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 Wire to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon. This is episode number one ninety and tan the show. We are joined by Joe Hamilton's, a wildlife biologist and the founder of the Quality Deer Management Association, and we're gonna be chatting with him about conservation, the q dum A, hunting in the South, and much much more. All Right, welcome to another episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sitka Gear. And today here in a little bit we're gonna be joined by Joe Hamilton's. And Joe is the founder of the Quality Dear Management Association. So he has just a wealth of information. He has a lot of interesting insight into kind of the evolution of the hunting world. Um, so there's gonna be a lot of interesting things to talk about when it comes to that. I want to talk to him a little bit about, you know, hunting and what we've got going on this month here in December. And he's gonna have an interesting perspective there too, because he's down in South Carolina. We don't talk to as many people as we probably should about hunting down the South, so I want to cover that. But then maybe maybe just as important as all of that is the fact that Joe is just a great storyteller. UM. I went down to UM get my dear Steward certification down in Missouri maybe six or seven years ago. It's this course that the Qualitier Management Association puts on, the two day event, and Joe was down there for that, and I just remember sitting there and just being like captivated whenever he talked. He just has that voice and that prey is in UM that just kind of sucks you in and you just want to listen to the guy. So I'm excited just just to listen to the guy today. UM. And he actually has a has a new book out with many of his stories that I think is gonna be pretty cool too. So we'll talk about all those things, UM. But before we do that, before we get to the good storyteller, we need to take a few minutes for some bad storytellers. Me and Me and Dan um with our our weekly preamble, do you have any bad stories Dan that we should cover? To that dude, I was a hardcore drinker for like ten years. Of course I got bad stories. Maybe not those stories. Okay, okay, all right, I'll tell you what. You know, we often talk a little bit about social media greed and their greed and stuff like that. Facebook envy, all the Facebook envy. Man, I got it, you diddy. It's like you got a field tag. I got a field tag. What do you get? But guess what the guy who shares the farm with me. I saw a picture of the buck that he shot. And do you remember the buck that I showed you at the beginning of the year, the big eight with the split G two. Is that the one that you missed? No, that's the bigger one of the eights? So but still a giant eight pointer, giant eight part pointer. He ended up shooting it during shotgun season, and and I just was like I had this mix of emotion of awesome, dude, he shot it, glad you know it was a mature buck. You know you want to shoot mature bucks. Whatever. But at the same time, like I got this struggle on the inside going I wish that was me, not necessarily hating on him, but just like, man, I what do I need to do to to hunt more or to you know, expand my opportunities or or whatever, you know, by land, get a second tag, start shotgun hunting, you know whatever, go to another state. I just like, I didn't regret what I did, but I was just like, I want to do more. Oh yeah, that's that's totally understandable. It's man, I know, um, right, when someone else kills a buck, of course we want to be happy for him. We are happy for them, celebrate that. But it is still human to have a little bit of that. Dang. I wish that was me, and it wouldn't have had Like if I don't know, let's say it's a guy you share the proper property with, or your neighbor ends up killing holy Field. Yeah you know this, this isn't my property, This isn't um you know, I don't own it. I had permission to hunt on it just like he does. Um. But it was a buck that I had been following all year. Um, it was a buck that I followed from the previous year as well, and I just was you know, it's almost like I was envisioning myself killing this year, whether it was this year or next year, and then someone else when and did it, um, and it just was like, oh man, I wish that was me. But at the same time, I sent the dude an email and I was like, hey, man, congratulations on a stub buck. You know, just that's awesome. And I just asked him, you know, where where did you kill him? Because I wanted to find out more information of how how he was traveling or the deer patterns. And he hasn't gotten back to me yet because I think he's at work, but or he's like or he's like, yeah, of course Dan wants now where it killed him. I'm not giving him mindtel Oh man, man, I know how it goes. It happens. It definitely happens. But so I was thinking about another part of what you said there though, about how you wish you could get out more. How many days did you actually get to hunt this season? Because you tagged out on like day four of your rut vacation. Is that right? Um? Let me pull up a calendar real quick. I can actually tell you I started my rut vacation on what my first night in the tree, Dan officially was Friday the third, and I killed my dear on Wednesday, the eight so two, three, four five, so like five full days of hunting. And then you go back into October and I think I hunted four days so and I was thinking about that too. You know, you bring up a good point like man, three hundred sixty five days in a tree stand and well, I got to go hunt or three sixty five days in a year and my hobby. Yes, there's there's other days like doing mineral trimming out tree stands that may take up four days, checking trail camerons. Let's add two more days, so now you're at five and then that it's like seventeen total days throughout the entire season. Yeah, that's that's kind of like, yes, like of the whole year, you just got ten days actually doing the thing that you think about all year, dream about all year, land for all year. Um. I mean, so, how my question do you is, how do we in what I mean we, I mean guys like us who have more more guys like me than guys like to say, I'm a little bit of an outlier, right, but let's say the average Joe, the working guy, the family guy. You know, how how do we then take and show those facts and statistics to our wives or significant others and say, listen, there's three sixty five days in a year, my passion, I got fifteen days to do it. Why are you complaining on fifteen days? You know what I mean? How do we have that conversation? Man? I don't know. I mean I feel like it's it's it's it's that, it's you just have to somehow have a conversation. I don't know the right way to do it. I have struggles with it sometimes too. Um. Now, I I have a kind of a get out of jail free card because I can say it's my career, so I get a lot more. I get a lot more leeway and I than most people. And I understand that. Um, but still it can be a challenge to so for me and Kylie, at least, the best thing has just been like trying to over communicate about things like I need to I need to playing things way out ahead of time. I need to, like I try to consult her on Okay, if I was going to be gone for a week, would it be better this week for you or that week? Or you know, would it be better this year? If I do like three day trips, like three three day trips instead of one ten day trip or different things like that, just trying to find little ways to compromise. Um. But I don't know, I don't know if they had to answer this, UM, I know I'm gonna have it. It's gonna be a new challenge starting next year with having a baby. I know that you've experienced the added pressures of all that. So I think it's I don't know, challenge that we all need to kind of navigate in our own unique way. Oh man, I just like I'm sitting here and people are still out there hunting, and I think I'm gonna be able to get a crack at um some late season hunting, but you know, it's never as good. You just want to experience the good parts of the years as long as humely possible. And I made the I made the decision to shoot a deer, right and and uh that when that happens, that pretty much puts an end to you know, hunting in Iowa, especially if you know for me and and bow hunting. Yes, there's other opportunities, but it's just not the same. Like I could do gun hunting, but I'm not as passionate about gun hunting as I am archery. So I don't know. Have you thought about getting a tag in like Illinois or hunting northern Missouri or western Illinois or something that's not too far away from you, then you can have that added both season time, right right? Yeah, And I've put a lot of thought into it, like going to Nebraska. I mean, even a longer trip is okay with me. It's just that like I think Missouri and I think Nebraska go on thet the uh their firearms steagent season starts, so I don't I don't know if you can bow hunt at the same time as that, but it probably wouldn't be as good. I thought about going over to Illinois, but from what I hear about Illinois, it's similar to Iowa, where there is public ground, but there's not a lot of it. And not to sound arrogant, I've had a lot of people also invite me onto their properties and say, hey, Dan, come hunt, come hunt my property. You can kill whatever you want. I don't want to be that guy, you know, I don't wanna you know, I don't want to run into a situation where it's, well, I let you on my property, now you have to let me on your property or I don't want to use whatever status they think I have to go and and kill a big deer. Yeah. I've always felt uncomfortable that too. I just like to just would rather do things on my own. And yeah, absolutely, But when I get what you're saying, um man, I don't know. I Um, there's something to me to have a blood transfusion with guy, a guy like Andy May. Yeah, I get some of his DNA my system and I just walk into the woods and kill big deer. Man. He is a great example, though, of somebody who can, even with a family, even with a job that does not give him like almost any vacation time, he still has been able to find a way to fit in short out of state trips and get it done. Um. He's a He's a great example, that's for sure. So I had a short out of state trip that I kind of want to talk about real quick here before we get Joe on. Are you are you interested here about that? Uh? Yeah, because you sent me a picture of a really good looking buck on trail camera going after him tonight and then I didn't hear anything about it. So what's the deal, all right? So, um, you know you've followed my hunting season all season with me as we've talked about things the hunt for holy Field and how it was always like I would hunt one spot. In the next day, I'd be somewhere different, but he'd be there, or he'd be one spot, I'd go there the next day and he was somewhere else. That kind of thing, you know, over and over and over again. Um well, my Ohio season now has taken that turn as well. So get this. I've got four days to spend in Ohio. I was in Seattle for two days last week when we talked last. I got home late Wednesday night, early