The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 023

Episode Date: December 4, 2015

Cazenovia, Wisconsin. After whitetail deer hunting opening day on the Duren family farm, Steven Rinella talks with Doug "Buckman" Duren, Brittany Brothers, Helen Cho, Janis Putelis, and Mahting Putelis. Subjects discussed: blaukš!, or the Latvian bang; similarities between opening day and Christmas; similarities between opening day and war; mooching for whitetails; The Wet Spot (or what Steve would name his bar if he had one); The Standard; Steve's alternative big buck management plan; thoughts on antlers; after-kill rituals; and why people want to let small animals go, aside from the fact that they don't have as much meat. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. We all learned a new Latvian word. It's blouch!

Blouch! You've missing a K. If a Latvian is telling a hunting story and they get to the part where you'd go like let's say i'm telling a story i'm like and he ran out across the field and i was going blam blam blam a lab would say i went blotch blotch, Yanni? You got it. With a little bit of K in there. Bloat.

Bloat. Yanni Van Zwals, brother Matting Putellis is with us. Another Latvian speaker. Joined by Doug Dern. Howdy. We're in Doug's hall of trophies right now. Doug, while I go around the room introducing everybody else,

can you count how many deer are in here? Brittany Brothers. Just got her second and third whitetails of the season. Ellen Cho, first whitetail buck ever for her. And then there's a couple people that are just sitting here. Kevin Biermeier and Jared Fink. Back to Blouch. Say it, Martin.

Blouch. Blouch. Blouch. I met Giannis and Martin's father over a year ago, but I visited with him yesterday, and he shared a story with me where he was talking about why deer camp is important. And he said that it was helpful to show, it was a helpful way to demonstrate different kinds of social relationships and social interactions to your son.

Like you bring your son to deer camp and he sees how people relate and how people have traditions. And as he's telling me this story, he's talking about bringing young Yanni to a deer camp where someone had a lot of girly magazines stapled up

on the walls. How old were you, Yanni? Probably eight or nine. He said twelve. Your dad said twelve. He said twelve? I think he was just trying to clean the story up a little bit. His dad, so you were.

You can hunt at 12 here or is it 14? 12. 12. So that was my first year with a rifle, and I definitely came a few years prior to that. So you were 12? No, I'm saying, no, I don't know if it was 12 or 9. So he was between 9 and 12. And his father's telling me this story.

And he says, of young Yanni walking into this room he says yeah and let me the the the i think it was a trailer at that time because it wasn't at the camp that we stay at we would go visit the neighbors you know see what everybody was up to and the guy they were latvians too or no yeah yeah but he had a he had a latvian american what do you call it helen when it's half korean half english when you speak it oh konglish konglish creole there's a lot of like language language talk going on but anyway so this guy had this nickname like they speak in a half Latvian, half English. Yeah, it's probably more like

an 80-20-90 thing. Yanni and his dad were doing that earlier today. Or was it yesterday? Oh, yesterday. Saw this big haze of hairy meat. Anyways, his nickname was Two Meals. Two Meals. Well, that's what it was spawned from.

Because he was a big guy And he always ate Two Meals And so that was combined And his nickname was Two Meals For the longest time I just thought That was his last name I thought his name was Giannis Two Meals

I thought that was his last name too Right but actually no That is just a nickname Because the dude always ate two meals. Huh. Because two meals is a very Latvian-sounding name. Right. What's his last name?

When you put the flair on it. What's his last name? People who go... Inves. Oh. That's funny. I want to get back to what I was talking about. This is the boringest...

No, go ahead. Okay, so... I thought it was a cool nickname. Oh That's funny I want to get back To what I was talking about This is the boringest Sorry No go ahead Okay so What was this real Cool nickname No it is a cool nickname But now you guys are arguing Over what it's real name was

No I was just You just tell me Anyway So Yanni's dad Is nostalgic And he says Talking about Yanni At deer camp

And he's explaining Yanni walking into this House with all the Girly magazines on the wall and he goes i can't remember exactly he says uh this was the first time in yanni's life when he had so much pussy laid out before him and there's a picture of him right over his head. I love your dad, man. Your dad's great.

I was just slightly disappointed he didn't have an accent, but that's my only thing. You didn't think he had an accent? I thought he would have an accent. You thought he had an accent? Yeah, he has an accent. He doesn't have an accent, but he loves to do, like at Yanni's wedding, he comes out and gives his speech

as if he shows up and he goes, I can't do it real well, but he's like, hello, how everybody doing tonight? Sorry, my English not very good. I'm from Latvia. good yeah he did it no no and he had he had a bunch of southerners going because they really thought he maybe didn't he was just off the boat yeah but that's sad yeah well i think we talked about

last time we last time we dug you count up the buck racks in here uh he's too busy taking selfies over there I don't know he got distracted Helen can you count the buck racks so last time we were in last time we recorded in here we were talking about 24

24 buck racks in here um last time we were here we were talking about the proximity of the Latvian area the Latvian hunting camp area to Doug's place and we were here we were talking about the proximity to the Latvian area the Latvian hunting camp area to Doug's place and we were just here for to participate in and celebrate

the opening day of Wisconsin's firearm deer season and Yanni's dad was at with some Latvians eating Latvian rye bread with liverwurst

on it and eating pea dogs. Say it. Pea dogs. And he dropped by to see us, but we did three days of full balls

with Skani Whitetail hunting. Opening day. You guys had Helen and Brittany, you'd never participated in this sort of thing. When it comes to opening day

traditions, people bring up, people say two things. They say that it feels like Christmas and it feels like a war zone. You can say that for sure. Sounds like a war zone. Yes. Feels like Christmas, sounds like a war zone. What was your impression?

I mean, can you get what the whole opening day deal is about? Oh, without a doubt. I mean mean there was a big hullabaloo about it the night before you know everybody comes into deer camp everyone's got their spots and then yeah i mean we got there and even before shooting light we heard doesn't stop them right well before it's shooting for some of them the anticipation is just too much there's some you know the Christmas analogy there's some guys that always peak

they always like to get on the middle of the night and peak there was a guy well one he was what was unique about the guy that shot very early is he was a one shot guy most Wisconsinites like to clear What was unique about the guy that shot very early is he was a one-shot guy. Most Wisconsinites like to clear their magazine before they register about whether any of the hits might have hit.

Because there's no way that you could be shooting and mentally registering the results of the shot as fast as what you hear some shooting around here. I wish you could see that. It's like, sploach, sploach, sploach, sploach. How would you possibly know if any of those shots hit? I think what you're failing to recognize is that it's possibly two or three guys

standing together all blouching at the same time. That could be. Yeah, because I had a conversation with a, I'm not going to name his name, but a man I've come to love over the years who just stopped by, because people stop by a lot during the opening days of deer season. He stopped by and he was saying that the one nice buck they saw wasn't big enough to, quote, get us out of the truck. Which would imply, yeah, if they jumped out, there could have been some blouches without anyone registering what was going on.

I'm joking, of course. But it's an enormous amount of shooting. I think Durkin... Didn't Durkin once calculate, or he at least published this, that on opening day, right?

A deer... A second. A deer a second gets killed in Wisconsin. That article. A deer a second? A deer per second in killed in Wisconsin. That article. A deer a second? A deer per second in Wisconsin is the title of that article. All day. Or like between which hours.

Well, there's hundreds of thousands of deer. How many seconds are in a day? Why do you look at me to do that? Because you're always doing little chores on your phone. I got somebody doing that for me over here now. No, and was it you that brought it up? That's the third standing army? That is such a bullshit.

It's been going on. That conversation has been going on. It comes out every year. This is the third largest army in the world. 86,400 seconds. There's a lot of deer hunters in Wisconsin. So then there's a deer second. No, because here's the third largest army in the world. 86,400 seconds. There's a lot of deer hunters in Wisconsin. So then there's a deer second. No, because here's the thing.

The whole thing that Wisconsin has the third largest standing. It's like, define a standing army. It's not a standing army. It's a third largest army on that particular day. It's the third largest army of people seated on buckets. That could possibly rise up in arms. And then it's always, and nobody got hurt. Well, somebody always gets hurt.

I'm guessing that guy, that early shot. I always wonder, how does that happen? It's got to be somebody loading a rifle. That was what we thought, too. Accidental discharge. In the morning, you thought it was accidental discharge. I mean, it was dark. It was 20 minutes before shooting light.

I hope the statute of limitations has run out on this because I'm going to tell in Michigan opening day. Wisconsin does a wacky where you can't tell when it's going to happen. Third Saturday in November. Yeah, they confuse

it. In Michigan, it's just like the same date every year. Which is ridiculous. Third Saturday means third Saturday, which is always the Saturday before Thanksgiving. You always know when deer season is. I don't mean the real deer season. I don't mean that bow hunting thing. Yeah, so in Michigan, it's not like that. So out of every seven opening days, five of them requires you to get out of something.

And when I was in college, I went briefly to Lake Superior State University, and this guy had – did I ever tell this story? I think I was talking about this this guy this professor had this thing you couldn't if you missed certain number of days you could never get higher than did i tell you this story i've pretty much heard all your stories i think but tell it anyway tell it anyway for the audience it's just killing me that i can't think if i told this or not does this ring a bell? The class I'm talking about? You haven't told it on the podcast. I've heard it before in the blind.

