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 Kenyon. This episode number two and thirty five, and today in the show, we are talking about public land white tails. We are talking about stalking down deer on the ground. We are discussing being mobile first time sits finding the hot sign, and so much more. And to do that, we're joined by Zack Barrenbaugh of The Hunting Public. Alright, real quick, before we get this one started, we want to thank our friends at Lacrosse Boots for the support of this podcast episode. Lacrosse produces some of the best knee high rubber boots out there for white tail hunters. I've been wearing them for a very long time now, both the Alpha Burley Pros and the Arrowheads. They've worked great for me. They are waterproof, they are sent free as they come, they are comfortable, they keep it warm, They do just about anything you need a boot to do in the white tail woods. Plus, they're available in many different camouflage options and solid green and yellow if you like that throwback look, which is what I'm rocking this year. I've been very happy with that. So if you're interested in checking out Lacrosse Boots for yourself, if you need some new kicks, head on over to Lacrosse Footwear dot com and check them out. All right, Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx and today we're talking public land white tails and joining Dan and I is Zach Fahrenbaugh. And if your YouTube watcher, you're probably are possibly familiar with Zack because of his work with Midwest white tail in the past and his current work with the hunting public. If you're not familiar with these guys, gotta check them out the Hunting Public. It's one of the absolute best white tail YouTube channels out there right now. Um, and it's Zack, and it's Aaron Warburton, who was a guest of ours last summer, and a handful of other guys. They're putting out almost daily video blogs showcasing their public land hunts all over the place they're They're living in Iowa, but they're also going to other places like Nebraska, Kentucky, UM, Missouri. I heard they're going to Alabama. Who knows. They're all over the place. They're doing a great job, and I think it's I think it's shining a great light on the public land opportunities that are out there. Uh, they're getting on some great bucks. They're showing that you can hunt quality mature deer even if you don't have a big farm and food plot. So I think that's awesome. I've really been enjoying what they're doing. And um, I think Zack is gonna be a guy who has some interesting thoughts, some interesting stories. So I'm excited. Dan. I gotta say, though, you know, I've been out chasing some public land bucks. Zack's chasing public land bucks. When are we gonna get you take the plunge in public land? Yeah? I got some stuff in here in Michigan. That's just calling her name. Oh okay, so it has to be in Michigan. Yeah. I hunted on public last season, dude, early season. Oh, I guess you did too. I did. And I hunted on public land this year during elk season. I mean that doesn't count, Okay, Okay. Basically, I'm just trying to get you to leave your wonderful deer hunting and come down to come down to my level. So I feel less bad. But yeah, basically, what you're telling me is, hey, Dan, we need you to hunt really shitty ground exactly because okay, because you got it too good. Did you see did you see that comment on Facebook today? Um? Someone you asked on the nine Finger Chronicles facebook page if what people thought about high fence hunting and someone and then someone comments, isn't that what it's like in Iowa? Or isn't it So do you mean Iowa bow hunting? Yeah? Exactly, exactly. Like, man, uh so, how are you otherwise you are getting excited? Uh? Yeah, dude, I'm I'm starting to really think about this season, um a lot lately, just from a planning standpoint. There's not much I can really do, but I know that I have a lot to do, so uh man, I don't know. I just feel like I'm really, really, really behind this year. I haven't I haven't moved my trail cameras off the mineral sites yet because I haven't. I've just been crazy busy. I haven't set up all the tree stands that I needed to set up because I've been crazy busy. I mean, all these are kind of excuses, but um, I'm I'm playing this chess match right now, me in time, right, so I have to be here for my kids and I have, like I got back on my elk hunt right, so now I have to really focus on the family for the next you know, two weeks until I can get out. I might get out opening evening October one, but then that we weekend, my wife has stuff going on, so I have to babysit. It's like, uh, I don't know, I don't know. It's not easy, right. And I got inspired because I was talking to this guy on the nine Finger Chronicles podcast uh this this past weekend and he's found a lot of success early season um bow hunting, And I want to kill a dear early season so bad, Like I don't. I want to find one and kill one that meets my standards and not have to go into the rut for some reason this year, I want to. I want to get it done and get it done early. More power to you man that early season. I mean, I mean the September hunts. Now, I know you're not gonna be hunt September, but I've really fallen in love with the September bow hunting. Catching him on that bed defeat pattern they're really on a pattern trying to decipher that quickly and make an adjustment and get on him. I mean, that's a lot of fun um. And I know Zach, he's gonna have some stuff to talk about that because they do that a lot um as certainly as possible. Now, um, oh god, I guess what I was gonna ask you was gonna be related to your trail cameras. But you haven't checked your trail cameras yet one yeah, just one time, and you're not going to check them until you start hunting? Is that if I remember? I mean, I have this rule that says, uh, don't go into the timber during September period. And I I mean a lot of those, A lot of those trail cameras are on the edge of the timber. Like I could. I could drive to most of them, uh all except maybe two of them. But it's just, man, I like, I want to know what's there. I want to know what happened with this shift, right. I want to get my trail camera More importantly, I want to get my trail cameras in position for October so so that when the rut does hit, I have you know, four or four and a half weeks of data to let me know. Hey, you know when some of this stuff going when some of the stuff is going down. Yeah, you know, I know you've got that September rule. But if you can drive to stuff, that might not be a bad idea, even though you're gonna go in there, as long as you stay with your car running. Just move the camera from wherever it's at to mock scrape or scrape on the edge of the field, and if you drive, uh you know, put some nosejamber where we put the camera. I mean, that might be worth the tiny bit of negative risk you're taking there, might be worth the increased intel you can get, especially if you're trying to kill one early, because that you're gonna need some data to figure that out. Yeah, that's a fact. Man. I don't know. We'll see, Uh, we'll just see what happens. It's all it's all based off time. And if I if I can make it, I can make it. If I can't, I can't. Yeah, I hear you're there. I um man, I don't know what about my early season chances over here in Michigan, my oh, my main holy field arm over there. I've got one wireless camera that's working, and I haven't got crap on that. Um, just does and like a spike, even though the food plot it's on looks beautiful. I got a scrape tree in there. All the doughs are hitting it, but but nothing with any age, no sign of hoole the field yet. I've scouted a handful of knights watching over this area from the road. Nothing not a single buck other than a year and a half olds. Um, So that's discouraging. But the new property that I'm hunting, I saw that pick I might hunt Michigan this year. That's a pretty good looking buck, isn't it? Because that one brow time just makes me happy for some reason. I don't know why. I think that is legitimately a twelve inch brow time. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I love big brows. Yes, I agree. I've yet take Well, I've killed one deer with a really big brow tin that that buck six shooter that killed a handful of years ago. He had a pretty cool prout time. Um, but I've never really got one of those deer they have those two just huge eye guards. That would be that would be awesome. So this deer has got one insanely long one and he has been coming in and out. This camera is set up just inside from a little kind of food source. It's some I think it's wheat or oats or something in it. And um, there's super thick betting right off of the edge of this food source, and there's a little two track that cuts off of the field heading into that thick stuff. And so I put a camera on a mock scrape just along that two track, just inside off of the field. And um, so I drove in there and pulled that card. I don't know. This was a week ago or something, and this big boys on their pretty consistent leaving in the evening, come back in the morning, in and out same way. Um, still under the cover of darkness. But on the twelve or or something like that, he was pretty close to daylight. It was like the kind of within an hour. So I'm I'm glad to see there's a consistent mature buck like that coming in and out of there. And that's gotta excited. So yeah, it's always good when one of those shows up. Yeah, it's right now, the only mature buck I've seen on camera, So hoping, hoping for more good stuff. To come soon. And you know how it is once October rolls in, at least at least for me and a lot of spots I hunt, it seems like I never had one of those farms is just loaded with summer bucks. It's like that back the Ohio spot we hunted that used to be loaded with summer bucks. But none of my Michigan areas, so fingers crossed they show up and when season kicks off will be something to something to go after. But we got less than two weeks, right, I know, man, Uh, I don't know whether I should I don't know whether I should be more excited or less excited, because I'm in this state of limbo now where I feel like if I go, if I get excited now, I'm just gonna have my spirits crushed with Hey, okay, so we have plans for this, this, this, and this for this October and then, uh, you got three kids and I'm not going to watch them all the time. You went on a one week elk hunt. So there's that, and so I don't know, I just every year. I don't know how this is for for the guys out there who their wives kind of give them grief a little bit. But every year I have to have a conversation, and every year it's the same conversation as the conversation from the previous year. And then someone someone ends up not getting to do what they want to do, and someone like holds it against the other person. Doesn't she just to do what she wants to do the rest of the year, though, Don't you pretty much given the whole rest of the year because you're trying to save up your brownie points right now? Yeah? I do. But her things are like maybe one day at a time. So like for me, that Elk hunt was eight days, right, that's eight days of having to watch my three kids. Like Mark, I have full confidence that you can go out into the into the harshest mountains and survive for eight days. But I'm not so sure I would put money on you if if you had to watch my three kids for eight days. Yeah, they look they look rough. Um, maybe we need to do I think I can't remember this last year or two years ago that I paid for babysitting for you, maybe like one one or two days. Yeah, I got you a couple of days of babies. I think maybe we need to create a Kickstarter for all the audience to wear an audience to chip in, chip in to get you some babiesitting time. Oh man, that'd be awesome. Yeah, I be honest to god, I bet you we'd get a lot of money. I know. I know people want to see you hunt, Dan. They just want you to live out your dreams. I know, and I would. I would. I'd probably just take that money. Take your wife out to dinner, check her out to dinner at those Brownie points. But that's that's the goal in the next two weeks is just make her as happy as humanly possible. Well, you you work hard at that because we need some good stories from you this this October. So should we should we get Zake on though, because Zack's already been hunting, He's got some good stories to tell. And uh, I think we'll have an interesting conversation. Sounds good, all right, let's do it. Alright, Let's take a quick second here to think our partners at Onyx. Onyx as the producer of the Onyx Hunt app, which is something that I'm using probably just about daily. It's something that I know that Zach is using almost daily. It's a tool that's gonna allow you to see your aerial views of maps, gonna allow you to see typo graphic views of maps. It's gonna allow you to see property line information overlaid, so you can see where the private property borders are, you can see where the public land is. You can see where trails are, campgrounds are, you can oh my gosh, you can see so many different things. There's even if you're heading out west do elk hunting, your mule deer hunting, you can overlay where the recent burns have been Back here in the Midwest and the East where we're worried about c w D, there's now a layer where you can overlay where c w D has been found. UM, so many different options here, tremendous tool. I'm heading off for an elk hunt tomorrow and I will have my Onyx app up and running probably the entire time, tracking where I'm at, watching and seeing where I'm going, plotting out where we want to head next. Um. Just something that I've found very valuable and I imagine you would two And if you are interested in checking it out, if you haven't yet, you can get the Onyx Hunt app over on just about any mobile app store and if you use the promo code wired w I R E D, you can get off your order. That promo code is w I R E D. Al Right, we are back now with Zach fahren Ball. Welcome to show. Zack, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat because you know, we had Aaron on show last summer and enjoyed that conversation. But you are kind of like the wild card of the hunting public. I feel like and and my buddy Dan over here, he's like the wild card of the Wired Hub podcast. So I needed to make sure to connect to you guys, and this should be an interesting conversation because of that, I think. So I'm looking forward to it. Um, yeah, I like that. I like I like the wild card name or you know, gonna be in that guy. I like that no expectations