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, and this is episode number two, and today in the show, I'm joined by outdoor writer and public land whitetail specialist Tony Peterson, and we're breaking down his two thousand seventeen public land successes and we are examining his new game plan for two thousand eighteen. And before we get things kicked off, I want to thank our friends at Lacrosse Boots for their support of this podcast. And as I've mentioned over the past couple of weeks, I've been wearing the Cross robber boots for almost two decades now. They can tinue to serve me without fail. Keep me warm during the late season, they keep me comfortable, walk into the tree stand all year long. They keep my feet dry. You know, I'm heading to Montana in just about one week, and i know on this hunt I'm gonna be going up and down a river multiple times. So good waterproof forever boots very important. Nice high rubber boots very important because I'm gonna going through some decently deep water, but these should have me covered for most of the time. It's a great way to get in and out. I can get in quietly, I can access some spots that you normally wouldn't be able to So using water as an access route is a great tool, and these rubber boots make that possible. So I know they're gonna be a great tool for me. I imagine if you're looking for boots, they should do the jeb for you too, so you can learn more if you're interested at Lacrosse Footwear dot com. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx and today we are joined again by Tony Peterson. And Tony's an outdoor writer. He's been published in many well known publications out there like bo Hunter Magazine or North American Whitetail. And he's a public land specialist. And if you heard I think this was episode two two just last month, I think it was, that was our public land master class. If you heard that podcast, Tony was on there a couple of times, because he's been on the show twice before actually, and in those episodes, like I don't know what number those original episodes were you should go back and listen to those, but in those ones he shared a lot of helpful information. He's become really one of my favorite go to people to talk to about public land, do it yourself, haunts, UM. He's someone who I like to catch up with a few times a year, even off the podcast, just to catch up on what he's up to, how he's doing these things. He's just a he's got a helpful perspective, a good way to talk about these things. So I'm excited to finally have him back on the show because it was almost I think almost two years ago since he was on last. So today we're gonna catch up with Tony, find out what's new in his hunting world. I'm interested to see if tactics or ideas have changed it all since we last chatted. And then I'm hoping we can try to learn some new things from him by kind of breaking down what he did during his two thousand seventeen season and then looking forward at his two thousand eighteen plans and diving into how he planned these trips, what he's hoping to do, what he's expecting, how he's going to try to tackle these different states at different times a year. I think he's hunting five different states, um on public lan, So he's gonna have some interesting things to talk about. I'm excited about that. But what I'm not excited about is that my usual co host, Dan Johnson is not here because of a scheduling conflict. So I'm stuck with Spencer new Hearth. And I'm just kidding, man, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for filling in. I will do my best to fill in Dan's role. All try to ask some of the worst questions to I guess I got a question for you. I got a question for it. That's That's how I gotta start every one of them. Okay, all right, In all seriousness though, man, speaking of Dan, we had a huge missed opportunity last week. Um, for those that didn't listen, last week, we had Spencer and Dan and Further and myself on the show talking about our own plans and goals and stuff for the year. And UM, when we were talking about naming our bucks. This buck I think you call them like the Big ten or the five by five or something really lame like that. Um, but Dan, I gave Dan the right to name that buck. Remember this, and you talked about your favorite movies Forrest Gump, and Dan then decided to name your buck Forrest. Well, and maybe you saw us on Instagram, but a bunch of people all commented saying that we really screwed it up because we should have named that buck Lieutenant Dan, who is a character in Forrest Gump and obviously the tie into Dan. Did you did you think about that afterwards? Did you see those comments afterwards? Spencer? I saw the comm ments, and uh, I can't believe that just went over our head like that. But I am on board with changing this year's name to Lieutenant Dan. It feels more fitting since Dan is now hunting a buck named Spencer, that I should haunt a buck named Dan, and even though he tried to get out of that, didn't name it something else. Uh, it has now come full circle and that this buck needs to be now when it is Dan. Yeah, well, I think the people have spoken and and Dan's not here to argue that, so I say we just go over his head and and make the switch. Huh, that's right. I'm pulling up the file folder now, so it went from Big ten to Forest to now Lieutenant Dan is there any way to like lock that on there, so there's no more changes allowed. We'll just decide right now that that's who he is, and I'll let the other hunters in the area know. If anybody sees this deal, he goes by Dan. That's good, get everyone on the same page. Um, anything new on that front. I know last time we chatted, you were, you know, talking about how you're trying to get things all lined up for opening day taking a stab at him. Anything you've done since then or do you have any plans in the coming days to try to tighten up the plan? Nothing new on my end since we last spoke about a week ago. But this is kind of my last week, um for some different preparations to check cameras to get in lass bit of scouting before that season opens on September one. So nothing new on my end. But how about with you, Mark? I see that you are putting some miles on your pickup and getting some of those classic August cell phone pictures through Spotty and Scope that we all see. Yeah yeah, um yeah, I've been been getting eyes on a lot of bucks and driving around a decent bit. Um. I guess since we last chatted, I think I mentioned when we talked that I thought I maybe had seen Holy Field. Um, well I saw that same buck again. Uh, this was like four or five nights ago. Maybe. UM, I still don't know for sure if it's him. I have I've been seeing like right at last, like he's been coming out in this bean field. But the frame looks a lot like him. So that's exciting, but I'm not gonna get too excited yet. Um. And then in that same field, like two or three nights ago, I had a batchelor group of five different bucks come out, and um, all of them were at least two year olds, maybe a three year old or two in there. And then one definitely was a four year old or older, different buck, definite shooter that I've not seen before. So that was cool. Um. So that's at least two different mature bucks that I've seen come out into that field. And this is this is really close to a spotic and hunt. I can't hunt this property, but it's right next door basically. Um So that was good. And I'm trying to think if I've seen anything else. I haven't checked my cameras yet that I have on my main Michigan property. I hung. Well. The other big thing I guess I did is I went up to our northern Michigan deer camp um and checked some cameras up there. No bucks hardly at all on those pictures, but we don't seem to get any summer pictures of mature bucks at this property. Uh. Um, But we did a bunch of bears on there. Um. But I got those cameras set, and then the big project up there was trying to get our food plots planted. I don't know if you've heard on some of the past episodes where I've talked about this place, Spencer, but basically it's a little forty acre property up in the big woods and swamp country in northern Michigan that uh that my grandpa bought like thirty years ago. And um, So the past few years we've been trying to make a few habitat improvements because it's it's been almost like void of deer completely. But three years ago we started trying to carving these little plots. And so this is the third year I think now where we have something planted, and uh excited about that. But it was kind of a debacle. Man. We we got up there and got to the plots and they were just completely overgrown with weeds. I'm perpetually dealing with weeds because I just can't get up to this place enough. So we sprayed it in like late June, I think, so I was hoping by spraying it then it's still be pretty well knocked down or at least not too badly grown over by the time we got back. But I was wrong about that. Lots of weeds and we didn't We weren't gonna have another chance to get up there, so like this is yesterday, so yesterday there's our only chance to do this. So I couldn't spray and come back. So basically we just had to deal that we had. So I had my little groundhog disc for the four wheeler and it took a long time, but it actually chewed up that stuff really good, so I'm pretty happy with what we got. Took a lot of circles over and over and over going around, but but I got it disped up, got the soil turned over well. I think I killed off most of those weeds um so that there might be some some weed issues a little bit, but that's fine. It's not doesn't need to be a perfectly manicured, beautiful plot. UM. I feel good about the fact we'll at least have good seed to soil contact for our planet. So um planet a mix of oats and winter wheat and some brassicas um, which is something new. For a long time, we were just able. We were just able to get oats planted up there because of how acidic the soil was. But we've been adding a lot of lime over the past few years, so it looks like our pH has improved enough that I think brassicas can take I'm excited to see that if that works out. And uh, And that was basically the Northern Michigan Project did. Did a little bit of scouting up there, moved some cameras around. UM. So now I'm probably not going to get back up there until both season and um the rest of this this next week week and a half I've got left before Montana. I'm just scurring around trying to get a bunch of stuff done here in southern Michigan. I planted my Braska plots here on the main farm, and UM move some tree stands around a couple of days ago. UM, you know, one cool thing. And I'm rambling here spencer, so feel for a jump in and tell me to shut up if you want. Um. But I was. I was trimming some lanes at a few stands, and I went back to where I think is probably my best location for the rut this coming fall. I've got three tree stands that are all actually four stands that are all kind of along this back bedding area on this property, and and um, over the years, I've tried to improve that betting area by doing some hinge cutting. While I'm walking back to one of these tree stands that's back down wind of this betting air, or it's located to be down wind on on west wind. And as I get up to the edge of this betting air, this hinge cut area, I stand there. I'm kind of looking around, taking in the scene, kind of you know, happily patting myself on the back about how good it looks and how thick and nasty is And all of a sudden, deer jumps up from like twenty yards away from me, goes running away. And it's a nice ten point buck, like at least a three year old buck, maybe older. You know, it's pretty quick, um, but a nice mature buck that was betted right in those hinge cuts I made. So that was cool to see something that I worked on, you know, a few years ago, and now it's you know, paying off with deer using it. So were you improving a betting area there? Or were you creating a betting area? Like do you think there's any chance that buck would have been there otherwise without those hinge cuts, So he wouldn't have been where he specifically was. There was originally a betting area, um, a small betting area, and so I had taken note of that some years ago and saw that deer betting there. Um. But I thought to myself, Okay, there's this bit of high ground on the back side of the swamp. I bet you can make it bigger and extend it lengthwise down this ridge farther and that just might you know, draw more deer to bed here. I might get some more buck activity if I do that. So, like I mentioned, over the year, I've done a couple of times, I've done this, extended the hinge cut to make this area much bigger. And so he was at the far end of the new stuff. So, um, this area that he was bettered in is an area hinge cut last spring. Um that that's maybe fifty to seventy five, maybe fifty seventy five yards extended out from where the old betting area originally was. So he was he was better at the far end of it. I can imagine this if you imagine this betting air being kind of relatively narrow but long. He was at the far end of one of the of the if it's like a long rectangle, who's the far end of the rectangle at the very end of it, betted up underneath some of these hinge cuts looking I'm assuming he was looking out towards the open stuff ahead of him. So that was that was encouraging to see. And I've got a tree stand that's fifty yards from there. Um, Now that's not the kind of thing I would like hunt that buckbed from that tree stands. It's a really hard to access place. So I only hunt these stands during the rut, and I go in really really far before daylight, circle back through the back door of the swamp. And then if I hunt those spots, it's an all day said, I can't get out of there. Um, But it was good to see. And um, when we've got a west wind in November, there'll be one of the spots I'll probably be And that's neat because like the hinge cutting is something simple that like anybody can do. It doesn't take a bunch of resources. It doesn't take a bunch of equipment. Uh you know, and that's something you've probably knocked out like one afternoon in the past to get that buck there. