Ep. 849: Chasing a 200" Buck on Public Land All Season long with Clint Campbell

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, which has brought
to you by first Light. I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson,
and today I'm joined by my good buddy Clint Campbell
to talk about his quest this season to kill a
legitimate two hundred inch deer on public land. I know
you noticed that this isn't Mark Kenyon.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
He's not here.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Today's your old third stringer, Antonio. Mark is off actually
recovering from a pretty nasty throat injury. You guys might
not know this, but Mark is actually a very accomplished
clarinet player. Well, he was wailing away the other day
when one of those little Kenyon boys chucked a football
in his direction. I'll spare you the details, but I'll
just say it was a direct hit. And now Mark

(01:02):
has to eat ice cream and apple sauce for a while.
Hopefully he heals up soon, though, because we don't want
him to suffer anymore. And plus I'm pretty sick of
doing not only my job, but most of his. My
guest today is a good friend of mine, Clint Campbell.
Clint is a really good hunter who also happens to
be the host of the Truth from the Stand podcast.

(01:22):
Clint had the opportunity to hunt a very rare deer
this year on public land, a buck that he's known
about for a few years, a legitimate two hundred inch
type of buck. It's truly incredible. So in this show,
we're going to dive deep into that story and go
even deeper into the reality of not only finding giant
bucks on public land, but what to do if you

(01:42):
do manage to locate one. Clint, Buddy, I feel like
I needed to do this podcast with you, sort of
as a wellness check. You're hanging in there.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I'm hanging in there, man, I'm okay. You know, things
are They were bleak for a moment, you know, I was.
I tried to my buddies. So my buddy sent a
text about that deer, and there were a couple of
us that knew about him and stuff like that, and
of course, you know, look it's it's deer hunting, right
and deer get killed, and you know, sometimes they get
killed by people, sometimes killed by cars. Like you know,

(02:20):
sometimes you just don't see them to die of old age, right,
So I try not to get too precious on a deer.
But and I tried to play it off with my
buddies where I was like, it's just the deer, you know,
and stuff igat And then my buddy reminded me. He's like, dude,
he's like, you've been living in your truck, in your
trailer for like, you know, thirty days or whatever. Essentially roughly,
you know, since October fifth, I have basically hunted at

(02:40):
this particular deer every possible moment you could get there,
chasing weather fronts and stuff like that. He's actually, don't
give me that. Don't give me that bs, you know.
So I was like, and then my response back to
him was like, I'm not crying. You're crying.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
So let's let's talk about this deer. Because you you
sent me a trail camera video I don't know, week
and a half ago, two weeks ago or something of
a legit giant that you had found on public land.
We don't need to get into the details other than
you you found one in a probably five million buck.

(03:17):
I mean, the level of that deer is is unreal.
I mean, if that if that deer walked out in
front of Lee Lakowski, he'd shoot it on site on
his home farm, you know. And it's and he's making
it to an old age on on public land. And
you put in like it, like you mentioned some real
time onto this deer, and you just found out just

(03:38):
a couple of days ago that that deer is dead.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, yeah, he's yeah, he's dead. You know, we knew
of him, and so it wasn't just me. It was
me and two my buddies, and I think truthfully, the
first time we knew of that deer was my one
buddy had a trail camera picture of him, and I
had trail cameras. Like so, I have two friends that
we all kind of hunt the same general area, right
and trying not to step on each other's toes and
stuff like that. But what we do, because this is

(04:03):
like a huge piece of you know, mountain ground and
big woods, is that we pull a lot of our
a lot of our intel together. Because it's a little
bit of ways away from me from where I live.
It's a little bit of a ways away from like
our one buddy and our other buddy kind of lives
pretty local, and so a lot of times I would
have asked them to check trail cameras if they run
by one of mine or whatever, and just like check
it and pull a card and like send me some

(04:24):
pictures or whatever's good on it and stuff like that.
So our one buddy actually had this year on camera
probably two years ago, and I had some cameras around
there too, and then coincidentally also picked him up on
a couple of different cameras, and so we knew of
him for probably three ish years. I guess this would
have been a third year. I mean, we probably had him
prior to that before he was really identifiable, but it
was probably three seasons ago that he was really identifiable

(04:47):
where he showed up and it was like, oh, that's
that's a good buck, Like he's probably like at that
that year, he was probably like one hundred and fifty inches,
you know, And there wasn't really a whole lot I
could do about it because I was hunting Kansas like
the past several years, you know, and so I was
going to have that tag in my pocket. I knew
I was going to be leaving at the end of
October for the first couple weeks in November, and so

(05:10):
this place is unless you really have time to dedicate
to try to hunt October, it hunts really really it
hunts really really hard in general, but it hunts exponentially
harder in October because they can bed pretty much anywhere.
There's no agriculture, so there's no defined destination food sources
that you can kind of play like a bed to
food game and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
I mean, this is this is true big woods.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, true, true, big true, big woods. Deer don't live
in every section of it. Right, There's certain pieces that
you might go to that you would think a deer
never crossed that area in the entire existence of that
piece of dirt, you know what I mean, Like just
by the nature of the way the habitat kind of
lays out and stuff. And so we knew of him
for a couple of years, and he was around again

(05:52):
last year, and and uh, last year I think is
really whenever I you know, I kind of took notice
of it. I think we all dig was he was
a big year, But it wasn't like we were kind
of exclusively hunting him, and I think I had two
hunts there last year and I had an awkward like
a weird and I won't say awkward, but I had
a weird encounter in super early October. And then it
wasn't until after the season I realized that that you know,

(06:14):
encounter that I had in the sign that i'd found
in the proximity to where this year was kind of
shown up on trail camera and I actually had a
picture of him the day it was either the day
before I think it was the day before I hunted
that area. I didn't I didn't find any this out
until postseason because I pulled one in and pulled the
cameras and stuff like that. I killed a buck and
pa local to me like mid October, so I didn't

(06:35):
make it back there to hunt. And this was like
October fifth or sixth or something like that when I
had this kind of weird encounter. And then when I
did my post season scout and my buddy and I
were out scout and sure enough found like a pretty
good rub about where I kind of heard this vocalization,
you know, and then there was a really big scrape
that wasn't far away from that, and so a lot
of the dots started kind of connecting a little bit,

(06:59):
and it was just a matter of like, wonder if
he's going to show up? Right? There was a second
one that was kind of a really interesting deer, and
that was probably the one that really peaked my interest,
and he was that deer was actually the one that
really helped me start to try to piece the puzzle
together as far as like how deer really use this area.
And then this deer that subsequently just recently got killed

(07:21):
that I was chasing, he showed back up and became
even more visible than he had been in the past
couple of years, and a bunch of different areas on
a bunch of different cameras, and a bunch of different
kind of sections of this piece, And that was kind
of when, you know, for me at least, I was like,
all right, this year, I'm going to dedicate I don't
do it really ever, you know, hunt a specific deer
more of a Hey, if there's an area that has

(07:42):
a couple of good deer, I'm going to hunt this
area on volume and hopefully one of these three or
four good year that I like, maybe they passed by.
But this was like an instance where I was like,
you know, I'm not going to very often have an
opportunity to hunt a deer of this caliber, certainly not
in the state of Pennsylvania on public land. And so
I was like, you know what, I had a great
season last year, filled two tags, killed a booner, you know,

(08:05):
so I was like, this is a great year to
just kind of let them mature deer try to teach
me some lessons. You know, if I don't fill a tag,
and then you know, I'll get to chase a really
kind of unique mature deer around the woods for as
long as I can and kind of see how they
live and how they act, and you know, and hopefully
it'll make me a better hunter as I kind of
continue to go. And so that was kind of the

(08:25):
goal overall.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
I mean, so let's let's back up here a second.
So this book, you found him or he kind of
got on your radar three years ago?

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Three Yeah, it was three seasons ago.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, right, he was pushing one fifty. So they let's
say for the last five years, for sure that beer
that deer walks by ninety nine point nine percent of
the hunters out there, he gets shot at.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
I would just think that that's like very very likely
and by four years ago, for sure that would be
the case. Yeah, and he survives. And here here's something,
this is part of what I wanted to talk to
you about, is it's it's cool as hell to have
that opportunity and find that deer of that caliber. I mean,

(09:12):
you're talking a deer that's right at the two hundred
inch mark all day long, you know, which is which
is just bananas, right, But also the fact that that
deer probably had a better chance to reach his full
potential by being in that big wood setting on public
land versus spending his time. If if he had spent

(09:32):
more time on private land with any level of hunting pressure,
he would have been so well known.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean he was. He certainly wasn't. He
wasn't a celebrity, but there was a lot more people
that knew of him than than just us. Like I
met some guys while I was there, they you know,
and I told my one buddy this that, you know,
I stopped and talked to him. My one buddy killed
a good buck and he sent me a message on

(09:59):
his on his satellite device, and I wasn't sure what
time it came in. So I saw a truck that
I thought was his pulled off and it happened to
be these other two dudes, and they recognized my truck
somewhere and they're like, they're like, hey, you hunting that
big one, So like right there, I was like, all right,
so it's not just me and two of my buddies.
It's like me too, my buddies, these two guys. And

(10:19):
then I knew my other buddy knew that there was
a couple of guys on this one piece of private
that wouldn't far away that was also also new of him, right,
And so I'm like, there's I know, at least like
seven or eight guys probably know of this deer like
within the area. And then just the number of trucks
that you would see kind of in that area kind
of told you that there was there was more than that, right,
But you're right, like this area hunts, you know. He

(10:44):
was definitely aided by the fact that it's a big
wood setting, he's not on private, and he's in an
area that doesn't have a lot of structure, so there's
not a lot of defined areas that are like real,
real obvious places that you should set up, right Like,
there's not like a he's gonna have to cross this
saddle or anything like that, right, Like, there's not a
lot of topography change and stuff like that, and so

(11:06):
you're really kind of relegated to try to get into
areas where you're using using habitat almost like structure like
soft edges and stuff like that that they're going to
want to travel and things like that, and that again,
that's why it hunts tough, and it's why it hunts
better in November than it does in October, because you
really just kind of play like where the dough is
going to spend time. You find where the thick cover is,
there's probably going to be a dough group that's betting