that way, but that no expectations that way exactly that, That's exactly the way I like it, No expectations. What I what I think we gotta do to get like the perfect hunter look would be to take Zack's hair and Dan's rut hunting beard. And if we combine those two things together, we have the most amazing bow hunting hair of anyone out there, I agree. I agree. I can't grow facial hair with a damn like. I just can't grow it. I tried my whole life. I can't do it. So yeah, if I could get a beard on it, I would do it, but I just can't can't make it happen. Well, hey, I feel your payment. I'm right there with you, So I can't can't have it all, that's right. Um So, so for those who are not familiar, you know we are on the show last year, you guys hadn't started the hunting public yet. Um so, can you give folks a kind of quick overview of how that came to be? And uh, and then we'll kind of go from there. Yeah. Um, Aaron, Greg and I were all working at Midwest White Tail. Those guys have been there for I think both of them started in two thousand or two thousand ten. Greg started and then two thousand eleven Aaron started, and then I started there in two thousand and fifteen, and we worked there. We had a lot of buddies that worked there at different times too, And I guess it was just, you know, kind of got to the point where we wanted to really start branching out and and you know kind of take a risk and go out on our own and really own what we were doing. And you know, we um just kind of went for it, I guess, and didn't didn't really know if it was going to be anything that was you know, going to be sustainable or you know, if it was we're going to be able to continue to keep doing you know, just just hunting industry type stuff. So I guess we started a Originally we just started simply like a production business, and our main goal was to, um, you know, just do all kinds of different projects, anything from you know, senior photos, weddings too, you know, maybe some hunting videos. And the first fall or first couple of months there in the fall, we just kind of used up all the money that you know, or what very very little money we had, and we just kind of used it all up and bought equipment and started hunting and just started making hunting videos because that's what you know, we really wanted what we were going to do until we ran out of money and end up, you know, I guess, getting some traction there enough to at least keep it going through the fall, and then h our friends that legendary White Tails really helped us kind of keep it keep it afloat there at the beginning, and um, you know, we really really very very thankful for that. You know, they helped us out a ton and I guess they were kind of the first people to jump on board and really support us, and we were able to keep things going throughout the spring. And and now you know, we don't have to do or we're you know, we're able to focus more on kind of the hunting side of the production business and we do a lot of um, you know stuff within the hunting industry. We do small projects for people, um, different hunting brands and stuff like that, and then that's how, you know, one of the ways that we're staying aflow. But yeah, I just I guess gained just enough traction that we were able to kind of go full time into focusing on hunting videos. And you know, our main mission with starting all this was we just really wanted to have videos that we're relatable, and our main I guess mission is to help get more people are interested in hunting, get them you know or viet help people feel confident and um hunting public land, you know, showing people that Hey, there is options out there if you don't have a leads or if you don't have a farm, or you know, you can't afford those things, or you know, if you don't have permission or know somebody, whatever the case may be. We're just we really really really want more people to get into the sport get excited about doing it. Um. You know, we just don't want the hunting, the population of hunters to keep decreasing. You know, it's to us. We feel it's an issue and we want to get people excited about it, get people back out in the woods, and you know, have some fun along the way. Yeah. Yeah, you guys are doing it, and I gotta I gotta give you mad props for you know, taking that leap. I know what that's like. I know that's scary, and trying to make it work on your own, that's that's no easy tasks. So um, well done on making it the first through the first year, and it seems like you guys got lots of momentum, so I'm sure it's going to continue. But I'm excited for you guys. Yeah. Thanks, it was Yeah, like you said, it was a pretty it was pretty scary. You know what that Well, I guess when we first decided we were going to do it, is like, well, like you know, here we go, may just may just end up like doing something completely different, and you know, a couple of months, but you know, at least we've we've got some goals and we just went forward and glad we did. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I'm glad it worked out. And you speaking of those early months, that brings me to the next thing I really want to talk about, which was Nebraska, because you guys took off last year right when you started this whole thing, and you headed out to Nebraska for this public land hunt, and that was really the first set of videos I think that you guys started putting out there. Um, you went back to the same place again this year. Both of those hunts looked like they went really well. I yeah, I would love to hear more about how that went this year and then maybe probably last year till I'm interested in both of them. And Dan, you'll be You'll be interested to know this is kind of out in that neck of the woods that you really love in Nebraska. So I think if you haven't seen these videos they're putting out, you should check it out because it's right up your alley with those big, rolling, grassy hills and it looks like big country, isn't Zack. Oh yeah, the Nebraska sam Hills are pretty pretty vast. I mean there's a lot of lamb and in fortunately there's a lot of publicly I'm giving you know, people that anything from fisherman to bird hunters and deer or you know, meal deer hunters, white tail hunters. There's all kinds of wildlife out there. It's a pretty incredible area. It sure looks like it. So, so I walk us through how how you ended up putting together some success. I guess let's let's talk last year first, because I'm kind of interested in this progression now that you've had last year, what you learned from it, how that led to this year. Um, I've watched those videos and got to see how you put together, but I'd be curious to hear what your thought process was throughout those those days. Yeah. Well, so, I guess the first trip is actually pretty funny. It was the first videos that we produced. But we definitely like at this point in us like we were basically just jobless, Like we didn't we we didn't really have any expectation totally yet of what we were doing. We just like new we wanted to try to you know, make make a living filming and editing, you know, using our our talents and filming and editing. So again, we didn't really like we wanted to make hunting videos, but we didn't really know. So yeah, we just took Eron's camera that he'd bought years ago. We just went for it, Jake Brody and I and we I guess essentially just started looking at maps a few days before we went, uh, picked out a campsite and just drove out there. We drove out there, Oh, I want to save us around the thirteenth or fourteen, um, I think it was. Yeah, one of those two days we drove out there just to night, got there very early in the morning, slept for about an hour, and then I woke up and saw the sand Hills for the first time and was just totally blown away. And you know, I guess by looking at maps beforehand and Jake Jacobs that had actually hunted there um in the late season before, so he had an idea of you know, what the area looked like. We had it out several places on a map, and you know, places that we wanted to check out. We got there and just started observing these areas that you know, we had suspected to be the best whitetail habitat, and pretty quickly we eliminated a lot of stuff just by you know, simply not observing deer coming out of the areas we thought they were going to be in. And we also just kind of got a little frustrated with that observing. And what we started doing was we'd see an area that you know, seemed like betting habitat and like we'd seen deer and very similar stuff, and we would just go in and we would still hunt it and in the morning specifically, and we would be still hunting and working back with those deer as they were coming back into the betting areas, and we ran into some deer doing that, and we also got our best information by doing that. We would just go right through these betting areas and we were looking for buck sign. You know, that time of the year, the deer just sid if you find a fresh rub right now, like you better be thinking about that. I guess, in my opinion at least, like that's the best sign to find buff and and I don't run. I guess I shouldn't say I don't run. My my my friends do, and I use their information, but I don't run trail cameras. I just like to run off signed And that's something I'll probably talk about a lot um. It's just looking at sign, looking at fresh sign, looking at big tracks, rubs, beds, you know, all the scrapes, all kinds of deer tigme, just really looking at that and trying to decipher that and then trying to make a plan to set up on it. And that's what we're doing. We'd go in and more than anything, just looking for rubs and big beds and did that and we had a lot of you know, or or we'd find an area that we had a lot of confidence in and we'd go back in there and we'd hunt it. And our whole strategy would be basically get in and get set up right on top of beds and hope that they came right back into them. And we had some encounters, but then finally, well, I guess, let me take one one quick step back. The other thing that we would do is we would literally go through and do like beer drives, or we call them wind bumps where we'd pick a betting area and what I would and Brodie and I both had tags. And he because he hunted because he was he was an Iowa resident, but his brothers and lived lived in Nebraska, so he'd go back and hunting in Nebraska. So we both had tags. But when we would go into these wind bumps, I would bump out these areas and I would just go through them, letting my wind drift through the bedding area. The deer would bump out in front of me, and I would just basically be scouting my way through these these spots and pretty pretty far into the trip um before you can you can you elaborate on the wind bumping. So why you're doing it that way and what you're what you're trying to achieve with that. Well, there's two two main things that we were trying to learn and achieve. I mean, for one, straight up trying to get a deer, like we've had to work in the past um where you know, a deer comes out of the betting area and offers, you know, the guy set up a shot. A lot of times the guys just sitting on the back side of a betting area on a funnel and hoping that the deer escape calmly, you know, by letting her scent drift in there. Generally the deer escape quite a bit calmer than if you walk through, you know, making a bunch of noise like a traditional deer drive. You know, I'm basically still hunting to these betting areas, just letting my scent go kind of opposite of what you would normally have generally still hunting. You know, you're gonna have a wind in your face there across wind and in this situation, I'm just going through the stetting area more or less scouting with the wind in my back. So that's you know, goal number one is simply shoot a deer and having a strategy, you know, just diffing off the wall strategy. It's totally different than most most people are going to do a bow hunting approach, I guess. But the other thing was is just trying to find that sign. You know. It's like unless we were going into these betting areas, we didn't know. I mean, they're so thick, they're so dense that like these bucks, if they don't leave and go out into the open You never know they're there unless you get in there and you either bump them or just gout around enough to where you're finding the sign coming out of these betting areas. I mean you had to get close because they're not they're not moving a lot that time of the year. They're very very small areas. So we went into this wind bump one day and like I said, it was pretty far along in the in the trip, and I bumped the buck and I watched him run. Now, the betting area is the wrong way. He wasn't going towards Jakie Brody, and I watched him go up over the hill and I was like, oh, like that's a that's an ice one we've been seeing. There's not a not a super old age class out there. So to see its real nice eight point and run up over the hill, I was like, like, we really need to think about this and see if we can, you know, figure out how to hunt it. So I continue to just scalp that whole thing. And it wasn't a super big piece maybe ten fifteen acres um, but just a super dense piece of habitat. There was all different types of vegetation in there, and there was tons of you know, basically just a betting area and a food source all in one. And there was tons and tons of beds and tons and tons of rubs in there. I found some scrapes as well, and I was like, you know, this is something again that we really need to think about and hopefully he'll come back. But you know, it's like it's it's such a good betting area and here's so many deer using it. We did. I did jump other Um, I did not jump other deer out of there. Some does. But it's like, even if he doesn't come back and I just come, surely another buck will be back in here in the next few days, at least before we leave. So I did scouted the whole thing, almost every inch of it in that in that day that I went bumped. After I bumped that buck, tried to figure it out, left my scent all over the place in there. I mean, we was laying in the beds and seeing what they could see. Was scouting it right, you know, right in the middle of the trip. So we waited a couple of days, and we went in there counting it one day, um and then wait, like I said, waited a couple of days hunted it saw I saw most of the year that we I jumped out of there come back except for that buck. And then we hunted it again the next morning, which I think would have been like three days out from when I went through it and went bumping and