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean I don't have any fancy equipment or anything. I just had a cheap chainsaw, and like you said, it was a one day thing where I went back there and did I did a handful of those cuts and uh, you know, all you gotta do is opens up some sunlight, put some cover on the ground, and those dear love it. So that was good to see and and walking around in there. Um, you know, I wish i'd I wish I was doing this two months ago or three months ago rather than now, But just my schedule has been nuts and I think that some activity in August is not going to impact me in November. Um but in a perfect world, that would I've been doing this, but here I am. Anyways, I was doing it, so I'm walking around in there and was clearing some lanes, because like I said, I've got three stands that are along this bedding area. Um. Two of them are for westerly winds, one of them is for an easterly wind. Um, and just kind of puts it around in there. It is just so tore up. There are so many rubs, there's so many you could see old scrapes, you could see beds um. And I usually go in here in the spring too and do a quick scout and shed hunt, and those are usually the only time I ever going here, and um man, it just looks dynamite. So last year, not from this specific tree stand, but from the other westerly tree stand, which is about two yards down the Betting Ara maybe give or take, I had nearly a shot at Holy Field from that spot. He came through at forty yards and my shooting lane was just cut to thirty five. So he was just back in a little bit too far back in the cover. Um, but you know, he's definitely the area. So maybe to three months from now we'll get in the counter with him in here and the whole story will come full circle. We uh as listeners would all look forward to that, and no get rid of this deer move on to something new, right, that's right? Um? So, so I've blabbed on for a long time now, but we gotta get Tony on here quick. He's waiting, but really quick before we do that. Um, any final plug for RUT Radio, because our RUT Radio episodes are gonna start up not next week but the week after that, right, do you want to give people a quick reminder of what to expect there? Yes? So this will be the third season now of RUT Radio. The first episode will go up September five, and the goal without radio is to bring you the most relatively relevant white tail until anywhere. Um. And so we will be recording these episodes like on a Tuesday, we'll talk to four different hunters that are very well respected for their white tail knowledge, talk about what they've been seeing for Dear movement, what they expect to see for Dear Movement. We'll get that podcast up on Wednesday, and we try to make them really digestible, like thirty minute episodes. So this is something you can knock out on your commute to work or over your lunch break, whatever it might be. And uh, we're gonna be bringing those episodes every week and talk to hunters across the nation. Yeah, So if if you're new to the podcast or for some reason, if you haven't subscribed yet, definitely subscribe now so you'll get those episodes. So by suscribe, subscribe to the wire Dut podcast, you're gonna get the RUT Radio episodes too. They're kind of just like a mini series within our own podcast here, So make sure you're subscribe. And like Spencer said, the fifth of September, well the first one on there, and I think right, I'll have been hunting for a couple of days by then in Montana, and you'll be hunting a couple of days in South Dakota, so probably the first update from our hunts will be on that episode two. So that's exciting. Yeah, And you know there's become it's becoming more and more popular to hunt that early September, late August where states allow. So right off the bat, we're going to have some unique reports for you guys. Hopefully Lieutenant Lieutenant Dan will be hitting the dirt, right, that's right, that's right, all right, man. Well let's take a quick break and then we'll give Tony call real quick. Before we do that, though, I want to thank our partners at Onyx and as I've been mentioning now for quite a decent bit. The Hunt app is something that I've been using a lot off of the off season. I use it during this season. It is a mobile application that allows you to see aerial maps, topographic maps. It shows property maps. You can see the actual private properties in the landowners. You can see the public land parcels, borders, designations, all that kind of stuff, and a lot of handy tools in there. I was just using onyx Maps yesterday actually while out scouting this new property I got permission on on the west side of the state here in Michigan, and we're out looking picking different trees to hanging stands. We're kind of doing some last minute stand prep and walking around scouting picking trees, and I would mark a tree on my app, and then what I was gonna do since there's another guy that's hunting this property with me, My plan was, I'm gonna mark all these trees they think would be good. I'm gonna set them up with tree stands over the next couple of days, and then I can send those locations directly to him. You can actually text away point to a friend and then if they had the Onyx app, they can open that app, it pulls up in their Onyx map and they can see it right there on their phones too. This is a great way to share locations in this kind of situation. If if my friends not able to actually get to one of these spots before the season, and if the first time he ever heads in is going to be four hunt, this way, he's not gonna be bumbling around looking for reflectors or some tape or something. You can just follow that white point on his phone right to the spot. So just another way that the Onyx Hunt app is helping me out a lot. If you'd like to learn more, you can go to onyx maps dot com. You can search for Onyx on your mobile app store of choice, and if you want off, you can use the promo code WIRED. That's w I R E D for off. Alright back with us now is Tony Peterson. Welcome to show, Tony, thanks for having me man. Yeah, this is uh the lucky number three time you've been on the show. Third appearance, so glad you have me on last year. I know we're gonna have to work double time to catch up for that. Um well, I appreciate it, man, I love doing this podcast. Yeah, it's fun. I've enjoyed our Ask two episodes a lot. And I was just saying, when me and Spencer are doing the intro um, how those are a couple of my favorite episodes. And you've really become one of those guys who I've you know, turned to is Is Um someone I've been able to learn from a lot as far as how to do a lot of these public land hunts. And you know, in particularly, I've started to do some of this western white tailed public land stuff that you know, you've done quite a bit of two so your your advice and ideas has definitely been helpful to me. So I just thinking, I thought today we could kind of, like you just mentioned, catch up on what you did last season and then look forward to this coming season, which opens for all three of us here in just a couple of weeks. So and you know, like we usually try to do, I'm hoping we can kind of use all those examples to dig into some things, um learn some of the different things that are going on. And and then I think there's a handful of other things you and I had kind of spitballed about otherwise it might be interesting to cover too, especially like with our families and some of that kind of stuff. Um, how all of that acts what we're doing as deer hunters. So that was that was my game plan. Um, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's right up my alley. So I'm good with that. Cool. So, so you mentioned that we didn't touch base last year? Um, how was the two thousand seventeen season for you? I was good, Um, you know, I had had a good run in a couple of states and I ended up, um, you know, having a lot of fun. Killed some bucks out there, killed a dough in northern Wisconsin on public land that was way harder to kill than any of the bucks I ran into, Um, and just had a I had a good season. It was. It was a lot of fun, a lot of cool encounters. And I'm really really optimistic for this year after last year. Where all did you hunt? Um? Last year, I hunted North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and I feel like there's one other state of missing there. Um, those for sure, but I had I hounted public in Wisconsin, hounted public in North Dakota, and South Dakota and some in Minnesota. So I spent a lot of time on you know, common ground out there, and it was it was just a fun season. Of course, you know, I went out hunting in Colorado and did some mantled open stuff too, but as far as white sales, those were the main states. I focused on what what was that dough hunt? Like? What made that one so special? Because it was so hard. It was just you know, you know that living in Michigan and having hunted where you've hunted, Uh, some of these states are just way more difficult than other states, you know, and it usually boils down to pressure and predators and you know, dear population and winter kill, the whole thing. And where I out in northern Wisconsin, it just consistently kicks my butt more than anywhere. And I last last November, I are about nine days to hunt public land up there, and I thought, you know, I had I had a couple of dough tags, I had a buck tag. I'm like, this will be this will be a blast. And I got my butt kicked almost every day and had several doughs that I was just trying to put in the freezer and got busted drawn on them and finally killed one, and it was it was way harder to do than any of the bucks I killed last year and anywhere I went. And you know, it's kind of an interesting example of what's going on in the hunting industry because I pitched that story to several of the magazines I worked for, and every editor passed on it because it was a dough, and you know, it's just it's kind of indicative of where we are, uh as an industry. But to me, you know, in my experience, it was just I really had to bring my a game up there just to kill a dough in a way that I don't even have to do to kill big bucks in some of these states. And so it's it's always interesting thing to me how it varies so much from state to state and county to county and just you know, parcel to parcel almost you know, Oh yeah, so this is like big Woods habitat right up there. Yeah, yeah, we're where where I'm kind of focusing on is right where the last of the egg ends and the real big Woods starts. So you do have it's not totally devoid agriculture. I mean, you can play off as some of the private fields around there. There might be an alfalfa field or a hate field or something, but for the most part, it's it's big wood stuff. Gotcha. Yeah, that's We're just talking before you came on about some work that I've been doing up on my family's northern Michigan property. And that's this little forty acre chunk that's surrounded by state land, like ten tho acres of state land, and it's just all big woods. Either there's a little bit of hardwood timber, but then there's a lot of swamp and um, it's so hard to find deer in that kind of area because it's pretty much homogeneous terrain, all timber. And you know, for years the population has been really low and the hunting up there has just been brutal, Like we like, our little group of guys that goes up there has hardly killed anything. So I'm really I'm really trying to refocus on hunting up there and try and like figure out, Okay, how can I apply all the things I've learned now is like an adult hunter to this place that I hunted growing up as a kid and did horrible lot, Like how can I start to figure this place out and what was your take? How did you end up trying to tackle that big wood slash? You know a little bit of agg but how did you approach that? I know you didn't end up killing the buck, but how are you trying to do and how do you ultimately kill that dough? Well, so my my strategy keeps changing. And you know, on the on the land that I'm hunting, um, it's it's in the managed force program, so it's it's private that's open to public, but there's there's these rules on it. So you know, you can't run a trail camera unless you contact the owner and get inform or you get permission, and you just have to you have to go about it differently. You can't leave tree stands up, so it's like you put up a stand, take it down up a stand. It's it's almost too much work for what it's worth. But what I started doing is going in and looking for fresh signs setting up there, and if i'd see a deer or see something that you know, observes something, I'd move in the next day. And I kept moving and I don't know how many stands I put up and took down in those nine days. But it was a lot and you know, I didn't kill a buck. I did see a buck that I thought was probably one sixty, which is which is you know, a giant for public land. Um. And I saw a couple of others that were you know, one fifteen two, maybe mid one thirties. So it wasn't like I was. You know, it was interesting because it was really hard, but I saw one of the biggest deer I've ever seen on public land. And just I think those kind of hunts, I think what you're talking about on your northern Michigan property. I think you just got to get in there and get where the deer are. Now it's almost more like a h an elk hunt. You know, if you go out and you see this beautiful meadow you know in you know, the mountains in Colorado or whatever. You know, it may look great, but it doesn't matter if they're not. If there's not fresh sign there and there's not elk around there, it doesn't matter. So you've gotta keep going and keep going. And I kind of think in the big woods, you know, we think of deer as being you know, occupying, you know it. So let's say there's ten deer per section or six deer per section, and you think, okay, they should be spread out. They're not. You know, one of the deal group that lives in one little area and this buck lives here, and you know, they're only occupying a little bit of the woods most of the time. And if you're not around that, it sucks bad to be up there hunting. And so I think it's just a real mobile strategy, and is is how it's usually going to play out for you, Like you're gonna have to keep looking, you know. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I um, yeah, We've got this little forty and on that forty about well of this forty, all of it was overgrown with stuff, and over the last couple of years, as I was talking about, we've actually carved in a couple of little tiny food plots and so we're getting some consistent dough activity now on the private stuff. Um, but I keep on being tempted to take a season and like spend a bunch of time up there and just explore all the surrounding public around it and do just what you said, bounce around from spot to spot to spot to spot. And there's some old clear cuts in the surrounding area that I gotta imagine there's some deer relating to those maybe a little bit. So I feel like, as you said, kind of jump around observe just I think it would be dreadful for anyone listening or watching because I probably will hardly ever see any deer, So it might be really boring content that year, but it could be really cool if I did figure it out. Well if it is, and it's super rewarding. And you know the thing about having swamps everywhere, because I hunt places like that too, and to me, it's the hardest kind of hunting out there for white tails and what I think, you know, especially if you're gonna focus anytime, you know, Halloween on, if you can look at your aerial photography and see you can kind of you can kind of see I call it a figure in the swamp where it'll be like a point across from a point and it's hard to see when you're on the ground walking around, but if you look at the aerial photography, sometimes you'll see those and that's where they cross a lot. And so usually if I'm dealing with huge wood stuff, I don't I don't do the clear cut thing as much because I may I may be in an area that has you know, four square miles a clear cut, and it's like, well, okay, so yeah, maybe the deer eating the fresh brows somewhere in there. But it's basically, you know, you're dealing with this huge, huge piece of land. And so if you find some of those those places in the swamps where it's easier for them to cross um, where there's an island in the swamp that they can get to and bed on because they love those because of the visitors, then you can kind of narrow down your search. You know what. It's like. It's a process, man, you know, it's it's just not easy to find. And just because you see that figure eight on d aerial photography, you might walk in there and realize you can't really hunt it with a prevailing wind, or it just might not be the right spot. But you can kind of shortcut the process a little bit by doing that. Sometimes, Yeah, that's a good idea. I definitely finding those like little pinch points, that kind of thing, I think is a great way to try and narrow it down. I've I've started looking for some things like that or just starting to identify all the different kind of internal edges that there's no obvious edges around here because it's not like big timber meeting up to a crop field or something. But I've been trying to find like edge between swamping hardwoods, or between hardwoods and pines um or some things like that. I think, I think that's someone to start doing, is take my map and just start marking each one of these different features that I think might have something to it. And the next spring, I just need to go and just walk every single bit of it and like really dedicate some time to figure in this place out, because I don't know, it just seems like to your point, it would be a lot of fun to figure that out and try to make it happen. Well, it is, and it's you know, it's so different. You know, you talk about making food plots and that's a blast, but this is a totally different style of hunting, you know. I mean, you're you're going out trying to figure out what these deer are doing, and these low densities and these places that are hard to get to, and you know, talking about soft edges back in the timber and that kind of stuff. Man, it's it's just it's rewarding, it's cool. And you know you mentioned going out next spring. I'll tell you what. I learned more about what deer doing the swamps in March than any other time, just because you can, you know, they're frozen, so you can walk anywhere you want to, and then you find some of those places that those those big bucks just tear up year after year, and they got those you know there there's some kind of terrain feature of something that's advantageous to them, and it's it can work in your favorite but it's you gotta you know, you gotta burn some boot leather to get there. Yeah, yeah, I gotta. I gotta put in that work. I think it's it's time to stop kind of twiddling my thumbs up there and just settling for the status quo and just being like, oh, this is just deer camp. I'll just have a nice time hanging out with a family, and it's time to actually put some real time into making the hunting a little better. So I gotta do it. Um Spencer, Tony Tony. On the other end of the spectrum, you have like the Dakotas and Nebraska, and you know, amount of tree coverage there is the least as anywhere else in the nation. How did you do hunting there in because I think those are three of your favorite states that you know visit pretty regularly. Yeah, they are. You know, I like, I like fewer trees. Uh, that's way more enjoyable to me than having, you know, six square miles of trees. It's just so much easier to figure out, you know what I mean. I always I always think of deer like walleyes. You know, if there's if there is the CRP patch, it was one fence row of trees, or you know there's there's some kind of patch of cedars somewhere. They just gravitate towards that stuff. And so if you get out into some of those places in South Dakota and North Dakota where you know, it looks more like peasant territory than anything, it's just a lot easier to figure out where the deer probably gonna go, and and you can observe them. You know, that's the big hindrance when you're hunting the big wood stuff is you can't see anything. So you know, you go run trail cameras or you might try to glass, a fresh clear cut or something. But for the most part, until you're hunting, you just don't see a lot of gear movement. And when you're hunting those states that are more open, you can observe so much better. And that's like, you know, my strategy, the way that I tend to kill a lot of bucks out west. I mean, that's that's what I do that you know, I filled my tag in North Dakota and South Dakota last year, both by just observing and then moving in. But Tony, you're kind of playing it off like it's easy almost, But I live here, I hunt here. I know it's not as easy as you're making it sound. But walk us through that South Dakota hunt. Because if I had to challenge somebody to go kill a deer like the way you did, which was late September from the ground on public land and uh hunting in I think those were pretty rough conditions at that time. I thought, I think it was like raining and windy all weekend, right, I don't think many guys would succeed. Yet you went out and you did that and you killed probably a five and a half year old white tail, just an awesome buck. Tell us about that haunt. Yeah, I mean it was a it was a cool deal, man. Um, you know I got on that deer just honestly. I was driving down the road after hunting in the morning and the rain, going back to camp to have lunch, and I saw three meal deer box on this just kind of cleared out hillside on a walking ranch and I nothing going on, So I went and stocked him, because you know, your tag is good for either meal dear or a white tail. I got in on those bucks, blew them out of there, and I was like, why are there? I've never seen meal dear here? Why are they here? And I kind of, you know, I kind of rolled around on the back of my head. Well, I ended up seeing a white tail buck crossed there in the dark coming back that night, going into the same spot, and I'm like, all right, well, so now i know I'm missing something. And because it was so rainy on the opener, I mean it was it was like biblical. It was crazy how much rain we got. Um. I walked in there with a ground blind because there was there was no you could tell just by looking at it that you probably weren't going to find a good tree stand tree, and what had happened is the rancher or somebody had cleared out a bunch of those low seaters in there, and there was fresh growth coming up, and so these deer were kind of staging there, kind of browsing, but they were they could get on this hillside that was really only like a hundred yards up road, but they could be out of sight. And so when I got in there, you could just see evidence of browsing everywhere, and there was a great big pile of cedar skeletons. So I just put a ground blind up next to it, and I thought, you know, if I get sick and sitting in the rain, I'm gonna I'm gonna come and sit in this thing. And it just so happened that because it was so rainy, there wasn't hardly any other hunters out there. It was opening weekend, and it was like pretty much a ghost town because it was downpours. And I ended up going sitting there and the buck that came in. There's two bucks that came in, and the little guy and then the big one that I killed. And I had seen those deer the day before a mile down the road at eleven o'clock on their feet, but they were on private and so they were just covering ground and browsing and some of these spots and and keying off one of the fields on that walking ranch, and then they would kind of stage their way back to bed. And I just got lucky. I got in there. You know, you could get You can get around real quiet when it's the town for We got in there, and those those two bucks sped past me, and I ended up getting there on that big ten pointer. But it was you know, it was honestly probably due mostly to that bad weather, because there's no way those deer would have been as consistent on a spot that close to the road if it would have been a nice opener. I just I just don't think. I mean, I can't prove that, but I think that the downpour kept the pressure away and those deer were still comfortable being in a killable spot. I think you, I think you had a small group with you on that haunt. How did everyone else do that was in camp? They did well? Um My one of my buddies killed a nice ten pointer um the second night of the season, and then another buddy hit one hit, a hit a smaller buck um that we never found. He hit it, he didn't hit it very well and it rained all night, so we ended up grid searching for a long time and just never picked him up. Um. So really we you know, shot opportunity, you wise, it was incredible. Um. You know, my buddy Eric killed a great ten point or made a perfect shot. Um. And that was another deer. We saw him and his buddy the day before the season opened feeding in a spot. Eric went in there, hung a stan, had to tweak it a little bit the next night and that buck came in at fifteen yards and he dumped him. So it was you know, any time that you can go to for three on public land in a short weekend of bow hunting is pretty solid, you know. Yeah. And before we move on, like I own to stress how difficult it is to do what you just did. I mean where you were hunting is uh gets a ton of firearm pressure. There are loads of deer killed there every year. Um. It is an appealing area to hunt, and so there's loads of archery pressure as well. And then like you talked about, it was public land on the ground in the rain. Um. You know, I was so impressed that you guys went out there and had that kind of success. Well, you know, to me, it's it's all relative. Right. You know, you're you're from South Dakota, so your experience is largely from South Dakota, right, And when you talk a ton of rifle pressure, I hear that, I'm sure, Mark here is it to being permission? It's all relative because you know, when I think of just just as an example, one of the private farms that hunt in Minnesota, UM, they have like three different shotgun groups that hunt there that have like fifteen guys apiece. So just in a couple of weeks of shotgun season, forty five people will hunt that farm. And that's not counting muzzleloaders, bow hunters, and random gun hunters who aren't part of the group. And so I always just you know, when I hear about a lot of pressure, I'm like, well, I've been around a lot of pressure my whole life. So it's not you know, I don't want to use that as an excuse to not go right, or is an excuse to not hunt as hard as possible, because that's kind of what we do a lot of times we say, well, this is gonna be hard I'm probably not going to succeed, so I'm not gonna you know, I'm not gonna work too hard at it, and that's not really the best way to go about it, you know. Yeah, speaking of like making excuses for not going out or not hunting his harden, Um, rain, I feel like rain is one of those things that people oftentimes like it's not gonna be that good or I don't want to get soaked, and they don't go hunting. I've always personally loved rainy days for hunts. Um. I feel like I've heard you two in the past talk about how you know bad weather is no excuse? Is that right? Do you do you love those kind of days too? Yeah? Huge. I I would pick rain over any condition to hunt in anywhere public, private. I don't care. Um, I just I don't think dear like beingbedded down in the rain. I think they, I think they just have the urge to move more and I don't. I don't know why, if it's just a discomfort thing or what. But I'm you know, for me, I'm looking for conditions that people don't want to hunt in. First, you know, the deer are always going to be out there moving you know, if it's hot, if it's windy, if it's rainy, they're gonna move. We we think they don't. They do. But I want to be out there when other people aren't there. That's what matters to me more. And so I'm I'm all in. If it's ninety degrees or if it's forty, our winds or whatever, I don't care. I like it when I like empty parking lot. