The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 143: Self-loathing and Guilt

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

Kalamazoo, Michigan- Steven Rinella talks with Mark Kenyon of Wired to Hunt, Guy Zuck, Chris “Ridge Pounder” Gill, Loren Moulton, Seth Morris and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. Subjects Discussed: The Golden Spruce and other essential reading; man-eating tigers and a seventeen-foot-long python; copper bullet efficacy; 12-hour mega sits; haikus, High Coues, and Huntin’ High; what makes a mature buck?; the significant benefits of hunting all day; early antler drops and Mark’s theory about the fate of Holyfield; getting screwed by big bucks; getting thrown off; adrenaline moments; mental fortitude, self-hatred, self-loathing, and discipline in hunting; MeatEater’s marital advice; and more. 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.

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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 meat. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We put the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Is there anyone here? Raise your hand if I haven't told you about A, my my buddy's brother who was carrying the deer rack on his backpack.

I haven't told you about this? No. No. Okay. Raise your hand if I haven't told you about this man-eating tiger in India. I told you guys all about it? Yeah, yeah. We heard that one, yeah.

Can we act like I didn't tell you? Yeah. Okay. My buddy's brother. He doesn't want me to say who it is, but it's a guy that's been on this podcast. And I've met his brother. I fished perch with his brother.

Kills a Columbia blacktail in Washington State. And I haven't spoken with him directly about it, but he kills a blacktail in Washington state. And I haven't spoke with him directly about it, but he kills a black tail in Washington state and he affixes the rack, the skull and antlers to his backpack. And this is one of those things that you hear about it being a no, no, like a, And this is one of those things that you hear about it being a no-no. Like, we'll even tie orange flagging or tie a game vest or whatever around antlers when you're doing it. But you're always like, man, what are the chances that that would happen?

That being, what are the chances that someone would mistake it for a live animal? Well, he got shot at so it was such a close call that the guy shot a hole through his backpack whoa dude wow too close the game warden hauled this dude off in handcuffs as he should jeez shot a hole through his backpack with a high-powered rifle, thinking, not only thinking that it was a live buck, but also that he was aiming at its lungs. Or he didn't get that far

into the thinking. Horrifying. Does anybody else have a story? Like, themselves or someone that they know closely that's happened to like where someone's shot at a sound or i know people that got shot in pennsylvania turkey hunting really i know there's three guys standing together talking after working a bird and all three of them got hit what What did the person think he was shooting at?

Wow. A turkey, I guess. Mistook three mugs for a turkey. Yep. And knew it was a gobbler. Not a hen. I don't know what he was thinking, but that's what I don't get about it.

I don't think there's a mistaking. There's movement. I'm going to shoot and figure it out later is it that or is it like buck fever sort of thing where you're just like so keyed in like anytime you see like a rack or movement you're like oh i gotta shoot because that's what i'm out here for that's just too in this case you've got a rack that's pointed the wrong direction yeah what it's moving to. If it's on a backpack walking away. Buck of a lifetime, man. Inverted. It was an inverted buck.

It's just still. Blows my mind. That stuff happens. It's disgusting. What are they thinking? There's more lurid details about this individual, but I don't want to give them away. Not lurid details about the victim, but lurid details about the perpetrator. He had some other things going on?

Mm-hmm. What does the victim say? I'm friends with the victim's brother. And I've fished with the victim. The near victim. No, the victim. I've fished with the victim, but I'm not

tight with him. Okay, the man-eating tiger. This is kind of amazing, man. If a grizzly here scratches someone up, that's a dead bear quick. This tiger in India killed 13 people before they were able to kill the tiger. Whittled away at 13 people before they were able to kill the tiger. Whittled away at 13 people. And they finally got it to expose itself and lured it in using Obsession clone. No.

13 people. You're serious about this? Yeah. About the clone? Old Obsession had like an extract, had some kind of like civet extract or something in it. And they find that it works really good as a tiger lure obsession obsession tell me you know more about this and we can take this one one step farther i was just reading about this i've heard that tigers have like a vengeance

for people they'll remember people sent they'll remember like they'll have it out and they'll you guys speak up lauren yeah you, you guys got to get tighter. We're trying to share a mic, but we're doing the two-finger thing. But you sound like a dude yelling up at a seminar. All right, well, I'm going to get real uncomfortably close to Chris and tell you that I believe that what I've heard is that tigers hold vengeance against people. I think that comes from one book called Tiger.

The Tiger? Yeah. By John Valant? Yeah. Who wrote one of the... Really, you know what? You want to read a real book, read his book, The Golden Spruce. I have not read that one.

That's a writing some bitch right there, man. He's good. But there's certain books that come out. It's like Malcolm Gladwell writes a book. Then for the next six months, you got to have people tell you stuff that they read in there and act like that they didn't read it there.

You know what? Actually, the way to think about that is, and you learn later where it's all coming from. Since that book came out, I've had 50 people tell me that about Tiger. It's not to take away from it because he's a hell of a writer. What was his name again? John Villant, I think. Yeah, I've had 50 people tell me that about tigers. Not to take away from it because he's a hell of a writer. What was his name again? John Villant, I think.

Yeah, we've emailed. V-A-I-L-L-A-N-T. Dude, The Golden Spruce is about a giant golden spruce and the man who sawed it down and why he sawed it down. And he did not saw it down for the reasons you think he would have sawed it down. It's about an act of eco-terrorism. It's a good act of like eco-terrorism. It's a good ass book. In Florida. Guy, you know about this?

Yeah. Seven, 17 foot python. Dude just got a 120 pound, 17 foot, five inch long python. He paid for it too, didn't he? He didn't bite him several him several times when he was wrestling with it bit him up a little bit awesome i can't even wrap my head around a snake that big me neither he can wrap his head around you god i can't wrap my head around why you would want to catch it i catch it after i shot its head off there's bounties on him i guess not alive i don't know why he wanted to catch it alive.

Just a lot cooler to roll in with a snake that's alive. 120 pound alive snake. It makes more of a statement, man. To have a 125 pound, 120 pound alive snake. Just giant pythons, man. 17 feet is long, man. Kind of getting sick of those pythons. Imagine the tree stands you were sitting in.

Dude, yeah. It'd go from the top of that tree stand to the bottom. That is insane. That's so scary. And weigh as much as Ridgefounder. Just about. What are they eating? Just anything.

Small mammals. They've eliminated a size class of mammals in the Everglades. Jeez. That's our buddy Robert Abernathy who worked on some python projects and whatnot he's a he's a biologist a couple interesting things he's telling us about they've like eliminated like the everything like grinners raccoons like a whole size class of like mid-sized mammal they just wipe them out and he told me they're working on this stuff to try to test how far north pythons can go. They can't penetrate the frost line.

Well, that's good. So if you live in... They're not going to be up in the Carolinas. They're not going to be up in Alabama. Our squirrel populations and our cottontail populations would be in danger. Yeah, there's no safe place to be a grinner anymore. We chased after a grinner last night, didn't we? We did.

We didn't come up with it. He gave us a slip. Does everybody know what a grinner is? Is it a possum? That's a possum. That's what Doug Duren calls them, grinners. Speaking of getting mauled up, now this is something we don't know. We just tried to fact check it.

But it seems like there's something here that where we got in a we got in a mix up with a with a brown bear on a fog knack about a year ago and i guess some guy just got mauled up pretty good we've been hearing all kinds of rumors from one dude one of these rumors i don't know if it's true or not, is that he was sporting a Stone Glacier backpack and that his backpack got mauled. What do you think about that, Seth? Do you believe it? Because we tried to fact check it, didn't we? Yeah. Well, yeah.

What do you feel safe adding here? He was a hiker. Yeah. We don't know what that means. We don't know if he's a scouting type hiker or an rei type what if he was hiking around what if he was hiking around hunting yeah that's why i'd say that i don't know either way we love him the same yeah ron bame wrote in uh all worked up about you remember the other day we were talking about dogs and like and i was talking about the cake theory

yeah yeah okay that got a lot of people i've noticed today a lot of letters came in about the cake theory um they're saying that that was a bad analogy one guy didn't he was talking about when he smells shrimp scampi that he smells all that he said i smell the butter and the shrimp but it's just easier to say scampi. So I'm like, whatever. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. We'll give this guy a hall pass. Do you have something to add? Well, yeah, because, yeah, sure, shrimp scampi,

if you can smell butter and shrimp, well, good on you. You don't have a broken nose. Ron Bain wrote, we're talking about what is a dog. But this is why Ron wrote in, though. Ron was right. In conversation about what dogs smell, like how is it different than what we smell, we got to think about different climactic,

not climax, climactic. Climatic? What was I trying to say? Climactic. Yeah. Yeah, that yeah that's right you know i'm talking about yeah climate the event that that different situations can influence a dog and so ron who you might know from the hunting dog podcast which is all about all things hunting dogs um he's been judging pointing dogs for the north American Versatile Hunting Dog Association for 20 years. And he's hung out with a guy who's spent 20 years running dogs from Michigan to Montana to Arizona. And here's what these guys think. He says for tracking ability on a dog, he says humidity levels are a major factor.

He thinks when you get below 10% humidity, it becomes tough for a dog to detect game. And you get much higher than 60%, and it starts to have a negative effect. He says that wind speed is also a crippler. Anything over, say, 15 miles per hour, and the scent just gets too diluted and spread out too thin too quickly. He says you get winds in the 20 to 30 range,

it becomes very hard for dogs to sort it out. He's talking about primarily bird dogs. It becomes very hard for them to sort it out. He says barometric pressure matters too, but it matters for a weird reason. If a front is coming in, birds just sit tight and they don't feed so you don't have a lot of bird feet wandering all over the place leaving odor so you could you could have this front coming in and think that somehow it's affecting your dog his ability to smell birds what's going on is birds just aren't out leading are out leaving scent most birds walk to their food source when they're feeding

they're leaving smell when they're leaving smell your dog can find it and he talks about when when he talks about when you're judging a dog or buying a dog, there's a scorecard category called use of nose. And he says, this should not be confused with quality of nose. A dog has to have a desire to find game. He can't just like to just run around looking for it. You can have, he says, he says this a lot like people needing to stay at the task at hand. He says, compare it to hunters that get tired or uncomfortable, say in the rain, and their desire

to continue starts to slip a bit. They get distracted thinking about things like hoping the weather gets better instead of pushing through it and blocking out those thoughts. Dogs are very much the same way. The nose that is tied or matched to its level of desire will produce the best results. Some skills can be taught, but desire will always win the day. Just think about that. Ron Bain.

Hunting Dog Podcast. Another dude real quick wrote in saying like uh we get this a lot too saying like hey does does copper ammo work and the thing about it go ahead yanni i didn't have anything to add you just piqued my uh interest perked up perked up i just listened You perked up. I was just listening. You perked up. Here's the way I would put it. More, I think that copper ammo is having a high rate of adoption because of efficacy.

Like so many loaders use it. You honest? Agree. like so many loaders use it. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? Agree. Like serious shooters switching for no other reason than efficacy. I feel like the efficacy. Accuracy. Accurate.