(11:27):
in that general area, and you play those odds, right,
And so even when you lay a plan for that area,
it's still kind of if you're hunting a specific deer,
it's still a little bit of like a hand grenade
toss to a degree, right, and but you know, you
use the intel that you have, and you know, the
one part that I started feeling good about was I

(11:49):
actually saw the deer on the hook on the hoof
October twelfth. And that was kind of like an odd
hunt because I just kind of jumped into a tree
as it was getting late in the evening, and I
knew he was in that general area. But it wasn't
like I'm gonna sit this tree cause I think I
can kill him here. It was literally like I need
to get into a tree cause it's four o'clock and
I just need to watch right and he I just

(12:09):
caught a glimpse of him at about sixty yards or so,
and then I got some camera intel on him in
you know, Ladish October, and that was the part that
like I he made a rub on camera on video,
and I was able to identify the tree and see
how he was making rubs and stiff from there, It's
like I got a real good He had an interesting

(12:31):
ant like characteristic that you know, people will make that
mistake that big deer run rub big trees, or they
you know, they rub real tall or whatever. Right, this deer,
this rub that he made was maybe only you know,
six inches long, and it was probably only like a
foot and a half off the ground, right, And so
if you looked at that rub, you would think nothing

(12:53):
of that caliber of animal was making that rub, right,
but the detail he was leaving he had an interesting
ant like character ristick on one of his longer times,
and because of the way that time was, you know,
a skew if you will, he was making tick marks
that were like sixteen inches above where the rub stopped

(13:14):
at the bottom, right, and so it was like, and
that was what I was when I said, you know,
I was gonna let up mature deer just kind of
teach me some lessons. It's those types of things of
paying attention to those small details when you're trying to
chase a critter like that, right, that if you can
just figure out small things and it's not going to
be like, oh, here's a rub, it's like no. I
was examining every single rub as I was walking through

(13:34):
the woods to see if I could find a tick
mark that was sixteen inches or so above where the
rub was at to know that that was him and
he's spending time in this area. So I started finding those, right,
and that was kind of how I started putting my
plan together. You know. The only bummer was is where
I got that video. You know, in the off season,
I said that would be where I would kill him
if I were going to kill him. It's probably the

(13:54):
best setup I had, right, because there was some topography
there that was going to make him kind of move
in an area. And I heard some fighting on the
twenty fifth of October heard buck roar and a buck fight,
and I had assumed it was him. And I was
a little outside the game one a morning and I

(14:14):
was like, you know what, the twenty six I'm going
to make a move back closer to that. And my
thought was I should go to that spot with a
topography and I should sit that. That should be my
first sit. And I've debated it, and I debated it,
debated it. Literally that morning. I got out of my
truck and I was going to walk to that spot,
and I was at the last minute, I was like,
you know what, I'm going to save that spot for
November because I think it's I think I'm probably like
four or five days out from it being real good there. Right.

(14:37):
I was like, I'm going to go in on the
west side of this particular kind of terrain feature and
I'm going to set up there and I'm going to
be about one hundred yards away from that spot. And
so I should catch any of the action it's kind
of coming through, you know, but not booger that up.
So I should be in the game, but not booger
that spot up. And sure shit, he walked through that

(14:58):
spot at eight fourteen that morning, you know. And so
it's one of those things where it's like, you know,
whenever you're hunting a deer like that, you're probably only
going to get one crack, right, And it's you know,
I constantly try to tell myself when I go out
of state, I'm aggressive, right because I'm only there on
short time, and when I hunt in state, a lot
of times, I'm a little bit more conservative, and I'm

(15:20):
trying to like like work that out of myself to
a degree, right, And this is like a time where
it's like, oh, I just would have been aggressive, been
like what, you know what, this is a good spot.
I'm just going to go there, right, and whatever the
results are, they are, And if it's boogered up, it's
boogered up. I'll figure it out later, you know. But
not being aggressive probably cost me, you know, an opportunity,

(15:41):
probably a chip shot shot, to be honest with you, right.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
So that's exactly what I was going to say, is
it is so much easier to the decision making process
on the road, to me, is so much easier than
at home because you don't have that, you don't have
the luxury of time, you know, like you don't if
you go in and blow them out. I mean you do,
but it's like, doesn't feel the same thing as knowing

(16:05):
now you've got thirty five days left to hunt and
you might not see him again. And I you know,
you said something there about how you know you're only
going to get one crack at a deer like that?
Most likely that's probably true, But I don't think it
has to be like when you when you're on him
like that. I think we I think we tell ourselves
that sometimes so we feel better about playing it so

(16:26):
conservatively and not being so cavalier. But when you see
you know, and you're not the only one. I mean,
I know a lot of really good kind of over
the road public land hunters who take that aggressiveness on
the road, but they really tamp it down when they
get home, and it's like it's just it's a hard
it's a mental thing to overcome. But when when you're
on a deer like that, I mean that deer clearly

(16:47):
spending real time there. I don't know if you if
you bump that deer, I don't know if he's not
back there tomorrow, because he has a lot of dudes
looking for him, you know. But it's such a that's
such a scary risk to take.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. It's one of those ones where
you know, I was kicking myself, like when I pulled
that card and I saw that, and I was like,
you gotta be kidding me, you know here like here,
you here, it was right, And I really should have
probably went and did it for the reason that I
was trying to get the Missouri right, So I wasn't.

(17:22):
I usually don't hunt this area, like I know, it
hunts tough in October, and I basically chased every cold
front in October. And so what I would do, you know,
is I would you know, every Saturday, I would go
up and I would have jiu jitsu at night, and
I would leave right after jiu jitsu, and I would
drive the couple hours and I would sleep in the

(17:42):
I would sleep in the front seat of my truck
in a sleeping bag, and I would get up early
and I would go hunt a morning set that I
thought was pretty good. I would see some deer. I
was seeing deer, like all October. I passed a deer
you know, on like the sixth or seventh or whatever
it was that I would shoot any other year, you know,
Like it's one of those ones where I'm like, I
can't believe I just passed that dear, you know, like,

(18:05):
and truthfully, that was the only good buck I had
in bow range, Like the whole season was that was
that encounter. And so I would chase, you know, I'd
go up Saturday and I hunt the morning and I
would scout and walk like seven eight miles whatever it
was until like it started getting dark. And then whatever
I happened to be whenever it was getting dark is
where I would get into a tree, right, And some
of it was checking trail cameras, so someone's putting out
some additional trail cameras looking for sign. I was trying

(18:26):
to find a track, you know, cut a track, find
a rub, find a scrape with a track in it,
like anything you know that I could do to try
to find them. And so I would do that on Saturdays,
and I would basically hunt every cold front that came through,
you know, even minor temp drops. I wasn't looking for
like ten degrees. I was even looking just for like
five degree changes and stuff like that. Anything that was
just like different, you know. And I would go up

(18:48):
and take my trailer and I would you know, work
from it during the day. I'd get up in the morning,
hunt the morning to about nine thirty ten o'clock, come
back to the trailer with starlink, and I would set
up and I would work all during the day. Then
I would peace out around thirty or so and get
back to the woods and hunt the evening. Right And
so that was basically all of October. I knew October
was kind of really a flyer just from cheryl camer data.

(19:10):
I knew that place kind of turned on like it
was a good rut like piece of dirt, if you will, right,
But I also wanted to kind of like know that
I was in the right area when Rutt kind of
kicked off, right, because these deer, I've had so many
deer in this area do two different things, right, Like,
it seems to me like this particular area like as
the deer get older, they become a little bit more

(19:32):
homebodyish right, and they don't move quite as much. But
then there's also like the groups of deer that just
completely vanish and disappear. And so I wanted to try
to get a good beat on whether or not what
deer in him, specifically if they were still around in October.
And the crazy thing was was I just had a
sneaking suspicion that deer was still around because I don't

(19:53):
I don't know if any of us got any pictures
of him. I think the last sure we had of
him was like September twenty first, until like I had
him on the twenty sixth. I don't know if anybody
any of my other buddies got him on camera like
prior to that. But yeah, I mean he basically goes
at a.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Lot of people. Weren't telling the truth in your little
circle at that point.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
No, I mean we were all pretty like forthcoming, right like,
because when I had that encounter with him, you know,
I was talking to my one buddy, and I mean
I told him I had the encounter. I told him
where I had the encounter at. You know, it's like, hey,
this is where where it was at. He and I
probably talked more than our other buddy or other buddy
also just had had a baby recently, so like his
time getting out. Oddly enough, out of the three of us,

(20:40):
he was the only one to killed a buck, so
he wasn't getting out nearly as often as like he
probably would have been the past years and stuff like that,
you know. And so but you know, a buddy, my
one buddy, and I think we were sharing pretty freely,
like of what we were seeing, what we weren't seeing,
you know, if we were cutting a track or not
cutting a track or whatever. But yeah, I bet, I mean,

(21:01):
I'm sure there was a little bit of secrecy going on.
You know. It's like we're all chasing a big dear.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
And didn't you find out though, after you found out
the buck was dead, that one of your buddies had
missed him.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah, my one buddy actually it was the day before
he the day before he killed he actually shot just
shot right under him. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and the
thing was like my one buddy and I, it's like
we had an agreement. It's like, dude, whoever kills this dear,
the other guy, we're taking the We're taking the guy
out for like a steak and bourbon. Dinner or staking
Scotch dinner, you know, like that was like on the books,

(21:32):
you know, because I was like, no matter what, like
if one of us gets a crack at this dear
and we get him on the ground, like it's just
cause for celebration regardless, right, And I mean that's just
speaks to like having good dudes, you know, around you
and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
So so let's let's back up a second here. If
if I were to go back, if I were to
take you back to Clint camp on let's say October
one of this season, and now we're going to ask you,
all right, you've got this freaking giant, You've been working him,

(22:07):
you've been aware of him a long time, this is
your focus for the season. What would you have pegged
your odds at of killing that deer?