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. What what when you have that kind of scenario like you had there for that opening weekend hunt in South Dakota where you see a bunch of rain in the forecast, does that change your strategy at all? Because okay, I see I've got this all this rain. Did that change your perspective as to how you want to approach that hunt where you sat anything like that? Like, one thing jumps to my mind is maybe if it's super rainy, it's gonna be really quiet going in there, so you might be able to be a little more aggressive getting close to bedding or something because you can be doing that quietly. I don't know if that's something that you ever think about, But what else is there? Well? Yeah, it changed you know my whole strategy. If I go to you know, a state like South Dakota where I'm hunting, or if I go to Nebraska or Oklahoma or somewhere, my my strategy is to identify a bunch of ponds and sit over water I like. And that's early season, mid season, late season. Dear drink every day and I like water. Um. I intended to do that in South Dakota until we knew at least the first four days of the season we're gonna get dumped one. So I ended up. You know, most of my planning was where are these ponds I'm gonna go sit? And then seeing that forecast, you know, developed, the closer to the hunt got, then it was like, all right, well now we got to call an audible and hunt them some other way. And so the rain, like the rain aspect, you know that that changes your strategy stuff. But for me, if I can get over a bean field in the rain, that's where I'll be first. And then if I'm not on something in the rain, I'll go for a still hunt and just look around and figure it out. And one thing that I learned last year, UM, while hunting in South Dakota is I did that. I got I had a storm come in while I was sitting on a stand, so I had to get down, and I had already had to buck come out into the field, and so I went and just snuck around to see where they came from. And this like grassy knoll that just feeds off of this field that they were in, was so covered in deer bed. It was incredible. And I didn't I didn't need to hunt it because I ended up killing that buck, but I just filed that away. And part of the reason I went exploring was like, it's the downpoard. There is gonna be a low impact thing, and I want to see where those deer were coming from. And so you can kind of you know, you may have to do things differently, but you can sneak around and take a look and scout. You know, we've we've gotten so scared about doing doing that and bumping deer or you know a lot of us are trying to save deer on private land or save you know, you know, quality action, I guess, and when you're on public land, especially if you've got four or five days, I'm not saving anything, Like I don't I don't want to scoop deer. But I don't care, you know, And so you can. You can take some risks and go try to figure some stuff out. I think, you know, I think a lot of times we play it just way too afely. Yeah, what what was next? You had that success in South Dakota, killed the dough in Wisconsin. Where where else did you find success? Where are the other states? Um? I killed a little buck in North Dakota. UM in the worst wind I've ever hunted in UM. We had. I went out with my buddy, Tyler Pierce. I'm not sure if you know him or not, but we went out. Tyler and I met up out there and we had any deer tags so we could hunt mele deer and white tails. And when we got there. The morning I got there, it was nice and calm, pretty warm. We were right in mid October, so it was kind of no man's land. And that night the wind came in and we hunted in horrible wind up to fifty five for almost the rest of our trip. UM and it was rough. I mean, I was on I found some bucks, a couple of really good bucks that I could not set up for because the wind never gave up. And it was. It was tough, but I ended up. I ended up setting to stand and just digging my heels in and saying, well, I'm gonna sit through this wind. And we had a high wind advisory. It was fifty five sustained. And I got into that tree and I was like, you know, the first thing I thought, it was like if I die because this tree tips over, this is so dumb and so. And then I'm like, even if this buck comes in or a buck comes in, I can't stand up and shoot. There's no way I'm gonna be comfortable doing that. So I climbed down and got on the ground and had seven does and a little buck come in, and I thought, man, I've only got one day left. We haven't killed anything. If they give me a really good shot, I should probably just thump him throw him in the cooler. And that's what happened. And the next night it calmed down and I put Tyler in there and the ten pointer that I was set up for this ancient buck with. He was limping, he had the Roman nos. He was just a cool dear. He came right down and made one little decision that brought him just out of Tyler's range. I go to watch the whole thing from putting up on a hill across from him, and it was so close. But that was that was North Dakota in a nutshell. It was crazy, Wendy. That's another one of the situations that, right you, some people would say they wouldn't go out and hunt in those kind of conditions, but you're you're going no matter what, right, well you have to, Um, you know, I don't doing what I do for a living. You know. Everybody thinks I get paid to hunt, and I don't. I get paid right and create content. But I create more content if I kill more stuff, so I don't really I can't afford to just take bad days off, you know. And it's if I did, if I did say, you know, I'm only gonna hunt when the conditions are pretty decent, I'd probably only hunt half of the time. And I don't really want to do that, you know. Um, So it's just it is what it is. You just go when you're on go ahead. I was gonna say in that same kind of thing applies to even guys that don't make a living making content or something, because a lot of a lot of hunters have a limited amount of time they can hunt. You know, they can just hunt the weekends. And if you've got really bad wind or rain this weekend or two weekends or in a row or whatever, are you just not gonna hunt it all in October? Or you're gonna take off the time that you would to do the thing you love and then just not go because the conditions are bad. I would always argue that, you know, even if the conditions are bad, and we talk a lot about, at least I talk a lot about, you know, waiting for the right conditions to go on for the kill in certain places like that, how important timing is. That doesn't mean you can't hunt. That just means, okay, if the weather is lousy or whatever, if the wind is so bad you don't think a lot of deer gonna be moving, maybe you do not go to your number one stand where the big buck you've been after all seasons at, but go hunt some public, go hunt whatever property you haven't been too for a while, and just have a good time, you know, go out there and see what happens. Yeah, that's that's such a good point. I mean, you know, we should say if you're stuck hunting acres and that's all you have. You know, you might not want to go in there every possible chance you can, right, but that's why you just try really hard not to get stuck in that situation. And you know, I'm like you guys, I'm I'm looking for spots all the time, public, private, whatever, um, just just for that reason. If if I have a chance to go, I have to for my job, but I want to anyway. And I see this, This happened a lot where it's it's just kind of easier to say, you know, it's October tenth and it's kind of hot, I'm not gonna go because it's not going to be any good anyway. Man, I'm here to tell you that that's just really not true. Yeah it's not November seven when it's you know, twenty degrees in the morning. But you can sure have a lot of fun out there still. And you know, I always look at it like we we go fishing a lot this summer. I take my little girls fishing, and I I hate waking up in the summer, you know, forty five minutes afore first light to go fish small mouth or whatever, because I might I just want to hit the alarm and sleep. But every single time I get out there on at lake and that suns rising and we're throwing topwaters for small mouth, it's beautiful. I'm like, I never regret doing this. It's the same thing when I get into that tree stand. I'm never like, oh, this was a stupid idea. I should just say at home. I'm always like, this was an awesome idea. You know, to that same point, um, in most situations, it would be considered unorthodox to like hunt in the morning. You know, prior to say October fift most guys just aren't doing it. But when you're on those public land, uh, you know a set schedule, like you only got five days to hunts, do you find yourself hunting any mornings at all? All time? I don't ever take the morning off. So this is another thing that the lies that we believe about deer hunting. Like a lot of people who who you know, know a lot about deer will say that don't hunt him in the morning. Well, what if you have an awesome situation to go catch some deer stage and coming off a field to go bed. What if you live in a state like Minnesota, know where our gun season this year starts on November three, so we have a half a million gun hunters out there on November three, So I can't count on the rut. So I'm gonna take every morning off until what October. I just no way. And you know, as an example, last year in uh in Minnesota, I killed my buck the second morning of the season, September six or seventeenth or whatever, coming through the stage on his way back from feeding, and it was kind of a process to set up and get in, you know, he kind of had the circle around and at a leaf pretty early. But that was a great morning hunt, killed a nice block. And then in South Dakota, I killed that buck in the morning in the same kind of situation where he was working his way back from feeding to go bed, and we like to say, well, you're just gonna screw it up. Always back in their beds before the first light, Like that's crazy. Every deer, every situation. You know, it's just usually takes a lot more work to figure out a good morning stand in the early season then it does the evenings, you know. I mean in the evenings we go to the food plot or a field edge, and it's pretty simple hunting in the morning, You've got to think about how you get in there without spook and everything, And it's just a different strategy, you know, but it can totally be done. It kind of relates back to what we were just saying about the weather, you know, like if you don't have the perfect conditions, maybe don't go to your perfect set until you have the right conditions. But you can still find ways to to go hunt and have a good time. I feel like with this kind of situation, if you've got a really small property and you know you don't have the right set up for a morning hunt, like it's there's not a good backdoor access route or something. Maybe in that situation, yet, don't hunt those mornings if you can't safely, If you can't safely pull off a morning hunt without screwing it up, maybe that's not a good idea. But if there is a way to do it, it takes a little extra work. To your point, why not, Um, I mean I'm in the same boat as is what you described, Tony that I usually don't hunt a lot of mornings on like my main Michigan like my little small Michigan private farms, because I can't get in easily without spooking deer. But you know, when I'm going out on some of these public land hounds, like I was in Montana last year, um, public land, and I had a pretty tight amount of time, only had like four or four and a half days. I decided, just like what you said, I was like, I don't I don't have time to I don't have enough time to be able to sacrifice those morings. I need to try to figure out some way to make it work. So I had to take an extra long route away around the food source to get away from that so I didn't spook deer there coming through the back door, get into the back of the betting area, and uh, you know, it paid off. I saw some box almost had some shots. UM. So you know, kind of to all these things, it's right, it's situations specific. You need to be smart about when you take your shots, how you do it. But there's definitely if there's anything I've learned, you know, over these years talking to some different people in the podcast, it's it's that there's no like black and white rules. There's lots of ideas and frameworks to think about, but you need to be able to be flexible based on the specific circumstances. That's because that it's a true and that you know what you're talking about with small properties, and some of them you can do, some of them you can't. The thing about it is when you say you can't, you can't hunt bucks in the morning in the early season, you should never do it. Then you're just like you're just giving yourself an excuse to not even try. Or it's like how many people have you heard say, well, it's it's too windy, the deer just aren't going to move. Like that's crazy, but we we say it and we we live by it sometimes and I just look at that stuff and I go, so all the deer are just not going to move today, Like there's no situation where you can figure out how to how to get in there and hunt them in the morning. That's crazy, you know. I mean some it's always worth investigating. To me. You know, a theme that a theme that you've touched on a lot is avoiding pressure. And so if I'm thinking about when the most amount of other hunters are in the woods, it's probably going to be like opening weekend, that could be anytime depending on your state. And then like come the rut that was first days of November. So do you hunt mid October a lot? And are maybe other hunters overlooking that time period because just there aren't very many people in the woods. Yeah, big time. I mean if you're if you're a public land guy and you're you're not hunting October, you're missing out. I mean, it's that there are deer out there that are going to be moving. It's it's not going to be a field edge thing anymore. You know, it's not going to be the same kind of hunt as it was two weeks or a month before. But those two are gonna stage, They're gonna eat acorns, they're gonna drink in a pond. There's a lot of stuff