Ep. 497: My Experience Tracking Big Woods Bucks in Maine with Hal Blood

to share for a long time. This has been a story I've hoped I would get to experience and hoped I get to share someday. For years now, I've talked about going up to Maine or somewhere in the Northeast and trying to track down deer in the snow. Right, This whole idea of finding a big track and walking it down over miles and miles of big woods terrain, this is just it just seemed like one of the

coolest ways to hunt ever. I think for two or three years I've been saying, Hey, this year, I'm gonna do it, and then it fell through, and then the next year I'm like, Okay, this is the year I'm gonna do it, and then it fell through. Well, finally it actually happened. I did it. I've had this experience, and today I want to share that story with you, as well as everything I learned about how to do

it and help me do it is hell Blood. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast this fall, you probably have an idea of what I've been doing and why I went and visited with somebody like hell Blood. But let me give you the real quick recap. My season this year has been mostly devoted to traveling across the country to hunt in brand new places in brand new ways, and I've been meeting with a local expert in each place to figure out what it is they do.

So in this case, I met up with Hail Blood in Maine, and I wanted Hale to show me how he tracks deer down in the snow. So we met up, spent a day together. I've followed in his footsteps, asking him a thousand questions, basically doing a podcast in person while we're out there doing the thing. So I got to see exactly how he tries to track down deer

in the snow. And then after that day together, I was going to head out on my own and try to see if I could put it into action, getting pig these ideas and pull off this kind of hunt myself. So that's what I tried to do. Back towards the third third week of November, I think it was. That's when I did it. And Man, without giving away too much, I will tell you this, it was a hell of an experience. I mean learned a ton, I got to spend some really fun days in beautiful country and Uh.

In short, I'm definitely going to be using these new tactics in the future. So we've got Hail here on the show. In just a couple of minutes. Hale is gonna help us walk through everything we did, share a lot of insight and strategies and tactics that anyone listening to this will be able to use and put into action in your own neck of the woods. If you have big woods train like this, if you have snow like this, I think you'll be able to learn a lot.

I've also got my two cameramen who were following me around, uh, capturing all of this for our new show. So we've got Dylan Lens and Jimmy Michaels, who will be able to add some different perspectives, some look, you know, some context, some color, and fact check me on anything if I miss something. So that's the game plan. I hope you guys enjoy this one. I certainly did. Let's get into my chat with Hail Blood, one of the absolute legends in the Big Woods deer track and world, a registered

main guide and one of the best out there. You can also learn more about him. We'll make sure to talk abouts at the end, but I want to say at the beginning to he's the host of the Big Woods Bucks podcast YouTube series. He's got classes, he uh books, guided hunts, he does it all. So if you like what you're here today, there's definitely more out there. So now, for real, without further ado, my chat with Hail, Dylan and Jimmy all right now with me on the line

to discuss this, uh, this pretty epic trip. We've got Hell Blood, Dylan Lens and Jimmy Michael's or Jimmer as

we like to call him. And uh, rather than rather than doing like the four people kind of beating around the bush and saying hey, it's good to be here, and people talking over each other, I'm just gonna skip that part and I want to jump just right into the really good stuff because there's a lot to talk about on this X. You know, this expedition of sorts um As, as you three already know, and as people listening her just a little bit about as they introduced

this whole idea, you know, the gist of what we're hoping to do on this trip was to come and meet up with you, Hal, spend a day, learn about what you do and how you do it when it comes to track and do here, and then you know, take everything I learned from that day and then go out on my own for three more days and try to pull it off myself. That was the hope and the dream, showing up in Maine, praying for snow and

hoping we could do this thing. Um Now, where I want to start, Hal, is what you were thinking about leading into the trip, because we kind of told you, hey, this is our dream, this is our idea, this is what we'd like to do, you know, would you help us out? And you were so kind as to agree. But when you looked at the forecast coming up as we were about to get there, when you were out there hunting yourself in those days leading up to it,

how were you feeling about things? What were you thinking about our chances and how we were actually going to pull this off when maybe conditions and are it seemingly they're a little a little less than ideal, right, yeah, a lot less than ideal. That's really just I was actually even before that week, I was thinking that, you know, when you talked about, you know, the limited time you had. That makes it tough anyways, because I tell people to

be Fanny yourself. Coming up here a week is a good start because most people, you know, they get a week maybe to go on a huddle whatever. But in reality up in this country, you know it yourself, take two weeks straight ahead. They have you know, a decent chance of you know, killing a buck, or even a decent chance of having a few days with a good conditions, because that's the reality. I mean, you can have you can have snow, but that doesn't mean it's good tracking snow.

And uh, you know you've seen some of that. You know, we had a little snow, but it wasn't there wasn't no way is near ideal. So and those are the days that's you know, it's higher a lot higher to the killer Buck on days like that. So that was my first thought was, really, it isn't much time to try to you know, really have a good chance at it.

But when we had to try it anyway, so and then when I saw the conditions, I mean we had basically we had pretty pretty dismal conditions the whole season until the end of Thanksgiving week we finally got a nice shot of snow kind of everywhere and it made a Muslo the season week a pretty good week. But going into that week there was only snow and like some of the higher elevations along the borders and you know,

places like that. So I had to go try to find a place to take you because what happens when we get those type of conditions with limited snow, it kind of crowds people to those places. In other words, if if you've got two or three mountains it's got snow half way up them, well they're going to have ten times a hunting pressure because people come up here they want to get on snow, so they all run

to them mountains. So I don't like to hunt those places like that, you know, when there's other people around, So I went and looked for a place we could go where I felt we probably wouldn't have anybody else around, and we didn't, and I took a chance on a place. And sometimes it get some of that early snow, and sometimes it doesn't. But fortunately it it had some, which made it at least we could follow tracks. I can

say that way we could follow tracks. Now you talked about how even though we were able to find some snow, you still didn't feel like it was ideal for this kind of hunt, Like, what's the absolute ideal situation? What do you if you could paint the perfect scenario when it came to the conditions, what would that have been. Well, really nice conditions are when you get several inches of snow anyways that that covers the ground enough to make it quiet. So if you get it depends if it's