Yeah, well, I'm rolling that in. Okay. I think for a while what happened with i in fact check me on this you know because you follow this stuff perhaps tighter than i do i think for a while when people first started using monolithic or copper bullets it was they were using because they were very accurate but they had there was like early on performance issues because there's a lot to get right where the thing has to expand but not break apart and i think it took some years to get it developed yeah it seemed like there was early critiques of uh when the bullets didn't hit bone, didn't hit some mass, that they would, the term was used, pencil through animals,

like taking an arrow with a field tip and just pushing it through the lungs and not getting the upset and the damage that you're looking for out of a bullet. And I don't know if that was coincidence or if they did make better technology. I know that Federal with their new, you know, Trophy Copper line, I know that they have made like a deeper cavity up front that's supposed to help, you know, initiate that expansion and make those pedals come out more, you know, so you can get the damage. Yeah, people try different tricks like even like

cutting them to try to get them to pedal and break into four pieces but i'm telling you man i have we've been shooting a bunch of the federal trophy copper and it comes out looking like uh it comes out looking like if you had a magazine picture of like the perfectly expanded bullet like opens right up turns into a nice slug i mean they advertise up to 99 percent weight retention so like good penetration and it doesn't bust all up and they put like a tip there's like a like a cavity in there but then it's got a polymer tip on it that helps it expand and the other problem with it would be that like here's the thing to think about when you talk about this stuff is when people talk about a long range bullet you might hear it and think like oh that means it's like accurate out to long range it's probably true probably has like a like a good like a high

ballistic or what's that word ballistic coefficient see that's right but the other thing we talk about long-range bullet would be that it will still mushroom it will still expand at a low velocity so if it's coming out of your if it's coming out of your muzzle at let's say 300 feet per second if it were to hit something at that speed if it's a poorly constructed bullet and it hits something at that speed he might

erupt into a bunch of pieces but then it slows down and it loses half of its velocity and hits something and it doesn't have there's not enough there's not enough force there to cause it to expand so if you see a long-range bullet what that'll mean is it can still expand one of the things it means is it can still expand at low velocities. And I think that these are all things that have taken a while to get sorted out, which I feel like now they've just gotten it sorted out, where you have solid copper stuff that has a polymer tip and a boat tail design and has a good downrange velocity, like it's still cooking,

and still opens up right. I just don't think you can really right now, and has a good downrange velocity, like it's still cooking, and still opens up right. I just don't think you can really right now, I don't think there's really any, from an efficacy standpoint, I just really don't see that there's any argument against it. No. Did this guy have a specific question about it? He's just saying he's always hearing about it, but he hears different things about whether it works or not.

This dude just wrote in today. I've yet to have a bad experience with him. I had a bad experience with a different kind a long time ago, and it was still in its infancy. This is like seven years ago. Not in its infancy, but I was using an unproven manufacturer's offerings and had a penciling incident at a long range. 400 plus yards. Good? Mark Canyon.

Yeah. Tell me about sitting in the tree uh tell me what happens in your mind when you're sitting when you're doing 12 hour sits we're just we're just finishing up a whitetail deer hunt a whitetail deer bow hunt peak rut and mark's been sitting all damn day yeah for the last three days at least all day 12 hour. It's a long haul. I mean, me and Lauren were talking when we got out of the tree every day. You wouldn't think after just sitting for 12 hours that you'd be physically exhausted. But when you get out of there, I mean, you are worn down.

Well, you're in a saddle. Today I was in a saddle. The two days before that I was in a stand. He was in a saddle. Today I was in a saddle. The two days before that, I was in a stand. He was in a saddle every day. But, yeah, I mean, you're looking a lot. You're searching a lot. But then there's a lot of downtime. There's a lot of periods of time where there's nothing going on.

And the biggest thing for me on all-day sits is it is, it's, of course, partly physical, but i think the mental side is the bigger part of it being able to stay mentally engaged as much as you possibly can over the course that whole day and knowing knowing that even though things have been dead for two hours that at any time it could all change so i've had my fair share of mistakes over the years where i lost focus in the middle of an all-day sit and it cost me. I told you guys a story last year about Holyfield, right? That was 11 o'clock in the afternoon and I lost focus and then there he is at 20 yards. You were sending text messages. I was reading a book on my phone. Reading a book on your phone? Yeah, you're sitting for 12 hours.

You need a little something to kind of buy the time and so i would like look at what i look at the phone for 20 seconds scan all around me look at the phone for 20 seconds scan all around yeah i got you reading haikus what were you reading i was reading uh it's a book called the name of the wind for a second i thought i've never heard of a book called High Coos Deer. Oh, High Coos? I'd read that book, dude. That would be a good one. This book about high country coos deer? I need to read that soon. Is that Duncan Gilchrist offering?

No, Duncan Gilchrist's best book has an unfortunate title of Hunt High. And I think a lot of people read that, and a lot of people read that, and they're they get to thinking one thing but he's talking about hunting the high country yo not hunting high yeah go on yeah yeah sitting all day man i think nothing of going out like if we're you know regular spot and stock hunting anything i walk you know i leave knowing i'm no way i'm coming back. Why would I come back?

Yep. Because I'll just take a big old nap out where I am. Yep. I'll eat my lunch where I am. There you go.

But sitting in the damn tree. It wears on you. The same scene for 12 hours. The same trail. The same trees. The same creek. It's all there.

You don't get to do anything it definitely gets worse the tighter the space and the shorter like yeah you've got a view if you have a if you yeah where you can glass every five minutes yeah yeah i mean it's just it's just a matter of toughing it out i having snacks having water and then yes i think that it is better to be in the tree and be slightly distracted on occasion by your phone or a book or something like that than not being in the tree at all yeah give me the main argument like i people can picture what it is but tell me why you sit all damn day so the reason why you sit all day during the rut is because bucks specifically get up some number of them on a relatively consistent basis in our cruising for does from let's say 10 or 11 till

one or two in the afternoon especially older deer now you're not going to see the same number of deers you might in the typical early morning or late evening hours, right? Deer are crepuscular, so they're most active at first light and last light. So no matter what, you're going to see the most activity then. But there's a disproportionate amount of activity, especially for mature bucks, middle of the day during the rut. You better talk into crepuscular there a little bit yeah yeah so crepuscular just it describes an animal that's most active at that dawn or dusk time period so deer many many mammals right are most active the first hour to last hour or two but for the

small time period these bucks know where does will be in the middle of the day, right? They're bedded down. So they have a great opportunity that time period to go from doe bedding area to doe bedding area to doe bedding area to find females that are ready to breed. So if you're willing to tough it out, it's a great time to get those bucks on their feet. And we saw it. You think he's going around to bedding areas just to sniff all the does out and see who's who's that's exactly what they're doing i want to say who's ripe yes that's not the right word hot hot hot dough ripe doesn't sound quite ripe sounds like something my wife would be like really really? Yeah, it's a little bit too visceral. I feel like she would say,

because there's got to be another word for that. Ready? Hot dough. Hot dough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're normally like the big bucks. She's coming to her breeding cycle.

There you go. Is that clear? You guys knew that. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Because they're normally so paranoid. this time of year they throw caution to the wind to a degree you know for love i think we can all relate i think we definitely witnessed it several times there was uh you know your

closest call came at 11 30 you You called it out before that. You said, this is my favorite hour, 11 o'clock, and here comes the one that was the closest right buck. But there were several other opportunities during that time. Yeah, two out of our last three days of doing the all-day sits, we saw potential shooters in the middle of the day and lots of other bucks, younger bucks. And I've seen at least every year now for a good number of years,

I've had at least one mature buck encounter midday. And the thing is, if you talk to guys who take this really seriously, I've got a buddy who always, always hunts all day, and he consistently kills mature bucks. And if you look at the number of mature bucks that he's killed, I think he's taken 17 or 18 or 19 of them during the middle of the day. You look at the number of hours compared to hours hunted across the board by other guys, right? There's many more hours spent in the tree evening or morning.

But there's a significant percentage killed midday by the fewer people that are actually hunting that time period yeah like no one's there but they're getting them but they're getting them um but it's tough i mean it's not necessarily fun now lauren when you're up filming mark canyon being in the tree all day what's your perception of what's going on are you like like, dude, this job sucks? Or do you feel like you're hunting? I think anytime you're out there, you're kind of feeling like you're hunting. You're part of the hunt.

You know, it definitely isn't the greatest deal sitting in a tree stand all day, especially a sling or a saddle. You know, it's not comfortable so but you're definitely engaged looking for that one buck or any deer any movement the whole time so it's kind of just like an assist you know that's how i feel about it are you periodically filming or do you let hours go by and not film anything well i think that hours went by without filming for for sure. You're stuck in one place, so shot options become pretty limited. You get as creative as you can, but in retrospect, you're always like, oh, I should have done more, I should have done this or that.

But you can only shoot the same angle, same depth, same focal length so many times. And, too, we had a lot of opportunities on does and fawns and not moving and lots of getting pinned down. So there's only so much doe footage you're going to shoot. Only so much of the interaction. Oh, I got a close-up of the fawn eating. I think I've got 12 of those, so do I need any more? I'm going to stop filming that. And I'm going to not move.

Does Mark ever yell at you? Like, how does Mark invade you? I think at one point we were discussing, did he say, what the, are you doing? But then we reviewed the footage and he didn't say that. He said, what are you doing? What was I doing? I think I moved or something.

You can't move like that. Yeah. Me and Ridge Pounder, we're like an old couple. I'm like an old abusive husband. He was pretty gentle. He didn't really yell at me, but I get it. I think it definitely gets intense enough where you don't want to screw anything up, especially if you're on a pretty high-end hunt where you know you're the

camera guy if you mess this guy's hunt up you're gonna hear about it you know and uh that's the last thing you want to do is mess up somebody's hunt so you're definitely part of the hunt you're a hunter at that point because you're looking for the shot i feel i felt bad a couple times i think i apologized to you once i was like i'm sorry i think i get a little bossy up in the tree i i have like hunting tourettes where like i can't help myself i have to say don't move stop moving why are you moving you can't move like that yeah a couple times i'm like oh gosh that sounds like a jerk at your six o'clock we had our system down for sure and and that happens real quick. The first day was brutal. The wind was blowing. It was 25 degrees. We were both shivering. You know, at one point your teeth are chattering.

You're like, oh my God, are we ever going to be done with this? But then time goes on and dough pins you down or whatever happens. I think we had, you know, we got lucky because there were a lot of deer and a lot of stuff going on the whole time, so it kind of kept us busy in that respect. And then after three days, the third day flew by. Twelve hours was no big deal. What time of the day, when you're doing a 12-hour mega sit,

God, it is 12 hours, too. It's almost maybe longer than 12 hours. Well, we got in at 6.30. Oh, 12 hours too it's almost maybe longer than 12 hours well we got in it getting a stand around 6 30 oh 12 hours get out just after six well at what time of the day do you hit where you're like oh we made it three yeah i mean there's that point where 10 o'clock rolls around you're like oh god it's a double shift well yeah so it was uh the first day we did it i think it was we sat in that we went to this new spot and there was bucks chasing does all over the place it was like it was a good morning and it was probably around 10

o'clock and i look at lauren i'm like i've got good news and bad news for you which do you want and then he guessed he's like is the bad news that we're sitting all day yep we're sitting all day with the good news because there's a lot of activity yeah there was tons of deer we counted uh yesterday i think we saw 35 i lost count after 35 deer yeah at least 35 deer yesterday that keeps you busy and there was enough to do up there. Though it is totally uncomfortable. I mean, your feet go numb, and I don't know. It's not the greatest deal. This is my first time ever bow hunting for whitetails managed property where deer have a chance to grow old and to like be there knowing that you could see one of these bucks come by that's four years old

keeps you keeps you wanting to sit there because these are things you just read about you know then to be like they actually might show up you think it's

going to be easy but it's not easy it's still not easy there's still too many things that could go wrong but like knowing they're out there

makes it intriguing man knowing they could roll around the corner how many opportunities did you have Mark

on two and a half year-half-year-olds? Oh, we could have killed a lot of two-and-a-half-year-olds, a good handful of them, lots of year-and-a-half-olds, a couple three-year-olds, one three-year-old, maybe two three-year-olds. I can't remember. Dude, that's where you're screwed up, man. Explain to people what you talk about when you talk about a mature buck because you always use the word mature buck you don't put like a number to it yeah so i i would typically call

four or older mature some people will say three or older in michigan the three-year-old is a if it's everything's relative right in michigan a three-year-old in most places is the most the most mature buck you might have around but you don't mean sexually mature because they're sexually sexually mature at one and a half correct correct so what is mature yeah you know why not just say big ass bucks in the eye of the beholder mature right it's in the eye of the beholder it's all relative but when you get to four five four plus you are at that top percentile of age in most populations in any state really um you know i think people would look at year and a half old bucks being like your i don't know like a 10 year old like a young child the way they act

the way they think the way they operate you get to a two-year-old you've got like a young teenage type deer you know you got your 15 year old boy running around being crazy you get to a three-year-old that's like your college kid that's the dude on the bar yeah he's like they're hitting the bars but they're they can be like the big boy in town in some places like they can walk around their chest out they were pretty good and strong but they still don't quite have it but when you you reach four, that's like you're – I think a four-year-old is like a 31-year-old. He's in the peak of everything. How old are you, Mark?

31. Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. So, yeah. wow wow okay so yeah four five six you're getting to they they've achieved what other whatever body structurally skeletally mature that's what i've missed that's a good point yes they're getting they have a weird way they look different when when they get that old, for sure. Everything about them.

You see them from hundreds of yards away, and you know what you're looking at. Definitely. The way they carry their head. The neck, the chest. It's almost a different animal. And just how deliberate they almost look like in their head they're gone yeah yeah they seem like grumpy old men damn it is what they seem

like walking all day how old are you steve 44 man so i'd say a four-year-old plus kind of like a 44 year old person god damn it yeah halfway to 88 man but here's the deal let's say he snapped both of his antlers off you wouldn't shoot him even though he's four and a half you know i had an interesting scenario like that two years ago with not to bring up the same deer again every time I ever talk to you, but Holyfield broke off part of his main beam. I like hearing about this deer. And I thought him to be four years old that year, and he snapped off half his antler. And I was faced with this question.

I was like, well, it's the buck I've been hunting forever. He's mature. At that point, I'd been two years. He's mature, but he lost half his antler. A lot of people were asking me, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? I said, I'm still going to shoot him. But if he had knocked off both of his antlers, in my thought, it would be, if I were to take that deer, I want to take that deer as I knew him.

If that makes sense at all. Oh, come on. It makes sense, but come on. Part of that, how do I describe it? Mental masturbation? You kill a deer, and you take the meat, you consume the meat. But then you also have some kind of memento to remember that animal by, to see that animal by.

So his antlers, the mount, that would be an important part of that hunt for me to be able to look at that, remember that, see that. It would just feel, it'd just be a bummer to kill him and not be able to see him in all of his glory again. And I wouldn't want to kill something and then feel like a bummer about it afterwards. Let me put this, let me do this to you. Let's say you found it. Let's say you had him because you found where he snapped him off. I guess in that case, then yeah. Because you could peg him back on there.

The taxidermist could fix it. I know. But yeah, it's an interesting question. Now, Holyfield, you think that buck's dead i think so i found a shed in february thinking so i found his antler so that means he made it into the winter figured he'd be back this year but have gotten zero pictures zero sightings none of the neighbors i talked to have seen him or gotten pictures so what do you think he's where do you think he's dead from well we found i found his shed early so i found it like the very beginning of february or late january so it's an early drop lots of times early antler drop is indicative of health issues

nutrition something like that i didn't know that so my theory is that maybe he got shot by someone in gun season. He got injured in some way. So he had an injury, dropped his antler early, and he succumbed to die off over the winter with a kill or something like that. I was bear hunting one time in May and saw a bull elk still packing his antlers around. Wow. Is that pretty unusual, Giannis? I've seen quite a few.

I've had some of my best elk i don't do a lot of it but elk shed picking days um late in may we had my birthday still dropping well just you know when you go there and they're all on top of the grass nothing's going over them they're all just brown laying there you know just recently happened. Yeah, I'm with you. To what degree, if you're a guy that wants to kill a mature white tail box, I mean, one, they got to be there. Absolutely. In many places, that's the biggest thing, keeping people from killing them

is that they're not there. Yeah, they didn't exist when I was a kid. And I grew up 90 miles from here. Yeah. They really did. I mean, I don't want to put too fine of a point on it. Okay. We hunted public land north of us a little bit,

and we hunted some large farms. We hunted some large farms very near our house. Within an eight mile, all the hunting we did, unless we went up to Baldwin to hunt public land, all the hunting we did was an eight mile radius, less than eight mile radius of our house. Okay, and hunt some large farms. Two farms that my people, my father knew from church,

families my father knew from church that let us hunt out there, where these were like 300 and 400 acre dairy operations where they were running dairy and they were growing corn and raising alfalfa to feed cows. And they had river bottoms, thickets, like the whole picture. And these two farms were virtually up against one another. Over the entirety of my, until I moved to Montana. And my old man's the one that shot it.

He shot it with his bow. One time of all those years of everyone hunting and the farmers' kids hunting and us hunting and everyone hunting and the surrounding, only one time did a buck that I now recognize to have been a three-and-a-half-year-old buck ever come off anywhere. I never laid eyes on one, dead or alive.

I do not think they could reach three and a half years of age unless they live in some deep dark swamp hole that nobody went to ever the one my dad killed he killed on the edge of a pine plantation small little thing called the pines well you think mark you think uh 20 30 years ago michigan had any big bucks or are they just not around? I think that Steve's right to a degree. There were definitely fewer of them. There were mature bucks around, but they're few and far between. And then number two, I do also think that 20, 30 years ago, people weren't as tuned in to how to kill mature bucks too.

Yep. So it's much, people are much more savvy now in the things you need to be doing to see and kill mature bucks. Back then, it was kind of head out into the, most people head out in the woods, sit next to a tree trunk or something like that, or get up and sit on a tree branch and shoot something over a carrot pile. Because you weren't running cameras either. So you didn't know. If you didn't know, if you knew one was out there, then you'd change everything to go get them. But you didn't know they were out there. The one my old man killed,

he didn't know it existed until it walked under the tree. Right. Yeah. But I do think culture has changed so much that it allows a lot more deer to reach that age. So probably the biggest thing is just that the number of mature bucks around is just higher now i remember being in high school and one of the farms we hunted on and one of the kids tim who's still a big time hunter today and does a really good job he's got a small property now but does a very good job with wildlife habitat on this place. He was the first guy, and I was in high school,

and I heard Tim Zerlott had passed on multiple bucks. And I remember thinking, like, something must be wrong with that dude's head. But he was a revolutionary. He was like a pioneer, man. He was a revolutionary at the time. Yeah. It's like passing on bucks, are you crazy?

Yeah, it was unheard of. And he had gotten good enough where he could do it. We used to think a big buck was just a year and a half old buck to put more tines on. My brother Danny shot with his bow one time. He shot an eight point

and got it stuffed. It's still hanging on my mom's house. It's a year and a half old buck. In our head, it was a giant. I remember he shot it and a year and a half old buck in our head it was a giant i remember he shot it and put a hole right through its heart it took three steps and fell over right on itself and he got it mounted and we you wouldn't believe what we went through to drag that deer out a hole because the last thing you'd ever do is cut a buck up in the woods because you want to go show everybody yeah and it was like danny killed an eight point danny killed an eight

point but there was no perception it was just the same thing it was just the same year and a half old buck we thought that the points yeah exactly on those points I think that puts it in perspective I think growing up I was taught that like a spike or a forked horn was

1 year old and if he's a 6 point he's probably 2 years old and 8 points 3 and a 10 is probably two years old and eight points three yes and ten it's probably four years old no matter the size you know gosh in our family we didn't even talk about age at all it was just the points it was like oh he's a spike he's a six point never once anyone say oh it's probably three or five oh it was the same my family pointer my first buck was an eight pointer and i got it mounted and I thought it was the biggest damn buck ever, but it was well under 100 inches.

When I shot that thing, I was in disbelief. I thought it was a giant. Yeah. Just because it had eight points. Someone getting an eight-pointer got everyone's attention, but now you look at him, you're like, yeah, he's just a year and a half old. Yeah. So point being, I don't think they were around and then culture changed yeah i think that a couple things that led to it in a handful of places like information about what it required to grow big bucks and i think kind of a changing people this is like some

old man shit here but but a lot's changed around the way people handle permissions and stuff on their properties and i think that at the like when i was coming into the world there were a lot of properties around us farms and stuff around us where the farmer wasn't even exactly clear on who was hunting there people just hunt you know if someone gave you permission years ago you just kept going on until they told you not to go anymore and so i think that there was more i think that later when people started to recognize the value of deer more they started to kind of like wanting to know who was out there and it just it wasn't like such a free-for-all you know i had i would have hunting

permission on farms where every person that asked had hunting permission right no rhyme reason to it i just like that kind of stuff has just come to an end hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, 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. 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. 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 hand-picked 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. It's tough to come by. I was sitting next to the, the other night, I was sitting at dinner with, you have met or heard of Shane Mahoney, everyone here.

To some extent. So he's kind of a preeminent expert on the North American model of wildlife conservation. He's kind of like a conservationist philosopher type figure. Is that how you'd describe him, Yanni? Yeah. I like that.

He was talking about just the way it's become hard for new hunters, the way it's become hard for young hunters is those days are kind of done when you could just wander around hunting on people's land on neighbor's land and you know the farms where everyone you just kind of go where you take your 22 and ride out on your bike and go and he said there's all these programs now that are like meant to sort of like recreate that but you're not going to recreate it. And if there's an upside to this, the upside to this is I think there's a lot more big bucks running around now

as people exercise more control over their stuff. And I don't know what good big bucks really are besides they look cool. They represent something. They represent an ecosystem, bucks really are besides they look cool they represent something they represent uh an ecosystem well at least a a species a population that is in balance in a natural state if you looked at the deer herd in michigan in 1970 or something like that or 1980s whenever you guys were hunting around or whenever this was.

80s. Okay. 90s. That was a very askew deer herd. Heavy, heavy on the does. Very light on any type of mature bucks, just tons and tons a year and a half old bucks. That's not a natural herd of deer as as it would

be in you know several hundred years ago when it wasn't as impacted by what we're doing but now you are finding some places where you have a more natural herd which is which is beneficial not just for hunters that like to see big bucks but having a relatively balanced age structure that's good for the whole herd in what way is that good for the herd so for example if you have more mature bucks and you have a balanced kind of structure of the different ages and things and the balance with the does you're going to have a more tight rut if you have a tight rut if you have a well-timed rut that happens consistently in a small window you're gonna have a better fawn drop you're gonna have a better fawn drop. You're going to have a tight fawn drop, a well-placed fawn drop that is conducive for the females and the fawns to be most healthy growing up the next year.

So if you get, let me describe the opposite scenario. If you have a scenario where you've got lots and lots of does, not many mature bucks, just a bunch of year and a half old bucks, you're going to get does coming into heat and bred at all different times of the year in the fall so we're going to say a very spread out trickle rut does and getting bread in mid-october all the way to mid-december scattered all around so you've got fawns dropping in march you got fawns dropping in maybe not march you got them dropping in late april mid-may early June. You want to have a tight drop. If you have fawns dropping all at the same time, less coyote predation.

If you have them dropping at the right time that's not too early, that they're freezing and not having nutrition available, but not so late that they're getting a late start on being able to— They go into winter small. Exactly. Yeah. So that—I mean, there's a whole bunch of different things along those lines. Can I lay a couple things in here real quick? Yeah, I'm rambling. No, you're not rambling at all.