to do. And you mentioned the fewer people that are out there chasing them around, the more likely you are to have good deer movement. And you know, I'll tell you last year was a real eye opener for me in mid October because I encountered big box in mid of soda in a place that I never thought I would. You know, I had never seen a bucket anywhere near the caliber I saw last year on like October tenth, and in Wisconsin. I saw the same thing at a time when it just shouldn't have been happening, And I'm sitting here going this has to at least partially be due to the fact that they're way fewer people out you're messing around. Yeah, it's funny when you just said that, when you said you saw these two bucks. In my head, the first thing that popped in my head was why. Okay, so we saw these big bucks middle of October. Why And then you just answered it because you thought the pressure is lower. And this goes back to something you were talking about a little while ago. I can't remember what the specific example was, but just this importance of whenever you observe something, you should always try to examine the why. Like nothing happens by chance. I don't think in the woods. There's always got to be something behind it. So whenever you see something like that. At least, what I always try to do is when I observe something or whatever might be, I then we'll sit back and think through, Okay, what what was the wind or what was the condition, or what was the train feature, what was the whatever that caused that deer to do that thing? And I think if you keep doing that all the time, that's how you really begin to learn. Um, yeah, do you agree with that, Tony? And then number two, was there anything else other than the pressure factor during that mid October time frame that you think led to those settings? Oh? For sure? Hunting in the cover, you know, I mean I think I don't you know, I have no idea what percentage of tree stands that the average bow hunter hangs that are on field edges or food plot edges or some kind of opening, right, we'd like to be able to see. It's really this is a really rampant in the gun hunting world where they want to be on a power line and shoot four yards away. But both hunters fall into the same thing where we'd like to be able to see, you know, But those deer, after a couple of weeks of getting hunted in those places, they really really stick to that. Ever, And you know, when I hang stand, both of the stands that I saw those big bucks on were in the cover. They were in in what I figured were staging areas, And so you're just in a place where those deer feel comfortable moving. You know, would I have had the same results if I was sitting on the same field edge stands I sat in on September fifteenth. Probably not. And you know, you can't prove why a deer's movement, But like what you said about there's a reason for everything. Those dear nature doesn't waste a calorie. It's hardly ever until there is a reason for it. And like you said, if you're paying attention to this stuff, and and you know all of the conditions and where you're hunting and how you're getting in there, and you see these deer doing stuff, you can figure out kind of why. And even if you don't really understand the total driver for their movements or whatever, it doesn't really matter as long as you know they're like doing it. You know, if you see a buck across the creek in a little spot, does it really matter why he crossed it? You know, in three years, a different big bucks going to cross it, Like, does it really matter where they're going? It's fun to figure out. But the cool thing is knowing that a mature buck like you know that did that one day, and if you did it one day, either him or somebody else will do it again. Yeah. Yes, It's like just making sure your eyes are open to stuff, and like not just saying oh, I saw a big buck there, but saying, oh, I saw a big buck there because there's a creek crossing, and then like taking note of that and to your point, oh, more bucks might do that same thing in the future because there's this creek crossing. I think that accumulation over the years makes it makes a big difference. Yeah, And that's you know, that's it's it's easy to talk to speak in those terms when you hunt a lot of different places because you're you're used to you know, new experience, new challenges, learning, watching a lot of different stuff. The harder part sometimes is when you think you know a property really well and it still kicks your butt because you're like, well, the deer like doing this and they don't like doing this, but why can't I get on it? And a lot of times it's because we just make up our mind about certain things or we haven't understood that that you know, the brows has changed, or you know, maybe some destination food source changed or something. And so if you if you hunt where you're in a lot of new places, a lot you just have to you have to consider that stuff where you're gonna get smoked, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Speaking of that, then, was there anything last year that any example like that last year where you had an AHA moment or any big lessons learned or anything else really notable like that. Um, maybe you already touched on it, but if not, anything that stands out in that regarding UM, I think I think North Dakota taught me a lesson that I should have just I should have just waited on that wind and used the one night I had and used it right. And I should have been more patient, but I got nervous about, you know, going home without filling a tag, and I wanted some more dear in my freezer. But when you when you're on you know, I was on pretty consistent movement by some good bucks, but I panic because I'm like, if I only have one night to do it, then I don't know if I can do it. Well. You know, that's sometimes just the hand you're dealt by mother nature. And I should have I should have been more patient, but I partially wasn't because I knew I could put my buddy in there and hopefully he would kill one of those big bucks. But just just watching that and feeling that pressure like I gotta get in there, gotta get in there, got in there, and sometimes you just say I can't overcome mother nature here. I just got to write it out until things change, you know. And I feel like I learned something like that every year, where I'm just reminded, like, dude, just just chill out, be patient and let this stuff unfold, uh, you know, instead of forcing it, because sometimes I do get pretty aggressive in my tactics. But you know, it's it's just everybody has holes in their game. I guess once in a while, I run into mind, you know. Yeah, So I think that's a pretty good segue then into um talking about what you're gonna do this year, unless Spencer, do you have any other questions? Uh? For Tony about what happened seventeen. No, let's let's hear about this fall. Yeah. You you've already been hunting, though, haven't you. I have been hunting. Yeah. I got to hunt down in Florida in the craziest white chill season out there. What was that like? Miserable? Uh? It was it was. I'll tell you what. I've been pretty lucky and traveled to quite a few different places and I have never been to a place as inhospitable as the swamps in south central Florida in the end of July beginning of August. That place does not want humans there. It's brutal, brutal. Wow, just so hot or what else? Oh? Yeah, I mean the heat, of course is you know, it's omni president it's everywhere, and the humidity, but the bugs, Like I you know, I've spent a lot of time in northern Minnesota where the mosquitoes are pretty epic, and I don't think it. I don't think I've ever seen anything like what Florida was like mosquito wise, And you know, there's cookie cutter storms every day in the afternoon, so you just all of a sudden get this, you know, lightning hit in the ground and just crazy rain for a little bit, this monsoon kind of weather. And so you're you're like in this place where there's water everywhere, and there's alligators everywhere. So you just see these gators in places where you're like that should not be. And because that because it's so wet, it pushes some of the other stuff into the high spots, like the snakes, and so it's just this like it's this place, man, where it's it's really interesting experience, but it is not for everyone. So would you return? Yeah, you know, it's such a strange, ange deal this. You know, it's like elk hunting almost where you go elk hunting, and elk hunting can just just totally kick your butt. It can be so not fun in some ways, but by the time you're driving home, you're already thinking, how do I do this different next year? And Florida. You know, the good thing is we had a really good crew down in Florida. I hunted with some really cool people and it was everybody was everybody was up for the misery and the challenge, which was nice because I've been on hunts like that where you have people that need a little more comfort and they can make it really really bad because they'll start complaining. And this this crew we had was awesome and so by the end of it we were talking about how we could get down there and hunt some some massolas in the springs. So yeah, I'll do it again. Did anyone see any deer to anyone kill anything? Was there any film? Mike Shay from Field and Stream killed a Great Buck Opening night, um and then you know, we all saw a deer. It was just tough. I saw, I saw a couple of little bucks, a bunch of doughs, killed a pig, you know that. That was the one fun thing about it that kind of kept you going was there were a lot of pigs down there and they were big, and so that's always it's always fun to have a bonus critter that could run through you know. Yeah, how how do you hunt an area like that? Like what were you were targeting food sources or bay or I don't know, how do you hunt in July for white tails in Florida? So you know, they have some feeders down there, and they have some food plots, and then there's just places that they go because it's you know, high ground. I mean, it's kind of like hunting swamps up here. Um, So it's it just depends, you know. I didn't see I never sat like over a feeder, but I sat a few places where I could see feeders, and it was like, I just I don't think that, you know, midsummer deer in Florida really want a car blow too hard. Don't think they're that drawn to corn. To be honest with you, I think it's just sort of a way of life, like in Texas, where you know, just that's just what they do. But I saw way more dear even greenery and kind of just browsing their way through than focusing on that stuff. And so and you know, the crazy thing was they were just starting to rut when we were there, and they rout in the summer, and so I suspect you could probably get if we would have been maybe a week later, ten days later, Um, it would have been pretty heavy chasing and you maybe could have called him in. And in fact, I did grant one buck in a little guy. I mean, he came right in on a string, So you know you can you can hunt him kind of like we hunt him up here and in the Midwest and out east. It's just such a different environment. Man, What is next for you then? Or is it going to be anelope, mule, dear white tail? Elk. I'm sure you're going to be someplace else hunting here within a few weeks, um. I've got I was just last weekend, was in Wisconsin setting up a bear bait site. I've got I drew a tag over in Wisconsin and doing a little do it yourself thing over there. So that will open on September five, and I'll I'll hunt bears and then I'm gonna wrap that up, hopefully by the ninth, and I'm gonna come home for a day and then I'm gonna go down to Nebraska and hunt on some white tails on some public land I've never been on. Those are the first two first two things I'm gonna do this year. Public land Nebraska that you've never been on. Walk me through how you go about planning that. So I saw this spot. I went down there Upland hunting with my dog two years ago, and my buddy and I go down We take our dogs in the late season and we just pick chunks of public and we go hunt, you know, pheasants or quail or prairie chickens, depending on where we are in the state. And he found this and he said, well, there's public land down the road here, let's go look at it. We got there and drove up to it and it was clearly not Upland type terrain. It was bluffs and it was along the river, and so we didn't hunt it, but I looked at it and I could see some trails coming down off a good deer trails and it was surrounded by some private agriculture, and so I kind of just filed it away. And so this year I had an elk hunt I was gonna go do in southern Colorado. They shut down the place I was going to go to because of the fires, and so I didn't know if I should try to restart elk planning, which is like real daunting, or if I should just say this just wasn't meant to be this year. And I finally decided I wouldn't go. And so I'm like, I'm gonna go hunt that place that we saw. And so I've been looking at that on aerial photos a lot, and you know, spending some serious time on on act and looking for some back you know, backup spots around there. But my plan, I'm I'm crossing my fingers that it's gonna be about degrees when I get there, because there's two ponds way in the back of this property, and I can see I can see trees that look like they definitely are big enough to put tree stands in on both of them. And so my first strategy isn't if it's normal to hot conditions. I'm gonna go hyke right back there, hanging stand and watch that water if it if that doesn't pan out, if it's rain he or whatever. I've got a few I don't know, I guess kind of drainages that lead down to private fields that look like they could be places you could catch them in the morning and the evening coming and going. And so if that's if my first spot doesn't work out, then I'm gonna be that that would be planned be on this place. There have been a few times, Tony where I've been talking to you, um about some hunts that you just did or that you're going to do, and you'll bring up how you found it while you were turkey hunting in the spring. How has um turkey hunting doing d I y trips