wet snow, damp snow, and dry fluffy snow. You know it takes more of the dry snow to do that than the damp snow because underneath you, you know, you've got all kinds of sticks in the woods, and this because obviously the snow covers the stick so you can't see him. So you're gonna be stepping on a lot of them. So you need enough snow to kind of mufflo sounds. And you know, if it's wet snow, a couple inches will help because of the sticks are damp and they don't make as much noise. But dry snow

it's more like four to six inches. You know. If you get four to six inches, it really quiets the woods down. Uh, if it's hanging in the trees, it muffles the sound. The sound doesn't carry through the woods like it would on a you know days when there's no snow on the limbs, clear crisp days. And so that's kind of it. You gotta, you gotta. It's gotta be quiet because you know, one of them ada can hear you for a hundred yards if not, you know, so it's just trying to get near one. It's difficult,

you know. And the other part that makes it ideal, especially if you have ma original snow, you know, just a little snow or it's it's uh more noisy as

something is wind. So I I call if we get a couple inches of snow and we've got a nice wind with the trees a sway and a little and there's leaves are rattling around, you know, with the dead leaves on the trees, and I call those those are the buck killing days right there, because that is taken away the advantage that that a buck has, you know, because obviously they can hear better than us, they can smell, and they can not that they see great if you

don't move, but they pick up movement probably quicker than what you do. So the wind takes care of all of that because if the trees are moving and the leaves are shaken, that puts some movement in the woods, so they don't pick up on your movement as quick it uh. The wind and the things rattling around helps cover your noise and it also makes it so your sense not gonna get anywhere, you know, if it's if it's a windy day, you your scent don't probably get

ten feet from you, you know. So that's ideal conditions. That's how you have to paint it out for an ideal day, like I said, a buck killing day. And quite frankly, we don't get very many of those days in a season, even in the season when there's when there is snow, you don't have those ideal conditions at often, Yeah, and we we never really had quite that set of conditions in the four days. We had another thing though,

that I imagine you thought was not ideal. But what did you think when we showed up for day one and you realize there was gonna be four of us trying to do this altogether? So you me and two cameramen? What did you think about that as far as our chances? I thought we're just gonna be taking a walk in

the woods. Yeah, yeah, definitely not ideal on that front. Um. So speaking of the camera and uh, Jimmer Dylan, when you we showed up in Maine and you got to see the area we're gonna be hiking around in, Uh, what what were you thinking about this hunt? What were your thoughts? Kind of preliminarily, Jimmy, if you want to start about our chances, about what you thought about what we're getting ourselves into. What was your take? Well, growing up in the Midwest, I was very used to more posting,

waiting for the deer to come to us. Um, this is this was brand new, having to stalk a deer basically looking for the tracks and then going after it. I honestly didn't know what to expect. I was somewhat familiar with the terrain and Maine, but not not exactly

where we were going. What about you dealing? You know, it was it was beautiful showing up there and you know, hoping we would get more snow, but you know, having to work with the conditions we had made it for obviously, but just you know, the idea was stalking a white tail and then adding a camera person or two camera people, you know, just made it seem like a colossal feat um coming into it, you know, I mean, this is the first time I've ever done a spot and stock

white tail hunt, you know, to try and film it. You know, usually if you're doing it for Mule or something like that, you have a lot of terrain to play with where you know, you can hide your sound and your your site a lot better. So just coming

into it just seemed like a daunting task. But it was pretty exciting to be there and you're right now, and it was just beautiful, you know, especially that first day, Like we showed up at night the first night and where you know, I don't think there's any snow down at camp, but we were hoping, and how you told us that there was a chance that you know, there should still be snow up to this other area where you had been walking around the previous couple of days.

And we showed up there that first morning and it started get the light out and we could see that yes, in fact, there was some snow and you can see the rolling hills and the big timber and I mean it was it was everything as advertised. It was. It was what you dream of when you think of going up into the woods of Maine. Uh, just as a beautiful, beautiful first day. Um. But one thing you know that was interested in me, how was the fact that you know,

you chose to drive right to a place and start hiking. Um, and start hiking before he found any tracks. I've talked to some people in the past that prefer driving around until they find tracks crossing the road and then go from there. Can you talk about your preference between you know, driving back roads so you find a track versus hiking to find a track, and what the pros and cons

of would be either approached. Yeah. I mean what I tell people is is for every for every buck track you see across the road, there's ten more that didn't cross the road. So your roads are picking up a track in the woods. Uh, basically we ten times better, right, So that's why I do that. I mean just riding around randomly and and for one thing you gotta remember is you got a hundred other people doing the same thing on most of the roads as people. That's that's

all they do do. So your odds are getting the track anyway, unless you some of these guys, it's like a it's like off to the races in the morning. You know, it's who who gets say the earliest in driving around. Some guys at four o'clock in the morning, a good two hours or more before daylight looking for a track, and you know then if they find one, they camp out on it, I guess. But I just that makes a long day trying to do that. And you know, even if you do find one, So I

just I just never do that. It's I can. I can almost always find it a good big track that I want to be on in the woods. I really rarely find one of those good big ones from the road. It's just a it's an absolute bonus if I do. And if I do, it's just usually because I found one on the way to where I was gonna go anyway. So I just my plan in the morning is is to get where I want to be at daylight and

head in the woods. So I'll be driving. I mean, I might drive twenty minutes from my house, I might drive an hour, but I just plan on being there at daylight, and I'll check the tracks on the way. If I see a track in the road, I'll get out and size it up. And it's like I said, it's a it's a bonus if I find one from the road, uh, that I want to take, you know,

A big, big enough one that I want to take. So, um, the only advantage I can see of driving and finding the track driving, there's no advantage because your your odds are a lot less to even finding one. But the one thing is if you do, you're fresh when you get on it, you know, because I might walk half the day sometimes finding a track, Well, I've put on by six seven miles already, so you know, I'm not that fresh when I get on at the start with, you know, And so it makes it, it makes it.