A thousand times. In a blind, but not in a podcast. Okay, so I'll tell it. It's a great story. This guy, this professor had this rule that once you miss a certain number of classes, you couldn't get anything better than a C, no matter how good you did.

And it was a class that was like a speaking class. And I missed all my days, and then opening day comes up. And if I go deer hunting on the opening day, I can't get any better than a C. And I was like, I'm not going to let this man steal this from me, this opening day situation. So we drove. It was a morning class. It was an 8 a.m. class.

Drove down to hunt, and we were hunting on a guy named Herb Scales' place, and he'd gotten in some trouble with some messing up of wetlands at the time, so we called him herbicide scales but uh he we went out to hunt his place and it was kind of getting light out not really by the time i didn't really know about really the the what time i just knew this opening day and he didn't you're not looking at your watch you're looking at whether you can see the deer or not. And a deer runs out in front of me and stops, like aware of me in the darkness. And it was so dark, I remember that I got down with my cheek to the ground in order to skylight the deer's head. And I could skylight the deer and see that it had antlers. Then I found its white throat patch in my scope,

but it was so dark I couldn't see the crosshairs. And I just imagined centering the throat patch in the center of my scope and blouch! Yeah, I was early for class that day. Huh. I didn't even gut it. I drug it onto the trail where I knew my brother would hit it on the way out of his blind

and boogied off and made it to class. And to date that class, I'll tell you this. This will date me and date the class. We had to do one of our speeches we had to give to the class was a speech where you try to convince someone of something. And there was a dude doing a thing. He was arguing that you should not be buying tapes anymore. You should start buying CDs.

Yeah. He was like, man, tapes are done, dude. CDs is where it's at. They last longer. Blouch. So, opening day, you get up and it's going to be the day.

If, if like, if you don't get a deer on opening day, your chances of getting a deer go down. I remember in Michigan, they used to say, if you didn't kill deer on opening day, your odds of getting a deer that deer season were reduced by 50%. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps

that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. We saw an opening day 23 deer. He's 16. You know what I mean? That was sitting dawn till dusk. so you're sitting in the woods from

legal hour but we were there hour before legal shooting light right so we're there at 5 30 um and we sat till legal last legal shooting light ended at like 504 yep you were there all day did it all day next day, did the whole thing all over again. So 12 hours in the blind. Not quite. 11 hours, 11 and a half hours in the blind. Back again, 11 and a half hours in the blind. Second day of the season, we saw two. We were hunting a spot called First Ravine.

I thought a great book would be from 22 to 2. The Untold Story of First Ravine. ravine i thought a great book would be from 22 to 2 the untold story of first ravine and then the third day i think we didn't see oh we saw that button buck or that fork you ran through yeah porky ran through and came over to me that work you read through and then today i said to you push those two does at me. I pushed those, but that was doing a drive. And I shot one. Doing a mooch drive.

So opening day, really, if you haven't ever experienced anything like it, just imagine that the woods is quiet, essentially 364 days out of the year. And then there's this day when all of a sudden you got what, half a million people in this state have a hunting license? Over half a million people in this state have a hunting license? And then on that opening day,

around this day, over like a deer second get shot, it has a profound impact on deer behavior they just run every doug's over here look like he's in pain hearing that but before we get doug's rebuttal let's take a quick moment to get a word from our sponsors good our sponsor today is a Smart Home Security Leader Scout Alarm. It's this sleek little contraption, self-installed home security system for the modern renter homeowner.

And the way it's set up, it's not that you have to have some technicians come in for three days and wire the house. There's no long-term contract. There's no credit check. It's month to month. It's hassle-free. You install it yourself. It takes minutes. And you can control it anytime, anywhere.

So if you've got an Apple phone, an Android phone, a smartwatch, you use Scout's apps, you can monitor who's coming and going from your house. You can see it in real time i could see the man you can really keep an eye on people in your home i shouldn't even bring that up because that's just downright dirty but you could um you can arm and disarm your system and you can integrate scout with nest amazon echo ifttt hue Nest, Amazon Echo, IFTTT, Hue, LIFX. And all the while, you keep Scout online 24-7 with optional 3G cellular backup plan. The way it comes, it's like it comes with a hub, which is the brain of the system. And then there's a door panel that you can arm and disarm with a key fob.

It's got motion sensors so you can see who's coming and going. And there's access sensors for anything that opens and closes. So you can rig this thing up on doors, windows, liquor cabinets, I don't know, anything. The lid to a hot tub. Scout's fully customizable.

You start with a hub and you only buy the sensors you need, so you just rig up the things you want to know when they're open and closed and you're set. So if you want to get rigged up and know more about what's going on around your house, enter the code MEATEATER. No, no, no, don't do that. Get 15% off. Use this one. 15% off and eat meat 15. So E-A-T-m-e-a-t-1-5 eat meat 15 you get

15 off a purchase when you make a minimum purchase of 300 bucks for the devices on scout alarm.com it's sleek it's smart it's secure scout.com. Enter the promo code EATMEAT15. Rig your house up so you know what's up. All right, so Doug, I feel, Doug, that you don't like how I'm explaining opening day. But I love opening day. I grew up doing opening day. I've come to you twice to participate in your opening day, yet what I'm saying somehow seems to contradict some of your impressions.

Well, you talked about, well, obviously I can't disagree with a deer a second. I was thinking about your comments about how the deer behavior changes and all that and the shooting begins so you go from this calmness to the shooting but there's a lot of shooting around here for two weeks before opening day i mean every weekend you hear people target practicing yeah a lot of blouch blouch you know it's a lot going on out there and uh so it's probably the combination of people in the woods the shooting and then the gut piles that freaks the deer out, which is kind of what you were getting at. Everything changes. It's so dramatic how it changes from opening day of the deer activity or the deer sightings change from opening day to the second day.

Yeah. and there have been plenty of times where I saw as many deer on the second day as I did on the first day. Behaving how? Doing their deer thing on this farm. Like out feeding 9, 10 in the morning? Deer don't feed 9, 10 in the morning around here. You're talking in the woods they don't feed 9 10 in the morning around here well talking in the woods they don't oh well okay i i'm sorry uh monday well it wasn't 9 10 in the morning it was 8 9 in the morning those deer were feeding through everything that ridge pounder and i saw up there

on uh the pail stand was just going through doing its deer thing. And it was Monday. So are you, you feel that it doesn't, the opening day does not have a profound impact on the way the deer act? No, I was just challenged about apparently having a look on my face that was painful. Oh, clearly it does. Clearly it does. I guess what I was going to say was it may, it to say was it feels like Christmas, sounds like a war zone, and it just doesn't, it's not as war zone. You know, there isn't as much shooting as there used to be.

There's not as much of that deer activity, you know, deer running in as there used to be. The hunting pressure isn't as much shooting as there used to be there's not as much of that deer activity you know deer running in as there used to be um the hunting pressure isn't the same you feel there's less hunting pressure around these parts yeah i really do what do you attribute that to i think that uh uh gun hunting used to be a lot more moving deer pretty much right away now it's very much a challenge of sitting uh people are afraid to push deer off their property i'm guilty of it too you know afraid's the wrong word but are reluctant to get up and move around and push deer off their property um because the neighbor's going to shoot it and and you know that sort of thing yeah i want to let me just interject on that thought for a minute. In this area, it's all huntable ground. I mean, it's just like, this is like deer country.

Yeah. Houses are very scattered apart. The ones that are there are, the houses, I mean, there's a small community near here, but the houses are very scattered apart. The ones that are are not those like overly manicured places people kind of have like a country setting agricultural wood lots butt up against everything all the houses around here you could pretty much have probably a great hunt by just opening the window and looking out your window i mean it's like deer country right and the plate the plots are people probably own anywhere from 40 acres to 400 400 acres there are people who own more than that

and most of the ground is probably in some way or another getting hunted i don't know about that i guess that's a part of what i'm saying and i don't we were talking about earlier you and i were talking about trying to speak to the neighbors and get a group together and and and that sort of thing i i really should take i have a map of the township and every 40 or every 80 or every you know ownership is is on that and just start really looking okay well who's hunting there? Is there someone hunting there? Is there not someone?

Do they allow hunting there? Because one of the complaints you hear often about private land and things like managed forest law and the other programs is, well, people don't, the public isn't allowed access to that land. And so nobody's in there moving the deer. And I think that's probably true because deer aren't going to come out of a place. They may go into a place where they're not bothered. And they're not going to come out of there if they're not bothered for a day or two.

And then their behavior has changed. And back when I was a kid and started hunting, as we talked about over 40 years ago, we hunted kind of wherever we wanted to. And you had no thought to who owned what? Yeah, I remember seeing the first no trespassing signs and the response was a a sign that said if your land is posted stay the hell off of mine is that right yeah when i was a kid my dad he's just

going tearing no trespassing signs down he learned it from a guy named eugene groders yeah and did you thought it was ugly someone had put one and they'd just go and take them all down. They thought it was just like it spoiled everything to see all those signs everywhere. That's what they thought. Well, and I don't disagree with that, but... Visually, they didn't like it. They thought it was tacky. Right. Laws in Wisconsin are now that if you don't have permission, you're trespassing.