every year changed things for you as a d I Y y tail gay she and ground man. It's the same thing with the you know, if I go into a place quail hunting, UM, I may find an amazing white tail spot, you know, I mean, just it's just covering ground. And one thing I like about turkey hunting it's it's different if you're bow hunting because you don't tend to cover as much ground as as running and gunning with a shotgun. But I use spring turkeys as scouting, you know what, retail scouting a lot, and I've started to use this upland hunt. This upland hunting is the same kind of thing where you know you're you're out there for a different purpose, but you always got your eye to deer sign and you know cool places to be, and so it's just it's just spending more time out there, you know what, what when you start out, so you said, you're in a head in there, hunt those ponds, see what's going on. If not, you're in hunt these drainages. In that kind of situation. You said, there's those drainages that are leading down to food, Like how how far away? Especially I'm always wondering about this too, especially this kind of like prairie states are kind of out there a little bits. I think it's a little bit different than the Midwest, where the distances between cover and food or how far deer are willing to travel maybe is different, do you get I mean, can you be pretty far away from that private land and still see movement across that public Yeah? Yeah, I mean it just it depends where you are and how how limited the food is this this place. There's a lot of food around there, it looks like so that that will kind of be uh, you know, I'll play it how I see it when I get in there. Um. That's that's one thing about the big wood stuff that we talked earlier. If I find the property that's got anything worthwhile for them to head to around there, those deer cover some serious ground. So it's just it's sort of a situational thing, you know. I mean, you can't. You can do a lot of work ahead of time on aerial photography, but until you get in there and watch and start walking around, it's just it's hard to know what's going on. But they'll they'll cover some grounds, Okay. Well, then before to go any further, we're and take our final break of the day for word from our partners at White Tailed Properties this week with White Tail Properties were druinned by Tom James, a land specialist out of Indiana, and Tom is going to be talking to us about what to consider when shopping for a property on the edge of suburbia. That's a great question. Living right outside the shadows of Indianapolis, I'm very familiar with that, and there are some really great hunting ground areas just outside of suburbia, but what you're dealing with a lot of times is being that close to town. Normally, those uh the prices for those properties are are labeled with a development or a residential development price, So a lot of times it's hard to find a competitive price that would be relative to something you were looking out for farther out into the into the more rural areas of the state. That being said, there can be some phenomenal deer hunting in those areas just outside of the country because a lot of those are sanctuary areas where no hunting is allowed, and oftentimes bucks grow to so old ages in those areas, knowing the community and knowing maybe how the perception for hunting is. One of the last things you want to do is spend a lot of money on a piece of property and you're gonna be harassed all the time by non hunters, or do you see with a deer leaving your property and you know, going off on the surrounding landos or landowners if you do happen to have a harvest. So considerations are cost access. The general mood of the hunting community around that, and and and making sure that you can get along with your neighbors and those areas. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Tim currently has listed for sale, visit white tail properties dot com. Backslash James that's j A. M. E. S. Yeah. Yeah, So so keep keep movings to the schedule. Then what's next? Um, after Nebraska Minnesota will open, I'll be hunt in private here. Um, I think. And then you sell out? What Whenever I hear you're hunting private ground, I think you're a sellout. I'm taking the easy way out. I know. Next thing, you know, I'll be all on guided and I'll fit it on the slippery slope. I know it. That's my gateway drug. That farm in southeastern Minnesota, That's it's honestly my my guilty pleasure because I just love hunting it so much. I grew up hunting there and I just I just want to be there. It's one of my favorite places. You know, It's just a dairy farm. I have permission on, so I always you know, people always like, how can you don't hunt public in Minnesota more? And I'm like, I just don't want to I just want to go hunt this place, you know. But I'll do that, and then I'm gonna do um, South Dakota on the end of September at some point I'm not sure exactly when, twenty seventh or something, and I head out there and then I'll head to North Dakota and then I kind of left it open in the end of October beginning of Nova bur in case I need to go back to Nebraska or do something else. And then I've got eight days carved out to go hunt some new stuff in Oklahoma. Oh, I got a pretty pretty full schedule find up. Yeah, So the North Dakota and South Dakota those the same spots that you've been going in the states or is that new stuff? Um? The North Dakota will be the same stuff, same area. South Dakota. I got a few new places I'm looking at that are in the just general same area. Um, So I'm not I don't know how that will shake out that. You know, the Oklahoma stuff is brand new. I've never been anywhere near this this area that I'm going to, So that will be a fun one because it'll be you know, the ruts should be cranking and it's totally you know, foreign to me. So we'll see. So I then have to ask, what how do you plan to approach that? Then? Oh, well, this one, the spot that I got I've got picked out is I don't know. It's pushing on four thousand acres and most of it is timbered, which is kind of strange Oklahoma. Um, but I'm gonna end up. I'm looking for some water on there because they're gonna be chasing. I'm looking at some of the private stuff around there because there's some fields that they could be going to. But I think it's going to be more of a you know, kick a trail, start walking and hanging hunt. Um. It looks it looks like the Oklahoma version of Big Woods, and so I don't really know what to expect on there. The the other places I've hunted in Oklahoma have been way easier to figure out because of you know, what they had on them as far as public you know, it's easy to define water sources and food sources and stuff. And this one is going to be a little bit of a puzzle. I think, how much time do you have a lot of to figure in that puzzle? Out? About eight days? So we'll see the last Yeah, the last time I went to Oklahoma. You know, it's it's a it's a hall, but it's a fun state to hunt. They have a lot of deer, a lot of turkeys, and I don't know if we'll running to any pigs in this spot or not, but that's always a possibility. So it's it's fun to go to a place where you got buck tags and dough tags and a good population of critics. You know. Yeah. Earlier this year, Tony I wrote an article talking about the top three d I Y States, And I was just basing that off of like tag costs, season length, public land available, um, some general numbers you can find based on harvest statistics and amount of deer in the states and stuff, and what I came up with just from research on my computer with South Dakota, Ohio, and Nebraska. But you would be the actual authority on this subject. So what would you say would be your top three d I Y States? Well, for me personally, uh, you know, it's tough to beat the Dakota. It's real tough to beat in Nebraska. Um, Oklahoma, I don't I just don't have enough experience in Oklahoma. Is safe for sure, but it is a really cool state. Um. It just you know, it depends where you're at. You know when I say that, that doesn't do anybody in Pennsylvania a whole lot of good probably, And so you know you kind of pack your in. Well, how close are you to Kentucky? Out close a right? You to Ohio? You know, I mean, it just it depends where you're at. But personally for me, I'm I'm a real big fan of the Dakotas and Nebraska, and I've been looking really hard at northern Missouri. I just haven't haven't carved out any serious time to go spend some time on public down there. But there's just that's you know, the cool thing about it is, you know, it's fun to write those things, it's fun to talk about. But the cool thing is that we just have all this public hunt like even if it's you know, even if you're not gonna go kill booners, anywhere you're living, probably have the chance to go hunt public without too much of an astment of travel. And that's prettily. Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned a lot of the Great Plain states there, I think everyone one but Kansas. Uh, what about further east. What are some of your favorite states you know in the Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee area. Well, I like Kentucky. Um, you know, I I don't because of where I live. It's just so much easier for me to go west and east. You know, I want to go where there's fewer people and not more. And so most of the time if I travel east to Hunt is to Wisconsin. Um, I just it doesn't make any sense for me if I can drive to Nebraska in seven hours to drive ten to go east somewhere, you know, I just it's just what I do. And you know, having twins six year olds at home, I need to pick places where I have the best chance to go tag out four days or five days or something like that. You know. I mean, if I had, if I had unlimited time and didn't have you know, daddy duty, I would probably go hunt a heck of a lot more states, and I would I would try them out more, you know. Okay, Spencer, you gotta put your ear muffs on because this is going to give you a headache. Um. But but Tony, this is something that you and me were kind of chatting about the other day, just offline, just this whole deal that I'm new to being a new dad, but you're in it for a little while. Now, how how does that factor into doing what you do? You know, I feel like i'm I'm I'm definitely struggling with this right now, just thinking through how can I make this hunting season as decent as possible for my wife and obligations with the family and everything. How do you balance all these hunting trips and everything with the responsibilities you've got back home. Uh, It's it's a tough one to figure out. Finding some equilibrium, especially in your case with a little one is tough. Um. That's one of the main drivers for me as far as hunting the states I do and doing as much research ahead of time as possible. You know, the more heavy lifting you can do from home and the less time you have to be away from home, the better. And so for me, you know, I didn't know, you know, when we had we had two kids at one time, I was like, I have no idea how much this is gonna cut down my time to go and be gone. But you knew, you know, like I knew it was going to be significant, But what it really did for me, was caused me the laser focus on, you know, doing things correctly, and so it actually hasn't cut down on my success at all. It's just forced me to work smarter. And you'll see that where not only do you just not you're you're just not gonna go be gone as much for a while when you got a little guy at home, but you're gonna want to be home as soon as you can. It's a weird thing, you know. You think about it and you're like, I can't wait to go to Montana or wherever. And you know, when you're there a couple of days, you're like, man, I miss my kids, you know, and you want to go home. So it's it's I can force you to really focus on the process and it just just try to be as efficient as possible. I feel like from from hearing you describe some of these past hunts, it sounds like, you know, I feel like maybe a lot of people tend to think like one of these odd state hunts us like seven days or ten days, you need a bunch of time. But it sounds to me that a lot of your trips are like four day hunts or five day hunts, you're a little bit tighter on those timeframes, is that right? And then number two like, do you do anything differently because of that? Then you might if you had that full long stretch that some people do. Yeah, I I usually only give myself four or five days. Five days is a pretty long one for white tails. You know, if I'm going out hunting or something, that's different, of course, but you know, you don't you don't want to waste to sit. So if you if you go for four days, let's say you got one day to scout and hang stands and four days to hunt, you have eight sits. Basically, unless you're you know, rout hunting hares sit all day or whatever. But generally speaking, morning evening, morning evening, you know, and if you miss one of those, or you screw one of them up, or you sit someplace where the wind sucks or something and you you lose one, it stinks you lose two. You know, there's a quarter of your time gone, and so you just try to make good decisions and it's you know this this probably sounds weird, but this is one of the reasons why I'm like really into working out in the last five years, because when I show up and I have one day to hang stands or scout. Like I sometimes you gotta go dark to dark and get this a ton of work done. So you have those chances. So you have that morning spot, and you have this one for the wind that direction and another one for the wind, and you you just make the most of it. You know. Is there anything else that you're doing. Yeah, I've got my assumptions based on some of the things you've already mentioned, but from an efficiency standpoint, anything else you're doing before the hunt to make sure that that four or five days is as seamless as smooth as possible. I don't know if there's any other kind of digital work you're doing, or I mean, I know you've talked about East scout, and you've talked about backup plans, anything more you can elaborate on that just for