Speaker 3 (22:15):
M I mean when I go into it, like I
gave myself one hundred percent because I don't ever like
to feel like I'm walking into something and that's gonna fail, right,
Like if I don't think I'm going to kill him,
then what am I? Why am I hunting him? You know?
But that's part of like, you know, just like sports talk, right,
It's like any football team. It's like you walk into

(22:36):
a game and it's like you could be oh and
sixteen facing the team that's sixteen and oh and you're like,
we're gonna win the game, right because if you don't
think that way, you have no chance. Right.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Well, that's what I wanted to get to, because you
you put in real time on this, dear. And yeah,
I've had a few situations in my life where I
found a big one. You know, I've talked about a
million times when I found a booner on public here
in the Cities one time, hunted him for thirty days,
killed his buddy. Ever saw them again. But it takes
it takes that mentality, Okay, I know. I mean even

(23:07):
though you know you're kind of tricking yourself, right Like,
you know that your odds are not one hundred percent
that you're gonna kill a two hundred inch buck on
public land in Pennsylvania, right like, But you have to
you have to put in that requisite work to believe
in yourself enough to see that process through, even though
you know, like the odds are less than one hundred percent,

(23:27):
they just are. But if you're believing in the process
and what you've put in. That's what keeps you making
that drive and sleeping in the truck and doing the
scouting and everything. And I think I think that you.
I think it's easy for people to kind of contextualize
that around a buck of a thousand lifetimes. But if
you're just starting out, or you've killed a few deer

(23:49):
and you want to bump up from you know, two
and a half to something bigger or whatever, the same
rules really kind of apply. Like if you don't put
in the work, you know, you're not gonna have that belief,
you won't hunt as hard like that. You have to.
You have to have that faith in yourself somehow.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Yeah, yeah, you have to. You have to fool yourself
a little bit. It's the thing that helps you get
up at four o'clock in the morning and every morning,
you know what I mean. When you don't when you
don't want to write, especially whenever you're sleeping in the
front of your truck, you're tired, you know, you didn't
get good sleep, and midday when you're when you're scouting,
all you really want to do is go back to
the truck and take a nap, you know what I mean.

(24:26):
But you're not going to get any closer if you
don't put the time in right. I mean, I felt
pretty good about my odds of seeing him, Like I
thought that that would happen, but I didn't. I didn't
have any delusions of like what this was going to be.
You know, I knew that I had a pretty good
chance to see him because I thought, you know, in general,

(24:47):
me and my two buddies, I thought we were all
in the right general area like to have have a
visual of him right and truthfully, like you know, like
I said, I was one hundred percent because that's how
I forced myself to get up and do this every
day and like work and do all the things I
needed to do get I mean, I still trained jiu
jitsu like three days a week while I was doing
all this right, so it's like my life didn't miss

(25:09):
much of a beat, you know, while I was doing it.
But realistically, I thought it was fifty to fifty. You know.
I thought I had a couple places that were one
spot in particular that I thought was really dialut if
I could time it right, and that was the spot right,
and it was just a matter of like could I
be there when he was going to be there, right,
And so realistically I thought I had a fifty to
fifty percent chance. I thought for sure, it's like I

(25:31):
would see him at some point, whether or not I
was going to be close enough to get a shot
or not, or at the right spot. Whenever he was
close enough to get a shot, that I was like,
it's a kind of a toss up, right, because you
know just the way they move on that piece and
how far they can move. Like, for context, there was
a deer that my one buddy and I knew of
the previous couple of years that we were hunting this

(25:53):
other general area because I hadn't hunted this area until
last year at all, even know I had cameras on it,
had been scout it. And there was one particular deer
that you know, I had an encounter with in an
area and I thought for sure, like that general area
is where you could kill him. And he got killed
also I think during during gun season, and he he

(26:15):
was killed roughly four and a half five miles as
the crow flies from where we had him on camera
and where I had an encounter with him, right, So
you know the distance that they can that they travel
in this general area. I knew that. You know, when
you do see him, the chances of him being around

(26:37):
there for an extended period of time are probably limited,
especially once you got into like the later part of November.
Like I figured like that October earliest November time frame
was probably like the best time. Once you hit mid October,
I was like, I think he's probably gonna really be
searching and then he'll probably make his way back because
I always usually got him again in like late October

(26:59):
early December timeframe, right, And so I knew there's probably
like a period of two weeks where he's just going
to be gone, right and probably not going to be here,
which is why I kind of put my odds at
like fifty to fifty, because it's like he's not going
to spend all his time here. He's going to travel,
you know. And I know that, and I know from
prior experience they travel a long distance in this area.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
So I think, I think there's something so important to
what you just said. And I've been thinking about this
a lot lately, where if even if you have that
buck's entire home range to hunt, let's say the land
that you hunt, he's he spends ninety percent of his
time there or whatever. Like the time that he's probably

(27:43):
going to bounce and leave your world is the time
when you can haunt him, you know. And I think
that a lot of times. I think this is the
blessing and cursive trail cameras, right, Like you use trail
cameras to go, here's my window when this giant's going
to be here. Probably here's the window where he's probably
just going to light out and go somewhere where I
just don't know yet, And they're like very consistent on that,

(28:03):
and trail cameras teach you that. But trail cameras can
also tell, you know, the average person like, oh, well,
you just had a one forty walk through here, you
know twice this week, so like now that becomes your
target buck, and that that might have been him. Just
like we literally just had this happen at my buddy's
place over in Wisconsin. We had a buck show up
for two days that was probably pushing one fifty beautiful

(28:28):
mainframe ten point or just a toad for up there,
and then he's gone, and my buddy's like, I'm super
excited to go hunt gun season now, and I'm like,
that deer is freaking gone, dude, Like that was just him.
He followed a dough winery that was part of his
rot route or whatever for a couple of days and
he's gone. And I think a lot of people, I
think they go into a one buck hunt or they

(28:49):
you know, kind of pin their hopes on a deer
that's really totally out of play. I mean, i'll give
you another example quick here.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
I have.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I have a property over in Wisconsin. This's twenty eight
acres and one of the neighbors who borders me has
like sixteen acres sixteen and he's got a food plot
in there. Whatever he lives there. He puts a lot
of work into this little piece and we've had a
buck the last few years. That's a very big, non
typical for over there. I mean probably upper one sixties,
tons of stickers, really cool deer. But every year you

(29:19):
talk to him and this guy is like, you know,
stickers is back, blah blah blah. And I'm like, you
have sixteen acres, man, and you hunt the shit out
of it, like you're you're not going to kill that deer,
Like you can't. You can't work that deer using you know,
a fifty like a hundredth of his home range, a

(29:40):
fiftieth of his home range, whatever, Like there's just there's
just no way. But it's like so many people are
out there looking at just you know, maybe a couple
of pictures or whatever and going there there, that's my season,
that's what I'm going to do. And hey, that's like
if you want to do that, that's fine. But the
more you the more you do the kind of hunting
like you're talking about, the more you learn, like what's

(30:01):
really in play for me and what's not. And a
lot of these deer aren't in play that long in
a lot of places.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah, to me, in this type of setup or in
this type of setting, like if you don't have a
couple of years of intel like trail cameras, scouting, visual
on the hoof like whatever, like it's you have on
you have virtually no chance, right, just because of how
much ground they cover and how many HIGHI holes they

(30:30):
have and and things like that. It's a little bit different.
Like and it goes back to what we were talking about,
what we were talking about the beginning, which is, you know,
part of the reason why I think this deer got
to that age is because he lives on a piece
of you know, big woods that he has vast land
to travel. He has a lot of places he can
hide and a lot of places guys aren't willing to
hike two to hunt, you know what I mean. So

(30:51):
you know, it gives him the opportunity to grow old.
When you have those places that have a lot of
structure and and things like that, I think, you know, yeah,
maybe you don't need as much intel because it's really
defined how deer are probably going to move, right. You know,
you can start to you know, anticipate how they're, where
they're going to be and when they're going to be,
and like the food is here, and the betting is here,

(31:13):
and the does live here. It's like when it starts
to set up like that, it becomes a little bit
a little bit easier. But you know, this year, there
was there was none of that. You know, there was
no structure, There was no and so you know, the
only really reason we were able to kind of successfully
i think, kind of stay close to him and know
that we were in his core areas because we literally
had three years of intel of trail cameras data on

(31:36):
him of like being in different places different times of
the year, right, because that was the biggest thing for me,
was like was knowing that he would be in the
general area, like in the October October timeframe, right, or
I wasn't going to spend any time hunt him, Like
I wasn't going to pin my whole hunt on just
trying to hunt him in November and hope that he

(31:57):
comes through on a dough during the rut, you know,
Like I wasn't gonna do that. I'm not that lucky,
you know what I mean, Like we'll just put it
that way. I'm not I'm not that kind of I'm
not that lucky of a guy, right, So I knew
that he was probably still in the area just by
like previous years intel, you know, and that I needed
to spend my time like trying to like get a

(32:20):
visual or cut his cut his sign somewhere and then
getting that visual in mid October. Like if I didn't
see him, didn't have him on trail camera or anything
in October, right, like I probably would have left him
went to Missouri, like like I was planning to, right,
But because I saw him in the middle of October,
I was like, Okay, I know he's here. Like this
is his I always assumed this was his core area.

