00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number two oh eight and taking the show. We are talking about Theodore Roosevelt. We're talking about scouting and hunting for western white tails, talking about big drop time shed antlers and what it's like to pick up one of those, and finally I share my most recent near death experience. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by said good Gear and Tan the show. It's gonna be a fun one because I'm here with my buddy Dan Johnson and the man known as Further and and uh, and we're gonna be talking about a whole bunch of different things related to the trip that I was just on last week with Furtz when we went out to North Dakota and Montana and me and me and Further were out there scouting for white tails and doing some shed hunting and learning a little bit about Theodore Roosevelt too, So I figured we could talk about all that stuff. I want to talk about, Mr Roosevelt. I want to talk about Western white tail hunting. I want to talk about how to pull off a shed hunt like this and tell all the stories of of the week we had. Um. So that's my game plan. Dan, Is that sound okay by you? Yep, I'm all for. I must say that I followed along more than any other story, you know, like Instagram story or on social media or whatever. I followed along kind of really curious about what was all going down out there and what were your thoughts while you watch that? What were my thoughts? Yeah, my thoughts were was my name even brought up in the initial conversation about going out there as far as far as Hey, should we invite Dan Johnson? Because that would I think he would like that trip. Let's be honest about this. It doesn't matter. You couldn't. You couldn't. You won't answer that. I don't. I don't care if this is your podcast. Don't answer that. Because my same friends who I went to high school with and who I've known for almost twenty five years maybe even more, they don't have kids, and they stop invite me to do ship because they think I can't go to it because I have three kids. All right, So don't pull that bs. You put me, you put yourself in this position. Dan, No, No, the invite, the invites can still come. I can you know, I can tell you know. Isn't it Isn't it more painful to get invited to something they like I can't do it than just never know about it at all? Nope? Nope, absolutely not. How How am I supposed to not know about it? I follow you all social media and I'm here doing a podcast with you. I mean, obviously you'll know about it, but if it makes you feel any better, I didn't invite anyone. It was the last minute thing. At the last second. I was like, John, I know Josh has got the schedule, he can come along with me to do this, and you know he was able to do it. But I do feel a little bad that you and some of my other buddies were following along watching this all happen, and um, it was a trip that I would have been very jealous of too. I'm usually on the other end of this. I'm usually watching other people do a cool trip like this, and I'm upset, and uh, I just got luckier this time worked out? Hey further? Would three have? Would would three have been a crowd on this trip would three have been too many? Uh, I mean I wouldn't have brought home as many antlers then, So yeah, I guess so, or we could have covered more ground, that's true. That's true. No, this kind of trip you could plan to do with more people. You just would have to find a lot more spots, that's all. So it worked out. It worked out good because you know, a big part of what this trip was about, it wasn't about the shed hunting and the scouting and stuff. It was about this project that I'm working on personally, um, this public land project. So I needed to go to North Dakota and some of these areas where Theodore Roosevelt spent some important years of his life. So I needed to go there, and I had to do some research stuff. I had to go visit the National Park there. I had to go do some kind of check out some museums and different things on those lines. And that's kind of stuff that I knew that, you know, if people just wanted to come along for a shed hunting trip, they weren't gonna be interested and possibly having to devote several days of that kind of stuff. So um, So that was the big impetus for this trip was I had to go and do that stuff. But then I got to thinking, well, for going out there for this, maybe I can you know, loop in some deer hunting, scouting, some shed hunting and kind of make this grand trip out of it. Um. And so so that's what we did. I want to talk about it in detail, but real quick before we dive down that road, Dan really fast, do you have any updates of significance that we need to touch on in the life of Dan Johnson. No, I don't have any. I just want to hear about trip. And I want to because this stuff does interest me, like the whole the whole Teddy Roosevelt thing. Yeah. Yeah, So so let's start there then, because you know, as I mentioned, we went. We headed out to western North Dakota, UM in this region where they kind of referred to as the bad Lands. And this spot is so important because Theodore Roosevelt went out there and had some really important experiences in his life. UM. A lot of people refer to this area as the cradle of conservation because these few years that Teddy spent so much time out there, A lot of people believe in in Roosevelt even wrote himself that his time they formed his core beliefs and desires and passions around conservation and trying to protect wildlife and wild places. Um. And he said much of much of that was responsible for or much of his time that was responsible for the things that he did later as the president. So back when he was in his mid twenties, uh, Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt was a New York state assemblyman. And so that's basically I think state congressman type thing. So in his mid twenties though he was doing he's kind of working his way up in politics. But he had always been interested in the outdoors. He's a big naturalist, growing up as a kid, really into bugs and birds and things like that. And he started exploring some wild places around him. Um. So he was going up to upstate New York and he went up into the north Woods of Maine. UM. So he always loved the outdoors. But he grew up in this kind of aristocratic family um of of a lot of importance there, so he didn't necessarily have the really wild life and wild experience type of background. Um that many people maybe imagine that theater Roosevelt had. He didn't have that until the mid eighteen eighties when he bumped into this naval officer, formal naval naval officer, who was promoting western North Dakota um as like a sportsman's paradise. And Roosevelt had always been intrigued in the West. He had wanted to go out west, and so this guy is promoting it and talking about how great it is. So finally Roosevelt's like, all right, you know what, I'm going out there. I want to hunt. I want to see what the wild West is really all about. And in particularly he actually he wanted to try to hunt and kill buffalo um while they are still around, because this was getting to that point. That time frame was when the market hunting and everything kind of crescendo, and we're really at the tail end of um of that buffalo population. So Roosevelt heads out there. He takes a train out west. He gets off here in the bad lands of North Dakota, and he has this just incredible hunting experience, gets a taste of it. Absolutely love this landscape. We'll talk about this landscape a little bit more, but he he described it as like this area the bad Lands. He described it as savage, an area of savage desolation. He talked about like dreary plateaus and these fantastically shaped buttes and deep winding canyons. It was kind of an intoxicating place. And then of course amazing wildlife. He did end up killing a buffalo, saw all sorts of other wildlife. So before he even went home, he threw down a bunch of money and bought a ranching. He bought a ranch, gave a bunch of money to a couple of guys to make them his ranch hands, and said, hey, buy a bunch of cattle. I'm going to become a rancher out here, kind of a part time rancher. And so that was an eight three And over the next four ish years, UM, he came back to the bad Lands to western North Dakota time and time again. He came for for large portions of the summers over the next three years. UM. I think I read somewhere that in total he spent about fourteen months there over that period, from eight three to about eight seven, UM. And he just he had incredible experiences. He hunted whitetailed deer and mule deer and big horn sheep and elk. He went from there and headed further west into the Big Horn Mountains in Montana and hunted grizzlies and all sorts of other things like that. So we just had these amazing Western hunting and ranching kind of frontier experiences right at the tail into that whole era. UM. I was reading at one place that before European contact UM, specifically speaking of white tailed deer, before your peer in contact, there were approximately twenty four million white tailed deer in North America, and by this time frame that Roosevelt was out there, it was down to maybe five hundred thousand. So what he was seeing was amazing wildlife populations when he got there, and then over the course of that time period he saw declining and getting worse, and he was seeing kind of the rape and plunder of this landscape and others out west. So he kind of he saw what was great, what he thought was great, and they saw it getting worse and worse and worse. UM. And so that kind of set him on this path then to realize that he needed to do something about that. UM. And I feel like a big part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this in the podcast is because we always talk about how Theodore Roosevelt is this, Um, I don't know. He's kind of that guy. When we talked about conservations or hunter conservations, we always point to what Theodore Roosevelt said or what he did. Um, But a lot of people don't even really realize what that was other than he protected a bunch of land. Maybe that's the basics of what most people know. But he had all these experiences as a hunter, and this led him to doing a whole bunch of different things in the subsequent years. So this same place that me and Josh went to, this is the place that kind of built that foundation for him. Now, after the winter of eighteen seven, I believe it was. It was kind of a really bad year. There's