H I hired a job to try to catch up to that buck, you know. So, but that's the only advantage I could see is that you'd be fresh when you get on it, and maybe it's you could be fresh, but you might not be in shape because I think the guys that go ride the trucks all day long looking for tracks, they don't get any exercise, so they're not ready for the task anyway. You know, Yeah, that was that was definitely shocking for me. I definitely thought we were going to be spending a lot more time

driving roads in the truck. And then you know, for day one, I think we put on what eight nine miles? Yes, I think nine three quarter miles that we got to my expectation. Yeah, yeah, so hell. One of the things I was curious about when I started taking off on my own and was interested in when you started on that first day with us, was just how you plan the route you're gonna take. So you're going in blind

to a place we haven't found a track yet. You you picked a destination where you want to park your truck and then you said, all right, we're gonna take a hike and hope we cross the track. How do you plan a route? How do you think through where you should go walking around to hopefully pick up a track? Um? I always planned my My routes around like a big circle. Whether I'm still hunting a track, no matter what I'm doing, I make a big circle for the day. I don't.

I don't say I'm gonna circle here for an hour and try something else. Once in a while, I'll go in and I'll say I'll spend a half a day in this spot, because that's the size it is. You know, where I think I can find a track, but it's usually an all day thing. I'll start out for the day and I'll just walk a huge circle, which might be a ten mile circle, and it usually consists of either side of a mountain, uh all the way around a mountain, or maybe it's not a mountain, maybe it's

just ridges. But I just kind of I just kind of want to circle a big area where I think a buck might be coming and going from to get to the dos because during the idea season in November, that's basically what they're up to is checking on them does. Whether it's just before the rout when we start, or during the rout, it's gonna their travel patterns that are affected by where the does are located. So that's what

I do. I just make a big circle for the day, okay, And I remember that first that first spot we started, we kind of walked up old logging road I think was gonna take us up towards this ridge. And then, like you said, you mentioned that we'll just kind of

walk a big loop up around this area. But it didn't take too terribly long and we started walking and within less than a hundred yards we saw some fawn tracks, and then then there was a bigger track, but a pretty old one, and then I don't know, within a half hour of walking, I think maybe we came upon a track that you know, you thought, um was interesting.

But there was one thing that I was curious about before we got to that point, and it was the fact that we were cruising and we're hiking through the woods fast, we were making noise um, and I remember asking you, Hail, you know, do we need to be more quiet? Do we do you want us to be? You know, should we be in stealth mode or or do we just just ram through the woods like this

not caring? And you gave me your perspective there, but could you tell us now, you know, what's your take on when you're searching for a track, do you worry about making noise or do you just cover ground? No, I just cover ground. If you're if you're worried about making noise, you can't cover as much ground. So I just I'm not worried about making noise until I think I'm near a deer anyway, So there's a lot of space between the deer up in this country, so I

don't worry about it. Yeah. So then we did find that track. Then we were going fast, we're making a racket. We found a track and you took a look at You kind of walked off the side of the trail, looked at a couple of tracks, and you said, I think this one's good enough. Um. That moment, this part of the hunt was one that I was most interested in, maybe of all, which is like the analysis of a track. Um, when you were can at that track? Can you walk

me through? I guess this is this is an interesting What do you look at first? Do you look at size? Do you try to determinely is this a big enough deer first? Or do you look at is this a fresh enough track? First? What's the first thing you study before you then advanced to the next question. Well, it's probably a combination. I mean, it depends if if it's a new snow, like if it's just the snow has only been made that day or the day before and the night it is. To me it is a fresh track,

so I'm gonna I'm gonna size it up. But um, basically it's gotta be you know, I like the Even if it's a big track, I'm gonna look at it and maybe think about how old it has to be for him not gonna take it, which is usually two days old. If it's it's made two nights before, I

won't take it. I call a fresh track a track that's made in the night the previous eight So I'm obviously I'm looking in the morning, and if it was made sometime in the night, whether it's four hours old or twelve hours old, to me, it's still a fresh track. And most of the time I can catch that buck that day most most of the time, So to me, it's a freck crack. And then I I, uh, I looked for the size, and I'm I'm more particular than

most people. So if the people that are listening, don't, I don't think, don't don't try to go by my expectation of the size of a track, because you'll get discouraged because obviously the big old tracks made by the big old bucks, and they're the smartest ones to try to to try to kill. And that's not the way to begin, you know, You've got to begin on, you know, a younger buck maybe, uh, you know, to get some

experience with it. But I look for tracks here and and I idea of the northern Borealis and they have the biggest, the biggest feet than any of the other white tail species, so you know we do have they have big, big feet on them. So I'm looking for a tract. It's I call them a three by three three inches wide by three inches long. But theydn't have a square like that. They usually if they're three inches wide, they usually at least three and a half long, some

of them four. I have seen him four and a half. So that's the tracks I'm looking for. And they've gotta be toes got me around me. You took out of your pocket, you just grabbed I think it was like the lip bomb, you know, can or you just threw that in the track real quick enough the air you know here, you know, us new to this area was looking at tracks, you know, a foreign language, and you basically just read them like, yep, this is a big deal,

let's follow it. Yeah. Well, I've seen thousands of them, you know, and I've studied thousands of them. I followed thousands of them, so it's pretty easy to see right off. So it's like I said, it's it's the size in

the shape. A lot of the shape is like I said that, I want to see that the toes around it, because those are the old bucks, the pointed told bucks on old usually unless it's a huge buck that maybe doesn't you know, I've seen the ones that then well, I guess people might call them swamp box, but they list live in areas where it's not rugged putting, you know, it's not rocks and stuff in the ridges and ledges

that where their feet. They may have a little more pointed toe, but generally those toes are going to be arounded off by the time they get you know, five, six seventy years old. They're gonna they're gonna be around and then the other thing that happens with them where their feet is the toes won't won't go together anymore. In other words, the print won't be like a hot shaped print. There's gonna be a space in between the two toes, and the bigger that spaces is usually an

indication of the older box. And I've seen that space between them just in a normal walk, the almost an inch. Those are huge bucks, you know. And it's it's because their feet uh wearing out, that sprung out, the tendons are stretched or whatever it is, and they just don't go back together. So I those are ones I call square toad box because when you look in the print, the print itself looks square instead of pointed because them

two them two toes are sticking straight ahead. And that's the back feet, which when you look at a track of a buckets just walking a normal walk, you're looking at the rear. The clear print you see is the back foot because they, like any of those animals like that, they they step for step back foot into their front feet when they walk, so you're not getting a clear a clear picture of the front foot, which is bigger. The front feet are bigger than the back feet on

any of the day you look at them. The moose of the same way, you take the feet and compare them in the front feet are much bigger, so the back foot is smaller. So when you're looking at that, you always keep that in mind that you're looking at the smaller the feet anyway, and when you see that that is really big. And then you get a look at the front foot, like he stops to feed or turn or do something. When he sticks a front foot out there, you're gonna see how much bigger those feet are.