(32:43):
I now really think that it is right. And now
I have a better idea that I actually even think
like a section of this is more in play than
the rest of it, if that makes sense, right, Because
you know, at one point my buddy and I both
did this. We were talking about it on the phone
one day. We both basically took like the primary areas

(33:04):
where we had him relatively consistently dropped a pin and
then put a mile radius around it. And that was
what I was scouting in October, was I was basically
scouting that mile radius around that central kind of area
that we thought was kind of like, let's just call
this the center of his home range, right, And then
just spent time walking like that mile radius and like

(33:24):
the little areas that I thought he might be hiding
out and dropping a camera and stuff like that, just
to you know, see if I could pick him up.
And you know, and a lot of that time was
probably spent for not but based on you know, what
I ended up learning where he was spending a lot
of his time. But you know the benefit of that was,

(33:45):
you know, I really got to understand this piece a
lot better for future hunts, and I basically just gave
you know, I gave this season up to either trying
to kill this deer or I was going to little
mature deer teach me like that was my goal. Those
are the two goals I had to either fill my
tag with this deer. I was talking to my buddy
Jako for about this because he was like, man, you know,

(34:06):
hunting a deer like that, one specific deer in that
type of country. He was like, is like a task,
you know? And I was like yeah, I was like,
but you know, the season that I had last year,
I was like, I feel like I owe it to
like my development, if you will to do this and
let a mature deer, if nothing else, just teach me

(34:27):
some lessons and probably some hard lessons. I was like,
but you know, for me, that was part of like
the gratitude of the season that I had last year,
was like, let's do something hard this year, knowing that
the success rate's probably not going to be real high, right,
but the growth I think I can get out of it,
like as a hunter but also just as a person.
I was like, I think will be well worth it.

(34:48):
And so that was kind of the that was kind
of like the secondary goal.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Man. That's I mean, first off, that's really cool, but
also it's just it's it's like a missing component of
a lot of people want to kill big deer, but
they don't understand that that's just a part of it.
Like you have you have to do things that are
it's not the challenge of killing a big deer alone

(35:12):
doesn't really mean that much without like all the other
variables involved, right, And so if you're not, if you're
not trying something to help yourself level up a little bit,
like you're just you're just not going to get there.
And that's that's just how it works. And the thing
that I love about your story with this deer is,

(35:32):
you know, for a while the public land thing was
so hot. It's starting to that that I feel like
that's like sort of died down now and we're kind
of back to leases and box lines and like trophy,
we're like back to trophy hunting again. But public land,
as bad of a rep as it gets a lot
of times, can be sometimes a better option if you

(35:54):
want a giant, or you want a great hunt, or
you want to really learn how to do something out there,
better than good private land. And this is this is
like nobody really wants to hear this. But I ran
into this with my daughters this year, or one of
my daughters anyway. The other one killed a buck right away,
so she was tagged out, but one of them didn't.

(36:14):
And so we just had a weekend in early November,
and I said, you know, let's go run that decoy.
Let's do what we did last year, hunt some of
the private pieces we have. Couldn't see a deer, and
I told her, I said, you know, I got a
spot on public that I haven't been into for a
few years, but I killed some good deer in there,
and I saw some big ones, and I'm like, maybe
we can just roll in there and find something. And

(36:34):
she's never done that kind of hunt, dude. We pulled
up and there's there's a couple old logging roads and
there's big woods. It's thousands and thousands of acres of timber.
And I got out of the truck and I could
see big rubs from the truck and a scrape where
these deers scraping right by this gravel road. And I
told her, I said, we're going to go back and
get our stuff, We're going to walk in here and

(36:55):
we're gonna hunt, Like we're not going to go because
I just was originally going to go walk it with
her and just kind of look around. And we went
in there, and because you know she's crossbow hunt, she's twelve,
we set up on the ground, which is tough over there.
It was kind of that rainy southeast wind almost no
wind kind of stuff where it was like we keep
getting that weather pattern this year. So we sat that
night and when we walked in there, the amount of

(37:18):
sign and it keep in mind I had just come
from Iowa public Land, but still I didn't see sign
like that in Iowa anywhere I went. And I covered
some ground like it was like we are We're in
the belly of the beast right now. There's something going
on here. We didn't see any deer that night, but
it was rainy, the wind sucked. It was just like
I was like, I'm not I don't count this as

(37:39):
like a negative toward what we have working here, Like
this was just sort of a probably wasn't going to
work out. So we go back to the cabin and
I'm like, do I want to go back in there
with her in the morning, and I'm kind of like
debating because I have easier setups on private, you know,
And we were literally hunting any bucks. She'd shot any
illegal buck, but I was like it bothered me, and

(38:00):
so I don't get reception in the campies. I walked
outside and I pulled up on ax. I'm like, why
are they there? Like I didn't understand this, this concentration
a sign And I found a private hayfield I didn't know.
It looks like a horse hay field or whatever, nine
hundred yards away in the exact direction that that scrape

(38:20):
line was going. And there had been a bunch of
tracks on the road because we were dealing with a
lot of rain. And I was like, why why are
the deer doing this? Like why would they go to
that chunk of big woods and leave this one when
they're all kind of the same, you know what I mean.
So I'm like maybe logging activity or something. And then
I found that and I'm like, I'll bet you that's
the destination, Like it's it's you know, there's no agg

(38:41):
up there, right, And so I told my daughter, I said,
tomorrow morning, we're going to go the long way in
it's gonna be a pain in the ass, but we're
gonna not We're gonna We're gonna get ahead of these
deer and go set up again in that blind. You know,
we'd piled some dead falls together whatever, and I was like,
maybe we'll catch them coming back in in the morning.

(39:02):
And we got in there and it was super foggy,
dead still kind of rainy, and we heard a stick
snap like an hour into the morning, and she got ready.
Deer never showed up, and I know there's like little
logging roads and stuff they'll peel off of, and so
I'm like, maybe he didn't get here. And I looked
up and there was like one hundred and thirty inch

(39:23):
or stand in forty yards away and he had us
peg and he just cut down or ran away, and
I was like, man, we.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
Almost almost had an amazing buck on public land in
the Big Woods when we couldn't find a four key
on private.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Ten minutes down the road. And it's like that shit
is so cool just to have that opportunity, And a
lot of people kind of ic themselves out of that
and they look and go, well, I have grandma's forty
acres to hunt or whatever. I'm not going to go
scout the public down the road that gets pounded. And
I'm like, man, you just don't know on any given year,
you don't know what you're going to find in there.
And there's there's some opportunities that are just like, you know,

(40:06):
really great deer that you can work on public and
it's so freaking cool.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, man, I mean, I think, especially when you start
thinking about states that aren't known for for a good deer,
I think that the only way that you can find
like the upper caliber of deer is to is to

(40:34):
go to the to the public, like for the most part, right,
I think it's different whenever you get to like the
Iowa's and Kansas is and Illinois and stuff like that,
where it's like you can find good deer. I mean,
there's good deer everywhere in those states. Right, it's just
a matter of you know, being at the right on
the right piece, right, whether it's private or public or whatever.
But I really think when you start talking about states

(40:55):
like Pennsylvania, for example, you know, I think you have
a better chance to find, you know, a quality deer,
and like it's like, let's just say quality in the
terms of age structure, right, because that was ultimately the
one guy that I ran into. You know, he asked
me where I was from, because that piece that I
was hunting a little bit of a ways away from

(41:16):
my house a couple of hours, and his question to
me was like, well, how did you, like, why do
you hunt here? Right? And he'd been hunting there a
long time, so it's like I think at first he
was a little bit precious on the spot where it's
like people coming in that aren't from here hunting this area,
you know what I mean type of thing. Even though
I'm from I'm a resident, right, but it's still like
I'm not a local. And I just said, I looked

(41:36):
on a map and I was looking for a place
that I thought had enough land mass, you know, that
deer could hide during gun season. I was I can
get age on them so I could hunt the age
class of deer that I wanted to hunt. What's relative consistency,
you know, And that to me was like the most
important thing, was like being able to find a place
where they can you know, get to like four and

(41:57):
a half years old, you know, I'll even take three
and a half because a lot of the deer around
me locally, don't make it.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Three and a half.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
Like that's usually like upper end age class of deer
around here. You'll get your occasional four and a half
an occasional five and a half, right, But like buying large,
like the more mature deer you get on camera at
local to me is probably like three and a half
is probably like the you know, the larger part of
like the mature quote unquote age structure. But this area
was like big enough where I was like, yeah, I
think that you can get the get the age on them.

(42:24):
And I think whenever you're talking about states like Pa,
if you do want to hunt deer that you know,
get to that four and a half year old or
older kind of age class, like that's your best option,
right because if you're hunting the back forty and you're
around a bunch of other back forties, you know, and
it's a heavy hunting heritage state, and you could throw
Michigan probably into this too, you know, or even Wisconsin

(42:46):
for that matter, probably to a degree. You know a
lot of people and you know, it's not whatever they
want to do however they want to hunt, but like
a lot of people aren't trying to kill, you know,
the better deer in the air. They're just trying to
have fun and shoot a deer, you know what I mean,
and like, you know, or power to him. But if
you're a person who's looking for an age class to chase,
you know, or something like that, or a type of

(43:06):
experience you're looking for, and those places, you know, you're
probably not going to get that on your back forty
or your grandpa's back forty or one hundred and fifty
acres that you own over here, Like it's just you know,
it's going to probably be hit. And this as far
as like yeah, one year you might be able to,
but then the next five you might not. And that's
kind of the situation I had, you know, several years ago,
because we own property back in Western PA, like my

(43:29):
family does, and I hunted that, you know. Growing up,
I had like private property that I hunted, and then
as I got older, we had like other family pieces
that I that I hunted, and I just got to
a point where I was hunting a specific buck. You know,
this is like the last time I hunted a specific
year prior to this. And I had four different encounters

(43:50):
with him in late season, and like all well within
like marginal bow range, just could never get him shot.
And so the following years like I'm gonna kill him.
Open him day and he came out out of the
crick bottom and I saw him, and he just he's
with a couple other deer, and the other's deer got
spooky and he turned around and walked away, and then
someone shot him in gun season, and I knew where
he was bedded, but he was on the neighbors And
that was when where I stopped kind of hunting public land,

(44:12):
not because I have think there's anything wrong with it,
but I was like it killed me to know that,
Like I knew where that deer was at, and there
wasn't anything I could do about it. I just had
to wait and hope that he took the travel route
that I was setting up on right and that things
were going to break my way as opposed to getting
within fifty yards of him, you know, and having enough
daylight or whatever to work in, you know. And that