a horrible winter, things are really struggling out there, and he realized that someone's got to do something to try to protect the wildlife across America before the market hunters destroyed, before all these other things in development take away what we have. And so he came back from North Dakota on one of his last big trips out there, and he put together this big meeting in New York with a bunch of influential people, and right then and there they co founded the Boone and Crockett Club. And we all know about the Boon and Crack Club now because of the record books and everything, But at that point when Roosevelt co founded it with George Bird grinnell Um who was the editor of Forest and Stream which is now Field and Stream UM, they were developing this organization as like the first real environmental and wild game conservation organization that was ever created UM. And they did a whole lot of really important things. It wasn't just keeping track of records, but they were actually making real legislation changes and lobbying and making real impacts on that kind of stuff. So, for example, Roosevelt and the rest of the organization were huge in getting wildlife protections in Yellowstone. So even though that Yellowstone was created a national park almost twenty years ahead of that, there weren't any real enforcements in place, so people were still killing animals in there and kind of taking advantage of it, and there was no enforcement there. So a big thing that Booting Cracker Club and that Roosevelt helped make happen was actually get those game laws established and enforced. He was a huge player in helping protect the last remaining buffalo. UM. Even before he was president, he was huge and actually lobbying for the legislation that helped establish Force Reserves, which eventually became our National force. UM. Even before he was president, he helped lobby, lobby for and get the Lacy Act passed, which is the first federal game law which protected game. It banned the sale and transport, importation, exportation of wild game, and different things on those lines, and helps stop poachers and enforce get game warrants out there to and force these different laws. So all that kind of stuff he did before he ever was president. I don't think a lot of people realized that he was. The more and more I've studied Roosevelt, the more of understood that he was. His fingerprints aren't so much from when he was a young guy in his twenties all the way through through his presidential administration and after that. UM, and we hear about the stuff he does the president a little more. You know. He helped set aside more than two million acres of national forces and refugees, created five national parks. He signed the Antiquities Act, which created the ability for presidents to say aside national monuments, and he used that to protect the Grand Canyon, for example. UM It's a whole slew of different things, which which I think is why I think we still talk about Teddy Roosevelt today. UM And I think a lot of us can point to him, not just US hunters, anglers, but really anyone who cares about wild places or wildlife. We can point to him as being really one of the very most influential and very first people that really helped developed this ethic within North America that we do care about these places, and that we do want to set aside places and conserve wild resources and wildlife and make sure these things in these places are available not just for us now but also in the future. UM. So that is a very long and winding way of saying, it was important for me to go to this place where it all began for him. Um So, right now in western North Dakota, there's this national park now dedicated there to Roosevelt's called Theater Roosevelt National Park. Um. And that is where Teddy's ranches were. One of his ranches, one of his houses is there in one of the units. And then there's a separate unit with another one of the spots where he had a ranch house. The house isn't there anymore, um, but that's where a trip began. We went to the National Park, um to go see one of his ranch houses, to learn a little bit more, to see this area, and um, I wanted to just you know, experience a little bit of what he experienced that had inspired him so much. Um. What did you think about that area, Josh when you saw it? Um? What I mean? And we're there, you know it's it's cold, so snowy. This isn't even like it is in the middle of spring and summer when it's flourishing with color and stuff. Even now, though, what did you think about this place? Could you could you understand why Roosevelt maybe it was a little bit inspired? Oh yeah, I mean for sure it was. It was beautiful. Um. You know, I've been out I've been out west and seeing the rockies and stuff like that, but I haven't seen any of this, um kind of bad lands type landscape. Um. It's just really cool, very different from what I thought it was gonna be. Like, um, looking at pictures and stuff. UM, one of those things you don't really appreciate until you're out there and seeing it in person. And um, my wife and I are actually gonna be out there again this summer, UM, so I'm looking forward to seeing it during the summer months too. And it's all greened up and everything like that. But um, yeah, it's it's a beautiful place. It's almost like you're you're going, you're coming along with the high plains in the north, the Koda if you're coming from the east, so it's the rolling grassy hills and then all of a sudden, it's almost as if I've never been in the Grand Canyon actually, but it's something almost like that. I feel like you you're you see this flat area, hills, grass, and then all of a sudden there's massive canyon. So all this erosion created this this winding kind of labyrinth of what people call bad lands. UM. But it's these canyons and buttes and cliffs and just the crazy stuff that water did, um eroding this area into this kind of fantastical it's really hard to describe, um. But some people, some cowboys back in the day, they described as hell with the fire put out. UM. And I can see that if you were a cowboy back in the day trying to get across this area riding a horse or a wagon like you. And we were talking about this, Josh, like, how in the world could you cross this area because it's so rugged, it's it's it's insane. I don't know how people could get across it back at that point. Um, but it does make for a heck of a scene. I mean, the scenery is amazing, these big, huge canyons and steep, nasty cliffs and thick draws, and there's kind of brush and pines and cedars intermixed. But then these really weird striadd cliff colors where it goes from like a copper color to a to a brown, to a yellow to gray, and all these different layers of I think it's sands, maybe sandstone or something like that that's causing these different um sediment layers to be shown. Uh. And then there's the little Missouri River running through the middle of it. So you've got this river bottom area then with cotton woods and beautiful trees and the greens up real nice down there in the summer. Um in the National Park itself, you can't you can't hunt the National Park, of course, You can't shed hunt on the National Park itself, but if you're ever in the area, it's totally worth going to the National Park just to see it. It's a beautiful area that they still have buffalo there. Um what we saw buffalo? We saw, Yeah, the prairie towns. Um. We did see a bighorn sheet, but that was actually not on the National Park. That was on some other public land north of there. You know, did we see Muli's in the park outside? That was? I think I was outside of the park. Yea, we may have. I can't remember. I think that was outside where we were, though. Where outside of the park that we definitely saw a ton? Are there? Elk in there too? There are, but not in the section we're in, I guess. Um. I was told that if you went farther east there's a section where there's a pretty good heard of him. Um, but I hadn't. I hadn't seen seen him in the past. But super cool, really really cool place and it was funny, you know. We So we showed up at the park and like I said, I wanted to do some hiking around there. I wanted to visit the visitors center. I wanted to see the Maltese Cross cabin, which was one of his cabins there the first place he bought UM, so we wann't check that out, and that was really cool. But we went to stay at the campground there in the National Park, and like I said, you can't keep shed antlers in the park. If you find an antler in the National Park, you can't keep it. So we obviously weren't going to go shed hunting there. So we find a campsite and we're walking from the campsite to the little registration station, and I brought my dog on this trip because I wanted to take Boone shed hunting and these other places we're going and try to actually have him in a place where he could actually find sheds and get experienced. That was another big part of this is that this is kind of a training opportunity for Boone. UM. So we're walking to the registration station and I can't remember if I saw it first or if I saw Boone first, but Boon goes running off into the woods next to this registration station. At the same time I look over there by him and there's a nice four point shed right there. Boons goes sticks his nose and I'm like, goshd right there right when we got there. Um unfortunately picked it up, well he picked it up, ran around with it, and then we had to put it back in there. Um that was painful a little bit, but it was cool to see one right at the gate and uh get boone on a fresh shed. That was cool. Um, And it was funny, you know, Josh, I think I don't know if you said or I said it, but man, this could either be a sign of a really good trip ahead of us, or that could be like the only shed we find on the trip and we're gonna be doomed there. Absolutely luckily it it was a foreshadowing of good stuff to come. Um. So so yeah, from here, we explored the National Park a little bit and then we headed out and there's all sorts of public land outside of the National Park to the north and to the south, there's a whole bunch of different stuff. Um, there's some blma and there's some grasslands. Um, there's some state land. There's a whole bunch of different stuff that you can get on and explore. And so our plan was to do that, to explore a bunch of these different spots. Do some scouting to do some future hunting, um and then you know, hopefully pick up some sheds too. UM. So I don't know