Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast. I'm Dirk Durham and my co host Jason Phelps.
Hey, thanks for having me again. This is a common I'm a common guest for you.
Yeah, uncommonly common.
I think it's the low hanging fruit. You're not You're not digging deep for experts on the subject matter. We're just happened to be hunting together last two a couple of weeks and you're like, hey, I'll get I'll get Phelps on. That would be easy. But I claim definitely do not claim to be an expert on the subject today.
I don't know, you've kind of been saying a week about what a white tail expert you were. You might have a little bit a little bit braggadocious about it. But anyway, we're in Kansas white tail hunting. It's we got here November fourteenth, and tomorrow is the twenty second and we're wrapping things up heading home. It's been a crazy week and we last year we were here about a week earlier, and I feel like we've seen different activity every day as far as deer movement, so the
one of the biggest factors. It's different this year though, Besides the time, is also the weather we're having. It's it's been hot. Like when we first got here. I think we had three days that the highs were in the seventies and in the mornings it was probably in the forties. So you had to dress kind of warm for the mornings. But then by the time you were getting ready to get out of the stand to go to lunch, you're probably trying to shed some layers.
Yeah, it was it was unseasonably hot. We came from last year teens the low twenties, you know, high pressure all the time, north winds, which you know they claim around here. You know, for the same temperature you got some moisture in them, tend to be cooler. Coming to this year, we're I want to hunt in shorts and a T shirt. I don't want to be out. You know, it's it is hot in the middle of the day, but then you have to start off with those forty
degree days, so very contrasting weather. We show up very hot to start the hunt, and you know, well we'll get into it a little bit more about how you couple that weather with our our our timing with the rut. You know, last year we were here ten days earlier. This year, we're here ten days later. Kind of seemed to hit that peak rut lockdown phase and all of that added together with some of the other issues, you know, drought and EHD, we're going to talk about a little
bit at the end of this. It rolled up to see luss dear, moving, lust, dear in general, perceived less dear, you know, all of those things which made for longer days in the stand a little bit more of a I want to say, frustrating hunt. It's still hunting. I have a I have a blash just watching the woods wake up and squirrel's doing there, you know, whatever it is.
But in the end, you really want to see, you know, deer and hopefully get a chance at a big deer chase and be completely different weather when we show it up here.
Yeah. And in fact, like the first evening Dusty and I set in the stand then I had these big heavy fleece coveralls, bibs and jacket, and man, I took the jacket off and zipped the zip the the bibs clear to my ankles, and Dusty's like whoa, whoa, whoa, that's way too much skin for this close contact. And a blind. But it was that hot, man. I was gonna die if I didn't. Contrast to the year before, we couldn't hardly put off put on enough clothes. I had some new bibs that didn't get shipped to my
house in time. I had had to have my wife send them here about the day we were heading back. They got here about the same day we were heading back. So I was kind of cold in the blind last year. So yep, Yeah, it seemed like moonfase two didn't really seem to come in to play at all. It was kind of a darker moon all week. You get kind of a little slivery. You know, a lot of people hinge everything they do on a moon phase, but I feel like that's a pretty good moon phase for deer movement.
They weren't up all night, you know, partying.
No, No, it seemed to we didn't really notice that. You know. The other thing moon phase is we drive around, go to dinner. You know, you can if it was affecting it, you'd see more deer in the fields. It just seems it's kind of be a real consistent number. So I wouldn't from what we've seen versus trail cameras that were able to check like all that added up to the moon phase really didn't, you know, drastically impact the hunt, I would say for sure.
Yeah, in our stands there were they were more set up for for like the feeding pattern, you know, for maybe pre rut or post rut, but not like that peak ret time. So and the reason is we have a shooter and a cameraman, so you have to have two people, and it's kind of limited. It's kind of hard to we're not on a guided hunt or anything.
We're just hunting a friend's house. He had some stands he had hung before, but it's it'd be a lot of work and hard to hard to get additional stands set up in some of those travel corridors and places like that where we might have seen a little more dear movement, but we didn't. We weren't really set up
for for a two guys set up. So next year or next time, I don't know if he'll draw the tag again, but next time we're definitely gonna come prepared with maybe some tree saddles for the camera guys, and then they can just pitch up up a tree wherever and and and be more mobile.