(44:34):
was kind of the thing for me. It was like
I was like, you know, I want to hunt a
better age class a deer, and I want to be
able to if I know where a deer is at
I want to be able to go get him, you know,
and and that's ultimately why I ended up, you know
where I ended up. And you know, finding this caliber
of deer to hunt this particular year was just kind
of a was just kind of a bonus.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Right, Just just to be clear, you said that's when
he stopped hunting public, but you meant stopped hunting private there.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what. Yeah, and that and that's.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
That is a that is a hard thing to get
across where if somebody has their four year, they're eighty,
that's that's private. They don't want to go hunt in public.
But if you want, you know, like you said, in
some situations, you might have a better chance to find
a big one if you have more room to room,
and you might have a better chance to figure out

(45:23):
how to like how to really work some deer. And
you know, like I say this a lot on about
public land hunting, and I truly believe it. You know,
private land is so appealing because you feel like you're
only working the deer generally, you know, but if you're
on forty acres and the next forty over has five
hundreds on it, and the next forty over has two
hunters and the next forty. Oh, you really are working

(45:45):
the hunters too. You're just not thinking about it. You're
thinking about what are the deer doing on my place now?
And you know you can't divorce that from the fact
that they're getting pushed around and shot and all kinds
of stuff on other properties. You go out in thousands
of acres of unbroken timber in pa or wherever you have,

(46:08):
you accept the fact that you're going to be working
against other hunters like you have. You have to work
the hunting pressure to some level, but you also get
to work that deer, maybe in his entirety, and not
worry about him hopping the fence and betting where you
can't get him and somebody else might shoot him. And
there is there is like something really appealing to that.
And it's like, you know, I push this message on

(46:28):
here all the time and in my Foundation podcast because
I believe it so much. But I'm like, if you're
limiting yourself, you know, to forty acres and you're not
happy with your hunting or eighty acres or whatever you have,
you're not out anything. By going to try to figure
out some of the local public land or some of
the you know, maybe going like you do a couple
hours to a different part of the state, or I
do here in Minnesota quite a bit, just to see

(46:50):
if you can find something to work that puts you
in a little bit different place and gives you a
different chance to you know, kind of flex your muscles
a little bit. That shit's fun, and it's like that
is how you get way better. And you know, getting
better at something is pretty enjoyable typically.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Yeah. And the other thing is too, is that you know,
I guess at this at this point, like I just
go where the deer are that I want to chase,
right And so whether it's that piece I was on
this year or if it's stuffed local, wherever the deer
are that I want to chase is where I'm going
to hunt, you know, regardless of you know, because around
me the public gets hammered, right, Like it's crazy pressure,

(47:27):
like the pressure that that this big woods piece gets.
Like I think some of the locals think there's there's
pressure there, but you know, what I always kind of
say is like, man, if you're deterred by hunting in
areas that you where you see tree stands and flagging
tape and bright eyes. Dude, you will never even set
up where I live, you know, to mean, because you
walk into the woods and it's all over the place,
you know, and so you can't really care much about

(47:48):
what other hunters are doing, right because like you just
never step foot into the into the woods, right. And
I think that coming from a place that like that's
kind of what the pressure is, Like, I think is
a is a benefit to a degree because I'm not
typically deterred when I see a truck in a parking
lot or I see someone out in the woods. Like
for example, the deer I killed last year in Kansas,

(48:10):
I was glassing the deer that I killed the night before, right,
and I was watching a guy walk about two hundred
yards away from where I was watching the deer that
I was wanting to kill, right, And some people would
have been like, well, that's too close, like a deer
that's blowing up, like he just walked through a bunch
of stuff. Right, I was like, whatever, Like he's he's there.
This deer may or may not really know that he's there.

(48:32):
He's on a dough, Like he's probably more focused on
the dough. He's gonna come out, you know, probably tomorrow
night with this with this doe again, right, as long
as like she doesn't get bumped, you know or boogered
where they're petted. And so I went in the next
afternoon at like three o'clock and I killed a boom
and crocket deer on the ground at five point thirty,
you know what I mean. And there was guy, there
were guys all over that in trucks and stuff like that,

(48:52):
and it was just one of those things where it's
like I knew where this deer was, wasn't so concerned
about what they were doing. I had a plan and
I and I thought that I could get it done
without them interfering, you know, And so I wasn't too
broke up about other people hunting the hunting the piece necessarily.
You know. Now if they walk through exactly where you're

(49:12):
gonna be, it's a little bit of a different story, right.
But it's just like there were trucks there every day,
you know what I mean. But like I was, I
think they actually helped me because I wanted a deer
in a certain spot and that's where he ended up being.
And I had seen that over the past year or
two as well, right, And this was a big deer.
So he was being pretty consistent, you know, like he
wasn't going to change up unless someone made him change,

(49:33):
you know. And and so I wasn't, you know, put
off by the fact that there were other guys hunting
the hunting the area. In fact, I saw two guys
walk out of where I thought he was bedded with
a dough in the eat like where he was typically
betted in this CRP. The evening that I glassed him
and I drove out to go back to my camp,

(49:53):
I watched two guys walk out of where he's where
he was betting with that dough, right, And so it's
like he would say like, oh, man, that's all buggered up,
But like I was like, ah, they didn't. They didn't
bother him, you know. I was like, and I'm sure
he's he and that dough are probably used to people
walking around the area because they're doing it all the time, right,
And as long as they didn't get bumped, I was like,

(50:14):
I don't think it'll change much of what they're gonna do.
And sure enough, like it worked out the next day.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
I think that we have a very skewed view of
the impact that we put on deer, Like I think,
I think for sure more hunting pressure sucks, like well yeah,
just generally, but the the reality out there is, man,
you can bump into them, you can have people going

(50:49):
all over small game hunters come in and you know
how it is, like you how many times you've been
sitting on your stand or sitting there glassing like you said,
and you see somebody go through, burn through, burn dogs, whatever,
and then an hour later there's deer there, you know,
and or you bump one and you're like, I'm never
going to see a deer here, snorted a million times
and then they come right back through. Like I ran

(51:11):
into this this year in Iowa where I killed my buck.
I had a whole plan going down there. The last
time I drew there was there wasn't hardly any hunting
pressure there. This time there were freaking people everywhere. I
mean it was. It was nuts. The first four spots
I went to had trucks, and I was like, okay,
like i gotta i gotta recalibrate my plan because I'm

(51:32):
not I'm not working in it's not twenty twenty anymore.
I don't know. Something changed, and so I started looking
at it and going, well, most of these guys probably
aren't going in very deep. They're probably sitting obvious stuff
like there's there's that you know, kind of first layer,
you know, and down there the woods it's all nice
deciduous force, it's easy to walk through. It all looks

(51:52):
like it looks good. There's lots of deer, so there's
tongues of sign. So I'm like, looking at, you know,
on X again, I'm like, okay, I love river bottoms.
I love those flats along rivers that have willows and
just like that sawgrass and kind of like just that
different level of habitat right. And I was like, the
river that I'm hunting along is so low right now.

(52:14):
I've never seen it like this, and I've turkey hunted
and deer hunting down there a fair amount. So I'm like,
there's probably better vegetation, like better nutritious vegetation for browsing
in those spots than anywhere else. And so I'm like, okay,
I'm I'm gonna go figure that part out. And dude,
it was like a ten minute walk, you know, and
this is Iowa, of course, but there were there were

(52:34):
a lot of people hunting down there, and you know,
there's tracks along the people tracks along the river, and
I can see a blind in this one spot. I'm like, okay,
But you get in there and you're like, well, the
deer been browsing like crazy, and here here's a good crossing. Here,
here's a good crossing there. The cover is different. There's
actually like vibrant green plants growing along the river. I'm like,

(52:54):
this is probably just the next layer in. And you know,
we were we had a bunch of deer around us.
Decoyed went down the river and shot him and it
was like all we all I had to do was
sort of like forget about all the trucks, like forget that,
you know, like this is not what I expected, and
just go in and find them and then you work them.

(53:15):
And a lot of people just aren't you know. They
bring They bring us sort of a set of rules
to public land that just doesn't necessarily apply. You know,
like if you if you knock down a door somewhere
and walked in and you were gonna go sit, you
could go sit a field corner and shoot a deer,
right like, maybe probably not going to do that on
public land. In a lot of places, like it's going
to take a little bit. Like you mentioned about that

(53:36):
big when you were after how there's no bed to
food food to bed type of thing, Like you're not
you know, the cornfield isn't over there and the river
bottom isn't over there, Like it doesn't work that way.
But you're like, you know, there's soft edges in the woods,
and I'm starting to think about this. In fact, I
just wrote a Foundation's episode about it, Like the connective
tissue that the deer use, you know, like that that

(53:57):
river bottom buck eye killed. There were three river bottom
flats and the connective tissue was the shortest route between
them to stay hidden and stay in those willows and
shit like that and just not go into that wide
open woods where more people were. And it's like it's
a linear thing, right, like if they if they're over
here and they want to get over there, why what

(54:18):
are they going to use to get there? And that's
soft edge, Like you're talking about those real soft edges
in the woods, the big woods. They just use them.
They use them for cover, they use them for brows,
and they're just like one of those things that a
lot of people would walk through and just never pick
up on. But that's like, you know, you're hunting public land,
like you're working a giant deer. What is what is like?