Thursday morning, I load up the truck drive to Ohio. My goal was to get to Ohio and time to get out to hunt that first night. So I get there and I'm getting all my stuff ready. Um no, we talked about this all right here, right, we did talk about this. Um So that first night, right I wanted to head out, but the landowner locked his keys in the van. We talked about that, yes, okay, So that was night number one, So I basically didn't get to hunt at all. I just walked to the edge of the field and watched for the last like forty minutes of the night. Night number one, bad luck of keys getting locked in the landowners truck caused me to miss on that hunt. All right, So night number two I get there, I head in, get too much stand um long story shirt and that night is that towards like the last half hour forty five minutes of daylight. I spot a really nice buck walking um away from me on the other side of this finger of timber. Imagine, um, all of the stories I'm gonna tell you these next three days all involved this one little spot. Hold up your hand and make a peace sign, but facing you, facing you, so you've got the peace sign up you at that v um. Imagine the palm of your hand and the two fingers sticking up that is a corn field. And then the fingers are fingers of that corn sticking up. Okay, and then the space in between the peace sign, that gap there is a finger of timber. All right, can you vision I'm looking at it? Okay. So on night number two, the first night I'm actually able to hunt, I'm sitting on the western finger of corn um, on the western edge of that timber finger that's sticking down. All right, Okay, quick quick question is the corn picked corners picked? Okay, okay, continue. So I'm sitting there and like I said, like half hour before dark, big Buck shows up. But he had come from the eastern finger of corn heading south and walked straight down into the palm, into the palm of my hand, and then onto the neighbors. All that time period either behind the trees so I couldn't get a shot or out of range. So night number three, I said, all right, I'm gonna try to hunt in that area where he came out, and let me take a step back. After that hunt, I pulled trail cameras and one of the camera cards had him on camera passing by a tree stand I have right there um where he came out, so I had him on camera and then I saw him like ten minutes later when he was out in the field and had a tree stand right there. So night number three, Now I'm gonna go and I'm going to relocate and hunt. Now again, we're looking at our peace sign right where the two corn fingers come together at the end of that timbered point. I was gonna sit in ground right there so that if he came out the same place he did last night, I would have a shot at him. I would shoot into that inside corner, or if he came out on the western finger, like other deer have done the past, I could shoot there too, and the wind was good for that. So I'm getting I left hotel room, I'm driving to my property, and about five minutes before I get to the property, I all of a sudden had this horrible sinking feeling in my gut when I realized I left my scent crusher bag with all of my hunting clothes in it in the hotel room thirty thirty five to four de minutes away. So I'm like, I have to go back. I have no hunting clothing at all. And that the reason why I take it out of my truck was because to to to run this thing, you need to be plugged in, and you can plug it into your car and um use like a cigarette adapter, and so I tried to do that. So I had it in the front seat of my truck. I turned it on and was running when I was driving home the night before. But like I've heard, it's not a good I did have that ozone in a closed space. Um, and I was like, you know, I don't like running this thing while I'm in here. Um, so I'm not gonna do this, So I'll just take it into the hotel room tonight, plug into the wall, run it real quick there, and then use it next day. But long story short, I, you know, taking a step back, I say long story short way too much, and then I keep talking. I don't I don't end up making it a short story. I've caught myself doing it. It's like my other that being said, that's right, So that being said, long story short. Um, I realized I don't have any of my hunting clothing, so I have to turn around, drive all the way back, minutes back to hotel room get my gear. I finally get back to the property an hour and fifteen minutes or something like that later. It's now very late, but I'm gonna try. So I'm sneaking into the property. And of course, when I get to within sight of that spot that I want to sit, there's already doze out feeding there, so I can't. I can't get there, so I hunker down. I crawl on the edge of the oppositie of the field up to the spot where these deer had came across the night before. So I thought, well, if these deer come out where they did last year, if they continue traveling, they'd eventually crossed the field and come by me. Well, of course that didn't happen. Um, but a big buck stepped out right where the buck did the night before, and I would have been able to get a shot at him if I was sitting where I wanted to be, but of course I couldn't, so I had to watch him stay right there. He didn't travel across the field to where I was at. He stayed right there, and I just had to sit there, kicking myself for forgetting my clothing and not being able to be set up where I wanted to be set up. And then and then not only that that was bad enough, but then it's like it's after dark and the bucks still at their feeding and some does come out. So I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna stay here, be quiet, and let them move off so I don't spook them, and then maybe tomorrow night I can get a shot. So I'm sitting there. I'm sitting there, and I keep on hearing a noise behind me, getting closer and closer, and then I turned I'm thinking, okay, there's some kind of critter coming up closer, and I finally see, like five yards away from me is a possum, a really big possum. And I'm sitting on the ground, like not in a blind or on a chair. I'm just on the ground, and this possum keeps getting closer and closer and closer. Finally he's like three yards or four yards away, and I'm like, all right, this thing's gonna walk right over top of me. I need to scare him away. So I start like shaking some leaves and making like just making some like noises at him to try to scare him away, like make him realize that there's a big thing here he doesn't want to come towards. Instead of that scaring him away, he starts hissing and he charges me. I'm charged by a possum. I'm laying on the ground basically, and this thing is coming right at my face, so I'm like forced to jump up and like try to kick at him so I'm not attacked by a rabid possum. Did you kick him? I didn't kick him. He stopped before. But I mean right there, it was like just about to have to kick a possum in the face. Oh man, I've done that. Did you really I've kicked a possum. Well, it didn't quite come to that, but but it was. It was almost end of blows. But of course, because I had to jump up to fight off this possum, it's spooked. It's booked to those doughs on the other side of the field, and they took off um, and so it kind of alerted that buck. He stayed there but just staring in my direction for a long time. So I kind of spooked those deer, which is upsetting to me. So not only did I not get a shot at him, but then because of a possum attack, I spooked these deers. So that was night number three. Night number four, I'm like, all right, there's no way I'm not going to get into this spot I've wanted to hunt. I'm gonna get there really early. I'm not gonna forget my clothes, I'm gonna avoid possums. I'm gonna get to the finger of this timber. I'm gonna get set up there and I'll be able to shoot to this inside corner where this buck has come out. The last two nights I get there, I'm all set up. I'm thinking this is looking good, that the evenings coming along very well. And then an hour before dark, I spotted movement out in the field right where I was sitting the night before. And there's this stupid big eight pointer comes running out from right where I was at the night before, and then comes running across the field the opposite direction where I can't shoot him either. So it's just in that kind of season, man, man, you have literally been in the wrong place every every time. I mean, I cannot catch a break. And it's just maybe it just reaffirms what all of our listeners have been thinking for years now, that I'm just one of the world's worst deer hunters. Uh. Yeah, So that was disappointing, but it was nice to see a good buck um three nights in a row. You know, I'm not entirely sure if it was the same deer all three nights. I think it was a different deer um at least two of the nights um, but it was always was a nice eight point like somewhere in that like probably four year old, maybe like one thirty ish, maybe a little bigger eight pointer type deer. This say, muzzle loader hunt. This was yep, it was the season, so they were still when they came out, they were still too far for you to shoot. Yeah, Like that first night, by the time he cleared the trees, he was probably to fifty or something like, they're three with my muzzleloader. I'm not shooting past one. Um. And then the second night he was, yeah, probably about the same distance, but I was looking at from the opposite direction. And then um, the final night he maybe was like one seventy, maybe somewhere around that range, but he was running by the time I saw him, kind of running across the field and then disappeared into the timber on the other way. So no shots. Well, I don't know, I don't even know what to tell you, man, Just like, maybe you should just go back to basics. And when I mean basics, I mean no knowledge of hunting at all, and just go to the same tree stand the exact same time, the exact same tree stand for like five days in a row. That's that's exactly what I was thinking. I'm like, you know what, screw all this like keeping the deer on their feet, I'm gonna trick them by never changing. I'm just gonna sit the same spot the whole rest of the season. I'm gonna pick one spot and hunting like twenty days in a row, just do the complete opposite of what any half decent deer hunter would do. And that was what we talk about. Yeah, they've maybe these deer figure us out. They know our our new tactics and uh, their head evolution, right, I mean deer have to evolve to survive, whether that's you know, becoming you know, yeah, exactly. I mean maybe maybe holy Field has a is a subscriber to the Wired to Hunt podcast. That would explain a lot this year. Oh man, you see him the next time you see him, you actually put put him in the buy notes. You're like earbuds in his ears. He's got the new AirPods. Oh man. Yeah, so, um so that's my story. That's Ohio. I'm gonna start hunting Michigan now again tomorrow though we got a cold front that just came through today. I'm gonna get after and um I have one piece of good news to share with you today. Twins your wife you havn't twins? No, no, twins? Um better news than that. Well, I don't mean that would be great, I guess, but it also be