It used to be if it's not posted, you can go on it. Yeah. A lot of Western states are still like that. Landowner's obligation to post is land. Yeah. Which I think is, I think the way the law is now, at least in Wisconsin, is the correct way to do it. If you don't have permission to be on there, you're trespassing.

Yeah. No, I agree. So what was the point of that? Oh, being able to hunt. There's places you think the deer get piled up on where they're not getting bumped off, and people are reluctant to push deer around because they think deer are going to go onto their property and they don't want to push them out. Yeah.

So someone else is shooting at them. And the idea of the mooch is a little, has a little bit of that in it, that we're not trying to run deer out. We're just trying to bump them. Or you're, as a still hunter, as the moocher, you're, hopefully, if you're good at it, you're as apt to be able to get a shot at a deer as someone who's sitting in one of the places that we're up that you know where we're trying to ambush the deer yeah but we're really not trying to just run them out you know like surround a 40 and run them all out of there um so yeah what doug's talking about is when you go to hunt deer in the Midwest, it typically happens two ways.

You ambush them, so you sit somewhere and wait for the deer to come to you, or you drive them. The way you do drives generally is you get a handful of dudes that go to a spot where the most likely route of travel to be taken by a fleeing deer. Then you get a handful of other dudes to go in there and line up and push them out. So it's like when you imagine the Revolutionary War, like everybody lined up, like the redcoats are coming all lined up. You line up like that and march into a chunk of deer cover and bust them out and they go heading out that way and the interceptors try to get them so you got pushers and standers right doug and his crew out here they have a thing called which they've come to call mooching what

mooching means if if most sportsmen if you ask them what a mooch. It's a way to catch salmon where you run your main line down to a banana weight. Then off that banana weight, you got a leader and a couple octopus hooks. And you cut a herring's head off in such a way that you can put it on there and a herring spins and you're mooching salmon. But explain what you guys say a mooch is well so everybody goes out in the morning to their pre-chosen or pre-assigned stands and ambush spots ambush spots can you name a bunch of ambush spots uh sure new power uh uh two-man stand that's there's a boring one dad's woods Two Man Stand. There's a boring one.

Dad's Woods. We were on, Brittany and I were at Matt's Stand. There's the Rinella Ravine. Shit on a stick. Shit on a stick. Did you hear that? Rinella Ravine. It got renamed on the podcast.

It's official. First ravine became Rinella Ravine. It got renamed on the podcast. It's official. The first ravine became Rinella Ravine. Well, the dump, Fool on the Hill. Isn't there a standard, new standard? Standard, new standard. The thing is that the standard stand wasn't really a stand. It was just something that I put up in an elm tree near a bedding area where I had seen this deer and I just strapped a ladder to it or a I'm sorry a ladder stick to that elm tree and then kind of got a hanger stuck up in there

and it was about a I don't know 14 inch diameter elm tree that a 270 pound dude probably shouldn't have been crawling up into but I was going to kill that deer. And I crawled up in there, and I sat in the stand long enough to kill that deer and never used it again. Oh, so a new stand is just a better place to sit that spot. Yeah, well, and a better stand. The tree that I shot that deer out of was a white elm tree that has since died and actually found morel mushrooms under it for a couple of years in a row.

Congratulations. Yeah, well, it's a tree that keeps on giving. And so, yeah, standard, new standard. The rock. The rock. And that one's named because there's a big rock there i just i know you wouldn't get that connection otherwise so all right so yeah that's what it's a jump in there so the mooch everybody goes out to their stand right so picture we're on a we're on a chunk of ground

a sizable chunk of ground hundreds of acres of ground mixed woodland farmland these stands are all over the place covering areas and it depends on how many people you have but the idea is that one person is designated to start the mooch at the assigned time in the morning and especially with the people who've hunted here before and you know our our core group there's know, four or five of us that know it really well. And they, so the moocher starts moving, still hunting very slowly through, gets to a designated spot. Another stand gets in that stand and the next guy starts to move if nothing's happened. But the idea is that you'll bump a deer and it may go past everybody else or someone else and if it doesn't, it may do something as simple as turn around and go back and lie down. My brother who's here was in the bent oak stand one time and I went mooching up near him, near the ravine,

and he watched, a deer I didn't see, a little forky buck, get up, move away from me, turn around like a rabbit, swing all the way back around me. I was going slow enough that it wasn't excited. Circled back around and laid back down pretty much in the same spot after I'd passed. So that idea that, you know, you're not getting the deer all excited and it's more or less natural movement, we really like that part of it. And then there is the element of you're not running it out you know somewhere else and when you're trying to do some buck management and you know maybe some folks around you aren't uh

you know i feel like that's a way of keeping deer on your place um but it's also a way of moving them and kind of seeing what you you have and getting some good hunting opportunities. Because, you know, I'm not a big fan of shooting at a running deer, a walking deer or a quickly moving deer. But, you know, whereas a deer drive, when you push them out, they come hauling out. Hauling balls, yeah. Carrying the mail, we like to call it. Yeah, on a mooch, you do get a chance. Like the bump deer, often when you're in the standing spot, the bump by the time they get to you are pretty chilled out yeah they're kind of like watching their back trail a little bit but they're down to a normal that's exactly right

normal plug yep you know as opposed to a drive where they're hauling ass to the next big patch of woods or or you know they'll blow across the field and keep right on going. Although today, um, I went out to try to move a few deer for folks and, uh, Helen and John were in a blind and I knew there were deer around there. He's referring to Cho and, uh, and Cho's boyfriend, John's here. Yeah. And, uh, they needed another deer because they didn't have enough to butcher apparently they thought they had a lot of time on their hands or something for butchering and uh so i went out and took a walk and uh i moved pretty quickly

and the deer moved really quickly when they came out. I mean, they stopped. They were standing in the woods looking at me, and then I moved to try to get them to go past Helen, and they carried the male across that field. There was no stopping them. You couldn't get a crack at them? They were running like hell.

So Joe gives you a try? We were just like like what happened up there did you try to stop them yeah we were like hey yeah yeah hey and they're like not having it what's your like get helen give me your uh just give me your whole like let's say you you went home and and do you have a grandma yes let's see your grandma said what were you doing in wisconsin what's up with that what would you say like how would you explain like what are your impressions about opening day deer hunting and all that like

everything you've seen here seen and done here christmas or war well the morning sounded like a war zone i mean just non-stop gunshots then the second day was just completely quiet you know how many gunshots i heard this morning zero from i heard one prior to 8 a.m then i heard some cracking because my team was cracking away twice right yeah but i think by 8 a.m. I heard a shot. Yeah. But there was the guy, I thought you shot because there was the guy that shot by you.

That was the dude that was sitting by me on the other side of the fence. Yeah. Well, the first day I was like, wow, this is intense. There are deer everywhere.

And then the second day I was like, oh, this is what deer hunting is actually like. Just waiting in the cold. You found that plenty of opportunities on opening day. Oh, yeah. Just couldn't pull it together.

But not relaxed deer. No. The buck you got was feeding. The buck you got was not like a feeding deer. No, he had no idea. But we had deer filing through, and you're trying to just talk about that, like what the challenge is. It was just there were so many deer, but it was frustrating

because you couldn't get set up quick enough, or at least I couldn't get set up quick enough to find a window. I mean, it was pretty thick with brush, and so you'd have to literally be moving in your blind, and then quickly finding your scope, the one window between trees that you might be able to get a shot, and then by that point, they're already moving. So it was just frustrating.

Yeah. Exciting, because you're constantly seeing deer, so even though you're cold you know but it was yeah very frustrating. Is it something you'd go do more of? Yeah for sure.

Because you guys experience I mean your experience is from big game hunting you went on an elk hunt like full balls. But yeah, it was just, they're both challenging in very different ways. Like elk hunting is very challenging, but I mean, in the way that it's very physically demanding. And you're constantly searching and walking.

I mean, there's some sitting too, but I feel like there's a lot more moving. Whereas this kind of hunting, you're sitting in a blind for 10, 11 hours, being cold as hell. And then, you know, having to quickly pull things together. So, I don't know. There are parts of like, after having gone on the elk hunt, parts of this where you would see deer run off out of your shooting range and you just wanted to go after them. Yeah. Thinking that you could.

As soon as we left our blind, deer came out everywhere. And that felt a little bit like the elk hunt. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, so Helen, talk about getting your buck. Tell what happened there i don't know i blocked out i'm kidding i'm kidding no i'm like actually really

like grateful that we have this on camera because sometimes i'm like what happened that day it all blends together um i i was sitting on the right side you were sitting on the left side in your stump yeah and we kept seeing deer on the left side right so every time we'd see a deer it'd be like okay quickly switch spaces with me and the concept of having to move quickly but having to do it slowly so the deer can see you it's like very frustrating yeah it's a certain kind of quick yeah um and yeah i just i don't know i that were there two other was there two does behind it two bucks

in a doe two bucks in a doe browsing beating dogs in a doe. Browsing, beating Doug's oak trees. Yeah. Killing Doug's red oaks. No, I mean, it was like the perfect shot, and I didn't want to take a shot that wasn't, for me, as someone who doesn't have much experience hunting, I felt like I needed a shot that was broadside. Yeah, I want to point out that neither of you guys gave a shit if you got a buck or a doe.