scouting, and right at first light, heard a deer come in, walked right around us, and it was only about thirty yards away, but we couldn't see it's so thick in there. Heard it bed down, and about eight o'clock eight thirty maybe the wind started picking up. When that wind picked up, he got up and he shifted his bed. Then he walked to like ten yards in front of the stands. There was the same buck that I jumped out of there just a few days earlier. He walked the ten yards and his browsing had no idea we were in the world, and it had a perfect shot at him. And you know what, that was kind of an eye opener for me. And I talked to a lot of people about it since, and you found that a lot of people also use somewhat of a similar strategy. It may not be directly trying to bump the deer, but at the same time. You know, there are other guys that are doing stuff like that. And I really got me thinking a lot um just about you know, how how you come across the best stuff, and and you know what I kind of came down to was, you know, you're looking for that fresh sign, that sign that is being laid down right now, you know. And I think sometimes guys will get and myself included for sure. I mean, I'm my goal is to not do this as much as possible. Fears like I get, I get super fired up about a spot. But I found in like February, right, I'm out looking for sheds and trying to find, you know, find the best dear sign. Well, what you're finding then is you're finding a whole year's worth a sign. And it's sometimes hard to decipher. Okay, is that made in October? Is that made in September? Is that made in December? I mean not. I mean it's hard to tell. And I think that I went in and wasted a lot of fits because I was hunting signed and I saw in February that wasn't actually laid down in the time that I thought that. It was, like, you know, I'm like, oh, it's gonna be awesome on November four. Well, you get in there and the signs dry, I mean the deer we're in there in October, you're month late or two months late, you know, maybe the September when they first shed. You know what I think, kind of doing that style of hunting and being mobile and doing kind of off the wall type stuff allows you to find that hot sign and in reality, you know, when you find those best areas where the highest concentrations deer are like, but they are not just gonna leave. I mean I think that, you know, and I've had the argument to of like Holling more pressured states, you know than than Iowa for example, those gear aren't going to come back. Well I don't agree with that because if if you find a place where they all want to be, I mean I hunted, I grew up hunting Western Ohio. Like there's more pressure there than you know than anywhere else. I've been to this point for white tails, and there's small woodlots where people would go in and hunt. No, yeah, they'll bump them out of betting areas and then maybe gone for a couple of days. But if you find that best spot, like there's nowhere. If there's nowhere better like that, they're gonna come back to it because it has all the factors that they need. You know, they may leave for a few days or something, or maybe even a week, but at some point, you know, if all the deer feel comfortable there, if it's a pretty well set up bedding area with all the factors that they need, and go to scape routes, then they're going to come back. Now. Sometimes you know, it just takes a little bit of weird tactics to find that. Now, would you agree with this though that going about it in that kind of way, It's it's high risk, high reward, right, So you definitely could have that. Like you said, you might bump them out of there for a few days, or you might get a buck that maybe he's gonna stick around there, but he's just not gonna move during daylight. He might be back to that bed well before daylight in the morning, etcetera, etcetera. So I think there's a lot of people that are probably listening to this and they're like, oh, that's crazy. I'm never gonna do that, because you know, you're supposed to have the sanctuary and you leave these deer untouched. Blah blah blah. Um would you would you say that if you're hunting, if you've got like one little spot that you can hunt, You've got your twenty acre property at home, and that's the one spot you hunt, maybe you don't want to go in there and do this kind of thing all the time because you're gonna blow it out. But if you're in a situation you're at where you're in public line, you're just there seven days, so it's you've got nothing to lose because you need to get it done now. Or I feel like what you've got going on in Iowa is you guys are really aggressive, but you have lots and lots and lots of different spots. Same thing like Dan Infall. He's super aggressive. But if you blow out Spot A, that's fine because I'm going to Spot B and then spots C and D E F G. I mean, is that the right way to think about this? No, it is. I guess I maybe should have said that beforehand. Um, And and I guess I've uh, I've always been this way, even you know, as soon as I got my driver's license, I was going to go to a place that I was going to get away from Western Ohio like to where I had had that option, Um, it has. I guess if you're gonna hunt aggressively, I think that you have to put yourself in a situation where, now, whether it's funny public or private. You know, maybe you've got multiple different pieces of private land and some public mixed in or all public, or just a ton of pieces of private land. You have to have multiple different areas that you can go to. You have to be able to balance, and that's that's the key. Um. You know, we we do these aggressive tactics, and but like you said, we've got so many places that will never touch in a season that we've scouted in the past, and we've got, you know, ideas of how we would hunt it, but there's just not simply not enough time for it. And I think that if you're going to hunt aggressively like this, then you should have lots of different options. And I think that there's ways to hunt aggressively like this with not as many options as you know maybe we have or or even your your buddy has. But you know, I think that at some point throughout the season, you know, it is always worth getting aggressive. Um. I just if there's one pet peeve I have. It's just people being like, I gotta wait, I gotta you know, the wind is just not perfect. Well, sometimes you gotta get in there when it's when it's the time is right and it I guess it's just I think that people. Uh and and again like myself included, Like I think all this because of like all the times that I just thought I was being careful, but in reality I was just like just getting in such a rust that the deer were patterning me. I wasn't changing it up enough. YEA so quick question here. You know, on top of being aggressive, there's like whether you're aggressive or you're conservative in your approach to actually going after a deer, there's still some preparation that has to happen on the front end of of that, you know. And what that sounds like you're doing is this scouting at a very high and fast level to locate them all break break that, break that down for us and kind of tell us what what that scouting, that speed scouting is like for you guys. Yeah, So, um, I guess I guess when we go into an area, we really try to focus on set. Like again, setting up on that that hot sign or finding that hot time. And I always my best way to explain like what exactly we're looking for is the highest concentration of the best sign in that area. So you've got an idea of what your dear density is like in the um properties that you hunt. And you know what when you you know, you know what it looks like when there's a bunch of bucks in an area. You know, you kind of have that idea of how many rubs you know, per acre, there are, how many scrapes per acre there are Like when you when you when when you looking for that hot sign, when it really jumps out at you of like holy cow, Like there's scrapes, there's rubs, there's tracks, there's bucks, there's those there's all the deer kind of you know, getting they're all just kind of in this small area. He kind of you know what, you know, the difference of that versus you know a little bit aside. Does that make sense? Like like all of a sudden for that area for that deer density, like there's max sign and when you find that, it's just like whoa, you know, it almost smells like bucketing there, Like there's the scrapes, there's rubs beds, and that's that's what you know we're really looking for is that highest concentration of deer sign. And you know how long how long are you in that area until you end up bailing and going to the next spot. Um it really depends. UM. I would say, if it looks really good, you know, we'll get in there and we kind of ease our way. Like for example, a lot of times they have a betting area that we've previously scalted in mind, so you know, we know there's a good you know, betting area deep in this piece of public or maybe there's two or three along the way, and as we're scouting through there, we're just kind of hitting the the down wind side of that betting area, just kind of skirting mouth skirts that it's looking for good sign coming out of it. If we hit it at the first one, then you know, we'll set up there for the day. And then if but if we don't hit it on the first one, we'll go to the next one. And you know, it just gives kind of a Sometimes it's a day to day thing. Sometimes it's a in one hunt you may cover two or three betting area that's just trying to find the right one that's got that fine. Um. Sometimes we'll sit on the same betting area you know, for multiple days. It's something, um, we haven't done a ton of in the past. You know, some of the bucks that we've shot in the past few years have been, um, you know, kind of hunting a betting area repetitively until you know the gives you the right opportunity. But a lot of it are a lot of the bucks we've shot the past few years have been the first time fits. But something that I'm a little bit more interested in. It's just like seeing how much we can get away with, like how much it actually takes to drive the deer out of an area. This year, I'd like to try to focus on one or a couple of betting areas or a general spot you know, for three or four or five days at a time and just see, you know, just kind of push it a little bit and see what happens. Just try to learn something from that. But I guess again, this day to day spots spot. Now, Now, when you're you're doing this in season scouting, you're walking along, you find one of these betting areas where you're seeing that hot sight, you're seeing a lot that the concentration is right, it's uh, yeah, this is going to be a spot we need to hit. Now, walk me through the thought process from that moment on, like what are you looking for to help determinal where do we need to set up? How do we think they're going to come out of here? Um, what's what's that next step from? Okay, yeah, this is a great area to finding that perfect spot within the spot that you're gonna actually sit in. How you approach that? Yeah? So UM. I can actually use an example from Nebraska from this season, which is actually ends up being where I UM ended up getting the buck um this year. The first day we went in there, there was a piece that was there's a road that went through the middle of it that was just public access, like you could park it multiple different pull offs down this road. It was just the sand road that went through the piece. And we ended up driving down that road and just trying to get a feel for the habitat, and we jumped a couple of bucks and one of them was the one I ended up killing. But we're like that's a big one, Like that's the biggest one. We've seen the whole trip, and we kind of freaked out ended up going act turning around, going back to the first pull off, and then going back right back after him. Like they had just jumped out of that betting area. But we suspected they weren't going to go far and they would probably come right back, you know, just just running away from from the vehicle. We didn't figure that they would leave the county, you know. So how we approached that is like there's a little bit different situation, Like we didn't find the sign, but but we knew they were in there. So how we went about approaching it is like we just kind of got to a high point so where we could see that betting area and we could see kind of how the land laid, and from that Logan and I have a guy that I was with, we just were glassing that whole area and we're looking for just little terrain features that in ways that you know, just a little mini funnels, you know, just where we would expect trails to kind of go through this piece of land to this little creek bottom. And we just kind of kept getting the different high points and looking at it from different angles, and then we eventually were like, okay, this is the best funnel from right on this point of the creek. End up getting down there, and one of the two bucks that we jumped was ended up coming right down one of those trails and he caught our wind before we got a good shot at him. But you know, essentially the plan worked. He was coming right now in the place, right down the pipe, right where we expected him to. Um, just gonna win win. Kind of messed us up, but well, totally messed us up, but you know, that was That's one example was just kind of getting a field by looking at it. Okay, you know how's that terrain lay? And just from past experiences, you know, you get pretty good idea of how they are going to work through a creek bottom. But I guess in a different situation, if I was walking through an area scouting it, um, like like the one I shot in Nebraska last year, It's like, I'm in that area and seeing all that sign I'm looking at how the trails are oriented in there, looking at how the beds are oriented, thinking about which wind does deer betting there on? And you know, in that situation with the one I shot last year in Nebraska. A lot of those beds were set up for south wind. They were kind of cover it back facing to the north. So with that south wind, they've got covered behind them, wind coming you know, at their back, and they're looking out into an open area. So with that kind of info, um, that's how we decided to hunt it. And and that's the wind that he was in there on and we ended up getting him. You know, it's just a lot of different factors. I I'm really sometimes I'm bad at I guess putting, like thinking of all of the situations because it's always so different. You know, sometimes you're just walking