very scary. Um. The baby is doing very well though, by the way, good good, yeah, coming along very well. We're down to the final like ten weeks or something like that. Um. But the good news is that as of last Friday, which was the day after Michigan's gun season, yea, I had visual confirmation nice that holy Field had made it nice. So the big guy as a Friday was still alive. Um. Now muzzle otter season opened that next day, so of course there's still some people out there, but much fewer, much, much less of a chance of him being killed. So right, So that whole sanctuary theory that you've that we've discussed here, you're that you're going to stay off of it. Uh, you've stayed off of it, and hopefully he's found sanctuary on your on your farm. Yeah. I mean that's that's why I think I think that I think that probably had a big, big part and why he was able to survive because he has that place he can hunker down in. And not only did he survive, but then also the three year old that I've been praying would survive, the buck I'm calling survivor. Um, he made it too. So the two best bucks ahead of my property this year, both of them made it through firearms season. So that's really encouraging, and UM gives me something to be excited about for this late season with holy Field, and gives me something to be excited about for next year with a survivor. UM. So I'm gonna get out there tomorrow night with his cold front, assume the wind stays good for me, and UM hunt him the next couple of days with these really cold temperatures and hopefully finally we'll have a happy story to share. Yeah. Absolutely, man. I don't know how many guys out there are pulling for you still, but I'm pulling for you. And uh, you know, if you get any more mature bucks on your property, you're probably gonna have to open an outfitting business. I don't know about that. I don't know if if one mature buck would draw that many people, but it's enough for me, that's right, So I guess On that note, we should probably wrap this up. We've had a pretty long intro here, UM, so let's take a break for our sickest story and then we'll get Joe on the line and then UM, hopefully next week, we'll have a story share. For this week's Sikest story, we're joined by Jordan Miller of Runda Gun, who's gonna be telling us about an elk hunt that ended at ten steps. One of my favorite sitcom moments was this year down in New Mexico through a really good archery unit, and we had six days hunt. We used all six. We were down there. On the last day, hiked into one of my buddy Justin's favorite spots, hiking about mile and a half on this long ridge, and finally got this bull to google we had. We had a man. We pulled them all the way into about four and fifty yards. He just hung up in some brush. We called his cows all the way past us, and he just busted out. We had one last chance to get up on him, and we broke down the mountain, cut up this next ridge and we heard another bowl bugling. We got up right in between them. Justin made one little cow call and that bowl we were after he came just tarned down the side of the mountain to get up to that other bowl, and a little did we know it that he was gonna work about ten steps from us. Quartered right in took a shot. Had been practicing my bowl all this summer long at about a hundred yards just to get ready for fifty yards, and we drilled the six by seven public Land bowl at ten steps. One of my absolute favorite sick of moments on Jordan's hunt. He was wearing sickst Mountain pants and Mountain vest. If you'd like to create a sick Oft story of your own, or to learn more about Sitka's technical hunting apparel, visit sitkin gear dot com. Alright with me, now is Joe Hamilton's Welcome to the show. Joe. Thanks Mark, I'm very happy to be here. Yeah, and I'm excited to have you on here as well. And I mentioned before we started recording, actually as I did the introduction to the podcast, that when I went through the Q dam made Dear Steward course maybe five or six years ago. Now, I was um, and you were there. We were down in northern Missouri, and I just became captivated by your stories. Every time you were were talking to the group or sharing a story or experience. UM, I just kind of found myself just fully engaged in, so interested in what you had to say. So so because of that I've been particularly excited to make this episode happen because I know our our listeners are going to enjoy the same thing. So so that that being said, I guess before we dive into the many different topics I was hoping we could cover, could you just could you just kind of us up to speed on how you got to this point, um, maybe maybe especially what you did before the k d M A, and then we could dive a little bit more deeply into that story. But but what was Joe Hamilton's doing in the years that led up to that moment? Well, in the very early years, starting at age nine, became a hunter and that led me to the University of Georgia to get a degree in forestry and then to follow that up with a master's degree in wildlife biology, and I specialized in black bear project from my master's thesis. And then I came to work in South Carolina as a deer of research biologists in nineteen seventy nine and spent seven years living in a deer pin and conducting a variety of research projects. Most notably was the production of the scale for aging fetuses was the biggest part of that long time project. And then I moved then from the northeastern part of the coastal area down to the southeastern corner the deer rich low country and became a regional biologist, And in that capacity, I was working not just with deer but all species of wildlife, but focusing on deer because I had nearly eight hundred properties that I dealt with directly on what we called at that time the ant earlst Deer quote program, uh better known is the dough quote program and a little a little different there for our state. In most states, and that we issued ant reless tags or dough tags two properties, and I had to stay up with those properties each year and decide how many ant reless tags they were to get in all the while I was helping them out with changing their perspective on buck harvests. H two take more bucks to the older age classes before they were harvested. And I think the things that it's really important here is that in the eastern part of South Carolina then and even now, we have a four and a half month season up until this year with no buck limit whatsoever, and we do have for the first time around a buck limit this year, and it's going quite well limited five, which is still quite liberal, but that's what that's what I got involved with professionally in those early years, and and then uh from the mid eighties. For the next few years, I had more and more requests from hunters who had tired of shooting a lot of young bucks, and they were scerned that answered development was down and and the body weights were down. It was because nearly of their annual harvest was made up by year and a half old bucks. So they said, what can we do to make a difference, to crawl out of this hole we've dug for ourselves. But it's very timely that in one I had met Al Brothers, who is the co author of the very famous book Producing Quality White Tales, which came out in nineteen I met Al in Texas, spent a few days with him, and then the next year I was one of the co hosts for the Southeast Dear Study Group meeting. That's a group that had just started four years before that, consisting of professionals from about sixteen or seventeen Southeastern states. While we were having this meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, and it was my duty to come up with a keynote speaker. So, with the new interests in turning tradition around in the low country and now my connection to Al, I invited him to come to that meeting, our fifth annual Southeast Deer Study Group meeting, and deliver the keynote address. Well, he's quite a deal maker, he thought for a minute. He said, Jose, I will be there. I'll even come a few days early and I'll stay a few days after the main meeting as long as you can assure that I'll have a group to talk with every night. And the other part of that deal is you normally have a hundred and fifty professional people at that meeting. If you'll promise me you'll have a hundred and fifty deer hunters to match those numbers, I'll be there. And you gotta You've got to know that our brothers is a man of commitment. He is these rock solid biologically. He had a misfortune in doing a deer survey from a helicopter a few years before that broke his back and his legs were paralyzed. Didn't slow him down, though. What I wanted to point out was he drove a pickup truck using hand controls all the way from Lolaredo, Texas to Charleston, South Carolina, just to give that keynote address and to meet with select groups of hunters. So when any kind of a leader shows that kind of conviction to a cause, it's easy to fall in line and follow that person. So that was sort of the beginning of the idea of quality deer management. UH infused into the thought processes of our deer hunters here in the southeastern part of South Carolina, and UH fortunately there were enough people with large enough acreages to start UH on equality deer management approach and then made a difference pretty quickly, and the doubting Thomas's that were near them the fell in line pretty quickly said, M seems to be working for you, maybe we can try it as well. The bottom line is several years after that, we then had nearly three million acres in the eastern part of South Carolina or quality deer management guidelines, and that was done voluntarily, just despite the long season and the liberal buck limits. So that's that's my history with with my profession and with quality deer management. We've got enough people involved in those early years that we needed to organize them. So in nineteen eight, we started to South Carolina Quality Deer Management Association. Interest went beyond our state borders very quickly, so we decided to drop the South Carolina from our name, and we ultimately became the Quality of Deer Management Association, which we are now with members in all fifty states, half a dozen parts in countries and most of the Canadian provinces, nearly sixty thousand members and going strong. Here we are, here you are. That's it's pretty incredible to hear how you know, some some personal relationships and some different things that that can lead to something that has has grown to such a such a powerful and positive force within the hunting community today. What were those what were those early years like when you guys first founded the Quality Deer Management Association. What were you guys trying to achieve at that point? And you know, how did it grow from there to such a you know, substantial organization now. But we had some obstacles to overcome. As I mentioned, nearly nine of our buck harvest was comprised of year and a half old bucks. The other problem was there was a reluctance among most of these deer hunters to take any female deer that went very much against tradition. And even when I moved to this county that I live in now, there were petitions circulating for people to sign