But I remember in that era, it was common to hear that you had buck-to-dough ratios of 20 or 30 doughs to every buck. And I remember when I learned that they were born basically one-to ratio it's kind of shocking to see that that level of of harvest on the bucks but there's a thing that like and i've talked about this before i don't know if i talked about it here but when we had like largely kind of eliminated deer really knocked knocked deer back bad. Even coming up into the 1930s, 1940s, there just weren't that many deer around. People became very, like, it became culturally taboo to shoot does. I remember, like, in this era we're talking about when I was a kid, there were a lot of old-ers that that would like disparage someone who shot a doe and because you wanted to get a deer you just shot the bucks and you shot

every damn buck anyone ever laid eyes on got shot and you'd wind up with these situations where you had like i said 20 to 30 does for every buck, and the bucks were all, most bucks were not living, in to see their second December. Even relatively recently, that was still the case in a lot of states. So, for example, in Michigan, and I'm going to get the numbers not quite right, but some number of years ago, maybe it was 10 years ago, give or take, the percentage of the buck harvest in Michigan, if I remember right, someone's going to email you

and say I'm wrong, but it's somewhere in this ballpark. Yeah, they will. Something like 70% of all the bucks, maybe more of all the bucks killed in Michigan were year and a half olds. Now it has dropped down to, so it's significantly improved, but it's still one of the highest in the country. Something like 55% or 50-some percent now, I think, is the number of the bucks killed in Michigan annually are year and a half old. And that's still the top five in the country. But now across the entire country, several years ago for the first time,

an age class different than year and a half olds is a higher percentage of the buck harvest than year and a half olds. Interesting. No shit, really? Yeah, so now bucks over three comprise over 30 percent of the harvest if you look at across the country no way and this has changed over the last 15 to 20 years it's

just been dropping down so why don't why don't guys that are big into whitetail management why don't they let i know the answer to this but i'm just posing it why don't they let, I know the answer to this, but I'm just posing it. Why don't, if you want balanced age structure, why don't they let the, once they hit four, why don't they become hands off? Why be like, oh, we want to make older bucks, we want to make older bucks, but then systematically kill off every buck that gets to be that same threshold age. Why is there not a movement to, or like a management strategy to be like post-trophy and say like, oh yeah, man, if he hits four and a half, what, one in a hundred bucks or whatever it is will be four and a half. So as big as they they're going to get then we let those go because we're going to create five-year-olds six-year-olds seven-year-olds but instead they get that big and people just get so lusty for them they want them dead so it makes

it hard to argue that you're really trying to have these like age classes in place it seems like you're just walking what you're really trying to do is have big bucks because you want to shoot big bucks and you're trying to like act like there's some biology or ecology or conservation at work when it's like oh how convenient i think i mean i don't think anyone's going to argue the fact that anyone who is managing deer also wants to hunt deer they want to take some deer so yes so there's gonna each person's gonna set a different goal that is going to hopefully achieve something beneficial for the herd but also they've got to have a goal as far as what they want to try to hunt and harvest and if you start saying that you know i want to wait for six or seven or eight or nine year old bucks you're simply never going to shoot any bucks then because it's really, really hard to get bucks over four,

let alone over five, even on big managed properties. It's just not an easy thing to do because even if you have a large property, these deer still go all over the place. So it's no guaranteed thing that if you pass on a four-year-old, he's going to make to five. Whether you're on a 100-acre property or a 1,000-acre property, that's not a guarantee. So that just kind of why is it being about as old

like there's so fewer five year olds and four year olds even yeah it's i don't know of anyone even the folks that that take management to the highest level have great big properties um they can control a lot of acreage. I don't know anyone that really looks at targeting anything over five. Five is kind of like that. If it's over five, it is fully mature. It has kind of reached the pinnacle as far as body size, antler size. It's expressed whatever genetic potential there it is.

What he's going to be is what he's going to be, and that's a fully mature deer that's going to do everything that a mature deer is going to do and if you can get them older than that great but that's hard to ask for um so five-year-olds are what most people kind of set as that top end during this week tell me about the or i can start the encounters you had with with um the closest encounters you had with mature bucks and what what went wrong yeah well i had one i had one encounter with mature buck for sure mature buck do you want to tell my story do you want to start with yours uh you go ahead no i'll do it whatever you decide mark you should go first okay

it had it began and ended so fast like they do yeah so i'm perched up in a really shitty tree pounder i don't think i'm going to talk about the one that you screwed up. Because I don't think he was four and a half. I think he was like three and a half or something like that. What do you think he was, Mark? So that's not the deer I saw. The deer I saw was the one that you screwed up. The big one?

The other one. That's a mature buck. I didn't see the big, big one, but I'm talking about the other one. No. But did you screw that up? No. I screwed up. Well, I in that I'm a person that has an odor to him, not an unusual odor. In fact, my wife comments how I'm not a smelly person.

But, okay. Can we talk about the one you screwed up? Sure, man. It's a story that has to be told. First of all, I'd like to preface the story by saying that this has never in the history of Meat Eater ever happened to me before. As far as I know. You're embarrassed about it, but you don't need to be. Oh, terribly.

So, Lauren was talking about the pressure of being a camera dude on a hunt like that to me that interaction that happened is worse than like anything either one of the hunters could have done you want me to not tell it no you gotta tell it now okay if killing uh killing a mature buck mark how what percentage harder does it become when you have a camera person? It is harder. I think it's half as likely. Something significant, sure. It's twice as hard. A little less than twice as hard. Less than twice as hard. But still.

There's just a lot. There's already a lot that can go wrong. It's not quantifiable because there's twice as much odor. There's twice as much movement. There's twice as many weird blobs up in the tree. There's twice as much movement there's twice as many weird there's twice as many weird blobs up in the tree there's twice as much sound and i and i found that that um the best camera guys i don't know why this is but the best camera guys don't have this is this is not a fair statement we have some phenomenal camera guys who don't have a strong hunting background which is a plus but they tend to not know how to read a critter yeah they don't know how to read a critter and they don't know when is this fair

powder no it's totally fair i think i've i've been learning how to read a critter a lot better taking its temperature i can take a critter's temperature now i feel maybe not to the extent of a pro but i'm close i think a lot better than when is it appropriate to move yes taking his temperature yep a deer standing there uh who's kind of like waving his nose through the air and kind of almost wanting to like stomp his front hoof. Don't move then. Yeah, okay. So yeah, you take it at this temperature and you're like,

this is not an appropriate time for movement because this deer is like, I don't like something. I don't know what I don't like, but I don't like it. A deer that's got his nose up the arse of another deer. Time to move, man. Yeah, just get it over with. Slowly, though, still slowly. Yeah.

So you get it. Yeah. That's good, Chris. A turkey who's got his fan up, and his fan is between its head and you. You can do it. That's time to move. Yep. So we're sitting there, and we're in a weird setup where we're actually in different things.

I'm in a tree stand up in a shitty tree, and Chris is in a little outhouse. What do you call those? It's like a box blind. Chris is up in a little miniature plastic bad box blind. It was in less than desirable filming location. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was about 10 a.m i get a text from chris who i'm looking at chris can hear me so so we were i wear him because we're filming so

i have a mic and i can whisper to chris i can be like six o'clock do whatever but he can't communicate to me um we have one thing where there's a stick that he can hang out of his blind, and that conveys a certain message to me. What did that convey? That conveys, because this is a problem we have, that conveys, I see a deer that you don't see. And I'll tell you that this stick does not come into play very often. But it did one time. But one time the stick came into play.

Oh, poor guy. You get a lot of heat, man. You get a lot of heat, man. I get a lot of heat, yeah. It's all right. Your mom loves you, though. It's 10 a.m. Yeah, we met Pounder's mom and Miss Pounder, Mrs. Pounder. And she was telling us what a great cook Pounder is.

And she made a bunch of cookies. So around 10, I get a text. Is that what happened? Yeah. Yeah. And you needed to go down because you had left your camera battery at the base of the blind. So I have my backpack, but then I had like a little go bag that I had made and I was stoked on it because I was going to have it all like folded in and silent. And if I needed to like quickly change a battery, I would just reach into this bag. No zippers, no Velcro, nothing.

Grab the battery. Still a noisy ass bag. Yeah. Well, until it's in its right zone, then it's not the greatest bag. But I was stoked on the idea. But then I stupidly forgot to put the battery in that bag and left it in my bag at the bottom of this ladder and you didn't have a p bottle and i didn't have a p bottle and you can't really snake her up out over the window ledge a little too high and you could have snaked her out

the door or but you had to get a battery anyways so he says is it okay if I climb down? It's 10 a.m. Is it okay if I climb down and get me a battery and take a leap? I see the door open. I see him come down. I see him turn away from me. Presumably. Yeah. You snaked her out. And I look past you and down the hill.

And I'm not kidding you, man. We've been sitting there all morning. And he hits the ground starts taking a whiz and in the direction he's whizzing i just like here's a buck and he's coming and he's close he's coming it was like you ever have a dream where like you like when you wake up from the dream you're and you realize that it was a dream, you're like so relieved that it wasn't real life. Yes. That's what it was, except it was real life.

That was like the worst case scenario. And I'm saying to you, like I do, I'm like, Chris, Chris. Then I realized he can't hear. He had to unhook. So you eventually turn around and I give you a frantic like down on the ground. And I see him get out his phone like he's going to film with his phone and aim it

it's my only instinct it's a nice buck it's a nice like I'm like very interested in shooting this buck and this buck comes up and I think he's going to come right up the edge you're on and wind be perfect and I'm like he's going to pass and buy 10 feet away.

But it's like, he's probably not going to see because you're hunkered down in tall grass. But then he cuts and comes in and picks up your smell. And here's the difference between like an older buck and a not older buck. When he hits that smell, it's, he turns, you watch deer hit smell all the time.

And a lot of deer hit smell, they hit human odor, and they get this like, oh my gosh. And they wave their nose in the air, and they're like, they're going to run, maybe not.

They stomp their foot. They take three bounds, and stop again, and wh three bounds and stop again and, and blow and whatever they do. And then they drift off raising all kind of fanfare and tail in the air and all pissed off and letting everybody know. And, you know,

but it took them like a full minute to like come to the conclusion. This is what they want to do. This buck hits that, hits that wall of scent. And his attitude doesn't change. Really. But he just stops, turns around, and lowers his profile. He seems to slink into the earth more and just go back the same direction very often it's that you described that wall of scent i feel like it's they hit a wall they

literally you can physically see it as if they smash their head into it and then bam it's all different after that and he's like, he doesn't desire to draw any attention to himself. Yeah. No pause. It's like, that's how they live. That's the difference between a buck that dies and a buck that lives. It's like, you bump a big mule deer buck. You know like mule deer are famous for like, you bump a mule deer buck you know like mule deer are famous for like

well you bump a mule deer buck and they run and they're gonna vanish they're gonna get where he's not gonna be able to he's gonna vanish over the edge but he stops and looks back like the big ones when you bust a group of them he doesn't go the way the does go he goes a different way and he never stops he doesn't stop and do the what was that and this buck man it was kind of magical to watch him just be like not killing me today sons of bitches and just slunk out now the other one oh go ahead i was gonna ask this wasn't the short time one or was the short time one he had he had one of his sides had noticeably shorter tines than the other side.

Now, the one that was not, I don't want to say it was my fault, but the one that was not Chris's fault. Yes. All day we're watching deer that are following a certain line of traffic. They're

coming into our zone and they're coming along the same edge and some break some go straight and some break left and come up past us eat some dried leaves they're laying on top of the snow they like that little spot you just watch deer they're like doing this all day long and there's one spot i can't see really clearly and it's kind of like a ridge line that comes up to where we are. And late in the morning, like you're saying, late in the morning, here comes one. And I look and he's already, it's happening too fast already.

Coming against the flow of traffic, walking the ridge, just has that dead on paranoid look to him, but traveling with a sense of purpose. And it's a 10. It's a nice 10. And he comes up and I'm like, oh my God. I'm like, he's going to pass 10 yards away. He's going to pass 10 yards away. I get my bow.

He's behind some brush. I don't even have a chance to start pulling back and hits the wall of scent and not even i mean he's so close to me yeah and i'd been there for hours and the wind's like not the kind of wind that flushes everything away but just the kind of wind that's like very steady in a direction And you've pooled up, I don't know how much stink, at 10 yards away. And he hits it and just gone. Vanished.