Hell, I've been trying like hell to shoot the does that were rolling through but they were all kind of in a hurry and just had you got a buck just because that had to be the first yeah i mean that thing was nice shot just feet chilled out yeah it was perfect so there were two bucks this is the first time i've heard this part of the story bucks in a doe oh yeah what was the other buck like same look, looked just like his buddy. The other buck I had in the camera lens, and when Cho shoots her buck, the other one goes, huh? And then keeps right on eating. Like nothing happened.

Better you than me. I think you only taken one. Right, exactly. He goes right on eating those oaks of yours. He kind of hopped a little bit, but I think they just ate. Not barely. Barely.

He lifted his head and was like, huh? And I was like, okay. Okay, I'm good. It was three bucks. Yeah, actually. It was a button. And two bucks that were twins.

Yeah. No, not twins. Just a year and a half old bucks. A year and a half old bucks. So I didn't want to get out of the blind right away nope I was like

he's not going anywhere um he just ran a little ways and got woozy and tipped over in a very definitive way I thought I missed him

remember I looked over and I was like did I miss yeah because I couldn't she said I think I missed him I was like if you missed him he's going to have to visit a cardiologist.

Because there's blood streaming out of him. He piled up. And I didn't want to go down there right away because I wanted to because there's so much happening. There's just deer every which way. And I didn't want to go down there and blow it. So we sat a long while. And eventually, it was just horribly cold. And finally, it got calm.

And we start picking our way down to that damn deer and just freaking deer everywhere. I was like, we shouldn't have left the blind, man. We shouldn't have left the blind. You know, just deer like cross the field. Biggest buck I saw the whole trip comes down across the thing. I didn't want dog to get mad at me. So, I mean, I could have taken a Hail Mary out of that bass. We saw five deer when we moved.

Yeah. But wait, you said to me that you just passed on a... Passed a shooting opportunity on it. On a top row buck. No, I said an almost top row buck. Almost top row buck. I'll pull the damn text up. You passed, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, I had... You passed, but you made it sound like, hey, there he was. Well, he's not quite. Yeah, he was there. The deer was probably about 170 yards away. I had a rest. He was in my crosshairs. He was between two trees with a big gap exposing his rib cage,

his head sticking out the other side of the tree. I'm not going to tell you that absolutely 100% he was standing there for an hour feeding 20 yards away. On public land, I would have touched off a shot at that buck. You had a better shot.

We saw that same deer. That was an accurate. how can you not say anything no what but he knew this what do you what do you want me to say about it that's what happened yeah he was there no i mean just like the whole general subject but you gave me the impression that it was really fast. So now I get it. I get it now. I get it now. Okay. You had a better shot at that deer than I did. I saw him.

I had a legitimate shot at the damn deer. And I did. I asked you afterwards. I was like, did you have a shot? Did you have a shot? And you said, yeah. But you thought Doug would be mad at you, so you didn't take it. You didn't think it was quite big enough.

I'm really tired of him playing that card. Play what card? I thought Doug would be mad at you, so you didn't take it. You didn't think it was quite big enough. I'm really tired of him playing that card. Play what card? That Doug will be mad at me card. The first time I ever came to this farm. I've been to this farm seven times. It's good he didn't take that shot. I've been to this farm seven times. Yeah, it's good he didn't take that shot.

The first time I ever came to this farm. Okay, in this room where these 24 buck racks are hanging, these bucks are all off this property. Is that right? Yeah, they sure are. Okay, these bucks are all in this area. And many more during the same time period, but yeah.

And then some guys, buddies will come and shoot a buck, but then they'll want to take the thing home with them, so then dog just has to put a little photograph up on the wall, which really, if I kill a buck here worthy of the room, it's going to live in the room. I'm not going to take it home with me. But some guys will take it home and then here and there you got some pictures of bucks

that belong here that aren't even in here. Those two nailed that tree there. I gather they're from here? Yeah. They took them home with them? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I came here...

You couldn't blame them for that. No, no, no. I'm not blaming him. Just saying. One of the walls here has like 13 buck racks on it. And there's what's called top row bucks. So the bigger bucks are along the top row. And he's got them all done in the old way

where he used to cut a board, a plaque out, kind of half-assedly shaped like an Indian arrowhead maybe. Is that what it's supposed to resemble? I just think those are different shapes. They're all different. But they're kind of supposed to resemble an Indian arrowhead. Or a shield. Like the old way. Oh, you think it's a shield?

Whatever the hell. A plaque. An old way. Oh, you think it's a shield? Whatever the hell. A plaque. An old plaque. But it's not a random shape that you mount old plaques on and you do velvet or the skull cap. And I came here many, many years ago. And Doug said, if you shoot a buck here, it should knock one of the bucks on the top row out. Top shelf, baby. Top shelf buck.

Yeah, and it just seems like the... Well, I don't want to get into my disappointment. When's the last time that's happened, that somebody's knocked one off the top? Last year. Last year I shot that deer. So it's just a way where it's a way to encourage. It's a friendly way to encourage people to harvest does and to encourage people to allow younger bucks to pass and let them grow bigger.

Having some kind of guideline. Because you're responding to the way it used to be in the old days, right? Right. That you, as I was telling Helen and Brittany, I couldn't have been prouder of the first buck that I shot. It had one horn or one antler, you know. And we had one of our guys this weekend shoot one with one antler. I'm not going to say his name.

We found a dead one with one antler. We found a dead one with one antler up in the big woods by one of the stands. It's called the Wet Spot. And if Steve ever opens a bar, that's what I'm going to name it. But that's a whole interesting story about the dead deer. Yeah. But go on with what you were going to say. And what this requires is to take enough time to look at a buck and say, yeah, or that it was a good hunt or whatever, but you need to take that time

and be willing that I didn't have enough time, so he got a pass. Opening day, we saw that same buck, and i didn't get a real good look at him uh i think it was the same buck by the way we described him the one that you saw and i didn't get a real good look at him but i could have thrown a shot at him i mean i had a shot at him yeah i didn't have as good a shot as it sounds like that you did um but i think i i've said before that i've never uh not taken a shot that i regretted if i you know that sounds no i'm not following well i've taken shots that i've regretted yeah but i wish i wouldn't have taken but never said, no, I'm not going to take that shot, and then regretted it later. Oh, really?

Yeah. No, I have that problem. Why didn't I take that shot? You never look back and go, I should have just taken the damn shot. No. I should have maybe taken a better shot. Yeah. no i should have maybe taken a better shot yeah but speak to the to just try to quickly speak to what you're saying about the management because because because you were saying a minute ago that i keep saying that i didn't do x y or z because i've been trying to

do some of the some of the i've been trying to play along with some of the guidelines that you have on your property to try to encourage. And I've been just really, I don't know, impressed is too strong a word, but really happy with the fact that you have done that. Like not shooting the button bucks. Well, that's even more impressive. I mean, that is impressive to spend the time to look at them and go, okay. I mean, you see a small deer, you're looking at, you know, a small deer, a small buck looks different, a button buck looks different than a doe fawn.

Matting did the same thing today. He said, can I, you know, should I shoot a fawn? And I said, is it a doe and he goes yes i said yes i should have said both of them yeah we would have we still heard blouch blouch but the first one was just a miss it was just a miss but uh to take that time ago okay that's a small deer i'm going to make sure it's not a button buck um and i'm not convinced that uh well anyway i'm impressed by that and the fact that uh you know you have the patience you're taking the time and you have the patience to do that it probably

helps to be hunt you know getting the opportunity to um hunt in as many places that you do. So sometimes I try to cut some of my guys a little slack when I think about, this is their hunt. This is it. The other day I was commenting, we were kind of laughing about the way Doug wants to manage Deer on his place and the things that prevent him from carrying that out in all the ways he'd like to.

And I was saying how some people have a cartoon image of a person with a devil and an angel on their shoulders. And they're whispering these contradictory things. And I was saying that Doug essentially has two angels on their shoulders and like and they're whispering these contradictory things now saying that dog like essentially has two angels on his shoulders because one of the angels wants him to manage deer for like a good buck to doe ratio and allowing some bucks to get to you know maturity and to grow big healthy deer and the other angel is saying you should just let your friends have a good time man just let them get a deer yeah and doug granted that to i've taken four friends here um for hunts and each one of them they were all beginning or beginner hunters and each one of them got like any deer you are happy with.

Go ahead and get it. And they're not the only ones. There have been other, you know, first-time hunters. My nephew Jack here, you know, first-time hunter, happened to kill a very nice buck with it for his first deer. My nephew Sam, his first deer here was a little spike. His second deer was that big old hog in the corner over there yeah but i mean so it's pretty big jump up but uh so yeah i mean it's not

i shouldn't make it just about the horns and i've had some discussions really recently with my neighbor i don't think you make it just about the horns well there's like i think the longer you're here the longer i know you or the longer you're involved with the program the more it becomes about it and and and maybe it should or that i think that you ought to have a little more discretion the longer that you you know that you longer you've been here but you know everybody makes a mistake but you know you kind, really, you made that mistake? There was a mistake made on Saturday that I'm still not buying. He knows who he is.