to make it illegal to shoot those in this county. UM that was that was a hurdle. Got around that through education. UM. I decided that I would start a radio program that I did once a week. I wrote prolifically for magazines and local newspapers. The biologists that I talked with, and I decided we'd have a contest see if we could average giving a talk a week. And we did that, and in the course of a couple of years, we contacted thousands of people, and we we had those pioneers that that contacted us initially that wanted to make some change. Today, n only started passing up young bucks. They started taking a number of ant with the steer, and their neighbors saw very quickly things seemed to be working for you pretty well. Your body weights, you're getting better, your answer development is sticking up because you're shooting older bucks. That's that's kind of how it started. And it took years to get people to harvest enough antler list here to keep their dear heart in balance with the habitat conditions. But all the while bucks were getting older, the hunters were going from one level of management to the next. All we were trying to do initially was take a significant portion of the year and a half old bucks to two and a half before they were harvested. And then when when hunters got involved in that approach, they decided, well, we'll just start taking more to the three and a half year old category, and you know, the rest is history. There are people now that are taking deer, and not on the basis of the kind of answers they have, but the shape of their bodies. They're they're shooting four and a half and five and a half year old bucks regardless of their ant development, and the hunters are happy that they are healthy and things are working pretty well. The other factor that started to come into play in those early days was the idea that maybe we can do something with habitat and can create food plots and and they'll work more with our foresters and and try to integrate forestry and widlife management and and even work on falla fields and try to make them productive. Craig Harper at the University of Tennessee, of course, is a great proponent of that, trying to manage old fields for natural vegetation, which they have been making a living on for forever. And so it's all come together. And I think the thing to really boast about now is it's not so much the size of our organization. We're sixty thousand strong, but the impact of our educational efforts has been nationwide. Uh. It's uh to the point that in nineteen there were more ant erless deer harvested that year than antwerd. That came only through education and persistence and and just driving that message home that that's what the deer herd needed fairly even sex ratio numbers in balance with the habitat conditions. And and then a few years after that, Uh, we've been we've been tracking the percent of year and a half old bucks in the harvest since about eighty nine, and at that time when we started, it was approaching nation and wide. UM. A couple of years ago, Uh, that number bottomed out at around thirty of the bucks killed that year, and and then a little bit higher percent of three and a half year old bucks were harvested. And that happened for two years in a row, and I would assume this this past year, it'll it'll probably hold truth that we're harvesting more three and a half and the older bucks than year and a half old bucks. I don't see that changing uh backwards, that it would more than likely just get better and better. But but the the impact of our educational efforts UH is really something to boast about. We've we're very proud that our education has had gone to that point and so the deer herd has benefitted from there, and certainly deer hunters have as well. Absolutely, So what do you think about then, where where the QT may where the Quality Deer Management Association is today, given some of these goals being accomplished that you just mentioned, how do you feel about where the organization and you know, the impacts of the organization are today, and then what do you think about the future where things going? What kind of impact can the QT you may have in the years to come. Uh. I'm glad you mentioned that mark because we are at a turning point. We have have proven that with our our educational capacity and are the variety of programs that we have that we can UH meet the challenges of the present and and we've done that we've we've helped uh take more bucks of the older age classes. We've helped balance sex right shows, helped balance deer numbers with habitat conditions. What we're looking at now, AH, would be a relatively long list of changes that that some are even accelerating. For example, we just kind of survey the results of survey recently that the US Fishing Rally Service conducts every five years, and in the last five years we have lost over two million deer hunters. UM. So we were at a hive a few years ago, maybe fourteen and a half or so million, and we're down I think it's two point one million deer hunters. Uh. There are several reasons for that number. One. Uh people are the baby boomers are aging out of being very actively involved in hunting. Number two things go on our own is we have a problem with recruitment of young hunters into deer hunting because there's so many diversions sports, especially or keeping kids busy these days, and and so we have lower recruitment and lower retention. So we're gonna have to face those problems. We have predator problems that are seems to be uh that they're getting worse by the year. And it's not just coyotes, it's black bears are on the increase, and in some cases bobcats are as well. But the coyote is the one animal that sort of changed my life as a biologist in the Southeast. When I first encountered them in the late seventies, I told the people around me, I said, well, mother nature will solve that problem, because if if you have a A nine in this part of the world, it's not on heartworm tablets, They're not gonna last long. And then there's parvo virus, there's rabies, distemper uh on down the line nine. There are a lot of things that will keep these codes from being very effective as predators. Boy was I wrong on that. Uh That we still don't have many cootes dying of old age, but they can do enough damage in their first few years to change our lives as deer managers, and they have. In those early years, we were complacent realizing that the deer herd, the females are having more, averaging more than one fond per dough. Now in some areas and even in my neighborhood. Uh, it takes three or four doughs to bring one fond into the faull population. And that's that's the deafennition of recruitment. It's the number of farns, not that are just born in the summer, but those that are actually recruited into the fall population. So we've had to change our entire way of thinking about prescribing deer harvest on an annual basis. We've had to pull the range back a little bit on being so aggressive at harvesting does. Um We've had to focus on the time of the year those does are taken. I've been a proponent of now taking adult does late in the season to lengthen that that parental bond between the dough and the fond, to give the fond that much more of a jump start for future survival. So we've had a lot of changes to make in the face of this new predator. There are places Pennsylvania, for example, where the bare population is still in increasing and the study had done a few years ago indicated that black bears actually killed more funds than did the coyotes. Not many more. I mean it was like fifteen funds killed by bears and fourteen killed by code. He is just in one area, but UH still bears are on the increase in numbers and in their occupied range. North Carolina is a good example of bears extending their range, especially in the eastern part of the state from those coastal counties, moving more and more inland, and bears have been proven to be very effective predators of funds. So those are some of the changes we've had to deal with and and we are as an organization going to be really pushing more and more research to find out more about the effect of these predators on dear popular lations. We've got to do all we can to work with mentoring programs to bring more kids on board to hang onto those that we have. And so we've got new challenges to face. We've got disease problems that are tied maybe indirectly to the captive deer industry. Chronic wasting disease, it's the main disease that we're concerned about. That's a disease it's always fatal. Once the deer gets it, UH does not live through it, and all the violets alive. It sheds preons UH into the soil that can affect other deer. And we're having to watch that very closely. It also seems that that a disease we've been living with here for forever was e H D or episodic hemorrhagic disease. That's a viral disease that's transmitted by the little no sea of gnats. That disease is spreading northward and westward north northwestward into areas that here tooford had no experience for that disease. And when it does move into a new area, those deer have no background, no anybody's built up, and it really hits them hard. So they're experiencing, especially in the northeast in the last few years. I think two thousand and twelve is a particularly bad year. And then maybe another couple of years ago of fifty sev of some local deer populations were lost to that disease. But we don't see near that degree of mortality in the southeast because our dear have history with the disease. There are some new problems though that uh. There are a variety of the stereotypes of disease, and we keep seeing new Seraho types pop up, and and these even in the Southeast, are causing higher mortality because the deer have no history with that stereotype of the virus. So yeah, our future is is UH clouded with obstacles. But again, there's no better organization around than the QT M A or to identify and to face those those obstacles through research and through education, and we're poised to do that. We We've got a tremendous UH force of biologists on hand, not a large number, but educationally we're about as deep as anybody can be around here. And Mark as you will know, if these dear Steward courses that we have, we're educating hundreds of people every year and that's what's gonna take to to UH to be able to keep your ear to the ground and know what's going on with the local deer herds and and to report problems back to the proper officials. We need to know about these problems so we can identify them and then come up with ways to ameliorate some of those problems. So every you know, the future changes for everybody, But I think we're we're capable of meeting those challenges. Agree with you, and as you mentioned, you know through this UH these different challenges challenges you mentioned, I think that they impact a wide array of deer hunters, not just you know, private landowners who have a ton of ground that manage dear but these things impact all of us. And based on that, based on the fact that you're saying that the Quality Deer and Management Association is gonna be focusing on these types of challenges, and given some of the