to an area and you're like, all right, you know up on this ridge in you know, in Big timber Um. You know, maybe a side hill has you know where there's a bench and maybe there's an old clear cut down there. Well there's a hard transition line there, and right off the hard transition transition line there's just tons of you know, heavily used scrapes. It's like, well, you know, those bucks are working that transition line. They're scraping down along through there. And that's as simple as it is. Like you hit that that scrape line, you're like Okay, if we need to back out of here and you know, come back on the time when we feel like we're gonna hunt the scrapes or maybe hunt it that day. You know, every situation just vary so much, but you know, our main mission is to be right where you know, the most hot sign kind of comes together. Yeah, you just mentioned something I was gonna. I was kind of curious about your opinion on which is the question. Right there you find the sign, do you hunt right away or do you say, well, I gotta give it a few days to rest because I just came in here. Maybe you hung a stand or whatever it might be. I've always kind of been in mind that you should hunt it right then and there because maybe you can get them coming back the one time that they don't know something was there. But what's what's your take on that? Um Ya, again, it varies. I'd kind of the same way that you just said, Like I like to get aggressive, Like I like, I like to try to break all the rules, you know what I mean? Like I like to, um wouldn't bump it and then go set up on a you know that day, you know whatever, like just do something weird and just try something different. But a lot of times I would say if if it depends on how much impact you feel like you've got. You know, if you just kind of get into the edge of it and you're still down down wind of all the bedding or where you think the majority of the dr are, and you pick up on a real hot straight right on the edge of the you know, a transition line that you think a buck's gonna show up there and daylight, you know, hunt it right then, just hanging a stand up and hunt it or set up on the ground, whatever you want to do. Um, But if you go through a whole bedding area, you're bumping deer, you know, there's a high impact. You're leaving your sin all over in the middle of the betting area. A lot of times in that situation, give it like generally two days. So you know, just saying, let's say on November six, we'd go blow up the world in a betting area, but where like that that's the hot stuff, Like that's the best stuff we've seen in the past week. Then maybe on like November nine, we would go back in there on the wind that we felt was right and hope for the best. You know, it just depends on how much that impact, how much you feel that impact, he's going to throw the deer off. Yeah, my foilow you So so continue with that Nebraska situation here this year you found these bucks, you moved in there, you had the one catcher wind, what was your plan from there and out? So there was another little factor in there that I haven't included yet. There was some other guys who have actually just just got ahold of me. They just messaged me today and thought that was pretty cool. Kind of got to figure out what, you know, what they were doing a little bit more and what we were doing, and just trying to communicate a little bit better. But there was these other guys that were hunting in there, and they were going way back deeper into into the piece of public. So they were driving past the betting right past this betting area that we were hunting. And the reason that we found these years because we drove past the betting area and they jumped up. So when we were making that first move that first night, they came down that road and Logan, who was with me, ran up there and asked, you know, if they would um, if they would just like hold off or at least just park at the first pull off and not you know, go past them, because we knew that they were in there, and very very kindly of them, they were like, yeah, go for it, make a move on them, and and uh, you know, we'll just hold off of the evening so that we're super thankful for that, super super are cool with them to do that, and ended up making that move. But we knew that those guys were hunting back there, so that they were driving past that that betting area a lot, and you know, at least four times a day, and we waited a couple of days. I guess. We hunted it that next morning and didn't see much. So you know, we we went through that that whole or deal where we all we jumped them, almost got the one, and then the next morning we hunted it, but nothing really came back into that betting area. So we gave it a couple of days, I think two full days, and we went in there on the fifth day of season. I guess it had been two and a half days something like that, doesn't really matter about two days. Went back in there on the fifth day of season in the afternoon and pulled in and I was like, oh, man, like, it looks like there's been people back in here and that broke there. Know, there's tracks on the sand and vehicle tracks, and we're like, well, let's try it anyway, you know, we gotta know, I just gotta at least at least market off that you know, they've they've moved on and they've moved to a different betting area. And walked back, got about halfway back there and saw were those tire tracks that actually stopped and turned around. Well, it must have been somebody. It must have been somebody else other than those guys, because I now know that they had left after day three, so they hadn't been back there for a couple of days either. So get back there and all of a sudden it goes from fresh tire tracks on the sand access road to like nothing but deer tracks on top of old tire tracks. I'm like, okay, we might be in business here. And we crept up to the very spot where we turned around, and then those gear jumped up. That first day, I crawled up and I decided I did that. I was gonna just look into that betting area glass down there until I saw a deer moving and if I knew a deer was down in there, at least just even one, even just a flicker of a tail, that was gonna be enough for us to kind of make a play on him get to a setup. I didn't want to. I didn't want to go right back into it and like wasting, I guess, waste a whole hunt if I didn't think that they were deer in there. So I decided I would sit there for an hour, glass right into that betting area kind of had a pretty good advantage to where I could see down into it, and that was that was my whole plan, was look at it for an hour. If it's no good, we're just gonna keep moving and trying to figure out where they've moved to. So I'm laying there glassing with my buyeose, just down into this betting area. I'm not very far from it. I'm only, you know, oh, probably sixty yards from the edge of it. But I just, you know, I had the wind right and I was just peeking over from a high point and looking down in there. I wasn't seeing anything. It's kind of starting to get a little bit of discourage, and all of a sudden, I looked down and that big one was laying there seventy yards from me, looking the other way, and the whole Yeah, he was there the whole time. He was just betted, and uh. I was like, not no way. I'm looking at that right. I'm like, there's no way. And his ear flicked and I was like, you gotta be kidding me, Like he's he's seventy yards from me, like has no idea and logan kind of back behind me, hiding a little bit more. I peek back over and I like give him the signal like buck betted. You know. He calls up to me and I show him where the buck is and he sees it. He starts filming, and I I knew that there was no way that we were both gonna be able to get down in there, like you know, we were are already closed and now granted we could have I guess, I guess a million things went through my head in like a pretty short period of time because they didn't want to wait around too long, like either got to go for this thing right now in his bed, or we're gonna have to loop around and try to set up on a spot where he's going to uh, you know, maybe walk past, but now you're talking if you go set up now you're talking about he can go just about any direction. You know, he gets up out of that bed. Now, we could have got really really close and put our odds pretty high, but it's like, we know literally right where he's at right now. So I just kind of studied, you know, how the wind was playing through the creek bottom, looked at, you know, as best I could tell the way his body was oriented in that bed, and I started kind of making plans of Okay, how can I approach this to where he's not gonna see me or smell me or hear me coming, And new Logan would be able to film him from up on top there where I had spotted him from. So it was like I was like, all right, do you see that seedar right there? That's where I'm gonna try to get to. I had ranged him the buck and he was at seventy and that seater was at fifty five. So I thought, if I can get to that feater, it looks like I'll have an opening and it looks like they'll be broadside to that spot that I'm gonna get to. So so like the next hour and a half, I just crawled, and I mean just painful, probably about two hours actually, and only you know, maybe a grand total of you know, forty some yards. I've been a little bit further than about fifty yards. And I crawled and I crawled and I crawled, and I was like just every time the wind would blow, I'd picked my bow up and I'm just mass draft down in front of me, and I was on um. I would just kind of try to follow any tiny little low spot I could get to. I mean, just being super meticulous us about every little thing that I did, because it's like I just don't want to spook him, you know, at the very least, I don't want to spook him and blow him out of here, because like we now know that he's been in here twice, and like we got a really good chance. But I also thought I had a really good chance that I could get up to that theater that I actually be able to get shot. So after like two hours, somewhere between an hour and a half two hours, like eventually get to that seedar and I just barely peek up at Logan and he's still film in that spot, and I'm like well, he must still be there. So I peek around the right side of the feeder and I'm like, I'm gone out see him over there. I'm glassing down there. I thought maybe maybe now and I'm lower, I can't see, you know, quite as well as I could from that vantage. I looked and lost and looked, and finally was like, well, I'm gonna have to try to get to the other side of the trees. Like crawled around on the side of the tree, I mean, just painfully slow. And as soon as I poked my head around, I was like, yelp, right there he is, and I mean, he's close, can I I hit him with the ring and he still looking the other way that and I hit him with the range finder nineteen yards, hit it again, nineteen hit again, nineteen good enough, So I've putting my release on. Well, a bunch of sand stuck in my release. It started panicking because I couldn't get my release open. Like got that figured out. And right as that happened, the other buck that we almost got a few nights prior stands up out of his bed and starts grunting walking towards the big one. And this is all while I can't get my release open, which I did, like I said, get figured out, but finally get my release on this little buck, well, you know Buck, the other buck, I don't want to say little bucks that have shot him a couple of times, shot him any other day. He's walking right at the bigger one, grunting, and he walks right up to him. In the whole time, the big Bucks is just like totally disregarding him. He's like totally ignoring him, and I'm just got my my my set on this hole. I know he's gonna be bron side when he stands up. I know that his vitals should be exposed in this you know, perfect little hole right there about the size of the basketball, and I'm just focusing on that spot, not moving at Little Buck walks to like ken yards from me and is looking at Logan. Can see Logan on top of the hill. Can't tell what he is, starts kind of seeing me. This all took probably ten fifteen minutes, and he's looking at be looking at Logan, stops a little bit, eventually just gives up on it because he can't figure it out. We're both wearing gilly dudes, and he just kind of walks around, that buck walks right up to him, put his head on right into the bed, and then eventually just walked away. And I was like, I cannot believe he didn't get up, Like I thought for sure that that little buck would at least make him stand up for a second. And I it's like, well, maybe you know it really hated to be you know, got to to dark, and you know this buck never stands up. But anyway, I keep sitting there and I'm just focusing on the spot, and finally, like stupid, it was almost cost me. I looked back at Logan, just to make sure that he wasn't like, you know, having him camera issues or anything, making sure that he wasn't like calling me off or anything. And I look at him. Everything looks good, and as I look back, he's starting to stand up, and I was like, oh no, Like as soon as he moved, I wanted to be drawing, like I almost matched up, and he just stood up and he looked right in my direction. I mean he was facing me where he was broadside, but he was you know, his head was looking at me. And I was just like, well now or never, Like if he takes one step he's out of that hole, and I just drew back, putting on him, shot him and yeah, double along to him. And pretty weird, pretty weird story. Like I mean, I won't dive into it too much, and I'm sure there'll be plenty included in the video if anybody's interested. Guess but it hit him in both lungs and he betted three times. We bumped him once. He betted three times and like almost four yards and it hit him square like ten ring right behind the shoulder. Weirdest thing I've ever seen, very very weird. We can but we could talk about that for a long time. I guess it was wild. Uh, I'll tell you you're a wild man, dude, going in there like that Gilly Suton and crawling for hundreds of yards into there. I gotta wonder you said that. You said that this video of the Final Hunt is forty five minutes long. Is it just forty five minutes of you crawling the entire time? I hope it is no, but no, but I'm sure there'll be plenty of that. I'm sure it'll be pretty funny. H It was you know, one of those deals, you know, It was like I know, he's right there, Like I hate I hate leaving dear, like not getting as close to where they are as possible