further, was there anything of no on day one when we finally got out and looking that we should talk about or should we just skip to day two. I mean, day one is pretty slow other than the first shed we found in the campground, um, because we weren't even gonna shut hunt the first day. We're just gonna kind of drive around and check out the area, and then you know, we saw that shed in apart, we both got pretty fired up, like all right, we're gonna go We're gonna go find some sheds. Yeah, yeah, we that didn't go very well that first day. Yeah. Well, we couldn't get to a lot of spots because like all these roads, we're really muddy and kind of it's I don't know if it's clay or what the road was, um, but there's been a lot of snow melt happening, so everything was wet and we were in this rental car, and I don't know, I don't think either one of us really wanted to risk getting stuck down in here, way in the middle of nowhere. So I feel Mark, I feel like we need to back up for a second. Now that you mentioned the rental car and talk about our issues right before we left. I feel that's pertinent to the story. It's true, okay, Dan, So what's the rental car? I mean, you're going out, you know you're gonna be on some dirt roads, uh, you know or grabble or whatever. First off, I wanna I want to kind of visualize what the what I'm looking at here? So what is the rental car? First of all? Well, so we originally I wanted to get a cargo van because I imagined having a big cargo van, we could pile all of our stuff in there and then we could sleep in the van. Two, we could van life it, so we didn't need to set up tents or anything. We could just sleep in the truck and then drive from place to place and would be really easy and convenient have all our stuff in there. So I rented a cargo van from rental car place. So on the day we were leaving, Josh was supposed to go to the airport, pick up the van, and then drive down and pick me up. Well like an hour and a half before Josh was going to pick up the van. I get a phone call because I'm in the reservation and this is the rental car place, and I was just gonna say it was hurts. They give me a call and the guy tells me, Mr Kenyon, we we're not gonna have a vehicle for you today, and I'm like, excuse me, is no, We're not gonna be able to provide a vehicle for your reservation today, Like what do you mean You're not going to provide a vehicle the whole A reservation means that you were reserving a vehicle so that it will be there on the day I need to pick it up and then I get to use it. Like we we we made a business agreement. My side of the agreement is that I'm gonna pay you money. Your side of agreement is that you're gonna give me the car I reserved. And this guy and this company made me so mad because he's basically, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do. We don't have a vehicle. There's no other vehicles, there's no other vans for you. Um, and then he's not He's he wasn't offering a solution, Like if I'm in his shoes and all of a sudden I realized, oh my gosh, these people planned to have this vehicle to go on their week long trip and now for some reason, I can't get them that vehicle. Me as a employee, I would want to say, Okay, how do I fix this? Solution? How do I find a solution? How do I fix this? What else can I do to try to amend the situation. This guy didn't do anything, he didn't want to do anything. He's just like, we don't have a vehicle for you. And then so I'm waiting for the D or the but but nothing. So I had to be a jerk and be like, okay, man, that's not acceptable. What are you gonna do? Like, how do we fix this? And so for the next three hours I had to deal with this yuppie, calling him back and forth, trying to get him to do something, and every time it's like, oh, I can't get a hold my manager. Um, my manager supposed to call you. I call this other place. There's nothing there. Um. I've never been so frustrated the company in my life. So in the in the end, I'm trying to do this, and while I'm trying to I'm calling other dealerships and places are closing because this is Saturday, so all these places are closing. Like noon, I had I was baby not babysitting. I was on baby duty. Kylie was out for the day with her sister, so I had Everett. I'm trying to handle all these phone calls trying to find a vehicle, and he starts throwing a fit. So he's screaming and crying and going bloody murder and I'm on the phone and I can't hear these people, and these people are pissing me off. So it was like a two hour debacle. Um. I was just really mad. And uh finally I asked Josh that, Josh, I can't do this anymore, Like I get I have to deal with this kid. Can you can I pass the baton to you? Can you try to figure something out? And um, for you ended up finding a STUV we could rent and like the only the single last rental place within like hours of us that still open. We finally got something we could use, which was uh gmc acadia, right yep, So that that was what we got and it was it was actually not bad. It wasn't nearly as big as the van would have been, so we weren't able to sleep in it. We had tent camp um and like it was tight, it was really tightly packed. We were packed to the gills going there, and then every town we stopped somewhere camp we had to just unload everything and rearrange everything, and a little bit inconvenient. But on the bright side, I think that if we took the cargo van it would have handled the roads even worse than the than the STV did. Um, So I guess that was our silver lining. But yeah, even with all wheel drive, these roads were really really bad. Um. Some of them we could get down, some of them we couldn't. Um. But that first day a lot of the spots on the map that looked good that I wanted to get to had these just horrible roads that we had to turn around eventually on. So we did some walking in some places, but never found anything except Josh, you found a prong horn sheath, the sheath of a prong horn corn. Yeah about that. Actually that was an actually boom kind of found it. He was sniffer around it and it was kind of shoved it out into the road where I saw it. Yeah, that was that was pretty cool. So the next day, um, next day, we decided to go explore this other area that I had pinpointed as a as a high probability location. I thought it could be a good spot to hunt. I thought it could be a good spot, maybe find some antlers. Um So, long story short, on that one drove down to the spot parked. It was super wet like again to the point of everything being just post snow melt. Everything was flooded. Um So, the first section of this ground we were trying to walk was really wet, and both of us neither one of us wore our rubber boots. We're both wearing like hiking boots. Um So, the bunch of stuff we couldn't get to. But I don't know, after a few hours, and I think we're getting a little down a little bit because the whole first day either we couldn't walk stuff, and then the stuff we could walk we didn't find anything. And now this section it's flooded. We finally get some good looking stuff. We saw a bunch of sign I'm thinking all any time now we're in the fine antlers and it was just nothing, and um, I found I'm looking at the maps and I found one more section of like good cover along the river that I thought maybe that would be a spot that we could go find some sheds, but it was like over a mile away. So between us in this section timber was just a big expanse of stage brush, and I'm like, Josh, if you're up for I say, we just bomb across the stage brush real quick, get to that section of timber, and then just focus our shed hunting there. Um. And so you were up for that, and we started walking fast, just trying to cover ground to get to the timber. And then what happened, Josh, Yeah, we came up to this little high spot and we were still we were still looking even though we were walking fast through yards apart. I came up over on this little high spot and boom, there's a nice five point side just sticking up. You know, it's like perfect right there. Um. And then right next to it was the other side. So we just kind of walked up on a really nice match set, not thinking we're gonna see anything in there. Do do myself and the listeners a favor and describing a little bit more detail the terrain setting that you guys are doing this shed hunting in Yeah, good call. All right. So I'll give you my my perspective and Josh, you you add on to it if or tell me if you think it's different. But basically, what you've got here is we're down in the river bottom. So you've got this river that's winding through the middle, and this river is really high again because of the snow melt, that's really muddy, it's moving really fast. And then along the shore you've got these kind of fingers of cottonwood trees, kind of sparse cotton wood trees um. And then extending out from that then are these kind of long, flat expanses of sagebrush and grass UM. And then occasionally there'll be some sections like the section we're heading. There'll be some sections like where we're headed, um, where there is some thicker timber, so cotton wood trees mixed in with some cedars and stuff like that. UM. But then on either side, basically you've got canyon walls or buttes like these these bad land type hill slash cliff slash. I don't know how else to describe them. Um. If you google bad lands, you'll see what I'm talking about. What kind of stuff looks like but basically we're down in like the bottom of a canyon, almost this river bottom with these like hills or mountains on either side that kind of form these tight walls. Um. So that's kind of how I would describe it. Josh, would you add anything? I mean, that's pretty much dead on and then you know there's some cattle pasture and stuff like that to um, a lot of cattle grazing in the area. Um, but yeah, sage brush and then the cotton woods, some cedars mixed in here and there. Yeah. I mean you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Yeah, I mean this is this is very different than like Iowa or Michigan obviously, but it's kind of like your generic Western landscape though. I mean, if you pick any spot in Montana or North Dakota or South Dakota or parts of Wyoming where you've got a river bottom, it's kind of gonna look something like this. You've got you know, rolling hills and grasslands up on the top away from the river. Then it drops down into a river bottom. You're gonna get some trees and some stuff like that. Um. So that's what we're working with. And um, yeah, man, Josh