(54:38):
What can you use to your advantage when you can't
use those train traps and an obvious A to B
type of food to bed thing or something and that
that shit's so fun.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Yeah, that was That was probably my biggest learning curve
of when I first started scouting in and then eventually
hunting this place. And you know, I got to give
props to my two buddies. I keep kind of referencing
and I'm not mentioning them in name because I'm sure
if they ever want their name mentioned, Like I've literally
like the one won't even come on my podcast, Like
he's like, I'm not coming on. So but because you know,

(55:13):
when I first started up there, the one, my one buddy,
you know, I don't remember how we met exactly, but
you know, he was like, hey, you know, let's go
walk the woods or whatever. And just because I was
not sure whenever I was seeing sign if it was
like if that sign was good or not for that
particular area, right because I wasn't seeing a lot of
it and I wasn't seeing big sign right, and so

(55:34):
I just needed some context. And so we walked the
woods a little bit and hung some trail cameras and
stuff like that, and like, and I was showing him like, hey,
this is the type of stuff. I'm fine. He's like, no,
that's good, and I was like, okay, cool. And then
I ended up meeting my other buddy. Those two were friends.
So that's how I met the other the other guy,
and then he and I would walk the woods and
stuff together, and they're both really really good hunters, and
so I was able to kind of they expedited my

(55:55):
learning curve in the area by kind of helping me
understand like what good sign is for that area, what
deer like to use in that area, how they kind
of use the soft edges and stuff like that a
little bit, you know, more effectively, where you're typically going
to find like sign typically right, or where you're going
to find pockets of deer, and so a place that

(56:16):
would have taken me probably five years to start to
learn to actually be able to hunt effectively, like you know,
with their help, it's like I was able to kind
of figure out what I needed to know within like
three years, you know, which was you know, props to
them for being cool and you know and helping me out.
But you're right, it's like, you know, it's figuring all
that little stuff out was was not just helpful for

(56:38):
that area, but it's also changes how I look at other,
like other landscapes as well. Right, So, whether I'm in
Kansas or whatever, like you start to kind of you
and I talk about this all the time. You start
to create these like analogs between different places right where
it's like I've never been here before and I've never
hunted this type of terrain, but man, it feels a
lot like this place I was in in Kansas or

(57:01):
this place I was in.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Missouri or whatever.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Right Like this creek crossing is not in Missouri, but
it's NPA. But man, it feels a lot like that
one setup that I had that was like a drainage
that went into lake to this lake, you know, And
so it's it's stuff like that that you start to
kind of start to kind of pick up on and
then you know ultimately what happened this you know, for
me this year is like you know, I've already kind

(57:25):
of started looking at the map and going like what
did I what did this deer teach me? You know
that I can use to look at this landscape a
little bit differently and start to like find other areas
I want to explore, Right. And so I've already kind
of started going through the map and kind of like
dropping pins in areas that aren't even necessarily close to

(57:48):
that particular area. Right. It's like, what are the things
that this place had that allowed this deer, you know
in and a couple others to reach a certain maturity
or a certain caliber, And where can I find that
in some of these other pockets? Right? And then the
second part of that is is like, you know, where

(58:09):
can I use like some interesting access to find these? Right?
And so like I'm starting to like double down on
it a little bit because I'm like, this is a place.
You know. You know, when you find certain places or
certain types of setups, you know, there's a reason why.
You know, if you're in any state that doesn't grow
giants consistently, right, if you're finding them somewhere, right, there's

(58:34):
a reason why.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Right.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
It's just like when you're trying to hunt a deer,
it's like you don't you don't take things at face value,
ask like well, why did he do this? Why did
he go here? Why why was he here on this date?

Speaker 2 (58:43):
And so.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
And so you know what I'm starting to do now
is ask like, well, why was why was he able
to grow so old in that particular area? Right? Like
what did it have that let him do that? Right?
And then where else can I where else do I
see that like similarities? Right? And like let me go
explore those, because chances are you know, when you're talking

(59:07):
about big woods like that, you know there's I mean,
there's deer in this in this in this area that
I probably have never seen a person before, right, Like
I feel pretty confident in saying that, you know. And
so with that, it's like then they they have the
opportunity to get age on them, right, And so you know,

(59:27):
there's there's got to be more like him somewhere. You
just have to, you know, put the work into to
try to find them, right, And I'm not hung up
on trophy hunting necessarily, but boy, it's fun to chase
them like that because you know, you just they give
you a different lens into their world than you know,
other than younger deers. Just don't just don't give you, right,

(59:49):
they just don't make the mistakes, they don't leave as
much sign They make you work for everything, you know,
and it's just a different it's just a different experience.
And and that to me is like the fun part, right,
Like is just that experience. So like, give me like
one hundred and thirty inch like seven year old deer.
It's like I'd love to chase that deer, you know
what I mean, Like because that's just he's been around

(01:00:09):
the block, man, Like he's not gonna You're not gonna
kill him sitting on the inside corner of like foots.
It's just not gonna happen, you know what I mean.
Like you're gonna have to kill him in this funky
little setup somewhere that like you wouldn't even think that
a deer would you know, walk through that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Area or whatever the case is.

Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Well, I mean that's that's what I was gonna say,
you know, listening to you, I am not a one
buck hunter generally, but every once in a while I
find one that makes me a one one buck hunter quickly.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
And the one thing about you know, the times that
I've done it, it makes me think about deer in
such a different way than I usually do. I had
this buck in southeastern Minnesota on this farm, you know,
quite a few years ago that was probably pushing booner,
really cool deer, high and tight, just cool lass buck.

(01:01:07):
And that dude was spending a lot of time in
a valley on this one property, and he he taught
me so much about like like the real nocturnal nature
of some of these deer, but also just thinking about
individual trails. I mean there was a trail that he
took back to go to bed, very consistent, and it

(01:01:31):
was like it bothered me so much because I knew
the trail, I knew where to set up, and I
knew that he wasn't coming through there in daylight. And
it just like instead of thinking about that farm like
I usually do, where I'm like where can I run
into a decent book, Like I just want a good one,
Like I don't you know, I said this part, this
part's a big farm. I was like obsessed with that

(01:01:53):
stupid ass valley, scouting it, looking for shann Antler's in it,
running trail cameras on different trails leading out, and it
was like it kind of occurred to me and I
never killed that deer, by the way, but it occurred
to me, like, I'm learning more about this this particular
area in one season that I have in twenty years
of hunting there because this deer likes to use it.

(01:02:15):
And that was it, you know, And you you mentioned
how we talk a lot about how, you know, figuring
out you know, why, why does why did that buck
have the opportunity to get to two hundred inches out there?
How did he get that age on him? What? Where
was his where were his sanctuaries? Like what was his
like hideout strategy? How did he do it? When you

(01:02:35):
when you start figuring that stuff out and taking it
on the road with you or taking it to another place,
or using that on another giant you find three years
down the road, it's so beneficial. And you you mentioned that,
and you said something way earlier about figuring out that
this this deer had a very distinctive rub pattern, and
it reminded me. So I killed a buck a long

(01:02:56):
time ago, probably eight B nine something like that. I
had bow hunt this deer in north central Minnesota. He's
like one hundred and thirty inch nine pointer, but he
was the biggest deer on this place. I had had
eighty acres to hunt, and he was living in a
cattail slough, and I'll tell you what, that son of
a bitch just had that little sanctuary figure. He was

(01:03:17):
unapproachable most of the time, and you'd see him in there,
you know, like I glassed him in the summer, and
I kept finding these tracks. These the biggest tracks I
found on the farm had this like wonky kind of
toe shape where it was like a very distinct and
I remember like, like, that's got to be that deer,
Like there's there's probably not another deer here that's like

(01:03:38):
of that maturity level. And I ended up killing that
buck with a rifle, like totally just scummed into him,
bought a rifle tag that I'd never bought before, walked
into that cattail sou like six days in the deer season,
and he followed a dough through there, and I thumped
him and it was stupid, but that deer had that
distinctive hoof pattern, so it was him. And so even

(01:03:59):
just like I think about that all the time now
because I'm hunting cat taill slews a lot and where
I live is very sandy, so tracks are a big deal,
like we just you know, like I use tracks a lot,
and I'm like, man, I think back to that deer
in that season often, and it's not you know, it's
not like a huge buck. It wasn't like a particularly

(01:04:20):
special thing. But the journey that that deer took me
on is like still there's still payoffs to this day
from it. And that's I mean it's like I kind
of shit on mark and is like name and bucks
and stuff like that sometimes, but really, this this one
buck thing, well I should hun him for a lot
of reasons most justified it, but that that style of

(01:04:43):
just going that's the one and I'm going to figure
it out. That brings you to a different place as
a deer hunter, and it's definitely can be like very beneficial.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Yeah for sure. And that was that was the biggest
thing for me, was you know, just how much more
I had to pay attention to detail on this hunt,
you know, hunting this particular deer, and how much more
keyed into detail I was than on other hunts, right,
for for whatever reason, well for an obvious reason, right,

(01:05:16):
And it made me kind of think, like, man, like
you should be keyed in like this all the time.
Like when you're hunting, you know, and a lot of
times I'm not. You know, It's like I'm just kind
of like, hey, there's some rubs.

Speaker 6 (01:05:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
It's like in oh, cool, well there are some scrapes,
and why are they there?

Speaker 7 (01:05:29):
All?

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
Right? Cool? You know it's set up here, But it's not.
It's because I'm not hunting a specific deer and trying
to figure out what this deer is going to do.
I'm just trying to figure out what some deer will do, right,
And it becomes different if you're looking for a specific one,
because it's just like when you think about sociology versus psychology, right,
Sociology is the study of groups, right, and psychology is

(01:05:49):
the study of the individual, right, And hunting a specific
deer is like taking a psychology course and not a
sociology course. Right. It's like I'm trying to understand one, right,
not I don't care how the group, because that one,
especially if they got age on him, like they don't
act like the other deers, especially whenever they get to
that you know, older age class, right, like they just

(01:06:10):
you know, this dear, particularly like you would see some
like trail camera intel on him, where he was with
other deer, I can think of like a couple, but like,
by and large, most of the stuff I had of
him like he was by himself, Like he wasn't very
often with with other deer, even in the summer, you know,
Like I remember, I can think of like maybe two

(01:06:30):
years ago, like maybe a couple of trail camera pictures
that we got to him on this one scrape where
he was with another buck, but I don't it wasn't
more than like a handful of pictures, right, it might
even been the same from the same day, like just
like the rapid burst or whatever. And then this year
in last year, me personally, like on the cameras that
I was running, like, I don't have him on camera

(01:06:53):
with any deer ever, you know. And so which would
make sense because when he was like we got you know,
he was young. He was a younger deer, right, and
so maybe a little bit more amiable to be around,
or maybe a little bit more interested in being around
other deer or whatever. But it seemed like now as
he got older, like he had no interest in being
around other deer no matter what time of year it was,

(01:07:15):
you know. He really kind of became a recluse, and
like that was kind of telling, right, not just for him,
but like how I think about whenever I'm trying to
find another good deer or older deer. And then there
was like you, I won't mention what they were, but
there were two like habitat types that I found in
proximity to one another that I felt like was the

(01:07:36):
thing right for why he was spending time in an area.
And I was talking to another buddy of mine who
hunts a lot of big woods, and he was on
a hammer this year and I think he missed like
one hundred and sixty inch deer public land in Pennsylvania,
and I was talking to him about it, and he knew.
I sent him a picture of like a scrape and

(01:07:57):
a rub or whatever, and where I was at. He's like,
oh man, he's like I love that area. He's like
that's he's like that habitat rate there. He was like it,
like he's like, you'd be surprised how many how often
I find the biggest deer in those in those areas, right,
And so that was kind of like when the light
bulb went off, I was like, oh, wait a minute, okay.