these efficient quick hunts, Yeah, planning them out correctly. I mean, So what what I mean by that? Not only you know it's like the scouting of course, um, but the gear that I'm using, the camping equipment I'm using, the places I'm camping in relation to where I'm hunting. Um, all of those things I factor in because it's just you know, if it's easy to set up all these little roadblocks that you don't see coming. And this this is why it's hard for people to do this that don't do it as much as I do, because they go and they're like, oh, sleeping in the tense not that much fun, or you know, my my cock or my sleeping pads. No, it's no good. I'm not getting any sleep and it's a miserable experience. The more stuff that you can take care of like that, so you're comfortable, so you're eating better, you know, not eating just junk food all the time. Um, you just feel better, getting better sleep, all of that stuff matters. You will hunt way better if you're you know, if you're physically happy, you know, and it's it's not it's a strange thing to talk about. We kind of talked about it in the elk world a lot in the western back country stuff. But you know, if you're not in very good shape and you're gonna go try to hang a bunch of stands and hike, you know, seven miles in the breaks andth Dakota's probably not gonna happen. So you're gonna end up not having as many setups, not feeling as good, maybe not sleeping as well because you're sore, maybe not as driven to go do it. So all of it ties together. There's a lot, there's a lot to it. Yeah, that's a that's a really good point. So so now I'm gonna ask you a three part question, which is tackling those three things you just mentioned, but explaining to me exactly what you do. So from a fitness standpoint, what are you doing specifically to make sure you're to make sure your physical fitness isn't keeping you from having success from a white tail stamp? And I guess that we'll just go one time. So what are you doing that from? So the best thing I did was give up drinking five years ago for for a lot of reasons. That was a good, good idea for a person like me. But I I divide my time up between running and lift and weight uh I do. I try to do about eight workouts a week, so either you know, try to do it. You know, run four times, lift four times at least during the week, and that might only be forty five minutes of session or an hour of session, but I try to do that just to maintain and get the cardio in, get some get some core works and weight work in. So you're I just feel so much better tying stands and carrying stuff into the woods and dragon deer out. And it's it's you know, it's a process like anything else. You know, we want we want shortcuts to everything, right, you know what I mean. They're gonna sell you grunt tubes and all kinds of stuff to promise the deer comes into you, but they don't really work that well most of the time. It's the same thing with fitness. You know, like there's no way to do it other than just commit yourself and make it a way of your life. But if you do, you know, you're hunting will be a lot You'll you'll enjoy it a lot more. And so I'm just I'm just kind of locked into that phase right now where I know how much you know, and it's not just hunting. I mean a lot of people say they get in shape for l hunting, but you're really getting in shape for your entire life to be better. And you know, the one of the great benefits is, yeah, you can climb them out and better. You can carry a quarter of an outcout. But in a white shill world, we don't really focus on that that much. And it is a huge part if you're gonna do the kind of hunting that I do a lot, if you're not in very good shape, it's really hard and it's it's it ties into everything. Yeah, yeah, especially this public claim kind of stuff where you really need to get in there after stuff you're hiking around a lot, carrying and sticking stands. I mean that that helps. Just it seems to me like I don't I don't think a bunch of white tail hunters we don't need to all be Cameron Haynes. But I think if you can have some reasonable level of fitness so that at least your body isn't bringing you down. So that's not the reason. You know, as we talked about a lot, there's so many variables in a deer hunt. There's so many things that can go wrong. There's so many things that you can't control. That something is in your control, as your body and your physical fitness, that's something you can, you know, have some say over. So why not try to control that variable and and at least make sure that that's not bringing it down. So I've agree. Next one, you talked about camping, Choosing where you're gonna camp, what kind of gear you're gonna have. Do you have any recommendations as far as you're sleeping, set up your camping, set up all that kind of stuff to make sure that's smooth and as comfortable as it can be or as functional as possible. Yeah, go go luxury anyway you can. So. I used to stay in a little tiny tent. It would be me and a buddy usually, and you know, we're stepping over each other. You can't stand up in it, and it's just not very much fun. I'm to the point now if I can get away with it, because I can drive my truck up to a lot of places I camp. I use a I use like a pretty heavy duty six person dome tent, and I use that for myself and I can set up a little coffee making making station in there. I can drive some clothes out, I can stand up fully. I'm you know, I'm six too. I like to be in the morning, not be stooped over getting my clothes on, and just use a good cut a good sleeping pad, a good sleeping bag, all of that stuff. It just makes things so much nicer. I mean, I think about, I gotta I gotta pretty sweet system down for camp and now where I can sleep and I feel comfortable. But I think about how many years I hunted where I was in know, just really low quality stuff and just didn't I didn't appreciate what I could do for myself by just getting a little bit better stuff, you know. And and then I'm reminded of that when I go out hunting and I'm in a little tiny tent, sleeping on sleeping pat on the ground, and I'm like, oh, this is horrible, you know. I mean, it's a fun experience, but when you're used to kind of the cushion, you know, Kardashian style camping, and then you go to then you go to that ELK set up, You're like, oh, now I remember. But yeah, at the very least, you know, I realized not everybody's gonna go out buy a six man tent and all this this stuff. A cot with a good thick foam sleeping pad is a great start that takes you a long way started having a good night's sleep. Any specific brand or model or anything like that or other favorite gear, um, I'm using right now, I'm using Cabella's stuff. Um, you know, I'm sure there's way better stuff than I'm using. But I have a nice Cabella's cot and I have a I don't know what the model name of it is, but it's a it's a foam pad, is three inches thick, and they make it. I don't know what it costs. I can't remember, but it's so much better than any kind of blow up path I've ever used or anything. It is. It is for camping. It's really comfortable. I can definitely a test to the how important that kind of stuff is because it goes right back to your physical not your fitness, but just your physical comfort. If you're miserable and you can't sleep, it becomes just so much easier to take shortcuts during the hunt, or to lose your focus during the hunt, or whatever might be making mistakes. It all kind of ties back to that state of mind, state of your body, which well, yeah, when you if you're if you're not sleeping, well, you just will not hunt very well. And it's so tempting to sleep in it's so tempting to talk to yourself into I just need a good good night sleep, and you know if you're if you're running on eight hunts or ten hunts for an entire trip, and you this is your one one shot to go do something cool. Missing the missing the morning is it's just not an option. Yeah, so it's okay. That brings me to a question. This is something that I have have debated with myself many times, and you just kind of answered it for me. But I guess I'll put it out there again and see if this is what you mean. So I always used to be of the mind, like like talking maybe like the rut two weeks the first two weeks in November, usually hunt every day all day and I'm getting out too my tree stand like an hour and a half before daylight, and I'm sitting the entire day. I get back home or get back to camp, or get back to the hotel or whatever is I'm doing, and I've got a couple of hours to work, and then I fall asleep, and then you're up four hours later and you're doing it all over again. And so I do that, and as you know, anyone knows, that is just a crazy physical grind, like it definitely wears down on you. So that's what I do usually But then, like last year, I started thinking, am I actually lee? What what's the better scenario is grinding it out and being out there the whole time, the whole trip, every morning, super early. But maybe being at a deteriorated mental state or physical states you're focus maybe isn't cred on point by day seven you're not feeling good, or you're falling asleep in the tree, or because you're not focused, you look at your phone and a big buck passes by that you could have got a shop. So is that a risk to doing it that way or which? So would it be better to say, Okay, you know what, I'm going to give myself one sleep in mourning because then I know that my quality of attention and focus and all those things will be so much better for the rest of it. Um. I battled these two ideas in my head. What are your thoughts? So here's the litmus test for that. Are you still having fun? Right? Is the deteriorated state you're in where you're super tired and the works piling up and your wife's kind of mad at you? Is that to the point where it's it's you know, leaching some of the enjoyment out of it, because that's the case, sleep in or take a day off. If you know, if you're having awesome sits and you know a hundred million people aren't contacting you for work all the time and it's fun and your wife's like, go get him, buddy, then if you're in the right mental state, keep going. But you know, that's that's a great it's a great question because we always look at this from the perspective of what's what's my route from here to a big bucker from here to success? But really, I mean, we we forget so easily that we're supposed to be out there. We're out there because we enjoy it. It's supposed to be fun. And if you're out there and you're super tired and you're sick awaking up and it's not that much fun, then it's probably time to just show out for a second, you know, enjoy it, and get back out there when you're refreshed and you're and you and you can enjoy it. Because the worst thing that you can do with something like this is just you know, drive it right into the ditch because you're just you're so driven to succeed when really, I mean, we're just hunting rabbits with antlers. Man, Like, we're just we're out there, super lucky to live in this country and have the opportunities we have. And two, you know, people have gotten divorced over this to to to to go to that level. It's not fun anymore. So if it's if you're sitting there, and that's the same thing with whatever dear you want to shoot. You know, if you're if you're locked into two bucks and it's not fun to hunt because you're never gonna see one, then you're doing it wrong. Find something, you know, find find what deer is gonna make you happy, and shoot that sucker. You know, I talked about that all the time, but I just I believe it in my heart hearts. Man. Yeah, no, it's a it's a good point. It's something that every year I need to have like a mini self intervention. Even though I know this stuff and like I go into the season knowing it, I because I am so achievement focused, goal focused, so like determined when it comes to the actual hunt that every year, without without fail, I find some point in the season where I'm just I'm losing the fun out of it. I'm just so focused or so frustrated or so tired or whatever. I'm at least to the point now where I can recognize it, and I know when to like kind of slap myself and say, hey, man, chill out. Remember this is supposed to be fun. Get back to the basics. And usually that's that's about the time when I decided to do what I just said, I'll take a morning off, or I'll take a day off and like take the wife out for dinner or do something like that, just kind of reset. And then it's amazing how just that little reset it change is not just the actual quality of your hunts after that, but your mindset, your enjoyment. Even just that little bit can really flip things. And you get that when you get that renewed excitement all of a sudden, versus like that, oh gosh, I can't I can't imagine waking up again in the morning, or those moments like when the alarm clock goes off in the morning and you've got one of two feelings. Either one of it's like oh god no, or the other one's like all right, I'm ready. That just a little intervention can make a big difference there. So well, and what you're what you're talking about is just the you know, getting your head right, and that matters a lot when you're doing something challenging as bow hunting white tails. If you don't, if you're head not in the game for some reason, physical, mental, what's going on at home, what's going on at work, You're not gonna hunt the way you want to, and it's gonna snowball. So you're what you're saying there, taking some time off and having a little intervention. I'm the same way man. Usually Usually it's kind of you know, brought on me by my wife. We will be like, you know, maybe maybe it's time. Let's let's take the kids to go minigolfing or something tonight. Let's get out of a tree and just have some fun. And you're right, it's just like, Okay, I reset. I'm back mentally where I need to be. Yeah. Yeah, I think every year I'm seeing that becoming more and more important to make sure I take that time to just to just reset at least once a season or once during the run. I kind of need that, and I think especially now with a with a child, I feel like that's gonna probably