other things I've heard about the goals and how things might be shifting a little bit in the future with the q DUM, is it fair to say that that your your organization is wanting to to make a very clear statement that the q d m A is for all deer hunters and not just maybe the stereotypical or the stereotype which was I think there's this miss um, this misunderstanding with a lot of people that they thought q d M was just for rich guys with a bunch of property who wanted to grow really big angler deer. That was kind of the negative stereotype of what quality Deer management meant to some people. Um, I think anyone who really understands the organization and the tenets of it understands that's not the case. But it seems like now from the things I'm hearing the organization itself is trying to make it very clear that that's not the case and that you are focused on things that impact all deer hunters, and especially with your new goals I saw come out this year that really seems to be UM. It's strongly assertain, very clear, and I am I right in in seeing that in that interpretation, Yeah, you are. And I can understand how we got stereotyped in those early years because the people that came to us were those that controlled a large enough at tract of land to manage effectively as a an individual unit without regard to what their neighbors were doing. These were not just landowners, but these were organized hunting clubs at least in many cases thousands of acres. And we have since day one been an organization for all deer hunters, and we've we've begged their involvement from an educational point of view, everybody needs to know what's going on with with deer and and those people that have relatively small areas to hunt on have been brought together with a fairly recent approach for q d M cooperatives. UM Michigan, for example, has several hundred q d M co ops going. We've also hired two people in Missouri UH that work with co ops on a full time basis. That has been the approach. The other thing I wanted to pull out, though, was that what many hunters are not aware of is that the q d m A is very active with advocacy issues. UH. These are issues at the local, state, and federal level. We average being involved in about a hundred issues a year. In these range anywhere from access to hunting, to Sunday hunting, to changing the minimum age for for young hunters to it uh a younger age to get them into the fold of hunting sooner. UM. Now, I think there are some states where you've got to be twelve years old or older before you can actually carry a gun hunting. UM. That's certainly not the case here in South Carolina. We have no minimum age, and and there are some very uh precocial youngsters that that are killing their first deer at age five or six. Might be too young uh in the opinion of some people, but these kids grew up with hunting and by the time they're six, they're ready to get involved with it. UM. But I think that the general uh, the population of deer hunters need to know that we go to bat for them almost on a daily basis with regard to rules and regulations concerning deer management, season links, bag limits, uh, poaching finds. We've been involved in all of that, and if we hadn't been, they would have lost access to properties, they would have uh lost in a number of ways, maybe even in the eyes of the non hunting public. I think what we've done through our organization, we've we've brought the hunter to the forefront and people's opinions to see that we are good stewards of the land and the resource and we police our own ranks and we couldn't afford not to do that. But our organization, I think has has gone to great links to protect the rights and the access of hunters across the board. So yeah, it is for everybody, um, even somebody hunting on a relatively small piece of property that that they just have permission to hunt on, they need to know that we're standing behind them, uh legislatively, especially make sure they can still have access to those properties. Yeah. Well, I certainly fall into that camp, um, not having not owning any land myself and just hunting small parcels and I certainly know that there benefits to being involved with the Quality or Management Association, and I certainly appreciate the work you guys are doing. But real quick now, before we move on to anything new, I want to take a quick second to thank our partners at White Tailed Properties. This week, with White Tail Properties, we are joined by Tony Hansen, aid Land Specialists out of Michigan, and Tony is gonna be telling us about what factors matter most on a property in high pressure areas well. To me, it's it's a variety. So even though I mean I own and kind of hunt a lot of small properties, you got to look forward a mix of things you need. You need food for sure, but you need cover probably even more so. You know, I need to have all of the pieces that the deer needs because I don't want them traveling very far, and I don't want them to feel like they have to travel very far because you know, especially during our gun season, when there's you know, nearly a million guys out there, if a deer moves, it's it's got a real pigance of getting shot. So I try to find properties that have everything you need right there. And yes, neighborhood matters, but it doesn't matter quite as much as what you can, you know, do right there on your own property. So you want to make sure that you have food and cover and um, you know, betting areas, security places and actuaries. They are a big thing with me too. So I looked for a lot of variety and that's in the property. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Tony currently has listed for sale, visit white tail properties dot com backslash Hanson. That's h A N S E N UM. I want to kind of shift gears a little bit here, um because obviously, base what we've just heard, you've had a long and kind of storied history when it comes to your involvement with deer hunting and deer management and conservation, all these different types of things, and you recently have kind of compiled um oh, I guess a collection of some of those thoughts and stories and experiences of that history, UM in a book, that book being Fire Pot Stories, which which came out earlier this year, And I want to hear a little bit about that book, UM. But something I want to ask you first, because I think within the pages of this book, I haven't read the entire book yet, I've read portions of it um but from what I've seen so far, I think you answer the question I'm about to ask. I think you answer within the pages of this book, spread out over the entire book. But I'm curious if you can synthesize this in one answer, which is this, Joe, why do you hunt? That's my question. I was introduced to hunting at a very early age. My dad was a hunter. His dad was a hunter, so it just seemed to be the thing to do. And then once I got became involved in it, I fell in love with just being out of doors and the challenges of learning all the critters that I was sharing the out of doors with, not just by sight but by sound. And I very quickly learned that the more that I knew about these critters, the more at home that I felt when I was out of doors. Uh, those of us that that started going into the woods before daylight as youngsters were afraid of everything, and education taught me that I just am now a part of all these different goings on in the out of doors. The other thing that comes out of that is what you learned more about all these critters that you're spending time with UH, and you're in their habitat, you become more of a steward of them and their habitat. And that's what got me involved, that's what keeps me involved. And I'm still I'm seventy years old now, I'm a very active hunter. In fact, I spent the whole morning at our skin and shed processing a deer that's been hanging for about two weeks. And UH we eat venison several times a week year round, and I process all of my own meat. So I'm still very much involved in hunting. I've got two grandsons now, and the oldest is six. He I think it's a little bit too young to have a gun, but he has been with us a number of times this year. UM went out rattling one morning about just a few weeks ago, and and rattled in about it was the first deer you've ever seen in the woods. So what story does he have to tell the rest of his life that the first deer he saw his grandfather rattled in Um? And then a deal was shot in the neighborhood recently and the hunter couldn't find it, and I took my tracking dog out that night with not just my two grandsons but two of their cousins, and everybody had a flashlight. We had the dog on the lead, and we we trailed on and on and on and found the deer and everybody was asked to bow their head and have a moment of silence to pay tribute to the animal. And and then we dragged it out and took it to the skin and shed and feel dressed it, hung it in the cooper to age for a few weeks. So they were getting them involved in hunting activities without even guns being involved on their part. So that's how I came on board, and I think that's the way to get these youngsters involved. They need to understand the entire process uh of hunting and processing the meat and sharing it with family and friends and that kind of thing. So that's a long way to answer your question. Why did I hunt? I think genetically it was instilled within me that I had to and once I got a taste of it, h yeah, I just stayed with it. Yeah. So so then so that's why you hunt? Why did you write this book? Why put this book together? And what what is it? Kind of comprised of what's found in those pages. Uh, I've been a great disciple of Alder Leopold, who was the father of my profession. H He passed away when I was only a year old, but he was the first professor of wildlife biology and ever at the University of Wisconsin, and he wrote a book entitled a Sand County Almanac, and his teachings were that those of us that were in the profession, and this was pre television, needed to meet with our constituents on a regular basis, and those were the hunters we worked with and for and educate them anyway possible, either through public speaking or writing articles for local newspapers or even doing radio shows. And then when I got to the University of Georgia, the professors that I had there were uh, certainly disciples of Leopold as well, and and they all talked about the importance of writing. So my writing days go back to my days at the University of Georgia. And the earliest entry in my book it was a newspaper article I wrote in seventy two, So only a few years ago that I realized that I been amassing a pretty good variety of stories about hunting and fishing, and some very biologically oriented stories or articles. And I thought, well, if I corral these things together, I might have enough to make a book. So I put my outline together and started filling in the gaps, and and I wrote some stories in the last few years to fill in those gaps. But I now have a book comprised of ten chapters with seventies six stories, and as you know already Mark and having read a sampling of though some of are very uh scientifically oriented, management oriented, others are just