when you know exactly like their exact coordinates, you know. Yeah, yeah, I just always think it's silly, like um had a lot of people be like, yeah, it's all a big one. Watched him bed down, and you know we're gonna have to go after him a couple in a couple of days when we get the right winds, Like you watched him bed down and you left, you know, or like you watched him go into a bedding year and you left it like that, you know he's there, you know, if you know right where he's at, like just hunt that spot. And I guess you know, that's kind of what I was What I was thinking about, is like it's like I know, I know I'm gonna be mad if I don't try it. You know, I gotta at least try it, And you know, it's pretty painful, Like it's like I got all kinds of weird stuff still stuck in my body from that crawl, Like there's captus out there. Samber is like you know, whatever else is laying out there on the sand hills and I still got some weird, weird stuff on me, but it was well worth it. Yeah, but uh Dan, what are you? What are you thinking about all this? I think I need to hunt more out of state and buy a guilly suit. Yeah yeah, yeah, I think I think many a guilly suit is well. Just having having that option has really changed my whole perspective on hunting. Um. You know, I'm pretty pretty wired guy. Like I'm drink a lot of coffee, you know, I'm just pretty excited. I feel a lot of jumping around and I'm pretty empty, you know, And I'm not a stand guy, you know, like I did. It just doesn't work for my personality very well. Like I don't like to sit like the guys that can sit all day during the run, Like I have so much respect for that because like I cannot do it. I can't sit for like like that sounds. It's just the thought of it is horrible to me to sit all day in one stand. I don't I mean I've done it a lot, but I don't like it. Yeah that's pretty way, Uh Dan, This might be like a revolutionary idea for you, Dan, because because Dan has got these bad knees because of how old he is, he's not able to do those all day restits either. So maybe this is the key. Maybe you need this gilly suit tactic. Um, my luck, I just fall asleep in the grass. Yeah, I do plenty of that, man, no doubt falling in the grass a lot. So you gotta you gotta tell us more though about what you're how you're pulling off these groundstocks and everything, because I know you did this in Iowa last year too. Um, talk to us a little bit about just the things that you're thinking about to make that work. How you're going about the still hunting deal, um, how the gilly suits helping you? Anything else like that. But first, let's take our last break of the day to thank our friends at white Tail Properties. And white Tail Properties just launched a new video on their YouTube channel in that land Beat YouTube series I've been talking about, and this one's pretty interesting. It's called Broadhead Myths Debunked and it goes through talks to an archery expert who walks us through how he went and tested all the broadheads on the market to see which one flew the best, which were the most consistent, What are the best broadheads to use out there? He shares us as results in this video, they are not going to be what you expect. It's kind of surprise result he's got there. It's very interesting. Highly recommend checking it out, especially if your season hasn't opened yet. They're still trying to figure out what broadheads are gonna shoot this year. Definitely want to check this one out, so heading over to the white Tail Properties YouTube channel check out the Broadhead Myths Debunked video, and you can also learn more about what white Tail Properties has got going on by going to white Tail properties dot com. Yeah. Well, I've always had like an interest in hunting on the ground because, like I said, I've been you know, I've just been too impatient to sit tree stands setups for you know, a whole season. And you know, I really like I started watching White Tail Adrenaline a few years ago, like, man, like that just looks so fun and like I really really was inspired by, you know, just something different. You know. It wasn't you know, and they don't talk a lot about exactly like all their theories and that's what like how they're approaching it. But like you know, it was like it's working, and that's really all that I needed to know is like somebody's out there trying it, and like I want to try that too, just because you know, I want to do something different. I want to just be limited to tree stands, and I also just like to move around a lot. You know. That was kind of the you know, watching those guys was the inspiration to just go for It's like, Okay, somebody's doing it out there, and I, you know, when I first started doing it, I think that you know, my friends kind of thought that it was stupid and a little crazy. But once we once we started doing it and we were wearing those gilli suits, like deer cannot figure out what's going on. Like never, I don't know. I don't know that in a setup like where we were actually set up on the ground, that deer has ever spotted us, like what they've they've smelled us, but I don't think one's ever actually just picked us off. Now a million times in my life I've had deer picked me off the tree and in high, higher pressured areas or higher pressure states like I'm sure Mark you dealon with in Michigan or like where I grew up in western Ohio, like deer looking for hunters and tree stands, and I see that even here in Iowa in public ground, like we get a deer to it down the end of us. The first thing that they do is look in the trees and they have no idea where we are. And like it's been pretty crazy. I mean that's two guys on the ground hiding and guilies is they cannot figure it out. And they'll be you know, in easy bow rage and they still can't figure out where we're at. And if you think about how you know, what you know, if you've read anything about how white tails can see or um, you know, just there's there's a decent amount of research. I can't see anything but movement very well. And you know what that gillies feel. You're just breaking up that human shape, like you don't have the head and shoulders, and and that I think is ultimately what you know, it's kind of it's really the make or break of it is like if they see your head and shoulders, they're gone. But if they can't see that, and the guilli suit just does an incredible job just you know, um breaking that up. I also have like I don't know, probably close to a foot long hair, so like that helps break up. It's like the gilly haircut. You gotta have that too. Hey, good question. How much does one of those Gilly suits cost? Ah? Man, You know, I don't really know ours. The ones that we got a friend that actually gave them to us, and they were like I think if you look for him on line, you can find them. I want to say, yeah, it's bush rag dot com, and that's where you can find the exact ones that we're wearing. I don't know how much they cost because we didn't actually buy them, but I want to say that there relatively inexpensive, like you know what you would be spending on a tree stand or something like that. Those white tail adrenaline guys, don't they just make them themselves? Like those are homemade? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And I think like like my friend Jake who works with with us, he um, he's built his own in the past, and his grandma also had one together for him one time. And you know, when when I was growing up, me and my dad always used the leafy suits, um like, especially for turkey hunting. You know those you know, they're basically just have like maple leaves that kind of hang off of them. I think all that stuff will work. Anything really to anything that will match the color of the habitat that you're in, and that's gonna break up that head and shoulders is gonna work. Um, you know something, I guess not to get off the Guilly subject, but kind of see it. I want to. I want to do it without a Guilly now, Like I want to just like wear like a solid like color like tan or brown and just do it without the Guilly because I think it's also it's that's still possible too. It's just a lot of it being aware of your surroundings and like again, trying to get the human shape broken up. And I think the Gilli suit makes that super easy. But I think it would be fun to just you know, try it without a couple of times if see, if you know, it can be pulled off. I mean people are doing it for sure. It's just kind of a kind of a fun challenge I think would be to just kind of go with without even wearing camo. Just wear like dan longsleeve shirt or something. I think they can work. And like I was saying, the wild card, try in the flannel, dude, I think I agree, Dude. I don't think camo is as important as people think it is. Hmm, No, I don't. I don't want at all. I think. Um. I mean, there's all kinds of different camo patterns that guys are wearing out there, and they're all you know, everybody's you know, having success with all different types of stuff. The biggest thing is is just blending with your surroundings as best as you can. And I think some times, I mean, like a lot of people's grandpa's hunted and like red flannels. I mean, my grandpa hunted it. His hunting clothes were red. Was like a red flannel and like you know, bid like tam Bibbs. You know that's both my Grandpa's hunted in that stuff for years. You know. Now they wear camo, but you know, for years and years, that's that's what people hunted in. And like you know that the color red or or you know a hunter orange. You know. So I think sometimes people are like, oh, you can never wear that, well, dare don't see color like we see color. I mean I don't. I'm no expert on that by any means, but like obviously they don't, or they'd be running from every guy that was wearing Hunter orange during gun seasons. Does not stop. I mean they never stopped run. But it's uh yeah, I mean I don't think it's quite as important as some people make it out to be. It's just blending with your surroundings, is so yeah, I think, Dan, what you need to do is just gonna old blue suit all blue. And if you do that, um, I think that's gonna be the ticket to your success. They'll they'll put me up there with the grage then, right, yes, they would if you can pull it off, because that's actually that's like the one color that really does pop to white tails, while orange and red blends and gray blue would be the toughest. So if you if if you end up getting to kill a buck wearing like tan solid stuff, Zach, then yeah, then you really do need to try blue. That'll be like the final test if you can really really fool them. I've read I've read that. I've read that that thing about the blue so you never know, wild card out here breaking rules. So so you, uh, you're wearing the Gillis suit, you're stalking on in these deer do you are you gonna go and use this kind of tactic on any day, or or is it are you waiting for certain conditions, like do you just use this when it's nice and windy or rainy or something like that to break up your sound or what about that? That's actually, yeah, that's a really good question. I would prefer uh, I would prefer probably like rainy, windy days in November, you know, that's when it's the easiest to just like sneak up on a buck just being silly. Um. But at the same time, I always always say, pick the one factor that you can take and use gear advantage. Now, some days I'll use a couple of examples here. Some days, you know, a lot of people would say that you would never want to do it on a still crisp morning. I love still crisp mornings because I can just hear so much. But that's the one factor that I'm taking away. I can't cover as much ground, you know, or I can't maybe go barrel and into a spot quite like I can on you know, the wet, windy day. But if it's cold and crisp and and not much wind, I think you can just hear you are coming way before they can hear you. If you're going slowing up. You just got to change that caden stuff. If you've got a um oh, let's say a day where it's super it's super windy and hot, you know you're gonna just your strategy again, it is gonna change. If it's super windy, you can move super fasty, you can just bounce around of these different areas. Um you know, there's tons and tons of I guess different variations and weather conditions. But you know, I like to just pick that one thing that I guess, that one thing that you can as as the hunter, can focus on beating the deer. App whether that site or sound, there's generally something you can pull from any weather condition and just use that to your advantage. That makes sense. Now, what about your basic Ah, you mentioned that your cadence, how you're slowing it down certain conditions, speeding up in others. You know, I feel like like you did in Nebraska this year and kind of talked about in the past, you're kind of going into a new area and you're you're half scouting, half hunting, walking on the ground like that. Can you you talked about what you're looking for from the scouting standpoint, but from the hunting standpoint, you know how fast you're typically going? How I mean, are you you stopping every five yards and glassing or you cover more ground or kind of what does the actual process look like for you to make this work. Well, there's there's two different there's two different uh totally different type of cadence. Like, well, I guess there's some times variation. I guess that's stupid to say, but the two major differences, there's like the slow one and then there's the fast one. And like the fast one is like generally just getting to a spot. And honestly, the fast one has produced buck sidings just as much as the slow one. And what's going on there? I think a lot of times like just going fast not really caaren like knowing that there's a good stand so we're gonna sump into something. But sometimes I'm kind of purposely doing that, like kind of going a little too fast because if there's one around, I want to know, I want to see him jump up and run or I want to see him stand up and try to figure out what's going on. And my friend Sean and I were not hunt last year where we were doing pretty much exactly that we were. We were playing on going way deeper into this piece of public and you know, we're moving pretty quick down and we're kind of getting just starting to get into you know, where there was the best, you know, best betting habitat, but we were still wanting to go deeper and we were moving pretty quick and a buff heard us. It was one of those windy days. He heard a twig snap and he jumped up and he started looking around. He's