is match. That was awesome big. I mean that was like a hundred thirty at least a hundred thirty something and I had on the right side and it had looks like split brows that were broken off, and I mean it it would be a sweet buck. That was cool. Did you guys, did you guys bump any deer or see any white tails while you're doing these this shed hunts, the shed hunts, Yeah, and not not yet like in the story yet we hadn't um, but we definitely eventually did see deer um. And that's one of the things. A lot of these spots out west, and part of why I've enjoyed doing these Western white tail reled trips so much is that they're really there's really high populations of deer um, and they're all in these small areas because the white tails are very dependent and preferential to the river bottom cover because they want thick, dense cover, you know, just like they want here in the Midwest or in the East or wherever. Um. But that kind of cover, it isn't an elbow across most of the landscape. Most of the landscapes wide open grasslands or sage brush or whatever. Um. So what you get is you get all the deer packed into the smaller sections, so you can see a lot of deer, you can find a lot of sheds, you can you know, it's just cool from that perspective. So that was kind of what we're dealing with here, was most of these white tails were living maybe in a I don't know, if you went from one canyon wall to the other canyon wall, you know, from across the river, it maybe is a half mile wide, Josh, I don't know. Maybe is that something about right? Maybe maybe more maybe three quarters of a mile wide. Um, it's hard to judge that distance, I guess, but it's not super wide. Now it's long, um, but you're the areas you need to look and focus your time on. It narrows that a lot, which which makes it fun for this kind of thing. So yeah, we found this. This next section was basically this I don't know how to describe it. This this kind of finger of land that extended out from the edge of the cliffs towards the river. Um, but the river pinched tight to the cliffs on either side of it. So imagine like put your hand up, put your right hand straight up like a wall and then UM, maybe point your thumb out flat from there. That's your finger of land, and then the river butts up to your hand on either side of the thumb. But that thumb has got timber on it, so it's almost like this land locked piece of land that had a bunch of woods in it. The only way you could get to it was either floated or there's a little tiny kind of side hill trail you could walk along the edge of the cliffs sort of to get into that. UM. So I don't think a lot of people were heading in there if I don't know if any of the stuff gets touched very much because it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. But um, this section looked particularly protected, UM, and so we hiked all the way to that, and that ended up being really good, like awesome looking signed tons and tons and tons of deer signed um and real quick here, I think this will be a good place for us take a break for our Sickest story of the day. For this week's sit story, we're joined by Montana wild Zach Boughton, who tells us about a memorable high country mule deer hunt where he tagged out in the last week of the season. One of my favorite hunting moments was a couple of falls ago, last week a season. We were trying to find big, mature mule deer buck and we went back to a spot, but I just kind of had a gut feeling was going to produce. Had never seen a big buck in the area, and got there early temperatures were dipping down just below zero, and we just slowly started climbing the mountain, trying to hike slow so you don't get too sweaty. Definitely glad we had the right layers for that day and got up on the mountain and and made a decision to keep going. I had thought about going back down the mountain. I hadn't seen a lot of game. And next thing you know, we come through the timber look up on the hillside and here is just a big four point meal deer buck, exactly what I was looking for. Got down, the buck, had no clue I was there, put it behind his shoulder and squeeze the trigger and that was the end of it. And walking up on that buck was probably four or five years worth of time spent in the mountains to try to find that buck, and it was super reward and that's probably one of my favorite moments from the last couple of years. Super demanding hunt and spent a lot of time on the mountain looking for a buck of a certain size and maturity that we honestly had never laid eyes on before I filled my tag on Zack's hunt. He was wearing because timberline pants and traverse hoodie. If you'd like to create a sick of story of your own, or to learn more about sit because technical hunting apparel, visit sick of gear dot com. And right away, I think, really quickly we found a shed. Um, I guess that was mine? Josh right, I found that first shot. Uh yeah, if you want to call it yours? Oh oh yeah, dog find a lot? Did they know? No, he's saying that I poached his shed. I think, o, Dan, you wouldn't believe it. It was a bad one man. It's literally directly in front of me. I've got video evidence. I mean it was it was. We need to start further me and you, we need to start a club where because we get walked in front of a lot. It sounds yeah, no, no one, no one should be ashamed. You know, Mark is just like you know what I need. I need it for my content. Yeah yeah, No, Josh, Josh is the only one who should be ashamed because he he should have spotted it far before I did. So that's on you, Josh. Now let's let's take a step back, because if you know no one's ont of you, why do you have to look out way far? Yeah, you know he's over on his side. I'm on mindset. I'm just scanning, doing a thorough check, and he's out there just yeah, yeah, yeah. We're walking like forty yards apart scanning. You know, you can't help but see some of the stuff. And it was kind of in between us. But say whatever you will, Josh. Um, but but the long, the long story of it. Um, we picked up that shed and what was cool, and the same with the sheds that Josh found first, and then we found two other small ones that day. Um, all of these antlers, you know, we got to let boone pick up. So you know, in all of my shed hunting here in Michigan, over the course of the last four years or whatever, I found like two sheds in four years that Booner had a chance to smell and pick up before I touched it in one day. We found five or six that he got to. So just really good experience for to get to see it in the real setting, to pick it up, to smell it, to you know, really get his idea, get an idea of what these sheds are without marks, without his dad's sent on it, you know. Um. So that was really cool. And he had to kick out of it. You know, he didn't find any antlers, just like he didn't he never ran up to me with an antler I didn't see and like surprise me with the one. Um. You know, we would use one of us with Spotta and then we would walk over there and wait for him to grab it. Um. But you know, for the most part, I think at the end, I think one of them he didn't really want to pick up. But for the most part, he got excited about him, grabbed him, ran around with him, and brought him back to us. UM. So that was fun to see, wasn't Josh. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Ye. So, so I'm looking at a map right now and I you know, there's there's these creek systems and these river bottoms and then they kind of these what you call um, I guess a a bushy draw, a real thick draw that comes out and all that drink. It's basically a big rainage area, right that leads down into these into these rivers. Were you finding the sheds more on the flat river bottom ground or up into these drainage areas. So most of the stuff that we're focusing on, um, now, most of the stuff that we were seeing, as far as that, it was all on the flat river bottom stuff. Um. It seemed like as soon as you started gaining elevation. I don't know that I doubt this is a rule. I'm sure there's places where the white tails do head up a little bit into the draws and stuff. But as far as what we were seeing, it was really in the flat river bottom stuff that was just packed with deer sign As soon as you start going up, that's when you start seeing what you know, that's where we would see mule deer. That's where I found. I found a mule deer shed that was up in one of those little pieces. Um. Everything else as far as the white tails was down in that brush on the on the flat stuff. UM. But I'm sure there are some places where you could go farther up into those little draws a little bit higher up and getting the stuff. But I just don't think in most cases the white tails like the really rugged stuff, they prefer the easier walking versus like these mule deer's mule deer that will head right up these near vertical walls and go over all this nasty stuff. Um, I think that's at least what they prefer most of the time. But yeah, man, it was a good day in there. That was our first day. We're really really excited about what we were seeing. Not only did we find those sheds, but some spots that I think would be worth hunting for sure. Um. And we did find do we find two dead bucks in their josh? I think one on the one where that day. Yeah, so found like a nice like a nice two year old seven pointer that was dead in there. Um, plus all the sheds we found, plus just lots of good sign tough to get to. So that's the spot I think I'd like to try to get back to and hunt someday. Um. And then yeah, headed back home that night. We had some then in some brats I think, or maybe that's another night, But we get good at the campsite. Um. And then the next day, were you guys tent camping? Yeah, okay, yep, tent camp What do you think about this is the first time you've ever done like winter tent camping, Josh, what do you think? Yeah, it wasn't It wasn't that bad. Um, it could have been a lot worse. I think we actually got really lucky with their weather that week. Um. You know, it was never terribly cold. Um. And we both got good enough gear that kept a swarm all night. But it was, Um, I enjoyed it is what do you call it? Type too fun? Is that what you call it? Type two? Yeah? If it's not fun, it's type type too fun. I don't even know if I go that far. Josh, it wasn't that bad. It was. It was pretty uncomfortable. I mean it was cool at night, but like you said, as long as you had a good jacket and hat and stuff like that. I mean I think at night it probably got