funny stories that have occurred over the years of hunting and fishing. And when I was talking with Jeff Foxworthy about a request asked for him to put a quote on the back cover of my book, I told him that for a person that I know has walked into a covey of wild quail and flushed them and watched them fly, that many directions on And now can you appreciate many directions my stories have flown. So that's that's just the way to sum it up. I mean, it's a very unique book in that, Uh. First of all, I wrote some of the stories long enough ago, and I learned that I was not altogether right on some topics. I was a little too light with my approach to the importance of coyotes, for example, And I went back to at least six stories and and did sort of a Paul Harvey approach, which he had a radio program, and he called his the rest of the story. I called mine the follow up. And in some cases my follow up was longer than my original story. But I was able to revisit those original stories written twenty or twenty five years ago and bring them up to date and and correct the things that I was wrong about, and even boast a little bit about the predictions I made that came true that. Uh. So, I've got about six stories that that have a follow up to them. I think the most unique part of the book is that it has chapter one at both ends. And how did that happen? Well? Uh, When I got to the end of my journey and I realized I had my book, I needed a way to close it. I didn't want to say goodbye, this is the end. And I spent a long while on some property that I grew up hunting on in North Carolina, and I realized that that was chapter one in my life. And I've been fortunate now having lived long enough that I've hunted with and I have friends in four different generations that have hunted on that very property, and so that property was chapter one in their lives as well. So that's how that last chapter got its name, and the way that I closed it. I was on a youth turkey hunt that particular morning, and after the hunt was over, I sat on the porch of the cabin all the rest of the day trying to decide how to end this book. And it only happened after I've got in my truck very late in the afternoon and made the four mile drive out to the highway at a very slow pace with my windows down so I could listen to nature, and I was was hearing a variety of birds. I was hearing a variety of uh frogs like spring peepers and and narrow mouth toads, and on and on, and realizing that all these little tiny critters that were about an inch along, these little frogs were very site specific and where they lived, and I knew that, and and I was able to ride along, could have even ridden with my eyes closed with a mental map of where I was riding along, because this particular frog stays in the stream. This particular frog stays in a little pool that might drop, and then they move on and on. But I got to the highway and I thought, this is this is an exercise in education, and there will never ever be a final exam. So there's the challenge. Keep learning and keep appreciating nature. The more you know, the more you'll appreciate it. The more you know, the stronger you'll work as a steward to protect it. And that's how I ended the book, was with a challenge, rather than saying goodbye, this is the end. This is actually the beginning. UM. So there's everything in between. There are some stories that will make you laugh, there are some that will make you cry. There will be some that will teach you some things you didn't know before, and that's always a good thing. So there's something in that book for everybody, but there's not everything for everybody, as it should be. Yeah. Yeah, there's a there's a chapter within the book UM that I read, and it spoke about the path of a hunter and kind of this UM, this evolution towards you developing the hunter's spirit. UM. Could you talk a little bit about that, what that means about that path of the hunter, the hunter's spirit, and kind of your thoughts on that and this journey that many of us hunters go through. Why that's so important. Well, they're about five major stages that you go through, and I'm not gonna list off five of those, but I'll start with the first one, and it's one that out of Leopold referred to as the trigger itch stage, where people want to go out and get their limits. They want to kill as many as they can legally, and and numbers are important. Shooting is important. You learn through time and hopefully through the experiences and with the influence from our elders, that that's maybe not necessarily the approach to take. You become more custodial or you become a better steward as you're going through these different stages, and in the final stage you get to is is one of of ultimate stewardship, where you start looking more toward photography or artwork to to stay in touch with with hunting. You take on more responsibility to act as a mentor to bring youngsters on board. And and that's where I am now. I'm much more excited about taking youngsters and introducing them to hunting and just being out of doors than than ever before. And then there are all those different steps in between. There is not a a recipe on how long you would stay on each plateau. It might take you several years to progress from that first uh the shooters stage, or that one with trigger itch, to the next one and then to level for in the level four and then finally at the level five. The speed at which you go through that is not as important as the the path and the direction if you if you have an unwavering path going through those different plateaus, you're becoming a better steward along the way and a better representative of the hunting fraternity. So I mentioned that in a couple of different stories in the book. But that is the hunter's path. It's just sort of a natural progression to just get better and better and better at what you do. But there's an old saying, you live and learn. Some people only live and don't learn, And some hunters get involved in hunting and never change. They stay in that trigger it stage right on through the whole process, and that's that's unfortunate for them. It's unfortunate for hunting that there are people like that. But it's incumbent upon us that that recognized the educational process to bring them into the fold and to help lead the way by example and by through education to get them to appreciate what they have access to. So that's that's the hunter's path, and it's it's mentioned twice in different stories in the book. Yeah, and I think you do. I think you do a nice job of illustrating that journey throughout as you said, throughout the book. It's it's kind of woven through many of your stories in different ways. UM. And then I think another example of of a way to educate ourselves about some of those elements of the hunter's path and that stewardship is another book that you mentioned earlier, that being a Sand County Almanac by all the Leopold. I think many of those um core tenants of becoming a steward and of taking those steps as the hunter, I think those are discussed and shown throughout all those stories as well. I think a perfect example that being UM one of Leopold's lessons learned, you know, in in his essay Thinking Like a Mountain, where he spoke about UM, a topic you mentioned earlier, that being predators and how he had you know, as a young kid, had always thought I'll just shoot every wolf for coyote would be a good thing. You know, he thought it was fun to kill him. And you know, every fewer wolves there be more, dear. Um. And then he kind of had this ah ha moment as he started to understand how all of these things are are more interconnected than that and that, um, you know, there was a place for all of these different pieces and parts of the ecosystem, wolves and deer and humans and all of those things, um as as one part of a whole. Um. Why does the Sand County Almanac resonate with you so much? Because I know you've mentioned it quite a few times, both in this book and um in past times i've heard you speak, why is that something that you think hunters should should look to? Is another source of of knowledge and direction? Well, I mentioned the importance a minute ago of mentoring, and if you had to read any one book that was available, uh as a book that would mentor you through the different steps of hunting, it would be a San County Almanac because it it talks about your role as as a hunter and a manager, uh and not a despoiler. Of wildlife, and and it it reinforces that necessity to be a good steward of our natural resources. Um. And just one example after another in that in that book, and it just teaches you how to be aware of your surroundings. My book, by comparison, has all these stand alone stories. Leopold's book, like most other books, is a progression of thought. You just you flow from one to the next, to the next and next. My book has stand alone stories with one exception. I have one story that has a sequel to it, and then I have one chapter that's a trilogy, and it's all about one person that I grew up hunting with, a fellow that was part Cherokee Indian from the Appalachian region of North Carolina, and he was the ultimate storyteller for one thing, and that I've probably got some of my storytelling from being around him so much in my early years. But aside from that trilogy and then that one story that has a sequel to it, all the other stories or stand alone. So if the stories were published, I put at the end of that story when and where, whether it was a magazine or a newspaper article or whatever. But there are a number of stories in there, and some transcripts from talks that I had given h here in the States and in Australia, and I put that transcript in as a story. Uh So therein lies the variety of in this book. I mean, it goes in every direction. But Leopold was was a person that I wish I had known. I got to know him through his writings, and I can only hope that I will be remembered that same way many years from now, because I just felt it important to take all that I knew about hunting and put between two cu ORSA and I think I've done that for this book. And I think it's important that you ah can enjoy any experience that's outdoors related, and even down to reading about hunting. It can be funny, and it can and should be fun It should be enjoyable. The more you understand about it, the more you're gonna do it correctly and enjoy it more fully. So that that's leopolst influence on me, and I hope my influence that comes through to the readers of my book as well. So so speaking of that book then and of the power of story, because in many cases the things you've talked about here there these you know, lessons learned, these important things to to think about as far as becoming stewards. All these things, many times are conveyed through a story. And uh man, I'm a glutton for stories. I remember as a little kid going up to our family deer camp. Um there was there was a guy who went up to our camp with us. His name was Terry, and he was probably twenty five or thirty maybe, and I was like eight years old at the time, and I would just follow him around all day at camp. I'd sit next to him in the truck when we were