Was that one of the bigger whitetail bucks you've seen while bowhunting, at least? Yeah. Right? Probably a pretty nice one. Super nice one. It was the kind of buck and I was kind of like reviewing in my mind i was kind of glad i didn't have time to dwell on how nice he was but i find that i could do everything

better when i have time yeah if i have time um you see something you get excited when you have time the excitement goes down and you start remembering the important things this would have been one of those great shots to screw up because um it would have happened too fast do you think is there anything like if you i always try to do this at least any kind of mature buck encounter that doesn't end the way i wanted to try to self-analyze a little bit when you look back on that is there anything you would have done differently is there any other yeah i would be after all this time we've been spending in trees and just having things like that happen and then not work out i think that um it's hard to do it but the the balance of shooting lanes and cover yeah because here you have here here i'm in a tree

where 25 of the stuff around me there's no possible way to take a shot. You're also not that high in that tree either. That's a pretty low stand. It's a horrible tree. Yeah. From that angle, you got plenty of cover. Yeah. It's impossible to shoot.

25% of your zone, you cannot shoot. Now, though, if we assume that we're stuck with that stand where it is if the back had been trimmed out you know how much worse we would have been like hung out to dry then that's the thing no because if you could like i actually was sitting there tonight thinking about um i was actually sitting there tonight thinking about this problem and the cover issue and i think think if I hunted a spot where I was really putting in multiple years of hunting there, my contribution to whitetail hunting would be that I would become very detail-focused around selecting spots, not just for their location, not just to take advantage of pinch points

and travel routes, but I would put a lot of energy into places that had good cover so that if I looked around me and if I spun in a 360-degree circle, I'd be going cover, shooting lane, cover, shooting lane, cover, shooting lane, cover, shooting lane. Even if I had to have

someone come out, if I had to take my woman out and give her a pole saw with a 30 foot handle. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't think you're bringing up anything new here. I think that you're explaining what most people go out there and try to achieve. Not when you're doing,

not when you're running around making snap decisions about stuff. Yeah, I think you do. When I was younger, my old man put a ton of focus on it. Not cover, but shooting lanes. If you have the preset stands that you're putting up before season and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. But not like when you're doing the run and gun hanging hunt exactly and i think i think the issue here right both your situation and my situation we ran into the same problem um but i

think what i think what we have here is we've got a property that we are trying to get stands up this summer and a lot of stands up across a bunch of places and there simply wasn't time to get every single one perfect right guy and nobody hunted it yeah you guys were the first ones right um so i think what we have this year now we'll get this first run through like all the stands we've we've hung all the spots we got trimmed out i think now this next spring and summer we're gonna know okay this one we gotta fix a b and c this one we gotta trim out this this and summer, we're going to know, okay, this one we got to fix A, B, and C. This one we got to trim out this, this, and this. And we'll have time to go back to a lot of these other stands that we just barely had time to get up this year.

Now we can try to get things a little bit more fine-tuned. You know, I have a background as an arborist. Is that right? So this is an especially sensitive subject for me. I can feel that. You stewed on it. i've stewed on it as well because it it hurt me too but that's something okay talk about getting screwed by big bucks getting screwed by big bucks yeah the anatomy of getting screwed by a big buck well this that same

day that you had your big giant buck come by and be stuck behind brush i get this text message from you saying i had a giant at 10 yards couldn't get a shot because of brush. I told you I could have jumped on him. Yeah. I should have jumped on him. Why wasn't that your change that you would have made? So that morning, like I said, me and Lauren, we'd been seeing not even a handful,

a good number of bucks running through chasing does around a lot of activity so i gave him the good news bad news speech told him we're gonna sit all day and um as you alluded to around 11 o'clock i turned on hey lauren this is the beginning of what i think is the best stretch of the day oftentimes for like that one solo mature buck to come through just notorious 11 to 1 big bucks big old mature bucks are going to come cruising through checking these doe bedding areas and the spot we were in was a really cool little bench on a ridge and there's great bedding behind us great bedding sort of in front of us a little ways and then around the corner of this

ridge it just seemed like a spot that a mature buck would cruise midday so we even set a bet we're like okay i'm betting like like, okay, I'm betting. Let's put money. I'm like, I have $1 bill in my wallet. I bet you that we will see a mature buck, a deer. I think we just said a deer. I bet like 11.35 we'd see the first deer between 11 and 1. You walk around with a $1 bill in your wallet.

That's what he told me. Yes. In this situation, I happened to have a $1 bill. What was it? Okay. I lost. You told me. Yes. In this situation, I happened to have a $1 bill, was it? Okay. I lost. You did lose. Twice.

And then later we double or nothinged it and I won again. But actually, I wasn't quite right because we saw the dough at 11.30. The buck, we saw one hour later. So 12.30 rolls around. We've seen a few doughs coming through midday. 12.30, I am looking off to my right kind of doing my scan and i noticed a dark shape moving along the side of this ridge and there's snow over everything it snowed overnight so you can see these bodies or less right away i pulled my binoculars get eyes on him and at first i saw as a buck and i'm like

lauren buck coming in and whatever six o'clock or whatever it was. And he gets turned around. I'm like, usually the first thing I say is if it's a buck or doe. And then right away there's usually a quick snap judgment, like little buck or shooter or something like that, just so he knows if it's a shooter or not. Yeah. And at first I was like, buck, big buck.

And then I'm pausing and I'm looking at him again and I'm trying to look at his body and try to like see what's coming my way and for the first time this trip i was like i think that's a shooter um i just remember noticing obviously bigger body and then when you looked up at his antlers i saw heaviness there was a heaviness to it. And I remember looking at the main beam and seeing like something funky going on. Another thing of indicative, you're not going to see like a year and a half old or two and a half year old buck. That's going to be some kind of unique funkiness to the rack. So he's coming down the ridge and earlier, maybe 10 minutes before,

does that sound about right? Maybe five minutes before, we had seen a couple deer running or moving across the opposite ridge, and so I grunted a couple times just on the off chance that one was a buck. We occasionally do like a Hail Mary grunt. So I grunted, and now this buck comes in. We didn't know if he was coming in

just because he was cruising or if he was coming into the grunt. Make your buck grunt noise. Well, I usually use a grunt tube. Yeah, but just do it without it. It's more like this. Guys, look, you can probably do it. Do your turkey call with no turkey call.

Check this out. This is a guy with no turkey call in his mouth. Do the purr yeah that's where he makes his magic yeah the magic's so good that's good man yeah that's real good so there you are nicest buck we got on camera right yeah Yeah, well, you're stealing my thunder. So the next thing I know, he is coming up. He comes over the rise. And at this point, like full blown, this is absolutely a buck I'm going to shoot. I grab my bow. I've turned into position.

He's worked his way across. And at this point in an encounter with a mature buck, I'm usually holding my bow. And then I'm going to grab my release and have it clipped on and ready to go so i go to clip on my release and i don't have a release on my hand because you were changing your clothes because just a minute like 10 20 30 minutes something before i had added another layer put a vest on so i took everything off put the vest on and i'd take off my release well i put my release in my pocket and forgot to put my release on part of the downfall of a 12-hour sit yeah exactly i don't want to put a layer on take a layer off whatever yeah so this is the most

terrified i've probably ever been in my entire hunting life when i've got this great big mature buck coming in and i don't have a release on. I said a bad word on camera. I'm like, I blinked up. I said that as he's walking in. I'm scrambling, trying to get my release. I found it. I'm trying to get it in my hand. He's just slowly walking across.

Fortunately, the area he's walking across is all limbs. There's zero shots. Couldn't have shot anyways. Zero. Could you have drawn back? No, because he was so far from being from being able to be in a shot lane that i'd be holding back for three minutes so i remember getting the release on and my hands started to shake while i was trying to get it on

so badly i could not get the strap through the buckle like i'm sitting there like oh my gosh this buck's gonna get shaky from bucks no that was shaky from release, from freaking out about trying to get the release on. All that threw you off. That's what threw me off. Okay. I was like, I got to get this thing on, and I couldn't. I'm just imagining he's standing right in the open, and I can't shoot him right now.

He wasn't, but in my mind, I was thinking, but finally, I remember telling myself, don't think about going fast. Just pull it through. So I slowed it down, and I got the release on, and I look back up, and he's still behind all these tree limbs, slowly working his way. I'm like, okay.

He's right there. He's moving in. He's like 30 yards. He's 25 yards. Question about the release. Do you ever practice fingers so that just in case you release it, fall into the snow no you just have to let him walk you couldn't shoot fingers i don't know how to do i don't

think i would shoot fingers can you shoot a short limb bow with fingers there's no room for your fingers well there's a there's a minimum axle to axle that you have to have so you don't get like a real bad pinch from the bowstring my grip is so strong i can just grab the loop oh yeah with a pinch between my index finger and thumb and pull back that's very impressive i do train that wow put it in your teeth thank you mark yeah so no no release no go no release no go but in this case i was able to get the release on time it was a huge relief he's still there clicked on like all right this is great but then i'm looking at him and there's just no shoot there's no hole so i can get a shot i can't thread it through anywhere i'm looking i'm like trying to see and he's just noomy noomy his way along kind of just sniffing around walking

along just perfect now he's 20 yards broadside. Lawrence fell and I'm great. And he's a beautiful buck. And then I look, okay, no shooting lanes, no shooting lanes. I'm seeing, okay, he's got to walk another 10 yards or so. And then there's a big gap. See, there should be no reason for a buck to be lingering around that long without hitting a shooting lane. But he's moving anyway. Yeah. And I agree. There should have been a

shooting lane here. There just wasn't. There were shooting lanes in the other three directions. This was just the one spot that we didn't get yet. But he's moving, so it wouldn't do you any good. Slowly moving. And unfortunately, he slowly moved in the direction that our wind was blowing. The one direction

we didn't want him to go. And there was no openings before he hit that wind. So just like you described, he's walking along and he hits the wall. And as soon as he hits the wall, it's like someone spanked him like he just jumped and bounced off it's different than your buck that slank away he hit it and like immediately jumped ran off 10 15 yards stopped really yeah looked back one time and then slunk away and then after that i just melted down because then i realized that was the big brow buck the big brow buck was the the buck that i got in camera in september or

august the biggest deer we've seen on the farm really really really cool deer he has um he was the obviously most mature buck that we had seen yet huge body um like i remember we got the picture i'm like that's a no-brainer that's the only real one we got that wasn't them and then he has this really unique like at least 12 inch brow time just huge brow time um so really really really cool buck and he was the one i was like man if there's any deer i could happen to get a chance that he was the one i would really like to get a chance at and there was the one I would really like to get a chance at. And there he was at 20 yards, and I couldn't shoot him. And he bounces off, and that was it. So I was, you know, you have that, these moments, especially in Michigan,

an opportunity to mature buck is so, so, so rare. An opportunity to mature buck like that in Michigan is infinitely more rare. To have that right there in your hands after hours so many hours i mean this is you know i've been going at for quite a long time here in michigan for i don't know if that was like the 10th day in a row or something like that that i've been hunting um in the rut and um to have it right there and not have to come together it was a little frustrating even like it doesn't even need to be big, huge giants, man. Because I had like a, like I loosed an arrow.

I don't know. It was like an eight-point, you know, like a two-and-a-half-year-old type eight-point buck. But this trip, like a screw-up for me. And it's like all of a sudden just there he is out of nowhere, no sound, nothing. Like there he is, and he's no sound, nothing like there he is. And he's going to be gone in no time.

And I have a great shooting window. And he stopped and I go to draw back. So I'm ready when he hits the shooting window. And if I need to, I'm going to say something to stop him. Even though you said that with these bucks, don't do that. We did have a phone call before this.

We talked about it, right? How they jumped the string. Mark was saying they're too high strung and too nervous all the time. And when you stop them with a grunt, they tense up so bad that when they hear the string, they're going to bolt. They're going to jump the string. So you don't like to alert them. If you don't have to. Yeah.