down to the twenties um, and then the day it was thirties and forties. Um. But my wife was not interested in doing that kind of camping. Um. But yeah, the camp site we're in we camped back at the National Park. Um. For the first few days and that was just a beautiful, beautiful spot. Um. So yeah, great camping. And then when we were up on the other stuff, good deer scouting everything. And then our final day in North Dakota went to a different section. We had to do a ton of hiking just to get to the spot because again we were having issues of the roads, so we didn't want to risk going down on the muddy roads. But we still wanted to get to the spot, so we had to do a two mile walk down the road just to get to the spot we wanted to start scouting. Um. And then once we got in there, I think we walked another eight miles in there. Did we Did we do it twelve miles that day? Josh, Yeah, I think that's the twelve mile day. Yep. Yeah. Um, so we put some good miles in the boots there. But that was a good day too. We walked, It took us a while to get going, didn't find anything for a bit, but then I think that first shed you found was that huge G two shed, right, Yeah, you have that that big G two shed under the um under that cedar tree. Yeah, And um, I think basically all the sheds we found on that day. We're if I'm I think all of them were around cedars. They were in cedar betting, isn't that right? Ah? Yeah, I think so. Um yeah, because then I found that old, that old, chewed up one, which would have been a slammer, um, that was in some cedar betting. Um, just a little bit further down from this first one that I found. And then yeah, I think all of them are kind of in that same type of cover that day. And then found another couple of dead bucks or one dead buck on that section. Um, I found that tiny mule deer shed up on the side hill. Um. And then the well, one of the things I was thinking about in general this whole time we were in North Dakota, and I happened to record a clip talking about this. I think it gave me some good luck because I was just talking about being out here in western North Dakota, in this same general region where Theodore Roosevelt spent so much time. Um. In one of his book about him, I was reading, they were talking about one of his ranch houses, and they're saying that when he walked into his ranch house, there were so many white tail and mule deer shed antlers that you could mistake it for an antler museum. Um. So I was like, man, that's awesome. Like Theodore Roosevelt was picking up sheds just like me. And I wondered, like, maybe where I'm walking right now, maybe Theodore Roosevelt walked to pick up shed antlers too. Um that was like a cool thing to think about. So I record a little video clip talking about that. And then I was like, and you know, maybe maybe I'm gonna get maybe I can get a little bit of Theodore Roosevelt shed hunting luck. I could use that Right about now, and not like a half hour later, we're just about done with the day. We're heading past this section of thick theaters that are right in the edge of the butts, and I'm walking on the edge and I'm peering in underneath the branches to my right, and I spot a main beam. So I'm like, awesome, gotta shed. I called Josh over. I go sneaking into this thick stuff to go pick up the shed, and I come into I get underneath the tree limbs and it kind of opens up a little bit and then I see it's not just one shed a there it's too shed antlers in the big really big five point sides. So I freak out, me and Josh like high five in and stuff. Um, the best match that I've ever found. Um. And you couldn't ask like a prettier little picture right in there, could you, Josh? I mean? Sweet? Yeah, it's perfect right where we were in there, it's like where you think a deer with bed like that was like a nice big buck with bed. That's where it would be. Yeah, perfect little spot right up the next to the trunk of the cedar tree. The antlers are lying kind of almost on top of each other. They're like chocolate browns, beautiful colors, and so I grabbed the antlers. I pull them up out of the pine needles, and I'm looking at them, and then all of a sudden I realized there's like a four inch or five inch drop time off one of them, and I just really freaked out. Then it was so cool. It was the coolest antler I've ever picked up. Um, And that was that was a highlight of the trip for sure, don't you think, Josh, Oh, yeah, for sure that your face was priceless when you saw it. It's pretty funny. Yeah, I'm holding the handler right now, and it's super cool, really long main beams that kind of sweep up. Um. The drop time is almost if you were looking at where the brow time is and then then took a brow time and then just put another brow time directly underneath it. That's kind of what this antler looks like. UM. So that's my first drop time shed I've ever found him, probably the only drop time Sheddle ever find. Um. So yeah, man, that was the way we kept off our North Dakota day three. UM. And then that spot looked really great from a hunting perspective to UM. You know, my my big goal from the scouting standpoint was just to find these little pockets that had a lot of white tails and that looked like you know, are they hard to get to do that? A lot of white tails is a good sign. And I found those two spots. I definitely think hit that criteria. UM. And on that note, you know, one of the things I want to make sure we talked about in this is that when it comes to trying to do like a Western white tail hunt, the big thing I've been focusing on is just finding that finding if you're hunting public land or private land, whatever it is, find that kind of ground along a river corridor where there's some good thick cover, because again that's the limited quand that's the limited thing in most of these places. So if you find that good cover along the river, you almost certainly are gonna have some white tails in these places. Um So for me, it's just finding those places on the map and then going there in person and just saying, Okay, yeah, it does this look like has a sign that I think it has? Um And so we were able to do that. Um So I've got two really nice looking sections that I want to get back to someday. And I don't know, Josh, where are you at. You were talking like maybe you want to try to come back and hunt. Maybe not. Have you been thinking about anymore? Yeah, I've been thinking about it. I mean, it's definitely something I want to do. Um. You know, North Dakota especially, it is on my short list of states i'd like to get to. UM. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make it happen this year, but within the next five years i'd like to. I'd like to get out there. Um or Montana or South Dakot somewhere out west next a white tail hunt for next five years. That's the most unambitious goal I've ever heard that can happened. Buddy, do it now, Do it now, trust me, do it now. You don't have kids yet. I know I don't kids. Yeah, maybe I should do it now. Yeah, maybe I'll tell you what your kids then try to do it. Dance danciting on the other side of the internet right now, just dying to have that opportunity to get out there now. I need to make it happen sooner than later. You right, it was. I mean, it's just a really really pretty air. And I've just come to love this Western white tail thing in general because you get into these really unique habitats, very few people, lots of deer. The quality of deer is is pretty darned good, especially compared to what I have like to hunt here in Michigan. Now compared to Iowa. It's not like Iowa as far as you're not going to see as many monstrous deer um, but you can see a lot of like nice dear um. And for me, that kind of experiences is great. That's all I really want is to have like a cool wild experience and see a lot of dear and shoot him at sure buck. That's that's awesome. So that kind of thing is very achievable in states like Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Eastern Wyoming. UM. So I'm I'm pretty much on the point where I think every year, I'm gonna be doing at least one trip, if not two trips a year doing that kind of hunt because it I'm I'm really getting hooked on it. Um anything, Yeah, you gotta, I gotta. I got a question about, you know, shed hunting. You're you know for me when I go shed hunting, and maybe it's because I already know the properties that I'm shed hunting. But on a trip like this where you guys weren't necessarily just looking for sheds, you were also looking for um hunting spots as well. So how did you, I guess split up your time. I guess focused on sheds, but at the same time looking like, Okay, I'm gonna mark this on a on a map where I'm gonna put you know, this particular uh, this particular location for a mental note so I can come back to it and you know, as a potential hunting spot in the fall. Yeah. So for at least for me, I wasn't trying to go um. I wasn't focusing on scouting to the level of detail where I was trying to pick like specific stand locations or anything like that. It was really the scouting goals I had were just to determine and does this chunk look good? Like is it worth coming back and hunting here? Um? So really, once I got to these places, I was focused on shed hunting in that area. And then you know, every once and I would stop when we took breaks and stuff, and I'd be looking around and looking at the map and thinking through things, and you know, you kind of develop an aggregate idea of how much deer sign you're seeing, how many rubs are you seeing, how many big scrapes stuff like that, How what are the shed quality, what are the dead deer we're seeing? All those things kind of would just lead up to me knowing like, yes, this looks like a spot I'd like to come back to, or no it's not. Um. But I wasn't you know, scouring the area looking for rubs or looking for specific stand sites, are looking for access points or anything that um, most of my focus was devoted to looking for antlers. Um, I would what do you think, Josh, is that kind of where your head? Was that too? Yeah? I was the same way. I mean, yeah, you had to be blind though, not to see you know, good deer sign in the area. I mean, there's so many I can't I can't remember how many times I said to you, dude, I've never seen so many rubs in my life. Um, so he had to be blind not to see the deer sign in there and have a pretty good idea of of how they are using it. And um, you know, Mark and I were talking about if we, you know, if we come back out