driving up to camp, I would sit next to him in the cabin, and in every second there wasn't talking happening, I would just say, Hey, can you tell me a deer hunting story? Can you tell me your story? Can tell me the story of your first buck? Can you tell me a story of how you killed your you know this buck? And maybe that's why I'm doing what I'm doing today. I'm asking people to u to tell their own stories still now, many many years later. But I guess the point of me saying all that, Joe is out of your book, and these many different experiences and stories you shared. Um, is there a favorite story or or a hunting story in your life that stands out the most, Um, that you could share with us. Any story that stands out to you would be would be pretty interesting to me. Oh my goodness. There they're all favorites for that matter. UM. One one was very humorous and it's entitled The Upside Down Goat. I was probably fourteen years older so at the time, fifteen maybe, and we had killed it deer on this property near my hometown in southeastern North Carolina. And I didn't know anything about skinning or gutting or anything. And in those days, when the club killed a deer, they processed it that day, immediately after the hunt. So I was standing around in this little shelter on a on an old abandoned farm and and watching the process. The first of all skinned the deer and they gutted it, and I was standing there with my hands in my pockets, and all of a sudden, something hit me from behind, and I landed on my back and looked up and I was staring at the chin of a big, wild horned billy goat, and everybody around laughed at what had happened. I was, while I was just embarrassed to the degree. And I hunted on that property for a number of years, and that goat was always there, and he was always hiding behind something and waiting until you got out into the open before he attacked you. So I had invited a cousin of mine down from Fatteville, which is near Fort Bragg. Uh he wasn't a hunter at all, but I said, come on down and spend the weekend with me, and I'll take your deer hunting. And back in those days it was dog hunting only in eastern North Carolina. Nobody still hunted, uh um. And so I said, you'd come with me, and I'll put you on the stand and we'll stay there until lunchtime, and then we'll come out and have sardines and crackers and cheese for lunch, and then we'll hut that wag in the afternoon. Well, we went through the old barnyard where there were a few hogs running around, and didn't see the billy goat I had mentioned him. And we hunted for a few hours and came back through the barnyard and had gotten to the very little of the opening, and my cousin said, there he is. Here he comes. And there was an old abandoned car there in the in the farmyard. We got up on top of that, and this goat was going around and around and around. We thought that was pretty funny, but we were held captive by this marauding goat. And then all of a sudden, the goat jump to the hood of the car and then to the top and was standing between us. Uh. Not enough room for a big, wide, horned billy goat and two youngsters. We peeled off the car and made a mad dash for the gate, which was a fight a hundred yards away. And Uh. It got almost to the gate, the goat was closing the distance, and I grabbed the low hanging limb and swung up into the tree. My cousin missed the limb, so he and the goat were going around and around this tree. All the while. He kept extending his hand said, pull me up, pull me up. Well, I'm not a fool. It's gonna be much easier for him to pull me down than for me to pull him up. And I said, you just got to do it yourself. Do it like I did. Just climbed the tree. So we finally got together up in the tree, and then the other hunters started gathering the gate, only to see the two of us in this tree with the goat going around and around us. Very humiliating. But I put a picture in that article of a goat and I turned him upside down to go along with the title. So there's some stories like that that, and I will say all of these stories are true. They all happened the way I portrayed them. Some of the stories I put in there were told to me, and there may be some element of doubt as to how truthful they were from start to finish. But like an old timer told me one time, well I just had to tell it like I heard it, and I wrote it like I heard it in some cases. But yeah, there are there are a lot of stories like that. There's some there's a turkey hunting story in there that uh, there's rather comical towards the end, and there's some good fishing stories. So, as I said a while ago, there's there's a little bit of something in there for everybody, and I just I just hope the readers enjoyed the twisted journey through all my personal stories. All right, before we move on, let's take a quick break to thank our partners at Matthews Archery for their support of this podcast, and as you might have seen on social media over the past few weeks, Matthews has just launched their new flagship bow for two thousand eighteen, the Matthews try Acts, and here with us to talk a little bit more about what the tracks has to offer is Matthews design engineer Mark Hayes. The try X is the result of an extremely focused goal that we had this year for two thousand and eighteen, and that was to make the stealthiest bow of all time. And UH, with that focus goal, there's two things that we're looking at. We're looking at the most efficient bow that we could past they make, and what that does is the lost energy in a bow is usually sounding vibration. So if you can make a bow as efficient as possible, you're gonna lower the amount of energy that you have to actually deal with. Once we lowered that with our e h s and the new position, which we're called three D dampening, that bow is the quietest and most vibration free bow that we've ever made, and we're seeing it now once the bows are hitting the shops now and people are experiencing it that the Halon was a great, great platform. But and it's hard to believe that the vibration could get better, but it is noticeably better and it's fun to see people's reactions on that. It's it was built for close quarters. Um, you know, Eastern guys were in Midwest, We're used to blinds and tree stands, and you know, the geometry of the bow is uh good for that. Obviously, it is a short bow um axle to axle. Now a few was like a bigger bow with our our short lambs and our big cams and everything. But it is amazing how easy that is to carry around and how maneuverable it is. And that was kind of a byproduct of our first goal was to just to make the stealthiest killing machine of all time. Really, so the newest thing what people will definitely see that three D dampening. We move that damper out in front um of the bow and if you could imagine a twisting motion, our dampers were normally, you know, underneath the hand and you don't get the full rotation and that twisting for that damper to work. So by moving it out we're using all three directions. That's where three D comes from to really dampen that energy, and that's why the user cannot feel it when they actually shoot. It's really incredible. If you'd like to learn more about the Matthews tracks, you can visit www. Dot Matthews Inc dot com. You mentioned how back in those days it was just hunting with dogs most of what you guys did, um, and that's something that that's very unique to the South. Um. Being a Michigander up here in the northern part of the country, I'm I'm far removed from the culture of hunting in the South. UM, and sometimes I I what's the word I'm looking for here? I don't give our southern members of our audience enough attention as far as things that are that are happening for them and the the culture of hunting that they're a part of down there. Can you speak a little bit about that, what it's what it's been like as a hunter down south, how that might be different than some of the things we've experienced in my neck of the woods up here. UM, and maybe in particularly be curious to hear about um dog hunting and how that's a part of the culture down there, and and some different things on those lines. Well, I think we're probably uh inherited that style of hunting from our European ancestors, UM. But the dog hunting has has been a part of our tradition for as long as we've been settled in in this part of the world. When I grew up, as I mentioned, it was, it was dog hunting only in eastern North Carolina. I've been around long enough to see that change to the point now that there are not many people still dog hunting for a long list of reasons. Number one, uh, they don't like to be able to keep a big pack of dogs, and and the other is their their hunting properties have gotten smaller and smaller, and all the while the problems with neighbors having increased over time. By comparison, when when I hunted the loose knit club that I hunted with, UM hunted about a seven or eight hundred acre tract bordering the Cape Fair River, and nobody to our left or right or south of us hunted at all. So if our dogs left our property uh in pursuit of a deer, UH, they were usually back within a few hours. For one thing, the deal would make a big loop and come back, but it didn't bother anybody. If the dogs ran the deer to the river and crossed the river, then there was a club over there as well who did the same thing. We had their dogs running deer across the river to our side of the river, so that was not a problem. But that has changed over time to the point that every single property that's hunted has a neighboring hunter on it. And what's changed is that there are more and more people that still hunt who don't appreciate having dogs run through their property. So that's it's been the biggest change that's happened with with dog hunting. UM I will pat the dog hunters on the on the back and congratulate them. In Georgia, a few years ago, they realized that they were on thin ice and a faction of their leadership met with legislators and that came up with a set of guidelines a I think a minimum acreage in different ways that they were to police themselves, and they essentially saved dog hunting in the eastern part of Georgia by having those guidelines. UM. Still hunting is very strong these days in that part of the world, but dog hunting is too. I see the dog hunting is changing in all these other states as well, um when it is probably going by the wayside quicker than those that are participating in it would like to see. But it's because they're not sticking to a set of guidelines like the Georgia deer hunters set up for themselves. Dog hunting is still popular in eastern Virginia, eastern North Carolina, eastern South Carolina, Florida, and then some of the Gulf Coast states all the way around through Louisiana. A number of years ago, they they stopped dog hunting in East Texas, um because of the conflicts with with other hunters and other landowners, neighboring landowners. So it's a it's sort of a dying art, a dying tradition, and it'll last in certain pockets because of large enough acreage to participate in that. But I see those acreages changing to the to the negative side. They're getting smaller and smaller over time. So it was