You know. Now, what about for someone who's trying to do this for the first time, like I was, how would you go about identifying the track of a beginner buck, let's call it a younger buck. What what does that contract look like? And how do you differentiate that from a dough? Well, for a new person, it's going to be hard to differentiate from a dough because like a yelling buck, he doesn't really his new clause pronounced as

much yet. So I just tell people, when you're new at it, if the track is by itself and it's as long as it's not a tiny track like those on tracks we saw, but if it's a if it's a regular sized deer track and it's by itself, just follow it because what you're doing is your practice in any ways, and if you get a look at it and it's a dough, at least you've accomplished pie of what you set out to do. You tracked a deer

and saw it right, so you're getting some practice. Um. It might be a yielding bucket, might be a spike, horn, crotch, or a little six point or whatever it is. If you if you're a new person, if he caught up to one of those and could shoot it, it's a big accomplishment. You know, You've you've done something that the hunters can't do. I wouldn't do. We haven't done, you know. So that's how you get started. When you do like I said, you don't start out trying to take the

biggest track in the wood. I mean, I'm not saying don't take it if you find it, but but don't walk around and whatever all day long just looking for the great, biggest track. And sometimes the mother other tracks take you to a big track. So if you're on a average size track, you might come across the bigger one and you can always switch off onto that one,

you know. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, it's our day unfold, you know, as you go along throughout a day, strange things happen the day unfolds, and you never know what's gonna happen. When you following a buck, you know, you just you don't know where he's gonna take you. You don't know what he's gonna do. But at least he's showing you all that stuff. That's a that's the fun part about track and as you I call it, you live in the life of that buck. You're getting to

see exactly what that buck did. It's written in the snow for you. Where he went, what he did, if he checked, does he said, if he laid down you you get to figure out all the things about what he did and trying to figure out why you did him. You know, Yeah, that was one of my favorite things was just seeing that story written in the snow and and it's kind of like pulling a curtain back and you get to see behind the scenes of what these

deer actually do. That was that was fascinating the whole week. Getting to walk in the footprints of a deer and see see that world was was really cool. Now. One of the things though, that I found the toughest to figure out was was understanding how fresh was fresh enough, Like when I eventually went off on my own. That was something that kept coming back to. I look at a track of like, man, was this last night? Was

this yesterday? Like that different? I could tell what was like really old, and I could tell it was really fresh. But there was this middle ground where I would be back and forth him and Han on it. And and you had talked about when we crossed that first track, you said you want a crispy track. Uh, can you can you describe again for us what that means, like what a crispy track looks like in your eyes, and then walk us through anything else that helps you determine

that the track is fresh enough to go on. Because this is easier said than done, I think, yeah, that's the highest part. Aging a track is the highest prid of tracking. Whether you're trying to age one that's made last night of the night before, or you might be trying to age one that's fifteen minutes old instead of two hours old. You know, that's that's the hardest part

of track. And then that's that's just takes experience. I can tell you what it looks like to me, but and guarantee it ain't gonna look like that to you. You know what I mean, because you have to you have the first we see enough of them to get that information into you, INDI your brain. But a crispy track to me, well, first of all, the track changes tracking, the snow changes immediately after it's made. It's either it's

doing two things. It's either let's either melting if it's above thirty two, or it's freezing if it's blow thirty two. And if it's right at thirty two, that's the only time that it stays the same for a long time. So either side of that, the track is changing. And usually once the snow is on the ground, it's most of the time it's freezing. You know, it's below that thirty two degree mark. Snow is not mounting or whatever.

And when you first they the track is first made, it's h They'll be dust, you know, there'll be snow kicked the pushed up in front of it, you know, as they dragged your feet along or whatever. This snow say, it's powdery snow and it's fluffed out in the front, and that looks That's why I call it's crispy, because it looks like it just happened, looks like you just throw some sugar on the floor or something, you know, and it hasn't changed yet, you know, it hasn't had

time to. When I say freezing, it's really uh, it's evaporating. Like if you if you put a if you have one of you know, all the freezes now we're like frost frey. You know, if you've got your ice boxes, you in your refrigerator, it's if you leave your ice cubes in the ice tray so long, what happens to them? They just they disappear. I don't think if you left

them in there for a long time, because they evaporated away. Well, it's the same thing happens in the snow when it's actually happens quicker and snow than it does in solid ice. So it'll start to round out like the edge where it steps through the snow. When it's fresh, that edge will be real shop like real shop edge. And then it's gonna start withering, blending in melt, freezing and and just rounding over kind And it's subtle. It's not like

you're gonna see it immediately. It's really subtle. And then it's a different length of time if it's twenty degrees or from if it's zero degrees. So it's almost like you've got to have a slide and rule or something and calculate that out. But you have to do it in your mind, and it's through experience, and that's the only way you can do it, is gain that experience. So in the beginning, I guess you're gonna asked quite

a bit. So, yeah, the other way. The other way you can tell a little bit closer, as if if it steps in the wet ground, even if it's frozen and the snows powder and it's frozen ground, there's a lot of in this would see, there's a lot of wet ground in the wood. So a little trickles and they stepped into water wet ground. You'll see how much the ice is made in the track. It might be water in the track. How frozen is it? Is it half an inch thick? Is it? Uh, sixteenth of an

inch thick? You know? And then guessed by the temperature, hold it might be. You know, it's just a guess. Anyways, in the beginning, you just trying to think about it. But um, well that's just the thing you have to do. Yeah, And like you said, it it seems like just reps seems to be the most important thing because I when I was starting I I've realized real quickly that I had never paid this much attention to a track, just

to a snowy track before. So I just didn't have a set of I didn't have a context to compare one too. So I was looking at a track and I'm thinking, man, this this certainly seems fresh compared to the other things we've seen today. But I don't have a whole catalog of tracks I can look back through over years and think to myself, Okay, I saw this one and confirmed it was a deer that was there that day, and I saw this kind of track and