No, he's not here. But he'll be listening to this. He sent me a picture of himself with the sombrero today, wearing thebrero because nobody put it on him and made him take pictures so you think he was you know wanting to so you know i did wear the sombrero and here's the picture and i my response to him in the text message was that should be your screensaver for the next year yeah yeah i mean what do you think about all this? I don't understand. How could you be all of a sudden struck dumb? I'm not at all. There's just a lot of people here talking.

I like to let everybody else get their words out. What you thought? I don't know. That's all. I'm a part of it. The big buck management. I wish more people did more of it. You do?

Yeah. What's interesting to me is my dad and i were sitting around well first he came up and met the gals and we were skinning their bucks and we're looking at the antlers and he's like oh yeah you know like you know nice basket racks you know two and a half year olds i'm like no those bucks here are one and a half year olds and they're probably one and a half year olds everywhere but everybody thinks that they're two and a half year olds and i just think that like across the board everybody is shooting deer they think i guess what i've learned is that bucks just don't even get a chance to make it to be two and a half they just don't if you can just pass on like one year all of a sudden you're just going to see like oh so steve had an interesting thought about that my new management

plan new management plan so i'm going to copyright here tell him doug well the way i understand it is you get everybody together all the the neighbors and everybody in the region that, you know, you can reach out to and get to agree with, you know, some kind of management. And have how many meetings? Well, I'm going to invite them all to a luncheon first. Is that your plan? Luncheon? Luncheon. Luncheon, he said, too.

Not, you know, for drinks or anything. We're going to have a luncheon. And I just, who has a luncheon? I we're going to have a luncheon and I just who has a luncheon I don't know so anyway and you get everyone to agree that

all we're shooting are nubs and year and a half olds yeah any buck that has made it to two and a half years of age is gets a pass yeah because you know what you're doing you're making a plan to have a great 2018 right you're saying any buck that is a two and a half year-half-year-old buck, we're going to just have a moratorium killing those bucks. And in three years, we're going to have a bunch of five-year-old bucks running around.

But instead, people think that a management plan is to cease killing year-and-a-half-old bucks. And the problem with that plan, and wonder if if you guys from elroy would uh agree with this that the problem with that plan is a year and a half old buck isn't going to stay on your farm he's going to get moved out he's got then you're going to get someone else's because where are they all going it's not like an inf It's not like a new land being created. Well, yeah, yeah. But they're the ones that get, if you've got a two-and-a-half-year-old buck. He's here.

You can get him to stay. That buck over there that I shot last year, two-and-a-half-year-old buck, 145 inches of, you know, 145-inch nine-pointer. Big deer, two-and-a-half-year-old buck. I shot him because he had a lake shot off. Well, I'd have probably shot that deer anyway. I'm not going to say, well, I just shot him. But we hunted him all day.

He was wounded, and we hunted him all day, and I finally killed him. We took him down to have him tested for CWD, and the guy did the aging. And he said, two-and-a-half-year-old. I can't believe it. He couldn't. The guy who was doing the aging couldn't believe it because he thought what he thought three and a half year old and we had uh so when I start looking at even some of those top roe bucks over there well all those bottom roe bucks are probably two and a half year olds yeah um but that group of four over there those were were those three year old deer are probably two and a half year olds. Yeah. But that group of four over there, were those three year old deer?

I don't know. So the standard was aged at four. Is that right? And that was 192 inches of horn, you know. And it was a huge deer. I mean, you look at that picture and how big that deer is. I know it sounds it was a huge deer. I mean, you look at that picture and how, you know, how big that deer is. I know it sounds ridiculous on a podcast, but, and we've talked about the standard before.

So, so the whole aging of thing. And so then what about the rack and, you know, and what all that, and you get all kind of tied up and all that. So yeah, that idea that, well, let's shoot the smaller ones. A guy, our friend who is here, Tony Palskill, his cousin, who I've had the occasion to meet and hang out with a little bit, down by the Mineral Point area where they have some really big bucks down there, he said, I'd rather have a guy in our area shoot a year-and-a-half old than a two-and-a-half or a three-and-a-half-year-old. Because you're getting that, you're going to have that bigger buck. And they're all about big buck management,

whereas I think you all have learned that what my management is about is trying to have a balance out there of what's the best thing for the ecosystem and the habitat for everything. And my oak trees, you know, I'm growing the oak trees, trying to regenerate those oak trees so uh buck management isn't necessarily in some areas isn't about deer numbers and what i think our management is more about deer numbers and that's something we we took a big step forward in the last couple of days with a number of of does that we got but you made an interesting point. We were talking

the other day. We were kind of talking about this whole thing like meat, hunting for meat, hunting for antlers and how this all fits in and what it all means for everybody. And we were talking about a buddy of mine who came out a couple years ago and wanted to shoot a buck

and shot a buck. Shot a young buck. And then we roasted a buck. And shot a buck. Shot a young buck. And then we roasted the buck's head. Antlers and everything. Just to get the head meat off it. And then put it in the oven. Ruined the antlers. And I never thought about it.

But Doug had a great point. If you're going to put the head in the oven, put a damn doe's head in the oven. But there's a thing about that people want to shoot bucks. Yeah. I think that it's two things. People want to shoot bucks because culturally we're still

responding to when we didn't have that many deer. Yeah. It's been, I don't know. We've had good numbers of deer, increasing numbers of deer for over 50 years now. Like, I'm just talking in a national sense. A lot of deer. I guess, you know, the peak deer years were in the 90s. And that was too many deer.

Yeah. From the way I feel. From many definitions. Yes, from many definitions. Not if all you want is deer. of highway safety, agriculture, landscaping, forest regeneration, disease transmission.

There was a lot of damn deer in the 90s. But people are still like, you don't shoot. I know I've been trying to encourage you to say something, but I'm just trying to finish my point. I'm trying to finish my point. People are still in this mindset that you don't shoot does,

because does make deer. You know? A friend of mine in Alaska, old guy, he feels like if you shoot a doe, you should have your fingernails pulled out. Or worse, I'm sure. Yeah. So there's that, and there's also the thing that it's manly to kill a buck.

Right, you just want to see whose dick is bigger, basically. Well, so that's what I want to know about, because we've had talks about antlers with you two before. I talked about it in my garage while you were following some mule deer antlers off my wall there so i want to know how you guys like what your thoughts on antlers are and then like did you guys feel any of that this weekend like did you at all were you like i kind of want to shoot a buck my opinion was like i want to shoot the first thing that i see that I can get a good shot on, and then I want to shoot the next thing that I can that's whatever is the opposite of what I shot already.

Because those are the tags. Because I had a tag for both. Oh, I got you, I got you. Not just out of like appreciation for opposites. Oh, no. No, I mean, I guess I'm still, you know, a new hunter, so I'm in the place where, like, I'll take whatever I can get. And to me, like, that buck is going to taste much better than, like, a big old, you know, older buck.

But one thing about behavior, I got a question for you, but there's another thing to keep in mind. When you shoot a year-and-a-half-old buck, you can look at a buck there. You see a buck run by. He's a spike. He's a fork. You just know he's a year-and-a-half-old unless he's got some kind of problem or broke his antlers off or something. But typically, it's a safe assumption that that's what you're looking at.

That's going to be a great eating deer. To say that a doe is better eating, you don't't know you might be shooting some eight-year-old doe oh it's very true but with a year and a half old buck it's like you see that little spike rat coming through you're like that's gonna be you know it's a safe assumption that's a young deer right those you don't know right but my point was like i'm gonna shoot at the first thing the first opportunity that i get yeah and it's fortunate that I got that smaller buck for me because I think the meat is going to taste better. So how did it play out?

Because you got two deer in one day. Yeah. I don't know. So we saw a fair amount, I mean, fairly sporadically coming through. You couldn't have asked the deer to be spread out any better. We only saw 16 or 18 deer over the course of opening day and i say only because we get in the wisconsin guys you see 16 or 18 deer especially like in the 90 early early 2000s you'd see them at 15 minutes but in like bigger groups and people got used to

that so that was part of the problem but anyway but so the deer were kind of spaced out i can't even replay it in my head it'd be interesting to to see but there were like one or two and we're like okay you know i'm like okay and well then what happened was we saw them go into this bedding area and then all of us were staring in this one spot and then for whatever reason out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something to my right. And I look over and there's a buck that's like 30 yards away from us. Maybe 40, but not very far. Just walking right in as if like, you know, we weren't even there.

And it was just, it was like too much. I don't know. I wasn't. Yeah, you were not going to be able to pick up the tripod move it over and that was not going to happen it off hand because i'm just not there yet although you could at that distance you probably could have john waned it but i don't think that would be very good for the show but uh no but then he took off and then, but yeah, so we sat there for a little while and then I'll give Adam the credit for spotting the doe behind us that, you know, we weren't really looking behind us every once in a while.

I'd look back there, but he spotted it and set up. And I remember like, you're like, come here, come here, take the shot. And I was like, I just, I want to wait for it to walk into my window. And I'm going, oh, my God. Well, okay. And then I look at the deer in the binoculars and I'm going, well, it is just feeding along in there. She wasn't even paying attention to us. Yeah. about the guys who are with us, the camera operators.