That way, I'm stoked we Randy seemed to be real excited on uh, you know, next spring, if we can draw a turkey tag. It sounds like we have to draw ding turkey tag now and cats where you used
to be able to buy one. So it's a little wrench, but Randy seemed really excited to uh work when we're here next spring on the turkey hen if we can draw it to like go, he wants to kind of almost like a reinventory of stands, pull down stands that he doesn't hunt anymore, figure out what he's got, and then really look at some some rust and placement, you know,
really come down to the pitch points. Now that he's owned the properties for more than twenty years, he's really got it dialed in compared to some of his old stands that he doesn't hunt. And so I'll be exciting to be a part of that where I feel like, right now we show up and just hunt what he already has put together, where if we can be somewhat a part of that or help him make decisions. You know,
he's even been asking us now. Don't get me wrong, Randy knows his deer better than anybody does, but for us to get to sit and stands for days at a time and say, you know, hey, I think these deer, these deer want to come down this ridge. They're traveling over there, hanging out there. I think if we set a stand there, we could get shots at some of these more mature bucks. Like to have a little bit of input on some stand placement will be way more
rewarding to come back and hunt those. And you know, like you said, next time, whether it is next year or the following year, I think that'll be like a cool little aspect right now where just we just show up and hunt the stands that Randy already has place versus to have a little input will be will be a blast, and I think it'll just be exciting, especially if we do end up coming back on the rut to be able to like we we needed to be tighter to bedding, We needed to be down in those
pinch points travel corridors where a lot of these stands were set up. You know, Randy, Randy says it all the time you asked him. He's like, I killed my deer earlier, I kill my deer late. I don't typically play that that peak rut because things are so unpredictable. But I don't know, I think if we we do show up, it would be fun to have a chance to just you know, witness that or be in an area to take advantage of that that crazy time.
Oh yeah, absolutely, that's and that's half the fun, or a lot of the fun is just is doing the off season work. You know, I have so much fun, you know, for doing that with ELK, trying to figure them out in the summertime, you know, putting cameras out and doing all the all the work I think, you know, identifying those places here, coming back in the springtime, putting up stands, clearing out some shooting lines and doing doing all those things, and then coming back and getting to
hunt those stands. I mean, that'd be so rewarding, so much fun, and it's just like, you know, then you feel like you got more skin in the game too, and and and then you feel like, you know, it's like, man, Randy, he's got to do all this work and by himself, and I kind of feel like a jerk showing up here, you know, just you know, reaping the fruits of his labor. Right. So, yeah, I think it'd be awesome if we could come out and help do some of those things.
And just just to help him clean I say, clean up, but you know he's got ladder stands kind of scattered all over and this lock on here, and just to
help it. You know, it's a lot of work to get some of these stands into some of these areas, like just to put in some sweat equity of like hey, Randy, we'll go in grab that stand, or we'll grab take this stand down, you know, just just to help and then have a little bit of input, I think would be it's part of that that you know, pre work that that goes into making the hunt so much fun and enjoyable and being in the right spotter on the X.
Yeah. Yeah, and if you got three or four guys doing the work, it's way easier than just one or two, you know. I mean, that's that's a lot of work.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I don't know if Randy like the amount of property he has and how many stands like it, it's a lot of work to manage the property that Randy has. And so I'd love to be able to give back a little bit and help him if we.
Can, yeah, absolutely, just to kind of like talk a little bit more about the kind of deer there is here. You know, Randy manages his property for mature bucks, right, so he doesn't say, all right, guys, you can only shoot one hundred and seventy inch buck. He doesn't talk about that. He's like, I just want you guys to shoot mature bucks, so we don't want to shoot like three and a half year old deer. He's like, I really love you guys to shoot like a five and
a half year old deer. So we're which kind of creates a little it makes it a little bit tougher when when deer come into the stand because immediately you know, you're assessing. You know, a four and a half year old deer can have a pretty nice rack, and a lot of times they could be on that borderline of like in a year or two, that's it's going to be a giant. So he just really wants us to kind of look, you know, assess the body. You know, does it have a barrel chest, does it have a
saggy belly, does it have a sway back? Does it have a big beefy head, looks like a mucou? You know, all these little things to identify to make sure it's a mature deer before he squeeze the trigger. So that creates a little bit of an issue because a lot of times these bucks, you know, they're coming in and they're looking for does. And a lot of these stands, you know, they're set up in a food plot or there there's maybe some some corn or something there, set
out to draw a doze in. So these the bucks come in look for does. They're not going to come over and eat any corn, but they're just mostly keen in for dose. So they'll come in and here's my experience, they'll come and they won't expose themselves one hundred percent, so you don't have a shot when they come in and pause and they'll kind of look and they'll look for a dough and then they scan the area real quick.