here, take a take an evening or a morning off and just kind of sit up on one of these ridge tops and kind of glass these areas and see how they're using the area and kind of make a plan of attack from there. But yeah, I was. I was definitely more focused on looking for for sheds and specific trees to hunt. On hunting or or whatever the case. Maybe that's what's so cool too about hunting a place like this. And I'm just a sucker for like being able to see long distances and everything. But in a lot of these areas out west. Just the view shed that you have, the distance that you can see is so much more substantial than what you've got here in like an area of Michigan where usually it's super thick UM or if anything, if if there's a view it's because you're sitting over cropfield or something. But otherwise you can't see a whole lot and there's lots of trees and stuff um out here. You know. The way I've approached my western whitetail hunts so far, and the way I intend to continue, is that the first day or two UM, you're just getting to a high point or getting to some kind of observation point. Maybe it's an observation stand, maybe it's sitting up on a hill or a ridge. Maybe it's just sitting out on the road and using a spotting scope. UM. But just observe UM. And if you're hunting, you know in the early season or even you know in the middle of October, when they're still on like a bed defeed pattern of some type, UM, you can very easily determine where these dear bedded and where they're heading to feed UM. And then you just plan you observe, and then you act on it and you go and intercept. Um. It's not like you have to find a whole bunch of specific train features on your map and then scout and see if there's yes, there's trails there, and then yeah, maybe it's worth hanging to stand in this thicket like maybe we have to do here at home. You can just see it. And if you see it, you see a buck, your interest in hunting. You see a bunch of bucks move through this everything, you say, Okay, yeah, I know that tree right there that I watched. I'm gonna go hanging standing there tomorrow afternoon and hunt it and then you can adjust from there. Um. And I think this spot would be perfect for that. You get up on one of these buttes, watch over this area, you could see almost everything, um, and then sneak in there the next day and and hunt them. It's just cool. You get to see so much. I love just what we were talking about, Josh I as much as I love, you know, actually having a hunt that comes together and connecting on a deer. I'm happy nine the time if I can just observe a lot of deer. So these hunts are fun, just because you can see a lot of action. I mean, I just love watching them. Um. So these kinds of spots are great for that, which is uh, which is why I'll definitely be out there again soon. And you know, one thing we did talk about mark and scouting for you know, hunting season is UM we talked about maybe doing it like a almost something like we didn't done our elk trips where hike your camp back in there and camp um somewhat close to these areas, UM, just because it's such a far walk from any sort of area to park or anything like that, it could be a real issue, um getting deer out or whatever. So we talked about maybe camping back in there or something and helping um shorten our walk a little bit or whatever the case may be in in terms of our access right right, Yeah, find some of those locations that are really tough to get to where you'd have like a couple of mile walk just to get to it. Um, you can, like you said, almost put a spike camp back in there because there's so much public land in there and you could just have like it's almost like a I mean some of these sections people do backpack in and mule deer hunt up in the badland stuff around there. Um, so you can almost set up a camp like that, but then just drop down the hill into the white tail stuff. That would be That would be a really cool way to do it. So yeah, it was awesome North Dakota, absolutely beautiful. What do we have? We found eleven or twelve sheds while we were there. Yeah, I think we're at eleven or twelve. I think eleven if I remember right. Yeah, twist like a lot of nice, really nice quality antlers, you know. Yeah, and the two match sets are to both of our biggest match sets. Yep. So sweet. And then, um, you know, we kinda had used up all the places I had found on the map that I thought were worth checking out in this general region. Um, and then we're having no issues. Like I said earlier, a lot of spots we still want to go see we couldn't get down because they're all mudded out. So I decided to head back towards where a deer hunted last year in Montana and east in Montana. Um, and so that's what we did. On day four. We drove to eastern Montana, set up camp where I was at last year and then UM decided to shed hunt and scout some of the public land there and then also try to get permission from some of the landowners I met out there to walk some of their stuff. So this was a situation where my previous year's experience helped out a ton, because last year, while I was hunting in this area, UM, when I was camped out was like setting up camp. One day, a neighboring landowner came over and talked to me and wanted to, you know, make sure I wasn't an idiot who was gonna screw up stuff on his neighboring property and stuff like that, and wanted to just get to know me and what I was doing. He ended up being a really nice guy, ended up showing me around some of his stuff and blah blah blah, And then he talked to another neighbor, and that neighbor came drove down to my campsite the next day and he came to talk to me, And so I met these two really nice people last fall. Well this spring, now i'm back. I went and talked to both of them again and said, hey, you know, me and my buddy further, we're down here looking for some she alers. Yeah, they thought it was a weird named um and and they both ended up really lending us a hand. UM. One of them gave us permission to walk his property UM, which was a really big chunk that also gave us access to additional public land to UM. And then the other guy was was offered a less walk a little bit of his and then also gave us access to his canoe to cross a river to get to more stuff. UM. So I mean the long story short in the Montana with three days there in Montana. UM, the first day I found a match set on public land, which is pretty sweet. And that was one where I saw one side and I'm like, boom, go get it. And then he goes off and running the other direction. I'm like, what the heck is he doing? And then I look at word what he's doing and his head is in the other antler. He's sniffing the other antler the other side. UM. So that was cool. And then we started walking some of the private that we got permission on and UM, I don't know how would you describe this stuff. It was a little different than where we were at North Dakota. It was still river bottom stuff, Um, but a lot thicker, don't you think, super thick? Yeah, those of the Russian olive and man that stuff. I mean you were we were calling around our hands and knees down there. Um, that was pretty brutal. Yeah, it was. I don't even know how to describe it. Like imagine like the thickest, nastiest like thorn bushes that you might have to walk through in Iowa, Dan and then just imagine like stretches of like forty acres of that or whatever, just NonStop. But it all looked like underneath it, like there was kind of tunnels burrowed through it where all the deer were moving through, and there was just like deer crap everywhere, rubs on almost every tree. I mean, it was so tempting to get in there because you're like, there's gotta be sheds in here. Um, So we we pushed through it. We spent more time dodging tree branches and saving your face, and then you probably did actually looking for antlers down in there. That was that was the issue. We probably walked by a bunch of them. Yeah. What was nice about this area in Montana, though, is that in North Dakota there wasn't any like food source. There wasn't any kind of air culture, um, particularly close to the places that we were walking about. UM. Here on these properties, we were either able to walk a food source or we are close to food sources. So the number of deer in there was like even more, even higher than what we had in Northcota. I mean like really really high deer numbers and lots and lots of bucks. I mean I saw lots of bucks last year when I hunted there, but this trip made me realize it's even better than I realized. Um. That first day, I found eight sheds um. And that was only like a half day because the first half of the day was like getting set up, getting there, set up camp. So it really was a half day. And I had my best day of shed hunting ever that day, UM with eight pickups. And then Josh, you found one. Yep? Was that stefing you? Uh No, no I was. I was a very um, courteous shed hunter. I didn't cross your lines at all, just fun to make sure you didn't get too down on yourself. So I let you pick them all up that day. I had to have the content, right, I gotta get the content I'll tell I'll tell you what Kurt Josh was that. Um, he is so slow. I mean, he just he just takes his sweet time everywhere he goes. I'm always looking by my shoulder like are you coming, Josh, are you coming? Or like we had we're heading into this great looking betting area and we're about to get into it. I'm thinking, oh, there's gonna be a shut up here anywhere. And then Josh like, hey, man, going ahead of me, I gotta use the bathroom. So so he's like rushed around his backpack for toilet paper and stuff, and me and Boom go walking ahead and I go pull out like two really nice sheds that maybe he could have picked up if he was walking, but he was And when Josh of those moments, Man had one of those moments. Yeah, yeah, yeah, been a couple of days. You know, we're out you're out there and you're eating protein bars and all that kind of stuff. You know, just things happen. Things happen. The thing about Further is I've spent I've stayed in many hotel rooms with him and stuff because we do these we do these out of state hunts together a lot. He'll go if we need to go down this, He'll go in the bathroom and you'll hear him like watching YouTube videos and like singing along to music. He's calling his wife. So I imagine, I imagine we're out there shed hunting, I'm picking up sheds, and he's sitting like was back up against a tree trunk, like watching YouTube and talking to Kelly and