(01:08:18):
I was like it's this piece here that's next to
this piece, and it makes a lot of sense why
he's here now. And so when I say I start
to look for those things now, it's like if I
can find a place where those two types of habitat
are adjacent to one another, It's like that to me
is like where where like the light bulb starts to
go off right, you know, And that's the type of
Those are the types of lessons that you take with
you, you know, as far as cutting tracks, like I tried,

(01:08:40):
like this area a lot of grass, leaf cover, hard soil,
like hard ground, or you're in a swamp with like
mud and you know, uh heavy, you know, dense foliage
or whatever that you're not going to see a track.
But I did cut a good track on like the
next to last day that I was hunting, and I
know that wasn't this deer. And oddly enough, it was

(01:09:02):
like by where I parked my truck. I didn't see
it when I pulled in in the morning and I
was getting ready, I was coming out at night and
had my head lamps down and opened up my back
door and I was like, holy shit, man, that's a
big track, and got down and looked at it was
like the size of my hand, you know, And so
I was like, all right, it wasn't in the right
area for it to be him. But I was like, okay.
And the crazy thing was, is I think it's a

(01:09:22):
younger deer. It was on hard ground too, so it
wasn't like there was splay or anything like that, you
know what I mean. But the his hooves were still
kind of pointy, you know what I mean, So where
it's like it's a big track, but it was still
kind of a younger deer because they weren't starting to
round quite yet, you know. So you know, maybe next
year for that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
So you got you got a text with a picture
of this giant dead and you don't know how he died.

Speaker 3 (01:09:52):
No, no, you know, it's the area he was in.
You know, it could have been a hunter that shot
him and like just never found him. Possibly. You know
the picture that I saw, like there wasn't any entry
or exit wounds and I could see back to like
midway through his ribs or whatever, and so it doesn't
look like you was shot unless it was like a

(01:10:14):
really bad shot, like you know, guts type of situation.
And the coyotes had got to him, and I could
only see like basically from like the back of his
ribs ounce I couldn't see like his his his hind
quarters or his his his guts, or he could have
got hit on the road, you know. So that's you
don't know, you know, I don't know if we ever
ever figured it out, you know, And it doesn't really matter,

(01:10:38):
you know, to me, honestly, it's like he's not there
to he's not there to hunt anymore, you know, which
is a bummer, But you know, you just hate to
see you know, I hope I hope fingers crossed that
a hunter shot him and that they they get to
claim him, you know, like that's that's what my hope is,
just because I hate to see an animal like that,
you know, get hit on the freaking road and like

(01:11:00):
end up in the game commission, you know, you get
scrapped or whatever. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
So yeah, so you're you're moving on from this. Yeah,
it doesn't really matter how he was killed, because now
he's just dead. But it's yeah, you know, I mean,
it sucks that it played out that way, but it's
also just like such a gift to have that opportunity

(01:11:25):
for a season. I mean, I know when I talked
to you the other night, dude, you were burned, and
this was before you knew he was dead and you
were you were kind of running on e But that's
what that kind of thing is going to do to you.
But yeah, I mean, you you're not going to get
that chance. That's just not going to happen very often.
It's incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think in total, I think
from October fifth till I think the last day I
hunted was like the seventeenth or something like that. I
think was the last day that I hunted. I ended
up hunting him twenty six days, and I ended up
sleeping in my truck or in my trailer, like you know,

(01:12:04):
cause there were days where I didn't hunt, or it
was a Sunday that I didn't hunt, or it was
the day where it's like, well, the first day I
was gonna hunt because the wind was right and the
weather was right, but then it got warm, I wouldn't
hunt the next day and it's gonna hut the day after.
So there was like some of that where I was
just spending time there. So it's like one hunted him
twenty six days and you know, I think I slept
in my truck or my trailer like thirty thirty couple

(01:12:25):
days or something like that overall within like that month
and a half time period, so about half the days
that you could possibly hunt him, like I hunted him essentially,
you know. You know, and my wife, you know, got
to love her man because she was like never said
like when are you coming home or what are you doing?
Like there was another editing of that. She was always
like when I get back, She's like when you going

(01:12:45):
back up? And I'm like, uh. I would literally come
home on like a Sunday, go to jiu jitsu train
and be like, yeah, I'm leaving Tuesday after jiu jitsu,
you know what I mean, Like, and I'm gonna be
there Tuesday, Wenesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday next week, you know.
And so there was a lot of that, you know,
but I will say I will say this because you know,
I think we get wrapped and I certainly did, like

(01:13:07):
I got wrapped up into this, and there were a
few moments where I, you know, I try to remind
myself like when the grind's happening, and like you're just
not feeling it right, and you just you want to
be anywhere but in the woods that at that moment,
for whatever reason, I try to just remind myself to
be and I kept saying this to myself, like be
where your feet are, Like be where your feet are.
Don't wish the time away, don't wish you were somewhere else.

(01:13:29):
You know, there is no place better to be in
the world than where you're at right now, right, just
like in general, right because it's really easy, especially when
things aren't going your way or you're you know, you're
not feeling like you're on him or whatever the case is,
where you can really start to kind of get down.
And there was an older fellow that I met. He's

(01:13:50):
in his sixties, he's retired, and when I be's sleeping
in my truck, he just so happened to like the
park and sleep at the same spot because you can
really see the stars in this area. And he's retired,
and so he has a little set up in the
back of his truck that he sleeps in. And so
the first night, you know, because this all started in August,
because there was an area I thought I could kill
him in and and uh, I needed to see what

(01:14:14):
the thermals were gonna do, and I got the right
wind that I would want, would I would hunt that
area on And so I went up in August before
I left to go Elk County in and Idaho, slept
in the bed of my truck, got up at like,
you know, five o'clock in the morning, and hiked in
so I could get into that tree. Literally climbed into
the tree with my saddle, like got set up like
I was gonna hunt, you know, obviously no bo or anything,

(01:14:36):
and set up and just sat there and waited for
the sun to come up to see what the thermal
was going to do when the sun came up, based
on that prevailing wind that I was getting that day, right,
So that's kind of how obsessed I was. Like I
was there in the summer, like sleeping in my truck,
like getting into setups like to check thermals and stuff.
And he happened to be there that night when I
pulled in, and I'm like, man, who the hell is

(01:14:57):
in this parking parking spot? You know, I mean, like
it's like, is this guy knew about this big deer?
And like I'm already battling like some guy like in August,
you know, and uh, older guy he hunted the area
a lot, told him what I was up to, and
so he was like, you know, he hunts that general area.
And he was like, Hey, I'm going to stay out
of this area if you're if you're on something good,
I don't want to booker you up. He's like, I'm not,

(01:15:17):
I'm gonna hunt this, I'm gonna go over this other area.
We exchanged numbers and stuff, and he would text me
every so often, and I went up a couple of
different weekends to you know, to scout and do stuff
and uh, and he was there almost every time. Right.
He was doing some drywall work for you know, he's retired,
but he was doing some like freelance drywall work for

(01:15:38):
like a buddy of his that he knew in that area.
And he would just go there and sleep in the evenings,
right because he just like the stars, and he likes
to camp, and he loves the fish. He's a woodsman,
you know, and he just thought it was the coolest
thing that I was trying to kill this particular deer.
And so we really hit it off and he let
me know, get we out on the topic of like
family or something like that, and uh, on the topic

(01:15:59):
of wives or whatever the case is, you know, and
maybe he was like, here, you spend a lot of
time up here, and I was like, yeah. I was like, well,
you know, maybe I said something about like, you know,
you know, what's your wife thinking you camping out here
or whatever the case is, you know what I mean,
like just talking some snack. And he let me know
that his wife of like whatever it was like forty
years had passed away, right, which was was you know,

(01:16:19):
obviously sad, he's widowed, and so we were kind of
talking about it. Let Be asked me how long I've
been married, and I told him, you know, you know
a little over twenty years now. And and I just
asked him, hey, you know, cause he's a happy, go
lucky guy man, you know, he had he's had a
good life. And I was like, what's the key to
that kind of marriage where it's like you get to
do all this outdoor stuff and you know, and because

(01:16:41):
he he's always done that. And he said, just make
sure that you always give more than you take, was
what he told me, right, And so I remember I
was sitting in the tree on the day before I
came home and I was just thinking to myself, like
reminding myself to be where my feet are. And I
thought to myself back to that conversation, and I asked myself,

(01:17:04):
have I have I given more than I've taken to
this point And the answer was was no. And I
was like, I've taken my fair share of this false
time for me to go home. And so I just
kind of made the decision and that was gonna be
the last day I was going to hunt. And then
subsequently the next day I found out that deer got killed,
and it was his words of wisdom that kind of
like was like, because I was struggling, man, I was like,

(01:17:26):
I don't want to go home. I was getting prepared
to like work and hunt from the trailer for like
the next week, you know what I mean, like this
week actually, and and I was just thinking about him
and what he told me, the advice he gave me,
and I was like, nope, I've taken my fair share.
I was like, it's time for me to go home
and be where my feet are. My feet should be there.
And so, you know, we get crazy on big deer,