this ended up being a deal. It was right in front of me, and I didn't have that experience based to look back on UM. So to your point, just guessing it was guessing and hoping UM and then walking it down and seeing if I was writing yeah, yeah. The worst thing that can happen is, uh, you were wrong and it was two days old, but it took you to a fresher one off, or you were right and you went two dadds and you jumped at you know what I mean. It's it's at least you're getting

started somewhere right now. When we found that track, you determine that it was big enough and it was fresh enough to to go on um, and then we started cruising. And one of the first things you told me was you don't want to be an Elmer Fudd. Can you can you expand on that? Can you talk to me a little bit about how fast you go once you get on a track, and and how you determine when

you should be going fast versus when you should slow down. Yeah, So with usually when you get on a track, you very rarely get on one that's like fresh, like within an hour, you know what I mean. I mean that's if you do, it's like hitting the lottery kind of, you know, right, I just go along and read the tracks. See, I'm immediately when I get on that buck, I'm trying

to figure out what he's up to. So if he's just walking along steady, I gotta walk along steady, and I gotta walk fast because you can't walk as fast as a buck can walk. So if you ain't walking fast, you're still losing ground. So you've got to try to gain ground. And usually the way you gain ground is when he stops to do something, whether he stops to feed, he stops to check on some does make a scrape,

rob lay down, whatever he did to stop. That's the only time you really gaining any time on a buck. You're not you're not gaining time other than that. So you gotta move along or you'll never catch up anyway, unless he happened to lay down. You got lucky that way.

But you've gotta you've gotta plan you you gotta plan on gaining on the buck so you can get to where he is and hunt him, you know, and if that means jumping him out of his bed, you know, bumped him because he was moving too fast, so be it. At least now you know you're right behind him and you can you can hunt now if you Elma Fund. You know, that's kind of just a cartoon, but you always saw Alma Fund. He'd be he'd have both hands on his gun and he'd be going along very very quiet.

And if you do that in the beginning, when you first dawn one that's made sometimes in the night might be two, three, four or five eight hours old, you're probably never gonna even get anyway near that buck because that buck could be five miles from you when you get started, so you've got to make up that that ground. Now that brings to mind the next thing, which is your cruising, your cruising, your cruising. And that's what we did. We did a whole bunch of hiking and we followed

this track. It took us up a big ridge, It spun around, it was on some does that seemed like it start going back down the ridge. It made kind of a wide loop, dropped down back towards where we actually had started hiking originally, and you you were wondering, man, is he gonna circle back right over our tracks? And then he turned again and he started going up a ridge, up to the top of a knob of sorts. And at this point you said, all right, this buck is

doing a textbook thing. We need to slow down. Can you describe hell kind of what that was that made you want to slow down? And what are the what are all the things or what are the different things that would make you say, okay, it's time to shift into a new gear. Let's drop it down, let's creep now. We need to be in sneaky mode. What makes you shift into that part of the hunt well, that's if

I think he's laying down. Usually and as the main indication if he's laying down is usually that he said, because usually they're gonna feed before they take the time to lay down. So that's the number one indication, which that bucket done a little bit of it, not a lot, which is it's not unusual for bucking not to feed a lot during the rot. And this was when you came. It was, uh, you know, probably right during the biggest part of the rout, when it was really getting going.

So that bucket fed a little bit here, and there was following does around checking on them, you know, didn't get hooked up with one. And then when he he went down and then he kind of went along this hodwood ridge and abruptly turned and went right up right up a steep bridge. And that's usually what they do when they're gonna lay down, so they can look down

to where they've been, you know, on their backtrack. That's just classic is most of them bucks are always going to be looking back where they came from, the something following them, and up up here in this woods it's they've been addition through being chased by coyotes, so that's a that's their only real natural predator. I mean, the bears will eat the fawns and stuff there, but they're not chasing them around in the woods, uh, you know,

a buck or anything. So they learned to watch for kyo coming behind them with something, so they're always watching back. So when they when they do that, usually quite often, when they do it, it's already too late. By the time you get to where they turned and went up the ridge, they've already seen here and they're gone. But not always. Sometimes they'll get up over the crest where they can't see over, and maybe they feed a little there and lay down and you might happen to catch

them or whatever. But that's why we slowed down. I thought, probably he was gonna be up there. And again it was in one of them places that wasn't much else we could do about it, but just kind of ease up there and see. So we eased up slow lee up over that pressed to that ridge, and he hadn't laid down. He was headed for another knob, a green knob, and then I thought he was probably in there, and so he's over there, and and he didn't stop there.

We actually we had already crossed his tracks, and I didn't pick up on it because it come out of that little green growth where there wasn't much snow. If you remember, there was I don't know, it wasn't even an inch of snow. I don't think it just about Bailey. The leaves was sticking up through it still, So he just he made a funny loop, just kind of circled around. He must have thought there was a dough in that spot and he made that loop and there wasn't. So

then he just kept going. Remember from then on, he just kind of got on us straight away mission, you know, And he kept going along the edge of some water for ways and then finally made his way into you another thick kind of cedar pine patch with some kind I can't remember what it was, and we lost snow in there. Uh what do you can you talk about what you do in that kind of situation. You know, in this case, we just decided to pull the plug because we've been going a long ways and and we

lost the track in there. But you there were a couple of other places where we had lost the track, and you did some different things to try to pick it up again. Where you tracked it in the mud. Can you just talk about the different ways you try to pick up a track again when you lose it in a spot like that. Yeah, Well, like I said, it's it was so maginal snow if you remember under the green trees, that was barely any anyway, because you know,

it catches up in the limbs. In the hydewoods, it gets down to the ground, but in the green in the green trees, it switched up. Here is spruce and fir and cedar and stuff. But but sometimes you get in these big patches that there's no snow underneath, and you just have to circle around. He had to come out of there, so you just you circle and pick up the track instead of trying to stare at the ground and see if you can see the track in

the leaves of the needles or something. It's easier to walk or straight through the way you can see some snow and then and then pick it up there. But I knew when he headed down into that corner where it was all a big, big expanse of that green growth. I knew when he got down in there, we were going to probably have trouble because there's in there there was nothing to go by. It was a huge that

piece of woods. There was probably a half a mile wide, probably at least a half a mile by a half a mile, and he headed into there and there's no way to see. You can't even the ground in on beneath the those soft wood trees, cornifer trees, you can't. They don't even make a track. It's all just those needles from the hundred years worth, the needles stacked up like it's it's just hid. It's not like leaves punched up where you can see believes curled up in the hydewoods.