And then the first couple of times this happened to me, I'd be like, all right, okay, check out his body, look at this, look at that? Should I shoot him? Should I not shoot him? And by the time I've decided I was going to shoot him, he's already moved out. He's gone. The opportunity if there would have been one
has gone. So what I had to end up start doing is like as soon as I would see one, I would draw my bow back and then I would start really start picking him apart, looking at him and trying to make that decision whether or not I would want to shoot him. And then sometimes even then it was it was tough. So it's it was kind of
you know, these fleeting opportunities. You have to be quick on the draw, and you have to you know, he has to walk in the right spot for you to shoot one out of a out of a blind or even a tree.
Yep, yeah, we the same thing. One thing I've realized is ranging on flat ground. You know, if you are in a food plot, most of them are flat, Like you might think that deer's two steps behind, but he's eight yards off, you know, like I it messed with my mind. I hated everything about that because you you've got fifty landmarks out there. You know, tough of grass is thirty eight and this low spot is fifty. But you would think that something that was two feet behind
it is you know, it was, only it's not. It's And so I had a heck of a time trying to judge those shooting out of a tree stand. For me, seems to be a lot easier. I've got freedom of movement. They don't seem to be looking at me up there as much I can get away with more. These ground blinds, I swear these now, these redneck type blinds or these elevated ground blinds that we've got spread out through We're not in them all the time, but but they're spread
out throughout the property. I swear they know you're in there the second they are in, like visible rains. Those dang deer know that something's in there. They know the windows open something like they're just not right, you know, from the time that they walk out. But so you add that with the ability of you know, these chairs, they no matter how quiet you try to get them,
they squeak, they do. So it's like everything I'm I'm a nervous wreckon there, Like I don't know if I could move, I don't know if I can blink, I don't know if I can grab my binoculars. You add all that into like what Dirk just said, these bucks aren't. Now there may be feed at some of these locations, they don't they don't care about that the only reason they're there because the feed brings in some dose at times, and so they're they're scent checking. But those deer are
scent checking. If they don't smell anything within three or four seconds, five ten seconds, they're out. And you don't ever have a possibility. And so you couple all this with can I move? Can I range this thing fast enough? Can I get my bow drawn? Shooting out of a blind is? Uh doesn't seem to be the easiest thing to do.
One thing I kind of watched those bucks do this week is they'd come by the let's say there's a corn pile there. They come by there, they're looking for dose. They they don't even walk up to the corn pile. They bypass it, so they're not even getting caught on camera on the trail camera. And then I watched them like kind of pause out there, and then they'd scoop up a few little aakes and eat those and munch
on those like on the way. It's almost like they just kind of snack along as they go instead of like going to the corn pile. I don't know if they just don't like it or if it's just it's too much of a hindrance. They just don't want to slow down and eat. But I didn't have some little bucks come in any corn, so you just you never know.
I guess yeah, those big bucks just they a lot of times. What we see them do is they will cruise the entire timber patch on the downwind side of where that corn may be. You know, they're going to run that entire length or stretch or however they can win, check out the fastest and most efficient, and then they're they're not stopping to eat corn. Right. They may go check on it visually, like you said, just check on it.
Are their dose there? If not, if they can't win check it, then they're out right.
And that wind, the wind is a huge thing so us Western hunters we have our thermals that we hunt off of, but back here in the Midwest it's so flat. You know, if you have an eastern wind, pretty you can almost pretty much guarantee that everywhere on your property you're gonna have any and win, right unless you get down over into some little little coolies and creeks and some bluffs and it may make things kind of swirl
a little bit. But so that that's another level of like, Okay, you have to consider where you're gonna which stands you're gonna sit in. Maybe you've got some really big bucks on this stand that you've been seeing on trail camera, but the wind's wrong and you can't hunt it, and so rather than blow it, go in there and hunt and blow them out of there. Then you're looking at other stands that maybe not be quite as ideal but
still do have deer on them. But let's face it, you're not going to just sit it back at camp, sit on the on the couch and watch TV all day because you don't have a perfect wind. You'll just go hunt the stands that you can have a perfect wind for that particular stand.