all this stuff. And I think that's why you missed out, dude. I don't know. Hey, my motto in life is a slow and steady wins the race. So I was nice and slow and steady. And I think my wife's You and my wife probably both kill me times. You know, you guys both have the same issues with me. I think, yeah, yeah, he's Yeah. I won't lament anymore on that. But that was a fun day. Yeah. And then the next day it was the highlight probably of the trip. Yeah, And I think that that We started the day, went and scout some different public land. Didn't find much there, beautiful area and we saw a ton of animals, ton of antelope, mule, deer, white tails, all sorts of stuff, but just no sheds. Didn't look at the kind of stuff we want to hunt. Um, so one of the landowners then got in touch with said, Hey, if you want to cross the river with me on my canoe, you can get access to this other stuff. Um so then this is where it gets good. Here it gets good. Do you want to do you want to tell this his story Josh? Or how do we How do we tell? I think you'll do. I think you'll do a great job. But telling it so Dan, you won't be surprised about this because I've developed a history of doing this kind of stuff. Now, um, I we're gonna cross this river to get to this other section that's based on the maps and what I think. I'm like, Oh, this is gonna be amazing. Shed hunting in here, that's gonna be awesome. There's gotta be lots of deer in here. So me and the landowner are gonna go across the river and the canoe first, and then I was gonna come back across on my own and pick up Josh and then go back drop him off, and then come back across and pick up the landowner his wife. We're gonna shuttle people across. The river is really high again from runoff, it's really muddy, it's really fast, it's pushing through there all the snow melt from the spring. Um. But I've canoed a lot over the course of my life, he asked me. He's like, you you comfortable, You good with canoes. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm good with canoes. But I got to thinking that forwards. I guess I haven't canoed on a river since like high school. But but me and the landowner go paddling across, and he keeps saying that the keys, you gotta keep the nose of the canoe pointed into the current, so basically you're pointed upstream, and then you just gotta kind of float with the river down, but just keep your nose pointed up. So we managed to get across the river just fine. I drop him off, and he says, okay, go back across, grab Josh and do it again. So the canoe is pretty narrow, and I get sat in it and I start to push out, and just as I pushed on into the river, like immediately, the canoe like tips almost all the way over. Holy smokes um. And then I rip myself and I balance out. I'm like, Okay, that's good, I got this. I got this under control. He just like, just make sure the nose stays pointing down or upstream, make sure the water is coming towards you. So yeah, I got, I got. So I'm like, oh, I'm in good control. I'm balanced. I've got my my legs on either side spread out real wide to spread my way across. Took a deep breath and pushed off one more time, and I'm focused. I know exactly what to do. I'm pointing the nose of the canoe right down stream upstream. I take one paddle out and immediately the current takes the nose in that canoe and whips it around like a whole ninety degrees, and just instantly, the canoe flips over completely in the middle of the river capsizes. I go flipping over. I fall completely in the river up to like my chest, and in midfall, I just remember thinking, oh, ship and then my cell phone were the two things I remember thinking. I managed to though it was shallow enough right there that I was able to get my feet and I grabbed the canoe, and I just remember the next thing thing is like, do not lose this guy's canoe. Like I was so embarrassed already. I can't believe I just did this in front of him and his wife, after just telling him, Oh yeah, I'm good into canoes, and instantly I flip over in this torrent Or river and that I'm holding on like dear life for the canoe, trying to make sure I don't lose. It's like dragging me down the river. And I think the guy was yelling at me, like, let go the canoe, let go the canoe, because I think he was just worried I was going to drown. Um. But in my head, I'm like, I'm like, I can't lose this guy's canoe. So after I don't know how long, it probably was like three seconds, but to me it felt like thirty five seconds or a minute. Like in there, like battling this canoe that was filling up with water and sucking me downstream. I summoned, I summoned my inner hulk strength, I think. I think, if I remember right, Josh, didn't I picked the canoe up out of the water and hold it over, didn't I completely I'm pretty sure I put it over my head and was yelling and then walked through the raging room. Oh man, I think the best part of it though, I think the best part of it, Like as soon as you went over, as soon as you went under, the landowner's wife's okay, I think I'm just gonna stay on this side of the river. Completely lost trust in him. Yeah, She's like, I'm not riding across the room. Yeah. So. So I managed to save the canoe and get out of the river. Um, but I was completely drenched and um. Then the landowners like, okay, we need to get you back to the house to get you warmed up and dried off and stuff. And I was like, oh no, no, I'm fine, and he's like, oh no, we gotta get you back. I'm like, oh no, I'm finely as long as I walk. Um, as long as I'm walking around, I'll be fine. I'm like, I've done this before in Iowa. Don't worry about it. There was snow on the ground, and there was snow on the ground. Yeah so so yeah. Man, I was soaking wet and it was probably in the thirties. It was cold. Um, but I was like, damn it, I already made it across the river. I'm already soaked. I might as well try to find some sheds. And I'm glad we did it because we had about an hour and a half to shed hunt, and then we had to come back and shuttle the land. Excuse me, we had to shuttle the land on her back across the river and then we could continue. So we had like an hour and a half and Josh, you you found the shed of your life. Yeah, I found the shed of my life. And it was Yeah, we had hardly been walking to me, We're maybe back in there for ten minutes. I got one and uh it is timed down and uh uh I walked up to him. At Holy God, I waited for I waited for you to get over there because I knew it was a good one, and um, I pick it up. And this thing it's just a it's got serious mass. It's got a split brow and I don't know what this other. I don't know if you want to call it another main beam or a third brow time. Um, it's a giant. I'll probably never find a shed like this in my life. Um, it's awesome. Yeah. I think it's a it's like a seventy inch plus side and like you said, like triple brow time's huge, like seven inch third brow time curling up off of it. I mean it's a wild looking antler. Yeah yeah, and then um, and then make sure it doesn't do it justice though. Man, when I did it did to me it didn't look like a huge shed. But man, that is. That's big. Seventy inches is big. Oh yeah, man, it's I'm all on it right now. It's um. I barely put my hand around it at the bottom of it. I mean it's so it's got really good yeah, real good mass carries it all the way through throughout the main beam. I'll have to put a tape on it here and see what ends up being. Yeah. We were basing that estimated score off of Corey falls regulation that he did via photo, so he's usually pretty accurate on those. Um. But Josh, you have to tell us what the actual score is. And then after that, I found one more on our way back to Shuttle the landowner a crossed. I want to give you a chance to talk about that moment um, because I I had some bad luck. I think that river was really raging. That was probably what caused me to tip over. It was a difficult situation. Cards were stacked against me. Um. But but further you you then we got back to the river, and I said, I'm not going back across, and I'll be honest, I was. I was pretty shook up. Like after that, I was. I was pretty miserable, soaking wet, and I'm like, I'm not going across that thing again. Palli it myself. So I'm like, Josh, Josh, you told you told me. You're like, well, you're already wet, so you should do it. And I know I already experienced this. You need to have this life experience too, and so you did it. Yeah, yeah, I did it. I did it. I actually think the water was a little higher. I think a little bit faster. You run off. Oh no, dude. I made it across there like a pro, you know, slow and steady. That's you know, I told you that's my motto. I got. I got the landowner crossed, and I I was even I was even talking to him on the way back, like nothing was even going on. And I just glided right across that river like it was, you know, the smoothest river in the world. I don't I don't know if you knew this, Dan, but Josh was the two thousand five Kennawan Hills Athlete of the Year and he likes to remind us of that often. So as soon as he got across the river. As soon as he got across the river, he looks at me as his athlete of the year. I just like to rub rub it in Mark's face. Little. It was as as it was pretty impressive. I think it was looked pretty good coming across there. Yeah, yes, sailing that was good. And so what was your guys is? Because you know you said, I mean, you guys have said, well, we found a shed here, we found a couple shed here. You know, Mark, one day you found eight or something like that, But for this whole trip, it sounds like you guys just raked it in in total. Yeah. So the first like that, first North Code of the day we found none. Second North Code of day we found five. The next North quarter day we found six. Our first day in Montana we found nine total because I found eight, Josh found one. And then this day that we were just talking about was our best day, both of me and Josh's best day of shed hunting either. Ever. Um, I found twelve and Josh you found how many? I think I had eleven? Yeah, so we picked up twenty two sheds on this day. Um, and like nice ones. You know that that triple browton one Josh talk about the really big hammer four points side I found. I found several other really nice five point sides, lots of nice like probably like hud pointer type shed hunt sheds all on public ground, a mixture of publican private. Yeah, because we had we had permission from this one landowner and then we could