It's weird for someone who doesn't do it all the time to have people like that with you. You get used to it pretty quick. I mean, we build a big ground blind so all four of us could be in there. And you think, God, I'm going to be sitting out here in the woods with four people? Four people, you know, twitching and making,

and are we going to see anything? And first of all, those guys are really good at sitting still, and Brittany was super good at sitting still. That was probably the twitchiest one in the blind. And so there is that downside of having those people in there, but the upside of it is you do have more than just your eyes, and my eyes are getting worse all the time so it is really nice to have the extra sets of eyes um and adam saw it anyway yeah so no i was able to

you know wait like get set up really well and wait for her to walk into my perfect window i had and then that i mean she pretty much just just pil right up. So you got the doe before the buck. I knew that. Yeah, I knew that. Yeah, because the buck is the buck that ran... That buck that just looked up and said, I'm going to go back to browsing. That's the same...

There he goes, then. Yeah, that's the same buck that ran away from us and ran over to you guys. Oh, so that's the buck, Doug. No, different buck. No. Different buck. This buck came in from the north. Didn't come to you guys. Oh, so that's the buck, Doug. No, different buck. No. Different buck. This buck came in from the north.

Didn't come from you guys, from the south. He looked way different. No, he didn't. So anyhow, buck comes in. Well, that was, so that was, Sam drove him to us. That was a little bit, that was actually only two hours later. Yeah. So Sam was on. He mooched him to you. Yeah, Sam mooched him to us. Because he a little bit... That was actually only two hours later. Yeah. So Sam was on...

He mooched him to you. Yeah, Sam mooched him to us. Because he'd already killed a buck. Right. Yeah, so we... I guess the way it went down was we knew that there were two bucks up there and maybe that doe and her fawn

potentially. Yeah. And Sam said he was going to come and mooch him to us. It kind of like, you know, took a while. And so we were kind of like hemming and hawing. We were all hungry and thought maybe we'll go check out my doe. And, you know, yeah, maybe you went to the bathroom or like. I didn't go to the bathroom. I went over up next to a tree.

So, but yeah, I got up. So, right. No, that was the, Sam had been in contact with me and he goes, well, I'll mooch that side hill. And I said, well, you know, take your, take your time. And I've lectured him so many times about doing it. And I always say too fast that you move too fast well we're waiting for quite a while and then finally I know that he's he's through he lets me know that he's through doing what he's doing and at least I understood that to be the case and I'm like okay well another 10 minutes you know we can have we'll go and take

care of the dough or we'll have a sandwich then we'll go and take care of the dough or we'll have a sandwich and then we'll go and take care of the dough. And 10 minutes goes by and I'm like, well, I'm going to go pee. So I get up and walk down over to the designated pee area by our stand. How far were you guys, you going pretty far away to pee? Well, I mean, it was a mixed blind, so I wanted to, you know. Yeah, because I was peeing pretty much out the back door. Where were you going, Helen? I didn't want to get overrun by deer. So, you know, I wanted to pee for a little bit.

How many yards were you going? I wanted to go 45. I don't know. Well, she was going behind, because I was in the tree stand behind you guys. Yeah, I had to go behind Matting. So all you guys were right down below me peeing, and she was the only female. So whenever you had to pee, you were going out even where Martin couldn't see you from his little perch up there. Did you see any deer back there?

No. We did. And we had those does that ran through that valley. That first batch of does came up through there. You didn't see them. They were right on the trail behind us. So that's where you were peeing back there. I want to go back to Brittany's.

Oh, yeah, sorry. I find her story, you know, because I was there and I can relive it now. Yeah, so I don't know. It was like sort of a commotion because we saw a couple of deer. It was ridiculous, yeah.

Ran out of the woods and that was like, I mean, they were gone. And then he ran out, ran down into that little, I mean they were gone and then he ran out ran down into that little i guess ravine if you want to call it yeah there's a little ravine and uh sam had come around the side hill and they'd just been sunning themselves on in that bedding area on the other side you guys may have you can see that bedding or even they'll see the deer and they came over came down in the ravine and they're because of where we set up the ground blind to have a better vantage point 360 degrees

we couldn't see that good over that side hill and i've done my business over there and i turned around and came back and i'm they're all going like this and so i get over and what's going on? There's a buck and a doe and they're down the hill over here. So, well, okay, get set up. And, you know, she had done most of that by the time I got there. And boom, this deer just walked. No, no, no, not blouch yet. Surprise, here's this buck right in front of us again. Oh, boom, like surprise yeah i mean

he was really close to 30 or 40 yards a little bit further no not when you shot not when you shot but when you when he came up that hill yeah yeah and it's like holy moly he's just right there and you know she's taking her time getting set and that's kind of hard to do when all of a sudden you know they just show up so she's trying to get set and he trots away so i had uh my brother my late brother's uh old uh grunt call and i burp and burp burp and he stops and turns around and this i see it's i'm doing the call there and so he's coming back. I was really proud of that. And she's getting set again and taking a little time. Come on. The one angel on my shoulder was getting horns.

And she pulled the trigger and doesn't. And then he starts trotting away again and he turns around and looks oh really boy am i good at this i am so good at this and he turns around he's between these two trees and she pulls the trigger and down he goes and then the doe comes up i'm like oh you know he didn't want to leave the doe it had nothing to do with my little calls I suppose he thought maybe it was another buck coming for that doe but he wasn't going to go very far because she was still standing down just over the edge of the hill so it kind of deflated my caller ego um but we did have a little bit of a different experience with that deer than the first and the first one just buckled up and was dead yeah that one hit in the spine so what did it do didn't die right away um but he i guess

kind of crawled and we went after him to go put him down again and uh and i was gonna shoot it i went over to you know because it was one of those things and she goes, Doug, Doug, stop. I want to finish it. And so, because I kind of just, you know, my reaction was to run over to the deer and kill it. And, uh, so I stopped. And so she came over and was kind of getting real, uh, set and the deer expired i mean it was and it wasn't a minute it was a few seconds really that all happened very quickly yeah but she felt terrible about it though you know that she didn't make the perfect shot when you guys get uh when you got your when you get your deer, do you feel like

jumping up and down, hooting and hollering? Or do you like it how... We generally look kind of not a whole lot of jumping around. It's still like a... I don't know. For me, it's still like a feeling of this weird physical reaction that's not like wanting to

jump up and down but it's i don't know it's like this weird like i bet regret no it's not like an emotional reaction it's like a physical reaction it's just like i was like just like this wave of energy that I can't describe and I don't know how to put into words. Definitely emotional in a sense, but I don't know. I'm still not able to... I don't know. What would you say? When I walked up to that buck,

I think I still had a similar feeling of when I killed that elk. It was just kind of a loss for words. But it was weird this time because back to the antler thing, I think I looked at it and I was like, wow, those are really cool, you know? Yeah.

But yeah, there's a sense of loss so you it's not that you feel bad because you know that you know that you're going to do this animal right and you know but you know you just took this animal's life that you just saw walking these like beautiful creatures you just saw you know through your scope very close up and then you see it like dead on the ground so it's a very you know and then after that you're like pulling its guts out so it's just very it's it's a hard to explain experience it's a lot of stuff coming yeah yeah me like honestly maybe more shock because like i think i was telling yannis the next day like i it wasn't until i was like in bed along with my own thoughts that I like really kind of processed

like how kind of I guess yeah sad that I felt for the deer and and like I know just even taking two deer in one day there was like part of me that was like man like was that gratuitous to take, to kill two animals in one day? Like, you know, I don't know. It was just like, it's still sort of new where I'm still sort of trying to define, like, you know, what my hunting experience is going to be like, you know. Yeah, I feel that, that kind of regret for some things, but I have a hard time feeling it for deer because I feel that deer... I think of deer almost more in the vegetable world.

I think they're not that old. In large measure, they live as a result of people. It's our habits, our practices of clearing the land industrial agriculture um it allows so many deer to exist you know we have far more deer now than than during columbus's

time so when you when you when you take a deer's life i I feel like in some way it's not... You're not taking something. It's like you gave it to him anyways. Do you know what I mean? That's an interesting point. From a people's perspective. A truly wild thing that gets old, like when you kill a doll ram, a doll sheep ram. He's probably a minimum of eight

he's not gonna be any older than 12 but he's gonna be at least eight and he's never seen a person before you know so that feels different to me that feels like you've stepped in and undone something, you know. But then the other side of it is that, you know, yeah, these deer have seen people. So then you almost start thinking like, oh, did this deer knew I was going to kill? You know, like it felt that pressure. I mean, the buck that I shot in particular, I don't think did, but. No, that's what I like.

That buck had no idea. Right. I weigh that like that's a thing, that's what I like. That buck had no idea. I weigh that. That's a whole other thing you can do. People go like, if you just categorize, just antlers. Antlers is all that matters. Big buck equals good, no matter how you got it. I don't know how many people that actually subscribe to that,

but there's plenty that do, I'm sure. But to me, I think you should add in some other factors. The deer had no idea, completely unaware of your presence, feeding away. That's worth something. If it's a giant buck staring at you as you get out of your truck and roll down the window so you can rest your rifle over the edge of the window frame? Is that more valuable because it's a bigger buck? No way. Size also, I think, has something to do with it.