Yeap, And there's like we come out here limited days. You know, you got seven days to hunt. You're going to be in a stand every day, every morning, every night, if not a full day sit and so you got to be out there. And one thing that that was different than last year, the majority of the winds you got were north, which is a preferred wind here. This year, I think I don't know we got what every day besides the last day and a half, and maybe we had one day like the third day right, we had
a north wind. Everything else has been out of the south, which not that Randy doesn't have great south stands, but I would say the majority of his stands are set up for a north wind, and we just so it required us to hunt some stands that maybe they're still good, but they're not as good as some of his north stands that he'd prefer to have us in while we're here.
Right, And I think that's just kind of how the woods kind of lay out and deer movement lays out too, to where they're going to move under their preferred areas, and that north wind is going to be to our benefit, and if it ain't that north wind, then then it's going to be the deer's benefit. Like for instance, this morning was it definitely a different morning than yesterday. Yesterday we had more of an east wind. This morning was a north north northwest wind, and the deer were definitely
moving different in that little block of woods. They were skirt along that that south end of the woods kind of like in a fringe area, you you kind of transition from a from a hardwood stand into like kind of some scrubby pasture land. So they were walking right down along that edge and they can sin check that whole stand of woods just by walking that line yesterday.
They couldn't have done that. They'd had they had had to move differently, and you can tell just by today where they came in, how they how they moved through there. Then that north wind, it was just money.
Yep. Yeah, high pressure north wind seemed to get everything we needed tonight and the deer. Deer moved right, they were more comfortable moving in that coming off of that low pressure in that little storm system. Definitely what I seen as well on where I was at.
Yeah, so this morning it was pretty overcast, cold, pretty windy, and then the wind's picked up even more this afternoon and then it turned off, bright skies cleared off, cleared off real nice. Still a little bit of wind. But these deer here in Kansas kind of like a little bit of win ten to fifteen mile an hour winds. They seem to be comfortable with it.
Yep. Yeah, And you know we hunted here last year Chris Paris Randy like them Kansas deer. They love their wind. You know, they don't want to hunt on a five mile there one day. They want to hunt on a ten to fifteen, and the deer here they're used to the wind. They're comfortable with it coming out of the north. Seems seems to be, you know, just what you need as a hunter. Covers up somewhere you're selling, makes you
a little more comfortable. So it's like the perfect perfect wind, it seems like here.
Yeah, So once thing's cleared off this afternoon, we got in our stands. What happened in your stand?
So we get there about one last night of the hunt. You look at your watch, You're like, all right, I've got four hours and fifteen minutes to sit here. Like last last rah, gets started pretty slow. We're greeted to start with by a group of about ten turkeys from our left, end up having about thirty turkeys coming from behind us to our right. If that wasn't enough, then the group of ten long beards all showed up, so we ended up with about fifty or sixty turkeys in our food plot. Right off the bat.
It sounds like like that scene off Anchorman when Ron Burgundy gets jumped by the the Night news team and then pretty soon the Public Broadcasting news team and then the the Hispanic Broadcasting news team, and they all had their big gang fight. It seems like that's kind of like what was going on with the turkeys.
Yeah, so the one group of hands. So we don't want the hens out there when the deer come in a lot of times we've just found out sometimes I don't know why the deer don't want to put up with the turkeys out there. The turkeys kind of little bossy run the field, flap their wings at him, get close, kind of run them off. So we kind of stick our face out the blinds and wave our hats and make some weird noises, and we got all of them out of the field. Sor right, we're ready to deer
hunt now, heck with these turkeys on them. In April, we have a little dough come in same trowl we walked on. She gets behind her stand for some reason, doesn't cut out into the We're sitting on a freshly planted food plot. I think it's got oats out there, so real, real low just sitting on a food plot. Comes behind us, wins us. I'm like, wow, that was an ideal. She's supposed to come out in front of us, like we have great wind for this food plot. Then we're greeted by what one of the one of the
bucks we knew was in the area. He comes out at about eighty seventy to eighty yards out to my left and doesn't he's chasing. He's just running these ridges. He has no intention of slowing up. He's gone. He leaves the field about one hundred yards and sit there for another twenty minutes. She's like, come on, like shadows are hitting the field, like deer should be moving. Now.
We got a little micro eight point show up. So for anybody back west, and it depends on where he got out west where I would from, I would call it a three point with iye guards. Dirk would count the highgrads and call it a four point, and I would call it eastern count a micro eight point. So very small, like twelve inch year and a half old deer. Maybe good genetics. But he walks out a little more nervously, kind of gets gets down to where that butt crossed
and he follows him. So maybe a hot dough went through there earlier. Maybe just their their travel ight out. So we're sitting there waiting and Dave. Dave kind of jokingly says, next year comes out, it'll be the shooter like, yeah, right, you know, what are the chances of that? Just you know there'll be a dough and then maybe he'll come out later. So we're sitting there, maybe twenty minutes goes by.