access some public through that too. Um so yeah, man, we we pulled them in. I mean it was nuts. It was it was a shed hunting day like nothing I've ever experienced. Um. You it's just it's what you dream of. It was really like a dream shed hunt. Like so many times I go shed hunting, I'm like, oh man, there's gotta be one in there, and you go look in there and then there's nothing. Um, and that happens over and over and over again. But on this trip, many times you're like, oh, there's gotta be a shed in there, and then you stick your head and they're like, oh, there's a big whole crown right there. Um. It was just it was just I mean, it's it was unreal. It's just fun. I mean, it was shed hunting like on steroids. Because you're actually finding lots of sheds. I don't know you had a black Josh, I mean right, I mean yeah, it was. I was glad I was able to make it work get out there. Yeah, lots of antlers, and again I found some more spots that I want to hunt. I definitely feel more confident about hunting this area again. Now, um, we found, like I said, nice shed antlers in there. We also found several dead bucks, like nice bucks. Um, so while it's a bumper that the buck's dead, it is indicative of the quality of deer that ken survive out there. Um. So that made me more confident in the general area. Um. And then that final day we found another we had I think we needed to find six antlers to get to fifty for the trip. We're like, oh, you know, it doesn't matter, but it'd be cool if you get to fifty antlers. And we ended up finding our six antlers. So we got to fifty and we're walking back to the truck and we're just walking across another sage brush flat on public land, and UM, we're just saying, oh man, it'd be nice we get one of those sage brush surprises like we did that one day in North Dakota, and not seconds after saying that I got one, there's a five point side right there in the middle of like no man's land, nice little five point antler snagged that and put us at fifty one UM, and that wrapped up the trip. So it was nuts. I mean, I think I found twenty eight antlers. I think Josh had whatever the difference is twenty three or whatever or something whatever that turns out to be. And I'm I've got I've got seven or eight right next to me. They're all like big antlers, like really nice ones. Um. And then lots of like there's tons of two year old bucks that we picked up, like small five point side or small four point sides, um, but they're still cool antlers. UM. So this is it was. It was the best shed hunting trip of my life. I had two days in a row that were my best days ever. Um. And then this makes it my best shed hunting year by far ever, because I think I had I had fourteen. We had twelve sheds that I found up to this point in twelve was my best year ever before this. Now you had twenty two or twenty eight to that, and I'm at forty for the year, so I blew my past best year out of the water. Um so that was pretty cool. I've got a lot more antlers to uh to adorn the cabinets with, and the tables, and uh three or four new good public land spots to hunt, and a great week of camping and walking around. So it was a great trip all on all in, not to mention, got to spend some time in a place that you know, one of our leaders in the past, the other Roosevelt, was really inspired by and we got to go experience that same place, which I think, I don't know if you felt the same way, Josh, but like that that was a powerful thing for me to just sitting out there and thinking about it and looking out there and imagining what this must have looked like back then. And um, I've always found that pretty cool. Any thoughts, Dan, I got. Yeah, you you know, for a while now you've mentioned this project you're working on about public lands. Can you tell us when you're like, do day is or when you're goal to have it completed is, so we can you know, start thinking about getting you know, like buying it or or consuming it or whatever it's gonna happen with it. Yeah, so I still can't. I don't want to officially announce anything until it's officially announced. Um. But yeah, it makes sense like another Yeah, another entity will be announcing this, and so I want to let that entity announce it first. But probably if you've heard me talk about this in the past, you probably know what I'm talking about or maybe have an idea of what I'm talking about. But basically, there's this thing I've been working on for a long time that involves writing that's big and it's gonna come out someday. So you can take a jump to conclusions, Matt and figure this out yourself. Um, but I think there'll be something you can purchase maybe next year, um, if things go well. Um, but this is this kind of project takes a long time, so it'll be announced when it's announced. It'll be announced when it's announced, and you'll learn about it when. Yes, but it will include some discussion of this shed hunting trip, which would be kind of fun. Any final thoughts, Josh or Dan uh for wrap this little storytime up? Oh man, I think just make sure that when you go again, you holler at yours truly. I'll make sure to put it out there and if you can, if you can pull some magic off and can clear this space, you definitely should try to do it. Because already I won't even walk in front of you guys, I'll even make that promise. Well, we're already talking like uh with the rest of the guys, the rest of my buddies, that we should do our weird hunt shed hunt out west next year. So you should definitely try to just just plan on carving out some time Dan in like late March, and we'll just hit several states out west, find a bunch of public land, camp out there with a bunch of people. Have to have a lot of locations, but I think there's enough land that you could say, Okay, you two hit this chunk, you two hit this chunk, you two hit this chunk, and you could do that for days and you would never run out of spots. Um. So man, you know, I've said it for years now on the podcast that I'm just a sucker for the West, and it's been really cool to be able to combine my love for that area with my love for white tails. Um. And this trip was just another really cool way to do that. So um, I'll be out there again. I can't wait, and um, hopefully you guys will be too, Josh, anything else you want to add, Uh, Yeah, I hope we didn't like set the expectation too high for us if we go back out there again with our buddies or whatever. I think we got. I think we got a little bit lucky just with the weather, um getting there right after the stone milt during the week and all that good stuff where I don't think it's really picked over too much. But man, if we could hit it like we did again, uh, we would definitely do well for ourselves again. Um. But I just want to say thank you for inviting me along, and Um, I had a great time. We had a lot of fun, even though we weren't shed hunting. We had said a lot of fun even in the car. It's a long drive and is just a good time. God, Yeah it was. We laughed a lot, and I agree with your first point being that we did get lucky in that. Yeah. I don't think other people had shed hunting this stuff yet because we heard that just like the week before the weekend before there was snow over everything, So we got to get out there before the weekend, just after snow melt, so we're getting first pickings on a lot of stuff. So we we definitely did time it purely by luck and that that happened really well. Um, So yeah, it might not always be that good, but I agree we had a good time. We laughed a lot. I embarrassed myself a lot. That landowner, I still believe he really thinks that there's probably something wrong with me. We we just kept on joking about can you imagine what he's telling his friends, Like the stories that are passed around that town about this kid from Michigan. I'm sure a lot of people got laughs. You know what's you know what's funny though, Dan, me and me and Josh were we're camping out intents just off the road. Um. And so it's a small town out there, so I think a lot of people drive down this road and they usually don't see the cold people tent camping. Um. So me and Josh, after we're done, we're heading out of town. We stopped this bar to get dinner um before starting on drive back to Michigan. And as we come out, this woman stops me. I can't remember, how did that start? Oh? She recognized the vehicle. I thing. She looks like, She's like, like, are you those guys that are tent camping up on that road? And I was like, oh, yeah, that's that's us, And she looks at me right in the eye says, you guys are badass. I said, yes, ma'am, we are. So I met you that that comment right there made you feel better than finding all of those ships, because you probably could have beat me up. So I'm made sure to tell my wife that right away, to that, Hey there's something out there. Thanks for pretty bad ass. So yeah, but as soon as the story of the canoe gets gets around town, though, then it'll be oh, man, only one of you, only one of you is a bad as that the Yeah exactly, that's exactly what they think about me. So yeah, I didn't. I didn't the show and the show alright, guys, good good times. I can't wait till next year. And that is going to do it for us. Thanks so much for sticking around for this far ranging storytelling episode of sorts. We certainly had a good time with it. Before we wrap it up, a couple of quick updates. Number one, if you haven't yet a rating or review, on iTunes is a huge help. Thank you Advanced for doing that. It makes a big difference for this pod cast. Also, make sure you're following along with Wired Hunt on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter to be able to see these types of adventures like we've been talking about today. I shared all sorts of videos and pictures and stories throughout this past trip on Instagram and I'll be continue to do that with future adventures as well, So check that stuff out. The Instagram handle is wired to Hunt. You'll find the same thing over on Twitter and Facebook as well. H Finally, just want to give a big things to our partners who make all this possible to so big things to sit to Gear Yetie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, Mayven Optics, the White Tail Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt Terra Maps. And finally, like I said earlier, big things to all of you for being here with us today. We appreciate it and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.

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