Well, I go to draw back and not go to, I draw back so that I'm ready for the lane when it's a nice big shooting lane, but he stops shy of the lane. and as I'm looking, I realize, oh, wow, there's actually, like, most of his ribcage is actually open. And I become so fixated on the fact that, like, what are the chances, and can you do this, and oh, my gosh, you can, and should you, and sure, it's open. And I'm, like, running this in my head, and as my brain is sending the signal to hit the release,

he steps, but I still hit the release. And reviewing in my head, I almost had the desire to reach back and grab my arrow. He's like, I didn't mean to do that! But he stepped in lunge like stepped or was already like stepping like he's scared he saw me pull back and like freaked and lifted up and stepped and then his step as the as i'm releasing the movement his step turns into a leap and was gone for the arrow it's amazing how quick they can drop like that.

Dude, and this is one of those old crazy ones. Yeah. This is the teenager. So how did you feel after that missed opportunity? How do you take that? Well, at first I felt pretty sick because I was afraid I hit it. Yeah. But we have, you know, one of the luxuries we have.

We had two luxuries. One, a camera so you can review. And two,uries. One, a camera so you can review, and two, snow. So I waited a while and got down and followed his tracks for a long ways. Not a drop of blood. And then I catch up to him chasing a doe. Oh, really? Yeah.

And then went back. We watched the footage a ton times more, and it's not there. And I couldn't find the arrow because it went into snowy high grass. But like I said, I tracked him for over 100 yards how based off the film how much do you think he dropped he doesn't drop he goes forward because he was already going forward but you don't think he went down right i know exactly what you're talking about but no he doesn't seem to go down he seems to go forward he was already getting he was already getting going and i even like as my arrow's leaving i'm like i'm saying like what do you oh well chris and i

reviewed it too i would say for sure that he did the classic duck this duck the string you felt he went down more than forward yeah because when they before they can go forward to to make that they have to load their legs. What looks like a duck is when they load their legs. They're lowering to basically get their legs into a compressed spring

so they can then push off. Rather than you guys sitting here having no-wing glances at each other when we're talking about this, he was already stepping forward. No, he was. He was walking yeah he was walking forward as you released when he heard your string your bow go off he did what's called ducking the string where he crunches his legs underneath him his body drops and then he and then he goes forward okay Okay. Where were we, Mark? We were just talking about how we both had our opportunities to slip through our fingers like that.

And I can be frustrating. Super frustrating, man. Yeah. So, yeah, I spun the camera over to Mark after that buck hit the wall and ran off. Oh, yeah. It was a cold day. It was 25 degrees, and he's shaking like a leaf. And I asked, are you cold or what's going on?

I'm like, no, man, that buck tore me up. He was shaking in his boots, like full of emotion, obviously. Big, big opportunity slipped through his fingers. Did you cry? Holy smokes. No, I didn't cry cry but i was i was upset and excited and all that kind of stuff you know it was that would have i mean well it was the best buck on this property and if we're talking i've killed mature bucks in

michigan but that for sure would have been the biggest bucket ever would have gotten a shot at michigan so it's a that's a really big deer for the state. Um, so that was an opportunity that I would have loved to have seen it go a different way. So I was just, I don't know. It's just,

it's something when it's so close for some reason and it just slips through your fingers, it hurts just a little bit more like, and I knew, and I knew it too in my head. I'm thinking that was my opportunity. Like you're like you're yeah there's a chance but especially here in this state you get maybe one opportunity mature buck

even if you hunt really smart most places at least most places i hunt i don't know this is a abnormally good property for me um but most years you've got that one chance and if that one chance doesn't go the way you want want it to, you're kind of SOL. So I was like, that was it. And you were so, so close, 20 yards. Two observations. One was Ridge Pounders, but it's interesting. Is that, you know, you're up here, and right now because there's so much deer movement,

you're having all these, like, adrenaline moments. And Ridge was noticing noticing and once he brought this up i realized it's true adrenaline moments uh make it that you get cold on the comedown yeah you feel your body temperature drop in the minutes after adrenaline rushes yeah i could see that. Which if you'd asked me prior, without thinking about it, if you'd asked me, I'd be like, I'm guessing that it makes you feel hotter. Now, when it's real cold and you're camping and you got to go take a growler, my brother

used to call it taking a heater because he'd always mysteriously come away feeling warmer. Like just the activity or something, you know? He'd be like cold the relief yeah and he'd go dig a hole and come back and be like dude i'm warmed up i don't know why it doesn't make sense but i got warmed up but having a buck encounter or just a deer encounter even just like something exciting happened five minutes later you realize you got cold i'd be shivering i'd be fine before a big buck would come in close and then as soon as he walks away then i'd start shivering i'm like wait what but it's nothing's changed feel a chill as the adrenaline goes away it leaves you feeling a chill

uh my other observation is this this and this is harder to articulate. I spent a great many years lusting for and trying to figure out and crack the code on how to locate big mule deer. And it took a long time to start. A lot of it was location, but also just strategy. Like how to figure it out. For years, we just walk hunted,

walked likely territory, thinking you'd kick them up. Like, this is like how we went about it. Just like you'd kick them up, right? And over time I learned like, that not just that you need to sit and

observe like where you sit and observe and when you sit and observe and what you're actually looking for and all that and it's you know gradually like finding nicer ones but the the years of frustration around it made me want to learn it more and more and more a weird thing. And I think it's because I have a long background of, of what we thought we were serious deer hunters, but we didn't do the stuff that you do, but we felt like we were serious deer hunters all from the time,

you know, for a good decade. I did that between becoming old enough to legally hunt and then moving away from the midwest um like i that's what we did and thought we were you know into it yeah but um i don't know like i totally respect them but i just don't like i'm not getting where i feel the lust for them yeah no and No, and I don't know why. Well, I think... They're so hard, but I just don't feel the lust.

See, I think you just haven't... This is too much of a... You were dropped into a thing. You're just kind of along for the ride here right now. I think, at least for me, what gives me this insatiable craving to keep learning about these animals and hunt them and try to figure them out is the chess match element of it the the just the constant tinkering

and rethinking and and observing and adjusting and learning more and that's something that in this situation you know you showed up to new property we're kind of saying well try this try this try this i think that if you had to move back to michigan for a year or something like that and you had to dive in and figure all this stuff out you'd start i'd get lost i think you'd get lusty when you start dating that start putting that puzzle together for yourself that's when things start getting really, really interesting. And this was an interesting scenario here because, um,

you know, I'm learning it too. And, and, and you're learning it and, and guy, you're learning it into a degree. And this is kind of the first year this property is being hunted in this

kind of way. So there's lots of new elements. We're kind of figuring things out as we go. Um, I feel like we learned a lot just this week. Um, all sorts of stuff. I already know I want to do differently next time around. But all those mistakes that in the moment are like a painful mistake or something, that just reinvigorates and re-excites me for, well, I want to do this differently,

and I want to do this differently, and I want to try that differently. I think already, I was telling you guys the other, like I'm sitting in my bed at night for a half hour to an hour looking at maps and thinking about how we shouldn't move the camera there. We should move a stand there. We should get it back in there because I think that these mature white tail deer, um, they don't live in the most rugged rough country. They don't get the biggest antlers of any ungulate. They don't,'t um they're not going to put as much meat in the freezer as a moose they're not gonna take you to a mountain peak like a mountain goat but i don't think there is a more savvy wary tricky smart critter out there than a mature

whitetail buck like they deal with a whole lot of humans and these deer that make it to that age are just survivors and to consistently get on them and to learn them and be in a position to to sometimes get a shot at you like that requires a lot of mind power like thinking and that just gets me i I see it get you. I love it that it gets you. And I'm not like down on it. I don't know. Did you have a good time?

Phenomenal time. I feel really bad. A lot of stuff. Why would you feel bad? I feel really bad that you didn't get a shot at one. I mean, you did get a shot at one. Who cares? I don't care about that at all.

I felt like I let you down. No, who cares? I had a phenomenal time, a great time, and loved every second of it. But I don't like, yeah, man. I just like to meal deer and stuff like that. I get that. You know? I get that. I love it. You know? I get that.

I love it. I would do it all the time. But I think for me, it's, I think for me that I've, that, that a thing that, like some kind of strength that I have in the hunting is just, um and just go and go and go and sometimes it's a hindrance but sometimes it's the strength it's like go and go and go and i like to sit and just watch and watch and watch and like be out and and i and i i think that i struggle i think that i i struggle a little bit with the stationary, the very stationary aspect. Yeah.

Because even if you're sitting there glassing for Mule Deer, glassing for Coos Deer, whatever you're doing, and you're in one spot, there's like this kinetic energy that builds. Yeah. Because you know that all of a sudden there's going to be your chance and you're going to go. Yep. Even if you wait all day, you might wait wait all day but there's still this idea that like go time now we're gonna go yep and to be strapped into that tree watching things and it would never work to go after them they're just not going to put up with that but watching things and feeling that and it's going the wrong direction and you're like

you don't have that autonomy, or you don't have that. There's a lack of control. You can't make a move. The agency. You don't have the agency to, and it really, I don't know. I feel like I'd have to get better at it. I'd have to get better at it. I'd have to get better at it.

I used to not have the ability, like what I was talking about earlier, trying to learn how to kill a mule deer. I didn't have the ability at the time. If you just said, oh, the key to killing a mule deer is sitting and observing, I wouldn't have had it in me. I developed it. I would have to develop the ability to sit in these damn trees. But I wind up cursing the tree.

I don't wind up loving the tree. I get that. It's like I feel like I'm chained to it. You know that if you had sat in that same tree that you sat when you had those two encounters you described, you would have had another nice big buck in front of you this morning. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians

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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. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. You know why he was there? Because he weren't there. Because I wasn't there. Yeah, exactly.

That's the funny thing, like hunting this stuff now, you'd be like, oh, a big buck passed by that tree stand. Like, big buck passed that tree stand because you're not in it. It's not like he would have been there anyway. Yeah, it can be frustrating. Yeah, I do feel like the interesting thing about a Western-style hunt is that a lot of the actual hunting, the hunt is happening right then. The decisions you're making that are going to impact that hunt are happening right now it's like do i go up that ridge or that ridge or do we

make the stock now or do we wait many times the actions that dictate the success or failure of a whitetail hunt are not the actions taken right now as that deer is in front of you it's the actions you took two months ago or four months ago when you made the decision to put a stand here when you thought through all the things all the assumptions you have about a deer you think through all the behaviors that are going to happen on november 8th all that stuff that's leading to what you're seeing on november 8th the reason that happened is because the decision is made on august 1st and what limbs to cut what limbs not to cut which trails coming through here why did i want to access the tree stand from this way and exit

that way um so so much of the hunt actually takes place many many many weeks beforehand because the hunt really is in setting up the ambush location we have the decisions we can make now in the moment are do we hunt a or b or c or d which place for the what we have today and then how you actually conduct yourself in the tree but a big piece of the hunt you missed out on um so that i could i would imagine that maybe that might um change your experience a little bit too yeah uh a reason i like to hunt turkeys so much is because it's so responsive. Physically responsive. He does this, you do that.

He does this, micro movements. It's just like, I like it. Speaking of turkeys, we called in a lot of deer this week. They were very responsive. We called in a bunch of deer tonight. Oh, you did? Tonight too? Called in a bunch of does.

They didn't want to leave. Why didn't you shoot a doe? Man, I just didn't, man. We had a lot of opportunities to shoot at does. Yeah. A lot of them. I don't know why. It's a good question.

I wanted the same thing. Just because we were kind of like hunting bucks. Yeah. And I'm not hurting for meat yeah i'm sitting pretty good actually if i was meat crisis it would have been a whole different situation yeah we would have solved that problem quick yeah all right man thanks for coming out and chasing whitetails i'll come do it again i hope it i hope it goes a little different i had a great time man i don't care if i got one i honestly don't care good if you could I'll come do it again. I hope it goes a little different.