It's about four point thirty. I'm sitting in the blind, and if you haven't set these redneck blinds before, you've got an archery window kind of in the corner, an archery window in the corner, and then you've got what I would consider like a gun window in the middle. So I sit in the left side of the blind because the right handed shooter, I can shoot out the right window, I can shoot out the front, and if I needed to, I can kind of lean forward and
shoot out the window of my left. But as I'm sitting in my chair, I don't have much visibility out of this archery window to my left. That's kind of Dave's window. I'm but I can hear something coming at about four point thirty to my left. I'm close to him, like Dave, something's out my window. He kind of we're kind of sitting there looking. All of a sudden, the dough kind of squirts out, so we both see it
at the same time. Well, there's a dough not thinking there's a buck, like she just ran out the field. She's ready to eat and be excited to be there. And then Dave, I don't remember exactly what he says, but he does not. He doesn't convince me that it's a shooter buck. He makes something He's like, he's right there. There's something to that effect, like there's a buck, obviously,
but I don't know what it is. And then, in all my genius getting the blind set up, I've knocked my arrow and set it down on the gun holder that takes up the majority of sitting right next to that front left window where I need to go grab my bow. So I'm in a position where I've just got to like, let this thing walk out. I can't reach for my bow. I'm gonna scare it before we get started. As soon as he flashes through that window, though, I'm like, oh, it's a shooter. It's a good nine
mature buck. Easily identify him four and a half plus, maybe older, but I'm gonna guess four and a half, five and a half max, but a good, good nine point buck. I want to shoot it. Randy'd be happy for me to shoot this buck. That dough that squirted out to our left. She there. We've got a little island of brush out in front of us. So you got like a clear lane down your left, a clear lane out to your right, and then you've got this Randy had left a pilot brush in the middle of
his food plot. The dough kind of zigzags her way through that and pops out on the other side. Well, the buck kind of slowly picks up follows her. Well, she doesn't like him following her, so she comes back through the brush to where she just came. That should put him in about fifteen yards. Well, she comes at me, and then the wine's right in front of the She comes kind of a diagonal towards me to my left. She gets there and then wind's out. Well, he's grunting
the whole way, coming right back, fallowing er. So why he's in this brush pile. It's the perfect time for me to draw silently. I'm drawn looking out my left window, and that buck comes around the corner like fifteen But he's moving too fast. You know, there's there's no I don't want to shoot a frontel. He's in a folded dough in front of our blind, and he gets to a He's at like twelve yards right now, right in these blinds. I think the one i'mend's maybe a ten
or twelve foot elevated platform, not real tall. Some of them are fifteen. Some of them even go up to twenty. But I'm just in a ten or twelve, which is actually helps in this situation where I've got to try to shoot down at this deer. So I'm already at
full draw. I put my pin at twenty right where I want to hit, and I'm just kind of getting ready to is the broadside right in front of the blind, and I just happened to glance down at my AAR and I'm like, oh boy, my arrow is just gonna blow out the side of Randy's fiberglass blind right like the air is not gonna make it through where my pin says it's gonna hit right. So I don't panic, but I quickly need to like stand up or sit
up as tall as you can in your seat. I need to get that extra two or three inches out of my tour, so you know, I go to lift my bow up. Not to add to the situation, I bump my stabilizer on the little gun shelf that sticks out about two inches from the window. A pro tip. Maybe if you're a Western hunter and you think these long ten inch stabilizers are great, maybe in a white tail blind you switch to a four inch stabilizer. I don't know.
I'm thinking our thirty four inch bows could be a little shorter.
Yeah, I mean, it's just everything. My thirty two inch arrow was a pain in the butt until you get your bow drawn. Like everything is tight. But I drill the the platform that's in front of this window, the little shelf. I don't know why the buck didn't care, but I drill it and he doesn't even pick his head up, skip a beat, nothing. It was in love me quickly, Now panahe worse because the buck is continually
getting more quartered away. Right as he goes from my left to my right, I pull my boat back at full draw, lift up an extra inch, and then come back forward. As I get my bow forward, he's still at a shootable range. He's slowly walking. I settled my twenty in and hit him quartered away pretty good, but but had perfect chance of hitting both lungs and hit the arrow right where I needed to fortunately watched them trot across the field. I could see where my exit
was perfect in the pocket. My entry had foam coming out of it. We're able to watch a buck within a minute go over and bed down and expire. So yeah, last minute of the last night. It's so cliche to say, but it's like, it's just time in the saddle, you know. It just goes to show that white to't And I don't claim to be an expert. You hear a lot of the pros talk about it. It's just time in the saddle. Either that and picking your weather and being at the right place at the right time. So super
super lucky. And that was right. I was texting you guys that I had shot one right before your night was just getting going, and I felt it was a little bit late, but your night was just kind of getting started.