It's not like that. So once you get in there, I said, we ain't gonna there's no way to try to figure out even where he's going in here. And it's the other part of it is so thick in there. If you remember, you couldn't see twenty feet most places. You ain't gonna You're not gonna get him anyway. The only thing you can do, I mean, I don't give up on a buck that goes into that stuff. There's

there's snow where I can see where he went. I'll just try to I'll just jump him and push him out of there, and try to get him somewhere else where I can get a look at him. But uh, there just was no snow to do that. So we we turned and went on, figuring maybe he just went in and searched around and came back out again. So we just stayed in the Hodwoods and ran the Hodwood ridge above that green patch, you know, hoping to find his track or another track. You know, Dylan, did you

have a question? So one thing that I'm yeah, I'm just curious how you know, when you're closing in and you think that you're you know, actually you know, have a change of spotting this year, what are you imagine doing typically? Are you expecting to find him in his bed? Are you looking for him up and feating? Are you just looking for antlers through the brush? You know, I'm just curious to get in your head here and you know, imagine what you're expecting. Well, I guess it depends what

the buck is doing. If if if I know he's up on his feet, like I've already jumped him, or maybe sometimes you'll come to a bed and he just got up on his own and he's he's off again. I'm usually in them that case, I'm expecting to see him on his feet, beating, doing something. And if I expect that he's laying down, I play it a little

different because you've got to usually play it slower. If I think if he just fed around a bunch and went in on this knoll or something like that, I'll go very very slow, and I'll just I might just take a step, look all around, take one more step, scour around behind and around all the blowdowns, and yeah, I'm looking for an antler or an ear patrick brown or anything. If he's laying down, if he's done. Are you who with them? Are you catching these deer? Are

you catching them unexpected? You know? Are they ever you know, just doing their own thing? Are they typically onto you as you're closing the distance? Do they know something's after him? Um? Depends. Every situation is different. Depends how much you how many

times you've jumped him. If you jumped him a few times and they know something's behind him and they're gonna be looking all the time, and you just got to try to catch them, uh in the right place at the right time and see him first, or maybe I mean, I don't care. If he's standing, they have broadside chewing his on a piece of stick or something. I'm not looking for that. I'm just looking to get a chance

a shot. Whether it's he just took off and he's running, I don't doesn't make any difference to me, you know, I just want to get that shot, you know. I mean obviously if he's stand in the air or something or laying down, it's gonna be an easier shot. But um, when you get used to this type of hunt and a running shot is not a big deal to take, you know, Yeah, can you expand on that a little bit? Hell, just you know how you prepare yourself to take these

shots that seem like almost almost always there quick. It's a it's a very short window of opportunity when you get into I think you called it your death creep, when you really think you're getting in close to one and you're slipping in real careful, how how ready are you? Do you have your are you holding the gun at

the ready? Are you you know? What are the specifics you're doing and what has helped you to improve your chances of being able to pull off a shot in such a little tight and narrow of time and sometimes tight space too. Well, A lot of that is just

practice and experience. And uh, my practice, quite frankly was when I was I started rabbit hunting with my grandfather had beagles, and uh I started that when I was ten years old and shot thousands of rabbits running and they run like a deer kind of you know, they just they're they're bounding, you know, dogs are chasing them, and you just get experience doing that with you your swing, you follow through, you're looking for the openings, and that's experience.

So but that's I mean, I I was fortunate to to grow up in that manner where I had that experience already going into it. Most people probably don't have that kind of an experience. So but yeah, I go into it if I'm if I think one's laying there and I'm gonna get a look at it, or I think he's right here, handy, my guns in both hands, ready to go and U I Usually my rule of thumb is like if I can if I can see him for two jumps, I'm probably going to get a shot,

unless it's just too thick, you know. Usually that if I I should say I get two jumps where I see him for two jumps. So if I see him make a jump, I can get my gun in action in one jump, and then I can usually get my shot off by the time he's made that second jump. So yes, that's quick. Yeah, so, but it's practice. Yeah. That was That was definitely one of the things that was most concerning for me, as as I don't have

that experience of running shots. I was kind of raised, Um my grandpa viewed that is something that I should not do. So I was like, beat with a stick if I ever considered that basically metaphorically. Um So, coming to this, I was thinking, Man, how am I ever going to get a shot in this situation? That seemed like that was gonna be the real, real crux, Like that was gonna be something to be particularly challenging if

I ever made it to that point. But there's one other thing that we haven't touched on yet that was pretty important, it seemed like, which is, let's say you go into this death creep, you move into where you think he's betted, and you do bump him, but you can't get the shot, and he goes running off before you see him or before you can get a shot off,

whatever it might be. That buck runs off, Uh you told us that this is one of the things that you do that a lot of people don't that you think is particularly important, which is you take a sandwich break. Can you talk about your infamous sandwich breaks? Why you do that, Why that's important? Um, what you're doing with

that whole thing. Yeah, So a long time ago, I learned through experience that was just chasing bucks around all day because I jump them and give you know, keep right after him, and they're always looking back, and you'll come to a place where the tracks standing there turned around looking back at you in the tracks running again. So I just thought that I had to outsmile him.

I had to be a different thing to do. I could see that they were waiting, so and nine times out of ten they do, but one out of ten doesn't. But I always play the odds. Anyways, So I found that when I go right after him, i'd go maybe only a hundred yards, maybe three yards whatever it was at distance, and there would be tracks right where the buck was standing there, turned around facing back where he came from, kind of like treading around, kind of waiting.

So I said, well, that's what they do. They're waiting to see if something's coming. After him, so I'm not gonna come after him. So I tried fifteen minutes and that didn't seem to work. So once I started waiting a half an hour, it seemed to work pretty well. And then that's one thing I wrote my first book. I had more people comment on that, more experienced hunters that have killed lots of box track and stuff that

they never thought of it. And and I had a lot of a lot of people comment to me that that that's why they killed the first buck tracking was because they waited. Because what happens is that buck, usually unless you out now, was in their face and and really frightened them. That buck probably only heard a stick snap, maybe caught a little movement through the through the woods, through the limbs of something. He doesn't know what that is. He's just gonna get out. He's not gonna stay there.