like fifty yards away, but he couldn't see us, and like he heard us, but we saw him before he saw it, and he like, you know, he's panicking, he's looking around. Ended up watching him go right back into that betting area. Turned out he's with the dough and we just kind of hung with him right in that area, and we almost got him a couple of times. He was right at about forty yards. We just needed him to become a little bit closer. But um, you know that I guess that aggressive cadence that's faster walk. And it's almost like you know Dan Insult talks about like bed stacking or or like stacking up a betting area. It's kind of the same thing, right, Like we're just kind of plowing through or we're not necessarily plowing, We're just moving fast enough that like, if there's be around, we wanted them to kind of know, kind of hear us. And then as we start getting towards those areas that we're really thinking about focusing on, we're gonna slow down to the point of, you know, if you can hear yourself and not hear anything else, you're going too fast. And I'm again, I'm impatient. I have a kind of bad habits of getting going a little bit fast. But if I noticed that I'm doing that, just trying to you know, take a deep breath, calm down, and just like remember that I'm not necessarily trying to get anywhere. I don't have a point B that I need to be at. I'm hunting right now, and like I have to be more aware of my surroundings and just calm myself down. And you know when and Sean Sean, my friend Sean Farrendorf, Um, he works for a white Tail property now, but we're he worked at the Midwest white Tail for a little bit, you know him and I kind of he was kind of the first person to be like, yeah, let's try it, you know, let's try, you know, doing more of this still hunting, and it took it took some time for us to really figure out. And he I used to pick on him a lot because he had this tendency of like all of a sudden, he would just be going way too fast, like, dude, you've gotta slow down. Like just remember, you're not trying to get to anywhere specific. You're just you're now hunting. You're now looking for sign, you're looking for deer. You're trying to figure out you know, you know, you're find heaps, set up or just keep and then I think, um, it can vary so much, but you're back, I guess back to your question, like do you glass? You know, yeah, a lot of times we're just taking a few steps, and a lot of times we're doing that right on a deer trail. You know, we're just using the deer trail to keep inching closer to where we think that they're spending their time during the daylight. And you know, you walk a few steps, class listen, sometimes stand there for a few minutes, Sometimes stand there for fifteen minutes. You know, I think if you bump a deer, stand there for fift twenty minutes let things come back down, and you'll find that a lot of times, you know, those deer actually aren't even going that far, Like they may just run up bound fifty yards away and then go right back to what they were doing because they weren't ever actually sure what was that, you know, really going on? That winds in your face and a deer sees you and you're wearing a gilly suit and it's like, well, what the heck is that? It just kind of runs out site. It's gonna forget about you in twenty minutes, I mean a lot of time. And you know, there was a couple of hunts here in Nebraska that we just had where we we literally in this one hunt that we had popped up into this kind of overlooking this little betting area, and I had seen deer betted in their does bettered in their last year, and they got up to the top of the hill, and right as we trusted the hill, a fawn came running up out of the betting area, just totally random, like you know how funds will just kind of start running around like and just playing around. I'm pretty sure that's what that fun was doing, because it came we crested the hill, and it was cresting right at the same time we were, and it blew and took off run and while another dough stood up at the betting area took off running blowing, and then a few minutes later and went by some other deer stand up accidentally spooked them. They took off blowing. So we just sat there for like fifteen twenty minutes, and sure enough, the buck that we had been hunting back in that area stood up right in the middle of where all those dods had just flushed from, and he just stood up, just his antlers sticking out, and he just scanned that hole area for you know, ten fifteen minutes before he even took a step. And I think that, you know, the mistake comes when you bump one deer, then you can just just get piste off and you just keep going. You're like a you know, and I didn't want to you know, I didn't want to spook any deer. I don't want to bump into anything. Well, you know, don't let that get you discouraged. Just know that the kid we're getting close to more deer probably just slow down, take a minute, sit there, maybe have a snack, drink some water, just kind of hang out for a little bit, because sometimes if you get you know, I think if you get piste off and you just keep plowing through it, you're you are going to continue to bump the deer. But if you let things calm down, settle yourself down a little bit, and just get right back into Caden's after things of you know, I guess calm down and a lot of times you're not hurting as much as if you just keep playing through. Yeah. I love the idea of this because I think one of the things that I mean, if you if you talk to a lot of guys even just or even analyze our own hunts, like me and Dan year after year, one of the things we always come back to is that, you know, maybe we overhunted the spot, or maybe we didn't move fast enough on this new information. We didn't move the stand that day, We waited two days and it was too late. When you're on the ground, there's nothing holding you back from making the move on the fly, being mobile, um, not over hunting the same thing. Uh, you know that, Like you you mentioned earlier, the power of the first set when you're hunt on the ground, like this, you can do that every single hunt. Um, that's it's very appealing. Um. I hope Dan, I hope you do this. I hope you really do this, Dan, because I think this is I think I'm gonna, you know, dabble with it a little bit more myself. I feel like, any way you can, man, go ahead, go ahead. I was gonna say, anyway you can remove obstacles to do in the right thing. It's a good idea. So whether it means we're moving a tree stand completely so it's easier to make those moves and you need to, or you know something I did this year that started testing a saddle because that would make things easier to make a quick move. Um, for sure, I think all those things can help well. And then the fact that go ahead in Iowa, right, I mean the first fifteen to twenty days of October, there's still crops in the fields. So like for me, I can definitely see a scenario like that playing out where I'm just going and hiding in a cornfield or I'm going and hiding in a buffer strip that that could that could open up a whole new can of worms. They're talking about crops being being up versus not up. I mean, if there's ever a time to go in and blow up the world, go blow them up. Bedding in a cornfield. I mean a lot of times, you know, growing up in western Ohio, you know, there's lots of bucks that are spending a lot of time in the corn and like, if there's a better time to go bust them out. I mean, they're not gonna be there when that corn comes down, Like if they're on an island of trees in the middle of the corn field, Like they're gonna bed there pretty consistently until that you know, those you know, factors changed and the corn comes out, and then they're gonna be somewhere completely different. Like you might as well go after him then, because you're definitely not going to get them in the spots, you know. I mean, they're just not spending time in those areas that they will be, you know, a month or two down the road. And I think, and and honestly, the whole reason that I really kind of took this, you know, ground hunting thing and then just kind of ran with it is I want I want to at least could like helps people feel offidite about it. And I'm confident about trying something different. And I'm not saying that it's for everybody. I'm not, but I think that there's a lot of opportunity there that people are missing out on because you know, it's just kind of like that rule book has said for so long, you know, like hunt out of a tree stand, you know, don't don't bump into deer early in the season. Um, you know, don't. I don't know, don't you know, spread your boots down and stuff like, I mean, all that stuff like it's just for me. I yeah, yeah, I would. I would stick with that one. I would not wear a blue But you know, I think, but I think that you know, just having that confidence to be able to try something different, it's really you know, I want I want people to feel okay trying something different. I want them to I want people to feel okay when they bump a buck and try to learn something from it and and not not have a season of I mean I had and and here's the main reason. When I was in college, I got into a rut. I got into you know, kind of a position where how it was getting content. You know, had stands where I killed bucks before I had areas on public land that I you know, it was you know, like consistent spots, and I just limited myself to that stuff and limited myself to these areas that I, you know, min Scaling had been hunting for years and you know it stands I killed bucks in and then it just got stagnant and it's just like nothing was getting The encounters weren't increasing, you know, the um Mount Dear I was shooting was not increasing. It was just stacking and it was all just the same. And I got super set up with that, and you know, just wanted to get outside of you know, my comfort zone a little bit. And and even before I started hunting on the ground, I feel like, you know, we were definitely doing that. Um it's just those years I think back on them and I'm you know, just really disappointed that I didn't start doing it earlier, you know, just trying something different, trying to think outside of the box as much as possible. And you know, since then, the amount of encounters that I've had since I've started thinking outside the box, whether that's tree stand um in, a tree stand on the ground, whatever, that's when the encounters really started skyrocketing, like went from you know maybe at the best years, even like in Iowa, we were you know, let's say, how five really good encounters with the mature buck in Iowa, And then when we started going just like really getting out of the comfort zone and really trying to push the envelope and get close to where these bucks for betting, like being counters, just went like through the roofs. Like it's like every other time we're going out, we're just seeing a box. You know, maybe we're not killing him necessarily, but we're like seeing way more, way more bucks that we're looking to shoot than before. And you know, that really was eye opening to me. Yeah, there's something there's something we said about the fact that lots of times we do kind of limit ourselves by this arbitrary, known way of you're supposed to do it, and you just kind of it's easy to get stuck in that like, Okay, this is what we're supposed to do it, so you just do it that way. But to your point, you know, you see one guy doing a different way, you're like, oh, that that can work. That kind of opens up all these new possibilities. That's that's exciting. So it's been cool to see, you know, what Jared's been doing with what tail drenin, what you're doing with this UM or you know, all sorts of different ideas out there, you know, Andre du Quisto, the bumping dump idea out there that I feel like now Dan and then you guys have been kind of evolving similar tactics around that um a lot of ways it's gonna cat yeah, yeah, And that's you know, I think to your point, Like, I think that just having you know, a playbook with all different types of plays in it is way more effective than just limiting yourself and feeling you're like you're limiting yourself to one one specific tactic, Like like I still like hunting funnels during the rut and I still like hunting. I love one of them. Like one of the best setups I think in the flat river bottom country of Iowa is like get on the river with a perpendicular wind to that river channel and sit there and like a buck is going to cruise down it, especially if you're close to whether it's you know, really good betting habitat like sitting on a river. To me, it's like such an unbelievable tactic. It works out here super well. But like I don't want to just be limited to that play, you know, I don't want to be I personally don't want to sit in the tree stands or seven days straight on funnels like I like to do it occasionally, but I don't want to do it every single day of the season. And and I also don't want to wait for that to be the only opportunity. I guess that makes sense, you know, but that does um. So, two final questions on the ground hunting deal. Um, can you talk about how you're thinking about the wind when you are heading in and then also if you decide to set up from the ground, if you think about wind differently at all than you know if you're hunting in a tree stand. And then the last thing on that front is the kind of a two part question. Um. Part two is talk about actually getting the shot getting drawn back because it sounds like encounters are you know, definitely possible, but it's gotta be a little bit harder to pull off those shots in the ground. Um. So I'm curious about those two things. Yeah, I think those are really good questions. And I think the thing about the wind, I think maybe my answer may may be a little bit different than expected, like what I found them with the wind on the ground. Now I approach it the same way that you would um on you know, going to a tree standard with a tree stand set up, like I'm always going into the wind or across winds, like I don't ever want to have the wind in my back um and a lot. I like cross winds just as much as I like the wind in my face. Um and. And the reason being is is if sometimes I feel like I'm going directly into the wind, that Buck is just betting with his face pointed right at me. You know, you know, if you've if you've watched Buck's bed and, um, you know, almost always they're betting. I wouldn't say always, but they're almost always betting facing down wind. And that's why I kind of like that cross wind. And sometimes I feel like you can