Yeah, we hadn't really seen a lot up unto that point, but we had this buck that we spotted more kind of scrape along the edge of the field and along the fence row there, and he had a pretty bad lamp. You know. He was a mature buck. His rack wasn't real big, but we'd seen him before and Randy He's like, yeah, hey, if you get a chance to shoot that thing, you should take him out because with him lamping and stuff like that, he may not make the winner. So we
had to do that buck of favor. So that buck actually comes in and there's a feeder there, and there's a little a little button buck feed eating corner out of this feeder, and this this bigger buck. He starts coming in and then the last minute, before you know, he's about fifty yards out from the feeder. Then he makes this wide berth and he gets out in the standing corner and then he comes into a straight angle to this feeder and he gets pretty close and all
of a sudden he gets jumpy and spooky. Well, at that very moment, I was putting tension on my string, getting ready to draw because he needed to take like two more steps and I was going to have a shot. Well, I don't know why he spooked. Because he spooked, he was like looking towards that other little deer or that direction which was away from us, and he almost had his nose in the air like he was smelling something.
I don't know if he smelled like he thought that little buck was a doe and that that kind of freaked him out, or maybe there was a coyout in the you know, over in the in the corn somewhere that we couldn't see, but he he kind of freaked out and he took off, and we're down to the wire there, you know, we're the last thirty minutes of light. And I was just like, oh no, and I was were deflated, like, man, I don't know if I'm gonna get a buck. We only have thirty minutes left now
that now the odds are really stacked against us. So we watched him kind of walk off, and about that time, the phone started buzzing. Well during that whole episode, the phone was buzzing. The first message I look at it's a message from Randy and he's got a trail cam picture and he says, man, I feel bad. I bet
Dirk's would be sad. I feel bad for him. And were we were Dusty and I had been sitting for a day and a half on this other blind Then there's this big, old, big old eight point buck that we'd been kind of seeing off and on all week, and we were just hoping, you know, to get a crack at him. And as soon as we moved from that blind that buck shows up would have been a perfect twenty yard shot. We did we didn't. We hadn't nailed him, So then that was like insult to injury.
I was like, oh man, I'm like, you know, what's the chance is. You know, if it's gonna happen to anybody, will be me, right. So then I'm looking at my other message. I'm like, oh, oh, great, Jason shot at ELK. Good for him now, but r no, did I say elk? Yeah? Sorry? Yeah, good? Yeah, he shot a buck. Good for him. But I was actually pretty pumped for him. I was like, that's good. But so one of us needed to draw some blood.
It's been, you know, kind of a tough hunt. Not to get plain, but it's it's been a tough hunt. And so I was just kind of sitting there licking my wounds a little bit, thinking, well, this is how the you know, the the hunt ends, you know, watching the pretty sunset fade away, and the gray light was getting pretty long, and and I catch this, the shape of a deer up at the end of this field. I pull out my binoculars. I'm like, holy cow, Dusty,
I said, there's a giant buck walking across. He's walking along this fence row, but I don't know, almost almost two hundred yards away. He's kind of walking along real slow, and I'm just like, I have to do something to get this buck to come our way, because he's not coming our direction whatsoever. There's nothing that's going to lead him here. So I pick up my grunt call and I start blasting on that grunt call. We're just ba.
I think.