He's gonna get out of the way and see what happens. And he might only go a hundred yards and wait, two hundred, five hundred, doesn't matter. He's gonna get off where he feels comfortable, and then he's gonna wait and see if anything's following. Now, if you think about it, if a coyotes following him. Usually that's gonna be immediately, you know, when they get chased by a kyot, they get you know, the coyote is gonna be running after him.

So if that buck stands there fifteen twenty minutes, half hour or whatever and nothing comes along, he just relaxes again. He's not afraid. He just he's kind of really basically forgot about that experience. There's something bothered him, and he's gonna go about his business. Sometimes they lay right back down. Uh. Sometimes if it's later, like it's late morning, early afternoon, they won't lay down again. They'll just stop going about

their business because they've rested enough. They might start checking, does might stop feeding. But whatever he's doing, he's just start doing it again. That's the best time to kill the buck. The first time, laying in his bed is not the best time, because he's looking back. He's hard to you know, he's that it's the hardest time to

get him. Those are the times. The only time you're probably gonna get him that way is on one of those about killing days where you've got some wind and maybe as snow and there's just some action going on with he's blind and usually them kind of days, they don't want to run off as much because they feel vulnerable anyways because of the wind. So that second time I've killed more box after I've jumped them then then killed like when I jumped him, we'll kill them laying

in their beds and beginning to something. So that's why I do it. The only exceptions I have to that is I only do it once if it's the first time, and I make an exception if he's if he's with the dough, if he's laying with the dough. When they take off, I just ease right along after him because he's going to be distracted with her. He's probably sometimes they get split up and he's gonna try to get

back with her or something. Uh, So I'll go right after them because he ain't thinking about looking back as much she might be. But he's not interesting. That's very interesting. I encounter something like that, and I guess I didn't think of that aspect of things. But but yeah, I guess I'll wait to dive into that until it's start dive into that particular hunt a couple of days later. Um, I guess from that point, if we jumped back into

our day one, we we didn't bump one. We tracked one forever and then we walked and walked and walked after we lost that first track to try to find another one, and we never did find another one worth going on. Um, we just cruised for a long time and like Dylan said, we ended up covering almost ten miles. Um. I want to get Jimmer. I want to get Jimmer's perspective on that part of things. Just talk to me, Jimmer about your thoughts on how Hell hikes to the woods,

how fast he goes, how far he goes? Like what what did you learn about what it takes to walk a buck like this down? After now spending a day falling around one of the best in the business. Oh gosh, Even if I wasn't carrying a camera and a backpack full of camera gear, I still don't think I would have been able to keep up with Hell. That was That was That was impressive and inspirational. Um, he knows

what he's looking for. Is it's funny hearing hearing you talk right now, how it's like getting the the cliff notes to a really big book. The big book is the is the actual hunt. You have to read the book, you have to go do the hunt. The cliff notes are all the things that you're telling us right now. And I think, like Mark was saying, he'll talk about here in a second, but everything you're saying we ran into. Um even the looking at the prints, the what direction

are they going? And they are they betting down? Did we spook them? I mean, it's just from a camera guy's perspective, trying to tell the story visually. Seeing all those things come together was was truly fascinating. Having experienced the first day with you and then we went off on our own for the next three days, but boy,

covered that ground. That was I'm glad I had a couple of my own hunts prior in the month prior, and I felt like I was maybe in halfway decent shape, but still um kutous to your hell yeah yeah, I mean, I'll give you kudos as well. Hew. You you can put the pedal to the meadow and you can walk a long ways. I consider myself one of the best long distance hiker and walkers in the mountains that I know and that I hang out with, and I think most of my camera crew can attest that I can.

I can get after it pretty good. But you were, you were cruising, and I was thinking to myself, I hope I can get around half as well as you do, um, when I have as much experience as you do. Because you don't seem to have slowed down one bit. I'm guessing from what you were doing when you were thirty, it's my guess that was a good pace out there in the mountains. Well, in my mind, I'm still thirty.

That's my problem. Sometimes like one like that, and in the end of the day you're walking out, I'm like, I pay for it a little bit, But yes, I I still I'm I'm thankful that I'm still able to go like I can at my age. And I can tell you know, like I need my rest at night. I gotta rest my legs and stuff. But hey, I'll be sixty five year in in May. So uh, I think I'm doing pretty good for that being that age, I'd say so. So we we we ended that day having covered a bunch of ground, but never did pick

up another track. And the plan was the next day, I was going to go back out there on my own, UM and bring Dylan and Jim or with me and see if I couldn't get on another one. Now what I want to do is this Hell, I kind of want to walk you through what happened over the next three days, at least the highlights the most important parts, and then kind of picked your brain on you know, did I make the right decision here? Did I make

a mistake there? Would you have done something differently? I mean, as I described some of these things, feel free to jump through jump in hell if you think I did something wrong, or if you want to, you know, share something you might have thought differently in any of this. Um,

I'm really curious. It would have been really neat if somehow I could have had you just follow me around the next three days and like critique me as I went, or be or maybe not even tell me in the moment, but just be taking notes, and then at the end of the day I'd come back and we sit down and you would walk me through all the things I screwed up. That would have been the best. But this will have to do as a as the closest way

to learn from from what I did right or wrong. Um, So, Dylan and Jimmer in fact, check me here if there's anything I forget to mention if there's anything I should have expanded on, if there's anything different, feel free to jump through here or jump in here. As I described at least the main points. So day two. Day two starts off, we start at the same beginning point, and right away one of the first things I was I'm

not sure about was what's the route I want to take? Like, how do I how do I want to go through this huge expanse of open land that we have available in front of us. UM. And my initial thought was, Okay, I remember yesterday we had walked a lot of different country. But the very most dear sign just tracks, you know, seemed to be up towards the top of these ridges where there seemed to be some old cuts in more

hard woods. Um. That just seemed to be more diverse terrain and it seemed to be a lot more tracks. So I thought, let's head up to the tops of these ridges where that most sign was, and then I'll take a wide swing to the west which would take us into the new country, while most of the hiking

we did the day previous had been to the east. UM. So that was my strategy was basically get up high where most of the sign was the day before, and then get into a new section of it and we started hiking, just cruising, covering country, and pretty quickly, within like a half hour, um, we came across a track that was like a maybe track and this was one that looked at it and I was thinking two things.