Because we went squirrel hunting a couple days ago, and I definitely felt a little bad and, again, the sense of loss that I just took this animal's life. But I did not have the same feeling as when I came up to the deer or came up to the elk. Yeah. Which is weird because it shouldn't. You're still taking an animal's life. But for some reason, the size. Yeah, size plays.

I agree. Size plays into it. The only thing I think when I hunt squirrels is they're so fecund. A female, like a mature female, man, she can put off, I don't know, 16 of them in a year. A two-year-old squirrel is ancient. Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. You guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services

handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the

to the onx club y'all can I ask you a question on this subject sure just like in hunting for how many years now

30 40 do you have a ritual of when you take a deer's life of what you do in the next five minutes, ten minutes? Oh, I can't wait to hear that answer.

But prior to that, see? All right, football season's rolling on. And if you've got a season-long fantasy football team, you probably know by now that it might not be going anywhere. The thing is, you can do this on a weekly deal at DraftKings.com, where you get a new shot for glory every single week. And DraftKings is the destination for one-week fantasy football, where you can relive the fantasy drafts and play for huge prizes each and every week. It constantly renews. So you can challenge your friends in a custom league

or join an existing league and play for your share of a billion dollars. It's up for grabs this year at DraftKings. Just pick your contest, draft your players, collect your winnings, and that's it. Go in and renew some old rivalries, create new ones by going head-to-head with your friends, dudes at work, fantasy players from around the country that you don't

even know. You can match up and play with them. DraftKings is crowning a new millionaire every week this season. You could be next, but only if you get out there and play. This isn't fantasy football as usual. This is DraftKings. Welcome to the big time.

And go over to DraftKings.com now. When you go there, use the promo code MEET and you play for free with your first deposit in Sunday's million-dollar fantasy football contest. So first place is going to take home $100,000 and a whole lifetime

of bragging about it. Now. So, enter MEAT for free entry now at DraftKings.com. That's DraftKings.com promo code MEAT. Now, Doug, your ritual, do you have one? Don't bullshit us.

I used to more than I do now. The feeling that Helen and Brittany were both describing is probably more, I probably feel it more now than I used to where I kind of, I don't want to say forced myself, but felt like I should have a ritual. So now when I shoot an animal, it tends to be, you know, I'm usually alone. So it just tends to be more of a longer, quiet moment of, like, feeling it all. Yeah. And so if that's the ritual, that's the ritual. I mean, I used to, I mean, I just sit there

and look at the animal I patted, you know, but there's nothing, you know, specific. It's and look at the animal I patted. But there's nothing specific. It's more of a feeling that I have that is hard to describe. I think a lot of it you have to, if there is a ritual or a set of things you go through, I think you have steps you need to take that remind you to do it. Like the same way as if someone you've never met walks into the door, you might, in the back of your head, it might be like, oh, man, I better stand up and shake the guy's hand.

You know, you become, you remind yourself of your obligation. It might not always happen naturally. Like you sometimes are being like, i better do x right right you see someone drop their driver's license in the airport you know you'd be like i better pick that up and go run it to the person not that you just instinctively automatically do everything you're supposed to do i find myself now and then saying you know what you better just take a minute to recognize what's going on you know it doesn't always happen without me going like you know what like the moment deserves some the moment deserves acknowledgement you find that it happens with certain animals and not others?

Oh, yeah. Bears. It's real hard for me with bears. Deer. Like, white-tailed deer. I have to remind myself. Did you ever cry after taking a life? No. Never. I've seen it happen so many times.

Never. But I started hunting when I was so young. It's like I missed all these things, I think. So oftentimes when I've taken people out and have them get their first animal and they're overwhelmed with some emotion, I just see something that I probably would have been the same way, but I was young. And it was an accomplishment. Yep.

I mean, that's what I remember about shooting my first deer. I was 14, and I accomplished. I did that, and I was really proud of it and excited and uh all of that but this is maybe a weird comparison but uh I sold a cow on Monday and I felt bad putting her on the trailer I mean I you know I speak about acknowledging I mean, I talked to her the whole time as we were putting her on. And I know where she's going. And through no fault of her own, she had a medical problem that wasn't going to get fixed, and so this is what happens. So maybe I'm just getting a little more reflective in my old age or something. But I used to be, I used to have a real ritual where I'd actually, you know,

talk to the animal and all that. And there's a lot of things that go through my head. Even while this all went on with Brittany, I'm thinking to myself, okay, well, I'm excited for her. I'm thinking about my management program, and she took the dough first, and that's helping that, and this place produced that, and here's another person who's doing this now, and all that's going on at the same time.

And then when we got over there, I just kind of stood back and, you know, sort of watched or let her have her time with the whole thing. And I thought about that, too. You know, like, okay, well, you know, as you said, you think about it. What did I, you know, what do I, as you said, you think about it. What did I, you know, what do I do when, when I do this? Um, when you asked me that question, I looked up at that deer and that was just a whole, uh, when I killed that deer last year, that deer had to be killed. I mean, that was, that was sort of the thing. So I was finishing a job, you know, and that, so that was a was sort of the thing so i was finishing a job you know and so

that was a whole different you know emotion and and there's a bunch of other people around because there are a bunch of other people there were three other people around and um you know we talked about it but i mean it wasn't like give it its little uh or something. But anyway. Yeah. Well, I had the same experience today with those does. Right? Because I looked back and I saw those does and they were little. I mean, how old was the doe?

What do you think? Six months? Yeah, it was little. And I looked at it and there was two of them and I saw them and I was like, wow. That's a small animal compared to the elk I shot a month ago. It was tiny. And my first reaction was, those things are going to go. I'm going to let them walk.

And then I texted you, and I said, should I shoot these little does, these little fawns? You said a fawn. Should I shoot a fawn? And I said, is it a doe? And I said, yeah, because i had already looked because i was i was really focused on you know having my binoculars making sure that they didn't have little buttons on them and you said yeah i didn't say yep i didn't say yes i said kill it you said kill it that was your response and from then i was like oh well i had this reaction to this little doe yeah but i'm part of this management plan for doug's

farm and at that point i was like all right i'm gonna take that thing and so i shot it but then when i got there then it turned back to not doug's management plan and my own experience taking that life and it became an entirely different thing again so it's a very interesting like back and forth of no i'm gonna let it walk no i'm gonna kill it i'm having this experience with it you know and all that what is it that makes people want to let a that makes people want to let a fawn walk other than that you don't want to that you want to get the maximum yield of meat off your tag oh for me is it like preserving innocence somehow like the older deer guilty of something and yeah that's a really interesting question yeah there was something like that today was like i looked

at those things i was like that is so small like it seems like they were so close the first shot that i had at them was like 40 feet because they crept up behind the stand. And it was like, wow, that's like too easy. I was like, is mom going to walk around the corner? Like, I should take a bigger doe, you know, have more meat. Yeah, that I can understand. The first elk I killed with a bow, I killed a calf with my bow. And the whole time I'm out elk hunting took a few years before I got one.

And I finally get one and I thought like, oh, when you get an elk you're eating big all year. It's like, here's this thing. You now get almost 200 pounds of... And I will say, once Doug was like, kill it

my next thought was when we talk about this a lot during elk camp right is when you see that animal on day one and you ask yourself the question of do i want that meat in the freezer at the end of this hunt yeah and if the question if the answer is yes then you shoot that animal on day one and your hunt is done right yeah don't pass up how's it go yeah no it wasn't was it your thing or not your thing yeah it's not my original thing don't pass up on the first day what you'd be happy to have on the whatever 10 on the last day yeah so and i thought to myself i'd love to have that i'd love to have that meat in the freezer yeah you know i was thinking about it completely from the standpoint well not completely but much

from the standpoint of if you kill a doe fawn you just took a huge step in the management of you know reducing the herd right here oh and absolutely and that's why that's why i said kill it right and had you said kill it and by the way i need one too and we can party hunt kill the other one that was with it and as soon as i saw you and you were like yeah the mom probably got killed there was two fawns left you were doing that animal a favor because like they may not have made the winner you know who knows there were two little fawns. We could have just taken them both and it would have been it. Oh, yeah.

One out there all by itself. Right. A little lonely. Way to go, Monty. I know, right? A little lonesome animal. Anyway, it was an interesting back and forth, that whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and so, I mean, you all did good work in the management plan.

I need to, well, Helen just said, not me. I think you did just fine work in the management plan. But, you know, we took a number of, what did we take? Twelve. We took twelve deer eight eight does uh and uh and that's a big deal but that doesn't diminish you know the life of the animal or anything like that but there is a certain matter of factness about it that you have to have or you're not going to do it. I mean, if you're sitting there getting all emotional about it. So it reminds me of the thing that Steve said to the vegan when you had the

confronted, but when you had that discussion with him at that book signing exciting that's on on youtube and stuff you said um i know more about deer or i care more about deer than you ever will and it may not have to do i may not care as much about an individual deer but about deer in general and i'm totally hacking it up but the idea was all right dearness yeah there are deer and there's lots of them and so uh i don't know that i could go out and kill a doll sheep i could go cut a redwood tree and i know guys you know i know there are guys who do it every day i can go and cut 150 year old oak tree because it's time for it to go yeah i wouldn't be able to saw a redwood yeah and you know so it's that but if i lived around him and knew about him i might and that yeah so but i'd feel like an interloper so all of that is a part of the thought process that and the emotions and everything that go with it for me.