(01:17:48):
you know, and love chasing them, but at the end
of the day, you know, they don't matter. And that
was kind of you know, my one buddy or you know,
mutual friend of ours, Chad, you know, text me about it.
I said, you know that as like it sucks, you know,
the deer got killed. I was like, but you know,
in the grand scheme of things, that di didn't matter
a whole lot. You know, It's like I learned a lot.
I had a great time chasing him, and I was like,

(01:18:10):
the man, I'm a fortunate guy with the life that
I have, you know, I was like, and I need
to remember that, you know, above all else and everything
else will work itself out.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
Dude. That's so I'm so glad you said that, because
it's so true that. I mean, that deer is cool
as hell, right, and that's just like a that's like
a special thing. But the thing that's really cool about
it is just the challenge, like just just finding that challenge,
trying to try to level up to it, getting as
close as you can, putting in that work, doing your thing,

(01:18:41):
seeing what it's all about. And then okay, well now
he's dead, Like what's next, Like, wait, how are you
going to keep yourself going? As a person, you know,
and we we joked about this a little bit, but
I gotta I gotta ask this before you wrap this up.
Are you going to take that stick bow out and
go stick a forky or something now, just to get
like a palette cleanser out. I think you should.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
Yeah, it's laying right back there. I've been shooting at
the past couple of days because, uh, you know, I've
basically was going to plan to hunt with it all year,
was my plan, and then this dear showed up and
I was like, man, I'm not going to take a
risk of, like, you know, having an encounter with this deer,
and it'd be the first year I'm using a stick
bow and screw it up. And so I put it
on the back burner and then picked it back up,

(01:19:21):
and uh, yeah, I'm gonna take that out. I'm gonna
go out Saturday to some spots, a spot locally, you know,
where I know there's some deer, and we'll see what
comes through. I haven't checked a single trail camera locally,
so I have no clue what's happening around me. So
it's gonna literally just be you know, probably kayaking into
a spot that I like actually where I killed my
buck last year, and and kayak into there and take

(01:19:42):
the stick bow along and see if we can make
some magic happen. And and that's going to be you know,
that's probably what's gonna what's gonna transpire. There's one other
deer that I'm kind of interested in.

Speaker 8 (01:19:52):
He uh he.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
He has a kind of time frame. He's a very
kind of he's a late season deer, I guess I
should say. And so we'll probably make a run at
him if I don't kill anything in the next like
two weeks here at home. But yeah, that's kind of
the that's the plan. We're just gonna have fun now.
You know the stress, the stress is over, you know
what I mean. It's like, you know, it's you have
an experience like that, and you know he's not there,

(01:20:17):
and so the pressure is all kind of off at
this point. It's like everything's gravy, you know. So there's
no you know, if I get deer walks in and
I got the stick bow in my hand, I get
fired up. You know, I'm gonna let one rip. You know.
That's the that's the game plan.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
Dude, I love it, buddy. Truth from the Stand Podcast
Where do people find you out there?

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
Clinton the dot com. Truth from Stand dot Com is
the website, all the stuff's on their YouTube channels, Truth
from the Stand, Instagram, you know, Apple Spot, all the
normal places where you can find uh find content. You
can find my nonsense there too.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
Lots of lots of great guests on there. You do
do an awesome job with that podcast. I've been on
there a bunch of times. Sorry he didn't get that,
dear buddy, but it sounds like it still worked out
pretty well for you. Thank you so much for coming on, man.
I love chatting with you.

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
You too, buddy. I appreciate you having me and hope
Mark's feeling better.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
That's it for this week, folks. Make sure to tune
in every week for more whitetail goodness. I'm your guest host,
Tony Peterson and this has been a Wired to Hunt
podcast which is brought to you by First Life. I
want to thank you guys so much for your support.
We truly appreciate it here at meat Eater. And if
you want some more content, you can head on over
to the medeater dot com and get your fill podcast,

(01:21:33):
video series, articles, maybe do a little shopping maybe find
a recipe whatever. Maybe you're just bored with your commute,
or you're gonna head out on some late season trip
somewhere and you need to fill the time. You need
to go check out Clay's Bargeres podcast, Brent Reeves This
Country Life. We have a lot of really cool shows
out there for you to listen to that aren't whitetail

(01:21:53):
related necessarily, but they're pretty dang interesting and pretty fun
to listen to. Go check them out at the meadeater
dot com and as always, thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 8 (01:22:08):
It's that time of the year again. I'm back.

Speaker 6 (01:22:11):
Marcus Kenyon. How are you your son of a gadwall?
You look terrible. I'm just kidding her, am I I'm sorry.
I'm late. I crashed my recumbent bicycle into the side
of a quiz nose and I know what you're thinking.
I am as sober as a newborn blue crab. I
swear to you, this is just kombucha. I'm watching the
gut health. You gotta do it as you get older.

(01:22:31):
And also I'm wearing this ankle bracelet that makes a
beep beep sound if I have a drop of the stuff. Also,
alerts the authorities, who in turn alert my parole officer.
So there'll be none of that in the studio today,
I promise you.

Speaker 8 (01:22:44):
Let's get go.

Speaker 6 (01:22:45):
Oh you're queuing it up already.

Speaker 8 (01:22:48):
Okay. I thought we've learned.

Speaker 6 (01:22:49):
A lesson this year, but I guess not.

Speaker 8 (01:22:51):
Here we go.

Speaker 5 (01:22:53):
I love those dagy b wat, those beachy, big big
white tails. I love those beachy big dot hhat e
e tails. I love those beachy big white.

Speaker 6 (01:23:13):
Tails, big white tails, big white tails.

Speaker 8 (01:23:19):
Big white tails are great? Hold what fun it is
to sit in the freezing cold tree all day?

Speaker 6 (01:23:27):
Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great?

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
Hold?

Speaker 6 (01:23:33):
What fun it is to sit in the freezing cold
tree all day? Dashing through the woods for the morning
light turns great across the fields and draws, creep in
all the way, climb into the tree.

Speaker 8 (01:23:51):
Big bucks are on the way. What fun is to
sit and wait for my gosh don deer all day?

Speaker 5 (01:24:00):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (01:24:00):
Big, I'm sorry?

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
What is this?

Speaker 8 (01:24:04):
Pisocato strings? Who do you think I am? And you
get this out here? I don't want to hear it.

Speaker 6 (01:24:10):
Thank you, Big white tails, big white tails, big white
tails are great? Hold? Fun it is to sit in
the freezing cold tree all day. I hope sand dreams
are high the rut. He's finally here. Mark said, it's
the most wonderful time to kill o whitetail deer bingch

(01:24:33):
points sand pettings where you'll find me hanging twenty feet
in a tree, grunt tubes my bow inspector Cambo, it's
really Camby be.

Speaker 8 (01:24:44):
He or two ago.

Speaker 6 (01:24:46):
I thought that this was fun, but now I'm frozen
to my seat and the good times they are gone.
I've ate up all my snacks, my hands and toes
unnumb and we're gonna climbed down from my stand.

Speaker 8 (01:25:02):
That son of a bud decided to come on those.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Pie g b wat takes. Those you b g b
wat takes.

Speaker 6 (01:25:16):
I love those be and g bigup y eight shot
gi eat jail. I don't know why this is happening,
I swear to God, Oh officer, what seems to be
the problem here?

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
This?

Speaker 6 (01:25:28):
I don't know why this is happening. It must be
a malfunction, you know. Sometimes it happens when the batteries
run low.

Speaker 8 (01:25:33):
You don't know. You don't need to smell that, that's
just kombucha. I okay, yes, you've got me.

Speaker 6 (01:25:39):
It's ever clear and pacific COOLi Caprice son. I am
so so sorry. I don't know why my life has
brought me here. Mark Marcus, I'm so sorry. Enjoy the
rut or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
Good luck.

Speaker 6 (01:25:54):
Boys, Good to see you, Hayden. It's been a while. Hey, sorry,
I'm late. I crashed my pontiacain take into a light
pole and had to walk the rest of the way.

Speaker 8 (01:26:01):
But I'm here now. That's what matters.

Speaker 6 (01:26:03):
Give you a glass of Scotch, please, Hayden. Just two
rocks in there. I don't my guys, we're starting already.
This is happening.

Speaker 8 (01:26:10):
Okay, just give me the give me the glass, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
Okay, here we go.

Speaker 8 (01:26:13):
It's the most wonderful time.

Speaker 6 (01:26:16):
To kill deer. With the run now just starting and
dashing and dotting and veins cutting clean.

Speaker 8 (01:26:27):
It's the most wonderful time.

Speaker 6 (01:26:30):
To kill deer.

Speaker 8 (01:26:32):
There's far too much ice in this glass.

Speaker 6 (01:26:34):
It's the half happy season of all. There's gotta be
at least twelve cues with grunting and bleeding and cold
fronts and sleeting.

Speaker 8 (01:26:45):
The last weeks of fun.

Speaker 6 (01:26:48):
It's the half happy seedssin of home.

Speaker 7 (01:26:55):
There'll be pictures for posting and bragging and boasting and
rug beds with big Bucks and toe. There'll be narrow
miss stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks
missed with our bulls. It's the most wonderful time to
kill deer, not just one baby two. There will be

(01:27:19):
no dose of blowing and looming knocks glowing and blood
trails so clean.

Speaker 8 (01:27:26):
It's the most wonderful time to kill de Excuse me,
Can I have a napkin?

Speaker 6 (01:27:34):
Please?

Speaker 8 (01:27:35):
I just spilled some scotch on my loafers. I can't
have dirty loafers in the studio. Thank you tailgate beers
for drinking, and Big Bucks is slinking.

Speaker 6 (01:27:44):
And chasing and sent jacking does They'll be fighting.

Speaker 8 (01:27:48):
And scraping and no more escaping and arrow shot true
hitting key change. But no one told me that it's
the most wonderful time to kill deer. I was very
unprepared for this.

Speaker 6 (01:28:07):
There will be much morning sitting in cold fronts, are
hitting the dawn, Kristen clean. It's the most wonderful time, Oh,
the most wonderful time, Yes, the most swonderful time.

Speaker 8 (01:28:26):
To kill dear. There's too much ice in the glass rocks,

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Host

Mark Kenyon

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