kind of catch them from the side. And you you know, Sean and I last year and November nineteenth, I think we've snuck up on three bedded bucks and we're like fifty yards from them. We had a cross wind, and they had no idea where they were. We were there, and they had every advantage to see us except for the way that we approached it with a cross wind. Um. And then the other thing with the wind that I've found is like when you're set up, you don't get as much of that crazy swirling and crazy thermal play that you get when you're up in the tree stand. Like your wind. A lot of times it's just like going into you know, kind of getting stuffed by feeders or willows or taller ass whatever. Maybe it's not traveling. It doesn't seem to travel quite as far as it does when you're elevated, Like it seems like you're you're you're sent your down wind area is way bigger, you know, the spook zone. I guess it's like way bigger when you're a stand and when you're on the ground consistently and spotted left I'm ground setups and I would say pretty consistently have been winded less than tree stands there. Yeah, then tree stands setups. Um. It's it sounds weird, but like do a lot of you know, we carry milkweed with us all the time, and like a lot of times you drop that milk weed and it just like gets stuffed by something, and it doesn't seem like it's traveling quite as far as when you get up in the stand, you got all that open ground down below you for that wind to get down catch weird different thermals, different. Yeah, it's like it's been a really eye opening um just seeing how that wind goes away from the ground set up. It's it's it's pretty crazy and I'm really really pleased with that. And you know, I'm the stinkiest guy ever out there, Like I don't kindn't use any um, Like I don't have enough time with all the editing and stuff we do, we don't have any time to do um you know, any type of china control our set and trying to smell anything less than you know, just a stinky human. So like I want to know that that wind isn't just doing crazy stuff. And I found, you know, on the ground it just seems to be just a little bit more consistent and just doesn't seem to travel as far. And then I guess as far as the shot goes, UM, I love the shot opportunities because it's like you're shooting at a target. You know, when you get up in the tree stand and elevated, you're starting to talk about some weird angles sometimes, especially if you're getting way up in the tree stand. Um. I've actually been talking a lot about this year. You know, we actually got some saddles tree saddles as well, and we're excited about China those you know, we've been talking. Yeah, I think the opportunity is unbelievable just being mobile. But you know, the shot and I can I'll touch on drawing in a minute, but you know, the shot angles have been a huge game changer for me because the shots that I messed up when I was younger, I used a lot of climber stand climbing stands and I was younger, you know, that was my mobile set up because you know, Ohio, the trees aren't quite as bushy as they are out here in Iowa. Like Ohio trees are really straight, like telephone poles, Like you don't have a lot of that horizontal branch and kind of that brushy type tree that you get in and you know other parts in the Midwest. So I was a lot of times just trying to get super super far up in trees and the climber and not in turn would like get these really horrible angles to where a lot of the shots that I messed up I really in hindsight now, I think if I would have just been lower, I would have had more vitals to work with. You know, the higher you get, the weirder that angle gets. And I've I've made a lot of shots on deer that you know, I made a lot of shots on deer that I have recovered all these but you know, like one long liver and that's a lot of that has to do with like a high tree stand angle. You know, when you're on the ground, you're shooting at that deer like eye level, flat like you've got all that to work with. You don't have any weird angles from being too too far up. And that's my like, my really my favorite part about the ground coming the shot angles, you know. And one when one's at twenty yards, he never looks like he's further than twenty yards. He looks like twenty yards, you know, like like you're shooting at your three D target in the backyard. It's awesome, like so instinctual. You know, you just draw back center that pin and then you don't have to think about much more than that. And then I guess as far as drawing the actually just got ahold of a Matthew's try acts. And I love that thing because it's super short. It's like eight inches. Do you have fun mark? That thing feels so tiny. Yeah, And I love that because like that makes it so easy to draw on the ground. I do a lot of like basically put that low, that bottom limb parallel to the ground as close as I can, and draw the bow facing down and then then rise up. Like if you watch them. The buck I killed in Iowa last year and that I know that one was a little bit different, actually stood all the way up because I knew that when he was going behind a bush, I could just stand up and draw. But the biggest thing is is just keeping your profile low if they're if they're you know, if they're going to be able to see you, keep that profile low, and then I just ease up to them and I've drawn. I practiced draw on a ton of deer to make sure that, like, and I highly recommend that either you're in a tree stand or you're in a um on the ground, tree saddle, whatever. Like the more experience you get practiced drawing, the better you know you get it just making that decision, and it just comes more natural when you know it's a moment of truth. But um, the again, the biggest thing is keeping a low profile and just you know, using using the vegetation and the terrainteer advantage. Like if he can't if you can't see his eyes, if you've got a chance to draw, do it then and be ready. Um. And I've actually found that it's pretty easy to pull off, especially in grassy habitat. Maybe he got enough graphs that, like I sit on my knees mostly, and like if I'm sitting on my knees and I can draw that bow below that line of vegetation, a lot of times, it's pretty you know, pretty easy to do without them seeing you. Yeah, it's all about that timing. It seems like mm hmm yeah, same as a bear in a tree stand. Ye. Um, Well that's interesting, Dan. I know you've got to drop off here kind of soon. So do you have any final thing you want to make sure we cover? Was that before you have to bail? I'm just I'm kind of curious, uh, when it comes to like making like making the decision right. I mean, there had to be a whole bunch of failures uh in in what you do that led you to the method that you're you know, hunting right now. So maybe like talk about a couple of big failures that we're maybe aha moments that's like, hey, gosh, darn it, man, I should have done this. Mhm um. Well, I guess as far as the like the cadence and moving or like the setups, um, like once you've got to a spot, you know that a lot of that's just like major hard you know, like hard lost trial and air right like, yeah, we didn't have enough cover there or um. One one thing that really sticks out to me, um, there was a hunt last year, I believe it was October and there was this there was this betting area that I had hunted. I actually jumped a buck out of it the year prior, and just by hunting back there year prior, you know, I kind of put the pieces of the puzzle together and there was this scrape line I knew of that was right on the transition line of the betting area, and Jake and I went in there to still hunt it that morning and Ibby diners like we weren't going in there, sitting there talking to the cameras so stupid, like about all this sign that we were seeing and like how you know, looking really good, and you know, we're basically talking about, hey, we found the hot sign, right and sure enough, we were sitting in a place where we didn't have enough cover and we weren't set up. We were to continue moving, but like this was a huge, huge, like like learning, like this like point of learning, Like we we messed this up so bad. I have a decoy, had a little one of those heads up silhouette decoys, and I have that, so that was a little bit of cover. But like we were just pretty much sitting out in the open. Now we both had gilly suits on, so that definitely helps, but we didn't have any like big trees or anything around us. We were just kind of sitting out like a little bit of graphs beside us, which helps us a little bit. But sure enough we're sitting there and like this is all like captured on video. I'm just like, wait, do you hear that? It's like there's got to be a buck like scraping, Like it just was like that classics, just like sucking. They're just hoofing up the place. Sure enough, I look up and just this tank is standing there looking towards us. It's like I don't know, like he's too close, Like we're in a bad spot. So I I did my best to get that decoy in front of me, and I did get it set up and kind of stubbed it down on the ground, so sitting up in front of me, and he saw it. He started to circle down wind and he's in bow range. He's thirty yards. I didn't have a really good clear shot, and I got drawn on him and everything, but I just didn't have a good shot. But like he'd eventually was just got weirded out by the situation, blew and just kind of slowly bounded and then and then walked away. And that moment was like, Hey, if you're still hunting, never stop where there's not covered, dude, Like that's so dumb, Like why were we just sitting out in the middle of the open. I really think that if we had just had a big tree to hide most of our body behind, like we'd have got a shot at that book. I think he would have tried to circle down wind to that decoy and got in very very close range of us, and we'd have been able to shoot him. But you know, just the fact that we had nothing else was a huge, huge, like don't do that anymore. And like now and another thing that I maybe should have touched on earlier. We're talking about cadence. It's like always looking at the next place of like, okay, we're here, now we've got cover. The deer shows up. This is how I'm gonna draw all. This is where you know, I've got a shot here, I've got a shot here. But then if we're gonna make ten more yards, like that's the next next place, and then that's the shooting lane. You're almost picking the next spot before you get to it. You know, you kind of have a small goal in mind or like or maybe you make it halfway, maybe I make it halfway, and the deer starts coming towards us, Like how are we going to make cover work? You know, it's just it's gotta be a constant thing in your mind of like how can I grab some cover real quick and make us make it work? And I think that we learned that hard that day, Like I mean, it's silly, it's it's funny now, but like we were just like how did we just make that mistake? Like that was so dumb, Like we were literally were exactly where we expected them to be, working that scrape line, and that's exactly what he was doing. You know, everything that we had planned was right except for we just didn't have enough caught and it was just silly. Yeah, that was that was a hard one. My first year elk hunting, My my buddy I was with said this same thing. Never stop in an opening, never stop or do a calling sequence, or take any time to glass or anything unless you're set up somewhere with cover, because exactly what you said, things can happen so quick. They can all of a sudden be an elk that shows up, and if you aren't set up with cover, you're stuck hung out to dry. And you just always need to plan for that happening, be ready for it just in case it does. Because the one time that it happens and you're not ready, you know, you had the moment you had and yeah, for sure, and I think that I think what was the was disappointing was that Jake and I both are like, you know, really really into turkey hunting, and like one of my one of my biggest like pet peeves is like calling without like previously looking for a place that you can dive into like if I'm not standing right decided, I'm you know, a step from it, because if a bird gobbles and he's inside a fifty yards, like he might be coming right now and you need to grab that cover. And it's like that was just just totally went over our head when we were deer hunting that day, and I think that, you know, I hope to never make that mistake again. Surely I will at some point, but you know, we learned a lot from it that day. And I guess one other thing I wanted to quickly touch on, you know, to kind of get to um, you know, I guess getting to that point of you know, really looking hard for that hot sign and not setting up until you signed it is I just when I was talking about being in a rut at one point and hunting and you know, kind of doing the same old, same old. It was like you'd go into these spots and it's like the signs not there. You know, the scrape that might have been there the year prior isn't hot, it isn't opened up. Um, you know, the rubs aren't there, and I just feel like I wasted so many sits in spots that like are good spots but just aren't hot spots. And just you know, looking back at old footage, looking back at you know, from from high you know, I've started I started filming, you know, just like my buddies, Like we're in high school. So I have like tons of tons of things I could go back and look at, and it's like those days we were having the best hunts, it's like we're always in the hot sign. The days that we're having the bad hunts, we're always not in the hot sign. And I think that that's really one of the big steps that led me into this more mobile style of hunting. And and obviously like listening to guys like Dan and and learning more about this betting, you know, betting how Buck's dead and and all that has definitely played a role in that as well. But you know, the big thing was just like feeling like at one point there was just a bunch of time wasted in not hotspots. Yeah. So, so something that I think includes a lot of the ideas we talked about so far is your Iowa kill last year. You you briefly touched on a bit, but I feel like if I remember that hunt, right, there was a little bit of the there's the ground hunting. There was some hot sign you guys noticed there was, um, you know, being in this new area that I think there was like a standing cornfield or cut cornfield or something like that that you were playing off of. Can you walk us through that and maybe use as an example to illustrate some of the things we