I had a great time, man. I don't care if I got one. I honestly don't care. Good. If you could probe into my brain and see if I'm telling the truth or not, I'd be telling the truth. All right. I really don't give a shit. All right, good.

Yeah, thanks for sharing. It was fun to listen to you all week and learn a lot from you. Well, thank you to Guy and Matt for allowing us to hunt this location. We sure want you guys to come back. It was a good time. Do that turkey purr again. We heard that a whole bunch today, didn't we, Pounder? Oh, yeah, we did, dude.

We had turkeys up close, and that's the thing. You don't realize how much noise they make yeah they're a lot of messing around they're all making noise all the time when you get that close to them they're cool man getting in their winter flocks yeah we're 10 20 feet from them and they didn't care about us all making noise we were moving i was like filming them moving they were like don't care, bro. We're eating corn. I think if you'd have said something to them, they would have moved.

Yeah. I was like, hey, Turks. You guys need to get a turkey tag next year. Put it in for them. Oh, man. Today I was really regretting not having one. Lauren, you got any final thoughts, man? Just thanks for having me along.

I learned a lot from Mark sitting in tree stands for 48 hours. It's a good time. That was definitely part of the hunt. Not just here to take pictures. Not just here chasing dollars. He lost dollars, actually. Yeah, I lost $2. He still wants his $2.

That cut into the bottom line. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. He still wants his $2. That cut into the bottom line. Yeah, it's cool. Obviously, sitting in a tree that long is not anyone's favorite thing. Maybe it's Mark's favorite thing. I admire it, man. Sitting in a tree like that for that long. It's tough.

I think it comes with age too. The ability to, not necessarily the ability, but just the downright appreciation of it. It only comes with age of sitting there for a long time and just smelling the roses. It only comes with long, you know. You're never going to meet a 25-year-old that's like, oh, yeah. I disagree.

You do? Yeah. Yeah, I disagree too. All right, 18. Whatever the cutoff date is, the cutoff age is. Yeah, there is an age. I just think if you're tore up with it enough, you'll sit all day. If you love it enough, you'll do it.

So there's like 16-year-olds. Right, but you'll sit all day, but will you enjoy it? Oh, now that is different probably. That's what I'm saying. Because I think that even the 31-year-old me sometimes is like, God, why aren't they moving? Why isn't this happening? Exactly.

And I just think for me at 40 now, just in the last few years, sort of been like, you know what? What else is actually better than just sitting here and waiting for the next woodpecker to come by or the next chickadee to come by or whatever? Yeah. It is a rare opportunity to just slow down and embrace everything. Oh, it's non-existent. Yeah. It's easy to get caught up in everything else.

My brother hunts by himself. He's a few years older than me, so I don't know what the age part. He hunts by himself. And he hunts by himself in the mountains bow hunting for elk. And he said that every day it's part of his day to talk himself out of going home.

Because he hates it. Hates it. And has to every day talk himself out of quitting. What is he hating? The grind of it. Yeah. I get that. But he likes getting the elk so much.

In the end, it's worth it. But he says, every day I got to just be like, you can't. Just don't let yourself. You can't go home. Don't give in. Don't let yourself you can't go home don't give don't give in don't let yourself go home i have moments like that every day doing these all-day sets too it so much of of hunting the rut in particular is like is mental it's mental toughness so every year leading into the point i have like a little self pep talk it is all about mentally being in it. Are you going to grind it out? Are you going to simply make the decision that no matter what goes wrong, no matter how tired you are every

morning, every morning you wake up at four or four 30, whatever. And it's like, geez, all I want to do is hit snooze and keep sleeping. But are you going to dedicate yourself to say, no, I'm not going to give into that. You're going to go out there. You're going to do what you know you need to do. You're going to tough it out. You're going to do what you know you need to do. You're going to tough it out. It's just every single year when I look at the rut, we kind of call it the whitetail world, it's kind of like the rut marathon because there's like two to three weeks

where everyone who really loves this stuff is using all their vacation time or whatever and sitting in the tree all day for two weeks straight or whatever. And that definitely wears on you mentally and physically. And there's something to be said about coming out of that and you can look back and it is it's not like climbing a mountain physically it's not that kind of physical challenge but it's a mental challenge and that i was telling lauren today like as long as i come out of a hunt like this knowing that i gave it

everything i could like i didn't leave anything on the field, or I left it on the field. I'm not in any way feeling like a sport ball analogy for you, Steve. You don't cut any corners. As long as I can know that in my head, I can drive home tonight or tomorrow morning and feel okay about this hunt. I think that one of the things that gives people discipline

in all aspects, this isn't just hunting advice, but one of the things that I'm starting to think gives people discipline is it comes as much from self-hatred and self-loathing as it does any kind of love for something in particular. Because what you oftentimes wind up getting driven by is hatred for the version of yourself that would quit

so it's not that you love the woodpeckers and chickadees so much and you do i'm sure everyone does or you know anyone that gets into this game does but it winds up being that you are like i recognize that the smart thing to do would be be able to sit here all day or stay out overnight right now or like sit up on this hill and keep glassing or you name it take one more cast right go over the next hill and do one more shot gobble you're like i recognize that that's the way to be successful at this thing that i care about and i hate myself for wanting to do otherwise other than what i recognize to be the best thing and you're motivated by you're motivated by that as much as you are by uh

the positive end of things yeah i hear this from a lot of people i i have it and my brother has it yeah even like writing a book you know like i i hate the guy inside of me that wouldn't finish this yeah to yanni's point earlier about how this might change with age have you seen that change with age do you feel that way less than you used to or is it still just just as much it's only different now because i recognize it more i used to just be like driven to do some things but i didn't really think about it very much right you know like here's a here's an example uh when i was brought up my mother still lives in the house i was brought up in and i my room was on the second floor of a house, and it overlooked the lake.

And there was these large oaks, still are, large oaks in the backyard between my bedroom window and the lake. And I knew on mornings that we were supposed to wake up and go bow hunting early in the morning. I knew that if it was super rainy and and super windy we probably wouldn't go and i would wake up and i would look out and would hope to see that. The guilt shit, man. The self-loathing and the guilt is a powerful, powerful force in life for me. Yeah, that's really interesting.

And quitting hunting or quitting fishing, that kind of stuff. The other day I took my daughter, my five-year-old daughter, we were all duck hunting and she's crying. She's laying in her waders on the bank of a pond crying. And there was a real part of me that like, there was a real part of me that wanted to push against that very heavily and i let her made her do that for quite a while because

in the end when she's my age i think that's just gonna do her a lot more yeah that's gonna do a lot more for her than the other than than anything else you could have done. I don't want to sound sadistic, and it probably does. No, I understand where you're getting at. She's definitely going to love duck hunting. You know what? I spent most of my childhood crying because my feet were cold, man. Not most of it, but I don't want to exaggerate.

I spent a lot of days crying because I was cold. To no no one caring i know man i wonder about that too i had those days too where i but i look back on it now and i go why did i become a hunter because i was yelled at for my nose running i've been sniffling my nose and i was cold i was yelled at for this that and the other and there was just something inside of me that just like, no matter how much that was shitty, there was some other part, the chickadees and the woodpeckers that I loved, and it kept me out there. But I feel like I've heard just as many stories now

because I pay attention to it about raising kids in the outdoors, and the kids are like, that right i just got pushed and pushed and pushed and uh i'm not really into hunting i think you gotta weed them out those are the ones that gotta be weeded out maybe ridge you got any final thoughts um yeah i do well it's more of a question i had a bunch and then I kind of got, that was a good little combo, man. I got kind of caught up in it. Um, one of the questions that I had earlier was like, do you think, I don't know if mastery is the right word, but when you, Mark, when you were saying that, like, you got all these ideas about like what to do next on the next hunt and you're like a really good whitetail hunter do you like do you feel like you'll ever get to a point where you like

are mastering this kind of hunting and i like that can't that's not like you know there's there's so many variables when it comes to animals that it's like that's not really like a fair word but do you think you'll get to the point where you just like have it just like you'll know where something's going to be when or i think that anyone who is really really good at whitetail hunting will always believe they have not yet mastered it because i think that's a good answer dude i think that the i think you're constantly learning it isn't always evolving i keep saying chess match, but it is. There's so many new lessons learned I get every single year. I mean, certainly people achieve levels of consistent, quote unquote, success

that are on a different level than a lot of people. But there's always more. And that's the fun of it that's why i think that we keep coming back to year in year out never it's never the same i love that yeah you had 19 more things you wanted to bring up no uh no oh the age thing about sitting in a tree i would say that i did have a thought today or past couple days that if the pressure of filming and not screwing up a hunt because of the filming presence like if i was just sitting in a tree for 12 hours i think i'd be into it like i i wouldn't be

bummed or stressed. You'd like it. I'd like it. How old are you? 29. Will you take me up on the hunt invitation? At your place? Definitely, dude.

Definitely. I have a new freezer that's empty. I have a whole fridge that has nothing in it. Then you've got to make a trip up's empty. I have a whole fridge that has nothing in it. Okay. Then you've got to make a trip up to Michigan. I'll do it. I'll do it. Let's do it.

Seth, have you said anything yet? Yeah, early. Oh, okay. I shot my first buck at 12 o'clock noon, and I just remembered not wanting to be there. And I was 12 years old. But now. What time did you hit?

And you had been up there since daybreak? Yes. It was an all-day sit. So you were sitting until noon at 12 years of age. Because my dad was like, you're sitting all day. And now look at you now. You're a big-time hunter. And that was the very last day of the rifle season. And you were a hunter, trapper?

Yep. I love sitting all day now. 27. 27? Yep. It's a little tough to do, like, first week of the season. I mean, I don't sit all day. Is that terribly effective?

Yeah. So you came from the school of hard knockers. Yeah. You like it? Love it. You're glad now? I'm glad now. I'd do the same with my kids if I ever go that route.

That's what you wind up struggling with, man, because there was so much stuff that I hated about my dad. And the older I get, the more I'm like, man, I kind of see now where he was coming from. Yeah. I kind of see where he's coming from and one of the biggest things he had is he was not interested in being friends with his kids and i used to i'd be just baffled by that and now i'm like i kind of see what you're getting at because kind of see because he's dead anyway yeah he's like i'm gonna die i think you're doing to be good friends with me go be friends with your friends that's true yeah mark any concluders um you know i'm lacking any kind of terribly poignant concluder today except for uh I'm really glad you guys got to come up here and do this.

It was fun to get to share my passion with you guys a little bit and teach you guys about scent control, which I appreciate the effort, but it was subpar still. I saw some major infractions yeah well here's okay can we bring this up next time we talk yeah major infractions and you pay for them and you pay for them yeah and and mark is mark has a lot of things he does and mark admits i don't know uh what they all work but if i do all of them and it makes a 10 chance i'll just keep doing them all yeah that's that's a big enough yeah exactly that's enough to help i was skeptical at beginning of the week now after seeing all these deer hit that wall i'm like i get it dude yeah then we had

oh sorry i was going to okay so we had a number of different incidents where we got winded even though i was doing a lot of things that i try to do but it was definitely a compromised scent control regimen just it wasn't perfect given all the different things going on twice as much smell twice as much smell. I'm just a really smelly guy. I think that was it. Lauren might be a smelly guy. Wears very loud jackets. No, but you're not going to get away with your scent all the time.

But just last week, I had a five-and-a-half-year-old buck go downwind of me and not hit a wall at all. So sometimes taking all these precautions does help um sometimes it doesn't sometimes it does but i'm willing to do it all the time to get those few times where it does yeah i'm all for it dude yeah nothing you're doing there's nothing you're doing about scent control that's that was like something i hadn't uh heard of or i mean it's all like pretty much industry not industry standard but like you don't have like what you don't have uh weird like magical things you think i wish i did no i mean you have things

that like are like very practical things you don't have like um i find that if i you know eat celery three days before and then do a cleanse you know it's just good stuff like it's very similar to what fur trappers would do yeah fox trappers i was surprised though no sense of any sort that you're saying like a cover scent or a yeah or a tractant scent no it's illegal though now in michigan to use any kind of natural urine-based scent or anything. So that's – I never used them before. Really? You can't buy – what is it? Tink 69? You can buy it, I think, still.