I blast him like four or five big, long, aggressive grunts, and he stops and looks at us, and then he just starts walking again on the same path he was walking. I was like, oh, man, that didn't work. So I have a dough bleat as well. So I start hammering on that thing, and I don't know if I'm doing it right. I don't know if I'm doing it wrong at this point, it's just an act of desperation. So I was blown on that thing really loud because he's
a couple hundred yards away. So I start blowing on in It's like rah rah, and it was almost like like a doe in distress that's been injured or something and making that god awful noise they make, and he didn't. He didn't even look our way. I'm like, man, that didn't work either. And then all of a sudden, it's like when somebody starts steering a boat. He just starts starting to gradually starts turn in our direction, and he turns, turn, turns,
and he's walking right towards us. I'm like, holy call, here he comes, Dusty, here he comes. I gotta get ready. And this thing's coming through this cornfield and it's kind of you know, it's not like the corner you picture you see that that really like really tall stalks, they're you know, ten feet tall and bright green. This is, you know, a little more of a scabby patch of corn. You know, you can see through it in a lot of it. So we can watch him come most of
the way. And he comes and uh, there's a there's a swath cut through that corn and he walks into that swath and he's about fifty yards and right then I could have I could have stopped him, but I thought, well, he may take the same path as that other buck. He may smell that bucks tracks and maybe maybe come over towards us. So I don't want to shoot. I don't want to stop in there, he's fifty yards. I'd rather have a closer shot, so I don't stop him.
He crosses through that swath and gets back in the corner again, and then I can tell by his route he's not going to come our direction. So at that point I draw my bow and then I stop him. Man, man, you know, give him a few of those, and he stops, and I shoot, and I see my lighted knock fly. I'm like, it's oh, it's in there. It's in there. And then I'm like, I don't think it's in there.
He kind of runs off and kind of trotted off, didn't act like he was hit, and he kind of walks over the edge of the field, stops, looks at us. I'm like, shoot, I don't think he's hit. So I check him with binoculars. See no blood or you know, holds in him. So I start, I start grunting again, and he just kind of walks a little ways and then starts. He stops and starts licking a branch like there's a scrape there. I'm like, oh, yeah, he's definitely
not hurt. He says, start making a scrape here. And he messed around there for a minute and then just kind of slowly walked off into the sunset. And it's a beautiful a point, like a monster, like would have been my biggest white tail by far. Yeah, it kind of hurt a little bit. I mean, my heart's broken, and I don't know if I'm I'm gonna ever recuperate from it. But I will say those both those deer tonight, both of them, Even the first one, I thought my heart was going to to leap out of my chest.
It was pounding so hard. I think it was way more of adrenaline rush or way more exciting than when I have a bowl out come in. I guess I'm kind of used to, you know, calling an elk for so many years, and these white tails with the bow is so so new to me. I was definitely I really had to like try to control myself because I was kind of freaking out a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, I my buck, your first blow on me. I got so excited that as I went the full dry, I ended up with the bloody noses dripping down my face as I was trying to hold all that mess together. And yeah, I don't keep my I don't keep myself
together very well. I don't know if it's because the element a surprise or you know, you're working an elk, so you're like in constant communication and so it's like a slow build up or a slower build up versus like you went from seeing nothing to all of a sudden the shoot her buck and you got to try to figure it out. Yeah, it's it's a different it's tough.
It's like almost a different anticipation for me. It's like, I don't know, I've kind of like it. I have to struggle really hard to like make sure I keep my crap.
Together, but sure remind yourself to breathe.
Yeah, well after this, hut, what do you what do you think? What's what's what's your takeaways?
And uh, you know, last year I think we maybe had it too good. Oh, this stuff pretty exciting. Like you don't have to there's no mental game to this. You just jumping a tree and watch the deer all day and you'll shoot the one that eventually want to, you know, but this year was a different tale. A lot of hours go by without seeing a deer having
much action. So yeah, it's definitely a mental game, trying to keep your trying to keep your head in the game, even though weather wasn't helping us out, movement wasn't right. You know, the Bucks were in the middle of the lockdown. You know, they they've had multiple years of drought, so their numbers are down a little bit. Ehd you know, all of this kind of playing in. Don't get me wrong, they still have a great deer numbers and great deer on there on Randy's property. You know, he's did a
great job. But it's tough. It's it takes a lot of a lot of commitment and perseverance just sitting that tree all day, stay alert, you know, you know, because a lot of times, as we mentioned, you might only see those deer a few times and you need to react pretty quick. So no, it's tough. It's tough on a different level versus you know, hiking all day, you know, in the Western country trying to you know, hunt deer, elk versus you know, whitetail. You got to have the
mental to sit. And one thing I'm excited to get to do next year is a lot of a lot of what we get to reap the rewards of is Randy's work in the off season, or him and his buddy's work, you know, setney stands. We're gonna hopefully get to set some of these stands and make them make some decisions with them next year on you know, where we've seen the deer move where we think the deer going to be, and focus on these pitch points and
kind of help him get some stands reorganized. So I'll be I'm excited to be a part of that because right now I just get to take advantage of where Randy's did all the research and set the stands and put all the work in where I'd love to put a little bit of sweat equity in. But yeah, my takeaway is it's it's it's not physical by any means, but it's definitely like a mental stress that you're under all day, just trying to get through the day and
stay alert and hunt hard. And by hunting hard, I don't mean hiking hills and sweat, and I mean like staying awake, stay alert and being ready when the time comes.