talked about. Yeah, so what I guess there was one actually other really important factor, and that was hunting pressure. That day. It was November, and like it just seems like that day everybody was out and ended up running into um, that guy that I've actually met on public Land in Ohio, super crazy, and then I ran into him that day, met him, met him in twice in the middle of nowhere. He's from Vermont, and just happened to run into him twice, which was pretty cool, and um ran into him, ran and actually ended up running into his dad later that morning, and like just ran into a number of different hunters throughout that whole that whole day, and we were just again not like locking onto a spot, we were just like, okay, you know, it doesn't feel all right, it's bail And we went in that day, Um oh Man. We were probably at like five different public land locations throughout that day. We never went home, but you know, we just kept bouncing around, kind of poking into spots, and if it didn't feel good, we just laughed. And eventually we got to thinking about we'd hunted on the other side of the river on that same piece that we ended up going into that night and shooting the buck at. It was like I told told Jake, I was like, you know, not standing cornfield really interested me because if that standing corn I would imagine not a lot of people are walking way back in there, going through the corn and then getting into that betting area. And I had scouted that betting area. It's my buddy from Ohio. My parents were there, and um, we just scouted at that spring prior, and you know, it seems like a really good place to be during the ruts. So we started easing in there, and right away you could tell you could tell that there was hunting pressure kind of around the edges, like there were stands up around that standing cornfield, and and uh, you can see where somebody had been walking in there quite a bit. But as we got deeper in there, all of a sudden, the scrapes started popping up. And then as we started to get into the edge of it, oh and then and then we got back even for in one of those corn fields have just been recently cut and there were buck tracks in that in the mud. It was real kind of a damp day and damp evening the night before. There was all kinds of really fresh big buck tracks out in that um outing that cut cornfield. And we were easing our way back and got to the edge of the bedding area, started seeing you know, rubs popping up, straights trails everywhere, and we eventually got into the middle of the betting area and we did bump a deer on the way and we blew a bunch like, you know, totally spooked one. I was, I was assuming it was a dull. I mean, I don't know if that's the right of coumption or not, but you know, we were just like like, okay, if we bumped into a deer, we've seen all the sign you know, we've we're being really quiet like nothing else. No, the only reason that dear spooked is because they got our wind. Like everything you know up wind of us should have no idea where here, sign looks good, everything looks good. Let's let's set up here and if we need to go further tomorrow. You know, we only had we only had like an hour and a half left at that point in the day. We've been all over the place, and like we were kind of running a time. So we decided, all right, we're gonna set up here and if it's no good tonight, we'll go deeper. And the whole I guess the whole strategy was there was kind of this little mini funnel within that betting area where all the deer were coming out of their beds and they were walking down this like very small strip of canary grass. Everything else was like thick cat tails or willows, and like right in the middle there was kind of a hot little high rise and there was just canary grasstaurant on that and all those deer were coming out right on that that kind of little transition line. And our theory was, you know, if a buck is following some bills up and out of there, you might get lucky and he's gonna come right through here. But another thing that we think about a lot, and we've been talking about a lot of the last year. So it's like bucks crossing dough trails, you know, that's like kind of just a more effective way for them to kind of check for the hot dough. It's like they're just cutting, They're going perpendicular to the bulk of the trails, Like a lot of trails are just you know, a to b bed to food and find a lot of scrapes and rubs that are going straight perpendicular to that. And it just we just started thinking, you know, it's like, okay, if if that's the case, like there's obviously obviously a reason, And we started setting up on that a lot more last year, and it's all lots of buck doing that, just going exactly perpendicular to the ball of the beer movement. They're just cutting those dose trails looking for the hot dough. It's more efficient than them going and checking every betting area instead they're just going and looking on all those trails just on one mine. And I guess the theory was, like, like I said, eas either us either going to follow the dose out on this little patch canary graph on the transition, or he's gonna come across here and come across in front of us. Cutting east trails. Our wind was going it would have been perpendicular to those trails. So we were set up twenty yards from those trailers, you know, anywhere from like seven yards to yards from those trails, and they were going in front of us east and west, and the wind was coming out of the south and the wind is blowing. The wind was blowing towards mostly cat tails, where we expected the least amount of deer to come from. Let's put it that way, Um, kind of just going into a massive cattails. And like I said, like we blew a deer like right before we set up, because it was bedded out in those cat tails. But it was just one. And we knew if we were, you know, to do it for there was one, there would probably be some more. So we just didn't worry too much about it and just up and really nothing happened for the longest time. And I was getting impatient, you know, classic and I'm standing up on the We were kind of tucked up under a willow so unbelievable setup. It was. It was really really nice. It had ton to cover there, but there was this like big willow trunk that kind of like ran along the ground and then went up so I could stand up on that trunk and I could get like three more feet up in the air and see further into that betting area. So Jake is like Jake is with me. He was filming, and he was just like laying on the ground looking at his phone or something, and I'm standing up on this log glass and then that betting area. Remember saying something along the lines of just like, how are we not saying any deer because like we were in the middle of just like you know, the hot side, Like, how are there no deer in here? In like thirty seconds later, I hear crack this big branch snap, and I looked to my right and I just see handlers sticking up in the grass, and uh, it's just super dumb of me, and I just moved too fast. I panicked because I was like, he's right on top of us. I mean, he's forty five yards coming right out of I panicked, and I moved and he looked. He looked up and he saw he saw a movement. But I was again, I'm wearing that gilly suit, and I just slowly slops down. I can see that he's looking at me, but I just slowly slapped down, grabbed my bow, and I'm like, Jake, there's a buck coming right out of like, you know, get ready, but shure enough. He pops right out of that stuff. And at this point, he's thirty yards. He pops right out and he looks right at us for one, one or two seconds, and he just doesn't see anything, and he just keeps on going. And he came about five more yards closer, and he cut cut those trails and then got to the end of where he wanted to go and he started to circle right back into that betting area. Now he's not going out towards those fields at all. He's going deeper back into that betting area. You know he was That's exactly what he was doing, is he was cutting those trails and then he was gonna loop right back in there. He wasn't gonna go out towards the agg he wasn't gonna go out towards that open ground. You know, it's getting close to dark, but he's going right back into that betting area. And I had some you know, some shooting lanes picked out, and you know, when I was envisioning the spot working, I was like, man, how awesome would it be if one just walked and put his head right behind that big bush. And he's like, because it's like I think I could draw and just stand up. Sure enough, that's exactly what he did. He went right behind a big, big pile of brush out there. I just drew and stood up and as soon as he stepped out, I stopped him and shot him at tony five yards. And you know, a lot of a lot of that is, you know, I think how he ended up getting to that spot is you know, kind of like you said, all those things that we've touched on. It's like avoiding the pressure, you know, look in for the hot sign and um, just being mobile, you know if it's yeah, we could have very well set up on a number of other places that day, but it's like we just try not to get too caught up in a spot that, you know, maybe it's been good in the past, Like if the signs not they're not not worth sitting it. But we knew when we got into that spot that we were we were gonna hunt it that night. We were gonna hunt it the next day. Like if we didn't kill one that night, I'd guarantee we would have been back in there the next day because the sign was just on fire. Yeah, that's awesome that, I mean, it is is cool to see all those things kind of line up to make that hunt. And you know, so many times you can do nine percent of the things right and then something still goes wrong. But it's nice when all the lessons learned, all these things you've been thinking about every once in a while, once or twice a year, maybe they line up in the everything falls in place and it works out. So yeah, that's yeah, it's it's total trial and arra too. I mean, it's just like any type of hunting. I mean, you're gonna all for sure, but I think that Yeah, like you said, it's fun when it finally works out, because both times it doesn't. My favorite saying and hunting end in life is you win some, but you lose most. You can't you can't let the losses get you down. You just gotta keep going after it. Man. That is the truth. So, um, well, I feel like there's nineteen other things I still want to talk about, but we're pushing close to two hours here, so we better wrap it. But what's the what's the plan for the rest of the year where else. So you guys headed, Um tomorrow morning, we're going to Minnesota and we're gonna be hunting with um damn in fault. Um nice, I'll do it yourself sportsman. His name. His name is Garrett. Don't know if you're familiar with Garrett work. He's on YouTube. Um. And then a couple of other members from the Hunting Beast will be there and we're hunt some Minnesota public land, have some fun and we're calling it the public Land Challenge. But you know, there's actually no real challenge. You just wanna, you know, kind of document how we're all approaching things a little bit differently. You know, we all have fairly similar aggressive hunting type styles. But you know it's just gonna be a fun way to not really even I guess compare showing anything that's better, just showing how it's all different. And we're excited about that. And then um, we'll do Missouri for sure, Iowa for sure. Um, I really really really am hoping that it's all gonna line up and I'm gonna be able to get to Ohio. I kind of want to go to the kind of my plan right now is the hit Ohio one through ten, UM, and then November one through ten, and then oh what else. Alabama is looking like a thing that we're definitely gonna try and then and then that would be later in the season, and then Greg might go back to Nebraska. You know, he really wants to go back to Nebraska, which would be really cool. Kind of try try to hit it at a different time frame than we have the last couple of years. UM, probably a little bit of Wisconsin here and there, and then yeah, I mean we get lucky and put some more put some tags on some bucks, you know, maybe maybe even a couple more. Well, I know, some good stuff in Michigan I can point you towards if you ever had this direction. Uh, it's it's I would love the hunt in Michigan. Man, It's definitely on the It's definitely on the high priority list. That and that and just anywhere in the East. I guess is I'm really drawn to just being from there. I've always wanted to travel, you know, in the state's bordering Ohio, so places like Indiana, u Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, New York is really high on the priority list. Michigan, all those places I'm sadly you can't do them all in one year though. That's the that's the tough part. You can't do it all. But it sounds like you guys are gonna give it one hell to try, so I'm looking forward to following along. So, Zack, I appreciate you taking the time to do this just before taking off for a big trip and all that. And uh, can't we see how it goes? Yeah, no problem, I'm really happy to happy to talk hunting. I appreciate you having me on it. I can probably talk for another couple of days here at least, but we'll have to do it a follow up sometime, maybe later in the season or early next year. See how it all went. Yeah, sounds good. Appreciate it all right, Good luck to season, Zack, and we will talk to you later. And that's gonna do it first Today's so. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. I thought Zack had some really interesting things to share. Um, just a lot of ideas that get me thinking. So who knows, maybe I'll be run around on the ground this year a little bit, trying some things out. I know it's it's a very intriguing proposition and a lot of his public land ideas I know I've already been putting into action in different Four is based off some of the other people he's learned from. Um I've learned from two, and I certainly think there's a lot of potential there as well. So good stuff here. I guess before we wrap this thing up, if you haven't yet subscribed to the YouTube channel or the podcast, we would love it if you could do that. If you want to leave a rating or review on iTunes, that would be much appreciated as well. And I guess otherwise, I just want to wish you a ton of luck if you're out there hunting. I know hunting seasons they're open for a whole lot of people now, So good luck out there, shoot straight, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.

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