You can't use that in Michigan. You can't use it because of chronic wasting disease. Really? Can I give my concluding thought? Yes, please. really can i give my concluding thought yes please uh my concluding thought is if one wanted to go find all kinds of um awesome merchandise meat eater podcast stuff soon to be wired to hunt merchandise all kinds of t-shirts

um your blout shirt we got some amazing other new stuff coming out and then a uh and if you've been watching the new episodes of the show on netflix and you see like cool shit there first light apparel we have all this stuff for sale um go to the meat eater.com and go into the store and check it out. That's my first conclusion. Second conclusion was I thought that was pretty good deep-fried turkey. Very good deep-fried turkey. Deep-fried turkey nuggets. Where's that turkey from?

Matt's freezer. You just found a wild turkey in there? Two breasts. Two lobes. I like that, man. Two lobes. Deep-fried turkey chunks chunks hard to beat it's a guy's birthday sweet sweet chili sauce happy birthday guy happy birthday how old are you dinner 175 that's why you can make that turkey call how old are you 49 huh happy birthday halfway to 96

halfway that's a rough way to position it oldest guy in the room that's it do that turkey purr again still got my hair just give me one more turkey purr. I love that shit, man. Yanni? Thanks for asking. I thought you'd never get to me. Big room of people.

I was thinking if you wanted to become a better whitetail deer hunter, you should go check out Wired to Hunt. Because anything and everything you ever want to know about whitetails and more, it's all there. That's what I wanted to bring. I meant to bring that up. I'm glad you brought that up. Because Mark talks about this shit all the time. Yes.

And all that stuff now is actually on the meat eater.com website though yanni so you go to the media.com and you're gonna see all my new content with wired to hunt podcast is available anywhere you find podcast the wired on podcast is available anywhere you find podcast my video series is on the website and on our youtube channel regular blog posts and the wired hunt merchandise is not soon to be available on the store it is actually on the store as of right now oh it is it is oh so you got wired hunt hats wired hunt t-shirts and uh there'll be some new things coming down the road i don't have one of those it's weird you've never given me one i didn't well i don't know

you'd be like i feel like you should present one to me um what the hell mark what uh on wired to hunt podcast what would you say, like what percent of the time are you guys talking about like whitetail stuff? Oh, 97%. 97%. What's the other three? Like one episode a year I'll go on an elk hunt or something. One episode a year we'll talk turkeys.

No marital advice? Well, there's little bits of marital advice and family advice sprinkled within each episode usually. Give me a piece of marital advice? Well, there's little bits of marital advice and family advice sprinkled within each episode, usually. Give me a piece of marital advice. Oh, gosh. How long have you been married? Advice number one, I got married in 2013, so just over five years. All right, lay one on me.

Yeah, my best piece of marriage advice. I'm going to rate it. All right, and I stole this from someone else. That's fine. But it is peace before justice. You stole that from Randy Newberg. Yeah. I told you I stole it from someone.

Yeah. But that's the best advice I ever got. I stole my piece from Giannis. What's that? It's a good one. My best piece of marriage advice? Okay. When you're fighting with the missus or the mister.

Okay. Let's say you're in a fight. Let's say you're fighting over, give me something people fight about. How to load the dishwasher. Who fights about that? Steve? Yeah, well, not how to load it, but whether it should be loaded at all. There's a book about marriage.

It's called Marriage. It's got a name. It's a polemic. It's about marriage. Is marriage worth it? And there's a line in the book where the author says, marriage is an institution that makes it so you cannot load the dishwasher in the way that makes the most sense to you.

Cynical, right? However, okay, let's say you're fighting about uh the dishwasher here's another example the color of the paint that you're gonna put in the newly remodeled bathroom yeah fighting about the color of the paint in the bathroom because you got you've always pictured in your head that it's just gonna like white right everybody paints their bathroom white and maybe it's not necessarily a fight but it's like a heated discussion and it's getting towards being a fight just because someone might be tired.

Someone else might be thinking about hunting. Are you feeling me? I'm feeling you. You're not like fighting. There you are doing a remodel and it's time to get the paint. And you're kind of sitting there like, I think it should be white. In the name of managing

your relationship. Do you want to give the advice? You're the one who gave it to me. No, I just want to co-host this place. He's the color commentator. You're like, it should be white. That's what I got in my head is white.

Your partner is, oh, I was thinking it'd be blue. Then pretty soon you're like, you're in it. And you're fighting about it. Giannis' thing is, you then need to say, you break the fight for a second. And you rate on a 1 to 10. Not how much you care to win, but you rate on one to ten how much the issue actually matters to you and is this a verbal like you say to each other hey time out yep how much does this actually matter to you yeah you say this to your wife yeah and you you say how much matters to you

you'd be like you know it's you just throw the number out before you even ask. So you just say four. You just go three. That's where me and my wife are at now. We've been using this to great effect. Wow. And I don't need to say, I'll just say like, this is a seven for me, man. And she's like, this is a seven for you? This is like a three for me. That means you win.

Damn, that's good. I like that. And you wind up, because I wind up being in these fights with my wife about things that once I stop and think about it, I'm fighting about things that are twos and threes.

Because you just get so wrapped up in winning battles. Very interesting. And I have. In the early days like there's this there's this rug that that doesn't all it does is like trip every kid that runs through the house gets laid up by this tripping on this rug this like skidder across the floor and smash into the wall and one day i like roll the rug up my wife's like how under the rug i'm like i got the rug's gone and she wants the rug back and i'm like dude this is

like a way i'm i'm going so far to say this is the seven or eight this is a seven or eight on me and she's like it's like a one i'm annoyed that you took my rug but really when i think about it i really don't it's a one i don't know why i'm arguing with you but if you hate the rug you hate the rug it's cool wow that. That seems like a life changer. Good marriage advice, man. It's quite simple. I like that a lot. Noted.

It's going to get me another five more years of marriage. Can I give you one more? Please. When there's like a large decision that needs to be made and the decision is made of a big, great bundling of interests, say you're buying a house. I have found, my wife and I have found that it works really good if I say, here's the parts of this that I care about.

I care about this element of this and I care about this element of this, and I care about this element of this. You run the project. Everything that I'm not mentioning right now is you, but do not screw me on these two things. And then you run and go. And assigning ownership of something and clarifying like, but, you but you own it but here's the deal and this is an instance where the other person wants as much ownership as possible

yeah and you don't want to relinquish it because you don't want to get screwed on a couple points right clarify the points and then give the person autonomy to go do what they need to do. It's a big, oh, vacation, vacation, vacation. Be like, listen, man, I want to be able to spearfish. That's all. That's all. That's all.

I need to have relatively good access to some spearfishing. Other than that, I'm out. Google Walt Disney World slash spearfishing other than that i'm out google walt disney world slash do the two come together that's good stuff yeah guy you've been married a long time 23 years give me a hot marriage voice marriage advice shut up and listen married to the best woman on the planet and she's put up with a lot for me but uh i love her to death i'm sure she'd trade me in but i wouldn't trade her for nothing and uh yes marriage is work it's hard work's hard work, but when you truly work at it, you know, we have kids, but we love our kids to death. But we've really grown to love each other too.

No. Women are awesome. Awesome. You know, my – sorry, I don't mean to jump on the rest of your advice. That's it. Shut up was it. When – before my wife and I got married, she had – I can't remember. I guess it's a bridal shower or something like that.

And everyone was asked to write down their best piece of advice, marriage advice or something, on a note. And you put the notes in the thing. And then after we got married, she got to open up the box and read everybody's marital advice. And I think I either saw some or she showed me some of them and she showed me what her grandma had wrote to her. And at the time what her grandma wrote was, it was very simple. It was just two words, three words. Um, and I thought, Oh, like that was like the laziest answer. And that's all I thought of it. I was like, oh, that's a really lazy answer.

And then my wife, though, took that little post-it note and she put it on the picture of her grandma and grandpa and it's still in her bathroom sitting on the counter. And now years later, I see it every time I happen to be in there. I see it and I think about it a little bit more each time. And now when I look at it and I think about it, I think about maybe what she meant by this three words. It's very poignant.

And it's just simply, it's her very best marital advice. It was simply love. Big giant box. No, that would be good though. It was simply love each other. Yeah. Just love each other and all that goes into that. So I see that now every day.

And it's kind of like, yeah. If you're thinking about that with all the different decisions you make, that is kind of the key. Just to remind yourself, too. Yeah. You know what I did? This is know what uh you know what i did this is marriage advice you know what i did when my kids were born for all three of them is i uh wrote them a big long letter that explains our lives where i think they were conceived

what the circumstances what our lives look like, what are my sort of apprehensions about them coming into the world, what are my hopes and fears for them, what's going on in general, what their parents were like. And then I put my own address on them. And then on the day they were born, i dropped them so they would get postmarked and then i took them and vacuum sealed them in my uh pro 2300 i think vacuum sealed them and i'll give them to them when they get married

probably that's cool that's amazing big long letters i i i letters. I almost would dread seeing what's in the letter from eight years ago. Well, that's what I was going to say. Do you regret anything that you wrote in these letters? I don't want to know because I don't want to chicken out and not give it to them. Yeah. Because they're very telling. It'd be a lot better if I was dead. They're very telling.

Interesting. Like, I would want, it would be smart to read it by yourself where did you get this idea this just came to you or no i don't think i made it up man i can't remember but i don't think i made it up i feel like if i made it up i'd be pretty proud of having made it up and i'd remember making it up yes it's good i don't know why you never chicken shit out about it oh i'm not gonna man i got a lot of the difference between you and you eight years ago is so different no because they're really like they're really really telling of what of who and what you were eight years ago yeah just like stuff like around uh we had two kids and that was all we wanted at the time and we had a third and telling someone that story i wouldn't tell him

that story when he's eight like what was going on in our lives what led us to the decision i don't know just telling stuff i think your kids will be smart enough to read it in the voice of you as a late 30 year as the late 30 year old and not the 60 year old you'll be when they read it yeah i hope so it feels a good letter they're pretty good letters i don't doubt it put a lot of effort in writing them damn letters is that it that's it man i got one more guy thanks man for making a fantastic hunting spot man i got to see a lot of deer uh activity and and what am i trying to say things that they do behavior behavior that in all my years of whitetail hunting i had never seen yep all kinds of deer peeing on their tarsal glands and scrapes didn't see any rubs happening but no yeah i saw scrapes no rubs the licking branch

thing multiple times uh you guys heard a fight you know i got to see a buck come up and rub its orbital gland on the licking branch, work a scrape, piss down his leg. A couple minutes later, maybe more than a couple minutes later, another buck came, didn't do his orbital gland, but worked a scrape, pissed down his leg, and then I got to a couple minutes later watch a doe come and camp out on that spot. Nice. That's seeing some deer type shit

going on man grunting i bet you i heard at least a dozen maybe 20 grunts this week fighting grunting chasing squirrels every which way normally when you see i don't care if it is november 10th in michigan when you see a deer running you're like oh god no no but here you're like oh it must be a buck coming you know yeah it's running from other bucks it's really cool uh it's really cool like the just the wildlife habitat work here and watching it like bloom and take shape man and we're just getting started and i mean it's been a pleasure having y'all here and i would like to know any and all things you guys think we might be able to do to make things a better experience cut more shooting lanes that's right yeah that's yeah yeah that's how you get it killed but you're kind of focused on getting it

alive yeah don't don't worry i'll be i'll be trimming lanes here soon all right everybody thanks for listening. 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.