the way to hunt at one time, and it's that it's now has been taken over by steel hunting, which has become d way to hunt. I've seen archery and muzzle loading hunting gain in tremendous popularity over the years. So if you look at deer hunting in the last twenty or fifty or seventy five years, it change has been the bottom line to all of that. And we just have to keep up with that change, with with the demands of the future. And and we have to accept that some of these traditions where thin and and maybe it's time for them to go on the shelf. But but that's just a natural progression. It's just the thing that it's happening. Whether social problems are causing that or biological problems or whatever. It's just we have always faced change. We've got to keep fasting it. Yeah, very true, very true. So for those still hunting right now. And two things. Number one, when you're referring to still hunting back there, when you're speaking about the difference, isn't hunting you were You were speaking more about the hunting from a stand or staying still right, not like the stalking type hunting. Or am I misinterpreting that there are there's some terminology that's different north and south. Uh uh, your way still hunting is stalking and down our way. Uh. Another way to describe stalking. A good friend of mine calls it slipping and tipping. I like that. Uh, it's moving. Uh. Most people move too quickly and see a lot of white flashes, and don't kill me in a deer. With that technique, you have to be able to move with stealth, very quietly, always stopping a shadow, always hunt into the wind or on a cross wind, and never never, never be in a hurry. Uh. There there's one exception to that, and I've got that in my book, Uh in a story called stalk Look Listen, And I use a little hand diagram of an old Tommy railroad crossing which used to say stop, look listen. I called mine stalk look listen, and it was designed for uh, for the rut. So the thing for you to do is to move rather quickly through the woods and keep your ears wide open for that tail tail sound of a h a courtship in progress. If you hear a buck grunting, and if the buck chases the dough through an opening beyond your range, wait until they're gone, and then move there quickly, because realizing the doe small home range, she'll likely circle our in and come right back through there, you'll be in a better position to make a good assessment of the buck. Shoot it if it's mature enough and it's what you want, or you know for sure you're chasing an adult deer, so you can you can take the antist deer. But that's the one time where you would stalk quickly. All the other times you just need to slow it down and stalk very slowly. But there's one difference north and south. When we talk about still hunting down here, we're referring to sitting still um on a stand that's either free standing or in a tree or now more recently in a ground blind. That's our definition of steel hunting. We sit there in wait for the deer to come to us. So, so speaking of of tactics and things along those lines, for those down in the southern half of the country or down you know, even more regionally, maybe by you whether they're hunting South Carolina or North Carolina anywhere around there. UM, for those guys that are still hunting in the late season, do you have any general advice for um for success at this time of year, now that we're in the December, kind of on the downhill slide of the season well down here. When we have a four and a half month season. By this time of the year, many hunters will look forward to that last day. They're pretty well hunted out. Uh. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to these remaining two weeks because I've done everything I need to do for this year. I've pretty well taken care of the freezer. I'm going to hunt every opportunity I can because my trail cameras keep telling me that there are bucks out there that know my Social Security number, that not only have I not seen them, uh, my cameras have not seen them in the daytime. And do these deer or denizens of darkness, they operate almost totally on a nocturnal basis, and they have the whole season even with very low hunting pressure. But but this is this is the bottom line to quality deer management. You go into the wood now knowing that those deer are there. In my early years, I went into the woods wishing and hoping that a deer of that caliber was there, and and didn't know that there was probably not a deer in the county where I was hunting that was a deer of my dreams. And if you're looking into the very first page of my book. There's a there's a painting that a friend of mine's mother did years and years ago, and it's a decent eight point buck chasing a dough. And the caption on that artwork was the dreams I had as a beginning hunter became reality only through management. And that's what we've done for ourselves. We have created, through quality deer management, a situation where going honey now has an element of promise, sometimes a thin promise, but an element of excitement as well, that those deer are there now. It's up to you to show your prowess and to cross paths with that animal. And the season may close without you ever seeing that animal, but you see their tracks, you find their shared antlers. After the season, you know they're there. You know they're going to be there next year, and even bigger next year. So for me, as a seventy year old, there's more excitement in hunting now than ever before, and and I think it's incumbent upon us to share that with every youngster. We can get them out there and let them know what's there, let them know that none of this is by accident. It's all by design and good management. And it's here because we've been good stewards. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think that's that's so true. Kind of along those lines, maybe as we wrapped things up here, UM, I want to I want to steal a question from a guy named Tim Ferris that I follow, and he likes to ask this question to the guests of his podcast. I want to spend this one out to you, Joe. UM. It's kind of a concluding thought here. If you we're given a billboard on the side of the highway, let's say, maybe it's side of the highway leading to a bass Pro shops or Cabela's, and you knew there's gonna be a lot of deer hunters passing by that billboard. What phrase or words, what message would you put on that billboard for deer hunters to see? Uh? I tell you what a mental image would be A photograph or or a painting of a hutter, an older hunter sitting on a log next to a younger hunter, and that being viewed from behind, so you could in the foreground you can see the log and the two hunters sitting there, and you can see a view down through a valley of what they were looking at, and the message would be be a part of nature, become a good steward. Yeah, usually the shorter the message the stronger. But I think the message I like to convey to other hunters and even to non hunters, there's a heck of a lot to get out of being in the outer doors, whether you're sitting on a stone or sitting on a log. But the importance of sharing that not only with a fellow hunter, but especially with a young hunter. Bring them on board so they can enjoy the things that you be long enjoyed and just enjoy being a part of nature and take pride in being a good steward. And as you mentioned, Mark, this was probably a closing comment, but I needed to make a couple of comments about the availability of my book. Was definitely gonna have to ask you about that for sure, so please do tell us um Well number one. It's available online through the q d m A. Just go to our website cdum A dot com, go to the store two books and you can order it that way. You can call our toll free number at our headquarters in Georgia, and that's eight hundred two oh nine three three three seven. The other way is to order it from Amazon. Just go to Amazon dot com type in firefot Stories and you can order it that way. The third way is to get it directly from me, and if you choose to take that route, I can personalize it. I can sign it to you or to someone you want to gift the book to. You just need to contact me through my email, which is j Hamilton's at q d um a dot com. I'll be glad to put it in the mail to you, UH with it signed to you. I'll put my name on it and a date. So those are the three ways. I really thank you for this opportunity. It's it's always good to talk with with fellow deer hunters, UH, locally and far away. I wish I could maintain eye contact while we were talking, but that'll that'll have to happen in the future. Yes, absolutely, it's always great to hear from you, Joe, and and I'd like to to thank you as well. Definitely appreciate your time sharing these stories and experiences with us. And I think you know, if I think it's evidence simply from this conversation, anyone hearing this that UM that what you have to say and that what you've put on on paper is worth worth taking a look at, hearing about, and reading. So definitely recommend everyone check out the book and Joe, thank you and best of luck with the rest of your season chasing those denizens of the darkness. Thanks Mark and just I just want all the listeners to know that the quote to Der Management Association is an organization that started uh almost thirty years ago. In fact, two thousand and eighteen is our thirtieth anniversary. The bottom line is we are an organization for all deer hunters. That that's your bottom line. We're looking out for you. Uh. Your future is our future. So if you're not, remember become one, and I think it will be a decision that you'll be happy you made. Mark, thanks again for your time and I look forward to seeing you soon. Enough sounds great, Joe, thank you, And that's going to wrap it up for us here today. A couple usual reminders. If you haven't yet, we we certainly would appreciate it if you'd leave a rating or review for this podcast on iTunes. It just takes a minute or less. If you could, you know, give us a star rating. Whatever you think. We deserve give us some feedback. That's something that we can use to try to make this podcast better in the future, so we'd love to see what you think. Um also, make sure that you're following Wired to Hunt across all of our different platforms. You know, this wire tone isn't just a podcast. I also run a website. We've got a lot of things going on on Facebook and Instagram and videos on YouTube, so make sure you're following Wired to Hunt across all those different places. And then, I guess finally, we do want to thank our partners who help make this podcast possible. So big thank you to sit to gear Yeddie Cooler's, Matthews Archery, may Haven Optics, the White Tailed Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt Terra Maps, and finally, most importantly, thank you to everyone out there listening. Appreciate your support. I appreciate you being a part of this community. And hopefully you are still hitting the woods hard trying to fill some final tags of the season, and assuming you are, I wish you all the luck in the world and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.

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