Why did you like, look at me, funny when you said stay awake?
We were I was trying to take the over under at times. Dusty, your camera man, he was giving me the odds. He was the odds maker. You say he was Vegas in this he said he was going to set the betting line at forty sixty. So that means that's real close to where you were at sleep wise, you were asleep forty percent of time and a week maybe sixty percent of the time.
Wow. Wow, I thought it was him that was sleeping all that that I was gonna I was gonna throw him under the bus for sleeping. But no, actually, yeah, I have a hard time. Man if I if I sit very long, I man, I doze off. But it was good to have him there because if I dozed off, he was just like he was. He's like, hey, there comes a deer. And then I wake up like I don't know who my name is. I'm like I'm looking around like we're trying to focus on where am I.
But you know, it's nice to have him there. Yeah, but I agree, it's a it's a it's a definitely a mental game. You have to have the discipline to to stay alert. You know, move slowly, don't you know, just because you're in a blind doesn't mean deer can't see it. They can still see you, and you just have to make slow movements, deliberate movements, glass, check every little spot over and over and over again, and that
that's kind of the hard part. Like Western hung we get to see new views and vistas throughout the day as we hike, but here it's just like the same old spots. And you get a little bit of win and you get a little bit of leaves and stuff falling from the trees, and and pretty soon you're like, oh, man, I saw a tail flicker and yeah it was just a leaf. And you do that all day and it's it.
It can wear on you. I know. The other night was that last night where we were sitting here and like, man, I'm exhausted.
It was.
It's exhausting sometimes to do that, I guess if you're not used to it. But yeah, it was. It was fun and I can't wait till till we get to come back and help Randy. You know, rework a lot of his stands. He's got a lot of stands. He's like, you know, I'd like to just dig them out and replace him, or not replace them, but reset them, relocate them, you know, maybe you know, fine tune them a little bit. They're in a good spot, but maybe by moving them
one hundred yards. Now you're really in the spot where the deer are going to come by, which we've kind of seen some of those places too, but but that, like you say, it gives you some skin in the game. And and now we feel better about coming out, you know, yeah, accepting his hospitality. And I mean, we can't think if Randy listens to this, we can't thank him enough. I don't know what we ever did to deserve in invitation
to come out here. You know, we've been out here hunting, turkey hunting three times and deer hunting twice, and it's yeah, I'm just thankful.
Yeah, such a generous guy, just salted the earth. One of the best guys you know, you can be around, fun to be around. You know, there's a lot about hunting those, a lot about his property, you know, managing the property, hard worker, you know, just one of those guys you like to be around. And yeah, I don't know, like you know, to echo your sentiment, like, I don't know what we did deserve to be here, but hopefully
he keeps inviting us back. And yeah, I don't know how we're going to repay him, but uh, maybe we'll move some stands and uh, just uh, I don't know, likeviously, I don't know what we did, but it's it's a it's a pleasure to get to come out to Kansas. I look forward to this trip every year. It's awesome. The places managed to a t and uh it's a lot of fun.
Yeah, and just the in the area. I'd never spent really any time in Kansas before, and I love it out here. It's it's like you're taking a step back in time, you know, these this small town America and the people here are super nice and it's just man, Yeah, there's more places could be like this.
Yep, good people. Everybody's your friend, go to the gas station like everybody's asking how It's just yeah, I wish I wish a lot more places were like this.
Yeah, yeah, I love it. Well. I want to thank everybody for listening today. If you guys have any questions that you want Phelps to answer or me to answer, just email us at CTD at Phelpsgamecalls dot com and we will do our best to re read your question on the air and and answer it with whether it's Jason myself or maybe one of the guests sometime and if you know, the super secret phone number. I should have looked it up so I could say it right now.
But if you've heard some of the other episodes where I give out that number, call in and with your question, you can leave a detailed message UH. This three minutes or less so the machine don't cut you off, and we'll play your message on the line or on the air here and uh and then read and then answer it to the best of our abilities. So anyway, thanks again for coming on the show. Jason. You know it's hard to get you on here, and thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch you on this next show.