That was another big thing the past couple of days was, more than anything, I felt like I learned a lot about deer. Just watching them and seeing how they behave, the stop-and-go-ness of them. Yeah, how they interact with the landscape. The silence, holy cow. They can run silently. They can prance through the woods and you don't hear them.

I thought about that quote too, actually, when I was sitting there just learning more about deer. It was like, oh, okay. If you want to hunt them, you have to know how they move, how they behave. That's a thing that baffles me about people who are perplexed by hunting

is that they think that you have that they think hunters have animosity toward animals people who have animosity toward animals are horrible hunters you never get good at it. Or are serial killers.

Yeah. It's like... All the serial killers have like... The assumption is that, oh, you like to hunt and kill animals because you somehow like violence on animals. But be like, the people I know who are really good at hunting really become students of animals. They love to be around them.

That's such a weird statement to me. Well, it's out there. But here, let's do this. Helen, what are your concluding thoughts? No, you know what? Let's go clockwise like we're dealing poker. Like we're dealing euchre. Yanni?

Can I ask a question for my clinic? Yeah, hell yeah, man. You can do whatever you want. I just want Helen to expand on the antlers. Or just to answer whether or not you were thinking about it at all. Were you right there with Brittany just thinking, I just need to kill the first animal I get a shot at? Steve asked that question earlier and

instinctively I said, yeah, it doesn't matter. But I think once we started looking at them I was like, I think it'd be cool to have because I had shot a cow elk before and I was like, I think it'd be cool to maybe shoot a buck or

just seeing them more. I think the first time i kind of looked at a scope and i was like okay i get it was when we were glassing for elk in montana and we were spotting mule deer and be like oh wow that's a huge mule deer and i didn't really it just didn't click for me. There was nothing about it that was, that made me want to shoot that animal more than another animal. It made me want to have that animal, you know, on my wall or anything like that. And then Giannis, when we were at Giannis' house butchering the elk, and he was showing me, you know, some of his antlers that he had in his garage as he's wanting

to do i'm joking i'm totally joking i know and i think once you hold them in your hand you're just kind of there's something about them that that are definitely magical and you know even sitting in this room you're like it makes you want to one day you know shoot a buck that could potentially be on the top shelf um but yeah i really didn't get it before it was not something that was interesting to me so just hit you because it was like i hit you that day yeah yeah. In Yanni's garage. And then you had affirmation here in Wisconsin. Yeah, because the way we got into hunting was because, you know,

through the meat aspect, through the eating aspect of it. You know, that's why for me, broadside is the only shot I'm comfortable with right now because I know that if i shoot it through the lungs or shoot it through the heart or something like that then it's you know the least amount of waste meat wise like i'd rather not if the animal's facing me there's potential that it could you know go through the whole damn thing then go out the back ham yeah and like that's what's the point you know and you did land just the perfect hard shot yeah I was very happy about that

but Ellen's an excellent marksman until I clean missed the toe yeah and you can have another you can have another concluding thought if you don't want to have your concluding thought be a question that was my concluding thought I was very interested.

You're just on fire tonight. Helen, what's your concluding thought? Blouch, blouch. Now he's looking really tired. Nothing. I just I'm excited to finally be here. It feels kind of surreal being here after working on the show for a while.

And, you know, seeing the famed i don't know where it's famed but yeah i guess on the show now huh oh i thought she said shamed so that's your thank you for having us on your farm. And it was a really cool experience to get a different kind of hunting. I feel like it's so different from the first hunt that we've done and equally as fun and equally as challenging in a different way. Brittany? Yeah, no, I mean, I was, again, echoing what Helen just said. Stoked to finally meet

Doug Duren. That's the first time you guys are meeting. Yeah, Helen and I go hunting together. But I was also excited to, even though we really didn't see a damn thing, I was super excited to hunt with helen for the first time yeah we didn't talk about that because we didn't talk about hunting squirrels

either man squirrels were so much fun actually that i think it's a squirrel hunting the only thing i don't know about it is squirrel hands man skinning the squirrels is the worst part but uh no i was excited to hunt with helen we uh although we we had a very um unsuccessful rabbit hunt in montana where we basically threw rocks at trees and kicked up bushes and stuff but that but this is our first hunt and we like didn't kill each other just sitting in the blind all day not seeing anything we had a great time yeah it was, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, because you guys logged a whole day just together. Yeah, and didn't see anything until the last minute and we

were a pretty good team for beginners, I thought. I mean, a little slow on trying to figure out if it was a buck or a doe. In the end, she didn't take the shot because we weren't 100% sure. And we were losing light. And you thought it had spots.

It was just darker than the ones that we had seen the day before. Bubbly. I had hoped that, you know, I've done this before with you guys. Not with you guys, not with you two, but so this is my third time hosting or whatever it is that I do here. I've always tried to have the attitude of we're just going to do what we do. I guess now I understand kind of how it's done, and I want to make sure that you guys get what it is that you want. And one of the things that I was reminded of during this last few days was what we want is to come and experience what it is that you guys do here.

And, you know, let that story tell itself and the other part was taking uh britney and to a lesser degree helen uh hunting um not knowing britney other than some email exchanges and stuff that we worked on you know together and you know contact through the other shows and whatnot but okay so Eleanor my daughter's gone hunting with me a couple of times but she's not shot she just you know goes along and and creeps through the woods with me and stuff and so I wondered how I was gonna you know handle I wonder what was it going to be like with you know having a woman in the in the blind and and I don't guess she's going to get

all emotional if she shoots something and all that and so it was a really interesting experience for me too and uh you know on the front end you wonder about, what are you hoping to get out of this or what's this going to be like for you? And once again, it's just a great experience to have you all here, those of you who have been here before, and really wonderful to have those of you who are here for the first time. And I just feel really lucky that, one, that for whatever reason, we've all got to meet and do this together and that I feel really,

it's been really wonderful to be able to share this piece of property and everything that goes with it with you all too. So that's my concluding thought. That's a good one. Thank you. Mating. I'm going to teach another Latvian trick, because we learned blouch.

If I'm talking to mating, I say mating. If I'm talking about mating, I say mating. Seven different conjugations of the... Really? Seven. So I'll put it in use right now. I'll say, matting, would you like to do your concluding thoughts?

Then I turn slightly to Doug, and I say, Doug, matinch. He's going to do his concluding thoughts. Indeed. And I turn to Doug and say, Doug, thank you for having us and allowing me to shoot my first white tail yeah yeah and be part of part of that so i appreciate that that was cool too to be able to take out uh chris um who was with me all you know the whole time and allow the ridge pounder ridge pounder rich pound aka ridge.a. cameraman for me either.

Yeah, and have Monty be able to go and hunt also. And I just, you know, it just sort of expanded the experience sort of in a way that, oh, yeah, we can do that too, can't we? These guys were like down there and getting a license yesterday when i said something about yeah and off they went you know so yeah it was cool is that your entire concluding thought my thing that wasn't no i was gonna say that um i'm still only six i didn't start hunting as young as my brother did and so i'm only six kills in to my hunting career and i still cry five of them being elk five of them being yeah two cows three bulls and now one little doe in wisconsin and i still cry every time and it's like it is such a experience of being close to god for me that it's

really really powerful and so i'm thankful that i got to do it here um it's really, really powerful. And so I'm thankful that I got to do it here. It's cool to do. Coming out here is nice. I wander around a lot and go to a lot of places, but it's nice to have a spot like this where you kind of come in and gain sort of like a more intimate familiarity with something. And I've been here a bunch now um in some ways it reminds me a lot of growing up i grew up where we hunted a couple farms

about the size of this farm um and did all of our squirrel hunting there did all our deer hunting there not all but a ton of it on these two places. And in those places kind of dissolved away the patriarchs that, you know, it was in that area. Like the generational change, like you had these farmers and then they raise their families there. But then there wasn't enough farming to support all the kids farming. And so the kids went on to do other things you know and then when the dad died the farms has changed it became like more like recreational areas and not working farms and uh that kind of went away you know like you're on one hand the old man farmer guy didn't care. You're more than welcome to come out, friend of the family.

And then other people got where, why would I have you out here? I'm always joking with you about how you shouldn't let anybody else hunt. You're not joking. So it is nice to have a farm to come that you know that chunk of ground evolve over time yeah all right yeah i completely understand that and that idea that you get you that yeah that you've been here enough now that when i say something about an area or we're talking you know you're wherever you are and and i'm here or somewhere else we can talk about the farm and i can say well you know that spot by the or you'll say you know that spot by the yeah

and it's pretty cool all right thanks tuning in hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada you might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law but hear this on x hunt is now in canada it is now at your fingertips you canadians the great features that you love and on x are available for your hunts this season now the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.