be more important than ever so maybe that that is one of those times, like, Okay, if there happens to be that day where this fifty winds or where they there's ninety degree temperatures and November kind of no, Okay, you know what, I probably do need me one little one afternoon or one morning or one something where I'm gonna need this little reset. If you have to take a reset day or reset afternoon, try to time it so coincides with the worst potential conditions, even though yeah, it still could be good if you have to take a break, maybe it's a good way to line it up. Take advantage of slightly lower odds days or evenings and line those things up. Yep, absolutely, Spencer, give any thoughts on this now that you're a newly married man and you've got several kids on the way soon and all that. Uh, at this point, I still largely function like a bachelor when it comes to hunting, all right, that's right. We've been together for like eight years and I've been always a hardcore hunter, so she knows the deal right now. But I'm sure once kids come, like a decade from now, that will change. Can relate to this, how old is she? I am? Twenty six, she's twenty four. Okay, Well enjoy the next four or five years and hunt hunt your butt off, because this, this young mentality that you have is going to come to a screeching halt when she decides that it's time to make some babies. Your life's gonna change. Yeah, man, it all deteriorates once you hit thirty. I mean, my body's falling apart, your mind's falling apart. It's all downhill. So yeah, soak it in while you got it. Yeah, enjoy it. Oh man? Um, you know the final thing I was really curious about, back to the camping physical fitness, like these outside factors real quick? Is there anything from like an eating standpoint? I mean, I I know for me, I used to like on our rut vacations or something, me and my buddies we'd get like Wendy's every night or pizza every night, and we eat like donuts in the morning. And the last couple of years, I've kind of realized that that's not working for me. Um, you have anything on the eating standpoint that helps you be more effective for these huns? Yeah, I I am like a junk food addict, Like I can't I've never had moderation to anything in my life, Like I have to be super careful. And so what I do is I prep one big meal for dinner every night that I'm going to be in camp. And it's always you know, venison, asparagus, pepper, some kind of you know, vegetable venison mix, and then some rice, you know, instant rice I'll throw in there or whatever. So I have one good meal a day that isn't like many chocolate doughnuts and just horrible you know, empty carbs. And that seems to sort of center things a little bit where you're like, Okay, I know this is what I'm eating tonight. It's gonna be really good. It's good for me. It sort of carries over into the morning, and it keeps me, like you said, you know, from going and eating fast food all the time, or you know, whatever the worst options are. So I I do. I discipline myself for one meal a day, and it's it's usually the biggest meal obviously, but I have to prep it ahead of time. Otherwise I won't do it, you know, if I just you know, if if I don't make it really easy just to dump it right into a soft apan and cook it up, then I won't do it. Yeah, I'm exactly the same way I started two years ago, doing the exact same thing, having those pre prepared meals, and it comes out. I feel like so many things as like a serious white tail hunter. It's you need to find ways to by planning ahead of time, make things easy that normally would maybe would be inconvenient. Like there's things you know you should do, but if they're inconvenient or hard, you have the possibility of you know, cutting corners, not doing it quite the right way. But if you can ahead of time, plan ways to make it easier, simpler, done ahead of time, whether that's cooking meals or whether that's your planning for a hunt, or whether that's prepping your gear, and anything you can do ahead of time to make it easier, more convenient, smoother. It seems like that extra work ahead of time you can just pay off dividends across the board for all these kinds of things we're talking about. Oh it does, it's it's you know, it's Spencer doesn't notice yet because he's just a little pop but older, older, wiser man, we know that that's the key to enjoying anything is, you know, getting your getting your act together ahead of time and putting in some work ahead of time. It makes it makes the whole process so much better. Yeah. And I'm so glad that Dan couldn't make it today and that Spencer's on here, because I feel like we're changing We're changing your life right now. Spencer. I think if you, I hope you're taking notes because this is really gonna impact the trajectory of your next twenty thirty years. Yeah, I would have just turned this part of the podcast off. Yeah, we are really doing you a big favor here, Spencer. So so if this isn't interesting to you at all, Spencer, do you have any final things that are of interest, any any last questions for for Tony or anything. One thing I haven't heard you talk about is trying to get private access. And so when you're traveling out of state and you're you know, going there to hunt public do you ever find yourself knocking on doors or you know, scouting private land or do you find that to be fool's gold and you know, just not worth your time, It's it's lost time. Maybe. Yeah, I I used to knock on some doors a long time ago, and it just never was really worth it. And so I found if I just focus on the public and figuring out some random chunk of public land somewhere, I'm just better off. And you know, I'm not saying if I were, you know, in camp somewhere and a farmer drove up and said, hey, I got a thousand acres down the road, you can go, and I'm not saying I wouldn't do it. I don't seek it out anymore. I seek it out in Minnesota still. Like if I'm talking to somebody and they mentioned they own some woods or something, I'll investigate that for sure. But if I'm traveling just about anywhere, I'm I'm to the point now where I'm just focusing on the public. It's just easier. And you know, I know, you know, maybe if you're mining for more opportunities out there, you can find some cool stuff. But I just I'm digging this process of hunting public and it's just it's what I'm focused on, you know, So that's kind of I don't I don't I don't actively seek those opportunities. On that same note, do you sometimes find public ground that looks too good and like has a ton of hunters there where maybe you need to look for something that you know isn't manicured for white tails, or you know, something like that maybe has cattle on it and is a less than ideal property. Oh yeah, I I anything that it doesn't to me, It doesn't really matter how it looks. It matters how easy it is to get to. If something's easy to access, there's gonna be hunters in there most of the time. You know. If it's easy to access and it looks like amazing white tail property, it would be covered in people. So I'm just looking for harder to access areas. They don't have to look amazing, they don't have to. I I just want places that people don't want to go. Yeah, yeah, it brings to mind for me. Um. You know, sometimes they'll be public land parcels where they the state or the county or whatever might be has planted crops or food plots or something where they lease out some ground to farmers. And so I feel like that's one of those things that you see it and you're like, oh wow, food plots on public land. That's awesome. But it's kind of like this ringing belt. Every other hunter too, just draws them all in. And I feel like that's a perfect example something that looks great but probably actually because it looks so great, ends up making it not so great. Oh yeah, I've seen that a lot. But at the same time, I've scouted some public land own in Iowa that looks as dreamy as anything you're gonna see down there anywhere. And I can't say this for certain because I haven't haunted it yet, but just from the investigation I've done in the scouting, I think that there's some exceptions to that rule. Generally speaking, I don't like a state planet food potter, the easy, you know, the the no brain or food source that everybody can see from the road. That's that's not my style. But I think if you get into a certain area with maybe limited access or limited tags, you can find that place that looks too good to be true, but it's awesome and you're not gonna be overrun with people. Yeah, I gotta find those hidden gems. Yeah. Well, I um as always have enjoyed this one, Tony. I'm excited. You know, just a couple week and a half from now, I'm going to kick off my own public land hunt out there and we'll probably be doing a lot of things you're talking about, So I appreciate you doing your share and getting me pumped up and giving me a few more ideas as you always do. But before we go anything, I know you've got a few cool projects in the works right now that anything you want to mention like that. Yeah, man, we have a we have a pretty cool thing going on for North American White Hill where Laden forced the associate publisher there. He's a he's a good old boy from Missouri who loves to bow hunt. He and I kind of came up with this this project called Project Public where we're chronicling our fall through North American White Tails Instagram page with the hashtag project public, and so we're just showing scouting and the process and when we get into hunting here, we'll be showing you know, the setting up camp, hopefully some butcher stuff, all kinds of just just the little details, and there'll be some other aspects to it. But you know, if anybody wants to fall on and see how we're doing almost in real time, that's going to be how to do it. It's it should be pretty cool. Um. The other thing that I have going on I was hoping to have it finished for this podcast, and I think I'm I'm about nine point seven percent of the way there. But I've got a bow Hunting public Land White Tailed book coming out and I've just ran into a little bit of a design issue. But it's it's super close to being released. It will be released way before most of these white tail seasons open up. And I just I wrote it partially I kept doing something hard. People kept asking me if I had like a comprehensive uh, you know, right up with my strategy that people would ask me for the book, and I'm like, you know, I've written quite a few books and never done this one, and I thought, well, I should do this. And so that's gonna hit really really soon. They'll be able to get that off of Amazon here, probably within a couple of days. I'm pretty excited about that. Yeah, And I can say I've I've got to preview at least a draft of it, and there's some there's some definitely good stuff in there. So if people want to find that on Amazon, what's the title again, they need to search for it'll be bow Hunting public Land White Tails perfect. They'll be able to find it on my my page. I've got another another book on there, and then I've got another novel coming out here shortly too, but that one, you know, this crowd, the interest should be in that book, and it's it's pretty comprehensive, and it's it's not h it's different than a lot of the magazine work that I do and those those kind of titles because it's it's my own so I kind of got to say what I what I fully think about everything. So you should buckle and prepare for some of my opinions if you if you pick it up, and I hope you do, because it's it's it covers this process pretty heavily. So it was, it was it was a fun one to write. It's been a nightmare to to edit and finalize, but writing it was a lot of fun. So yeah, that's awesome. Well, I know a lot of people are gonna find that to be a helpful tool, just like just like all these conversations. So Tony, I just want to say thank you, and um man, I hope we can talk here. I'm sure Spencer's gonna loop you in for some radio episodes if you're up for giving us updates. Throughout the season. Um, so we'll be able to follow along and I'll be following um the project project public or public project project Project project public. All right, we'll be falling along there. And Man, I hope you have a great season. Well, I appreciate it. Mark, I hope you guys have a good season two. And you know, maybe we'll chat this this coming spring or something and hash out how we how we did and see see where we ended up. I'm hoping. Uh there's gonna be a lot of success stories in that in that conversation, So thank you. That'll be good. Yeah, And Spencer, you can feel free to tune out that because I'm sure we'll talk about balancing our families and I know how that all that is for you. So all right, Well, thank you, Tony, Spencer. Anything final from you, No, I am looking forward to the book. When we did our recap of radio back in January, head Tony on and I introduced him by saying he's one of the best white tail hunters. I know what I mean that. Uh, so covering this subject from Tony, I'm excited to see what he has. Well, thank you, man, I appreciate that, agreed, all right, well, let's shut this one down and that's gonna do it. So my only updates for you are the usual rating or reviews on iTunes. Please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. It's all under Wired to Hunt. Subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you might be having hunting season kicking off next weekend if you're in South Dakota or Montana, or Kentucky or North Dakota or a handful of other states. And if that's the case, this last week of preparation, it's it's it's so important. Make sure you check every piece of equipment, make sure you have a list of everything you need to have packed. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten something important on the first time of the year. I'm promising myself I'm not gonna do it again, So what make sure you don't make the same mistakes. I have best time of years coming right up. I'm super excited. I'm sure you guys are too, So the best of luck to everybody out there until next time. Then I hope you'll stay Wired to Hunt. U

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