It seemed to be and maybe on both fronts. It seemed like this could be fresh this This is probably an overnight track, I thought, But I just didn't know is this a big track? Like is this a buck track? Is this is just like a good dough track. I remember thinking that you can see do clause, but it's not big big And I kind of waffled on it and thought, you know, is it big enough? I don't know.

Is it super duper duper fresh? Not that fresh, but it's probably you know, it was new from when we came through their last so it happened at least um because this was still along the trail that we'd walked the first day, so I knew it was at least from the night at some point, and ultimately, you know, I decided, nah, let's not walk on this first one. It just doesn't knock my socks off. Let's keep going. I'm sure we'll find something better. And what did we do, Jammer?

From there? I mean we hiked I think four miles or something or we had a bunch um and didn't come across a single other new track after that and that, right, I mean I feel like we put a bunch of miles on after that. Yeah, and weird, you know, like you said, we went in the same spot the day before with how, but we were definitely covering brand new ground um and that yeah, and that first track, Yeah, we just didn't feel it and moved on from there. And yeah, from there, I think we burned a lot

of footage of you just walking. That's covering ground, a lot of walking footage, a lot of mark walking, and a lot of looking in the snow. You know, it's pretty funny, is we got back one of these nights. I don't know if it was day two or what day it was, but we got back to our little cabin and uh, we have a producer out there with us. It's guy Andreas we all know and love. And Andreas would be waiting at camp all day for us, and then when we get home he'd be asking us, did

you talk about this? Did you see this. Did we get coverage of this, Did we make sure to get footage of Mark doing this and this? Blah blah blah, just kind of making sure we checked all the boxes that we want to check. And I remember one night he's like, do you guys feel like you have enough footage of Mark walking? Do we have good walking mark footage? And I think everybody just laughed, just laughed. Mark many, many,

many hours of Mark walking. Um. But I'd say I'd say the highlight of day two was four hours later or four miles later, was one of the two I remember seeing four on my track. I was tracking all this on ONYX. We ended up coming across a track that seemed fresh ish enough. And at this point we've been walking half the day, hadn't come across anything else we want to track. Now I see you when I'm like, man, this is probably a buck and this is probably somewhat fresh.

We should start tracking this one. And so we end up tracking this this this deer, and it like looped around a couple of times and went here and there and everywhere. And remember thinking, man, this is fun, Like I'm finally on a track on my own, I'm actually tracking one I'm doing the thing. Um, this is pretty cool.

You know. The previous day I was following you, Hale, and you were making the decisions, and you were analyzing the tracks and finding it when we lost it, and so I didn't have to really work in that way. But now was actually doing all the work, doing all the thinking, picking it up when I get lost in other tracks, kind of sorting through the the puzzle when you see all these different things come together and you're trying to read the story of what actually happened here

and where did he go? And I'm thinking, this is great. We're gonna walk down this buck and we're gonna do the thing. And then it starts circling back to the west and it keeps going more and more in the direction that we started, and I think it was maybe like twenty minutes thirty minutes before we got back to the trail, and I'm thinking, oh, this deer is going

right back to where we started. And I started getting this little whisper in the back of my mind saying, what if this is the same track that you saw at the very beginning of the day. And sure enough, twenty minutes later, this deer ended up being the original track we saw at the very beginning of the day, and now I've followed his track all the way back

to the beginning. I wasted two thirds of the day and now I'm right back to where I started first and realized that this is the buck I passed up on, you know, eight hours earlier or whatever it was. Um, hell, what do you think about that? Because eventually end up when following that track for a while, and then I lost it somewhere and then that was our day, and I was kind of upset at myself that I passed on that one and now wasted the whole day, spent all this time. What do you think about how I

approached that? Is that something that's ever happened to you? Um? What do you think when you hear that? Funny? You should say that? Because when you get out of that day was a bunch was a law of practice, right, Oh yeah, you've got you've got your practice in and uh, you learned that that can happen and it can happen anybody,

because it happened to me. I do that not I don't shouldn't say quite often, but it happened to me again one of the days actually It was the first day a muzzle old the season this year when we had the good snow, I was lucky enough. I had my cameraman with me and and I I cut a track from the road where I've never cut a track before. I never never really seen a buck track crossing there.

And Uh it came out in the road and UH walked down the side of the road dragging his feet and I could see us another mark in the road, and I go, what the heck is going on? I had to look at it when there was a stick

laying there. Well, when he come out of the woods, he must have come up through some brush and he snapped the stick off and his aunt was about four ft long, and he dragged it with his aunt was down the road about fifty yards for it dropped out of his aunt was so now I'm thinking he must have a pretty decent rack to do that. And it was one of them square toad ones. But anyways, we jumped right on it. So we got right on at it pretty much daylight. And when it when it went

in the woods, it came to us. Well. First, when I first got in there, there was another track coming back almost back on itself. There, and I just in my mind, I just discounted it as being the same one, just just because of the way it came back. And I don't know why. I can't think about why I did, but there was a reason that I didn't even I

think that it could be the same one. But but I went a little bit further and I came to a kind of an open bowl there and I and another track came across, and I looked at that one, and I go, because if you if a track is crossing another track, you stopped before it crosses, and you sometimes you can see where they where a cross pass the two tracks, which one is fresher by, which which way the snow was dragged into one track of the other.

And it didn't drag any snow win so I couldn't tell, But I just took a hunch the way it went up. It went up and I could visualize that it looped around and it was exactly the same size track, And I said, that's the same buck. I'm pretty sure I'm making a loop. But in any event, it's getting out

of this little spot. So I took it and it went back across the road about a quarter of a mile above where at parked truck, and it got into completely different piece of woods that went up through some new cots, wandered around, followed the dough and it headed up on this mountain. So in my mind, I'm like, yeah,

he's gonna be up on that mountain somewhere. So he kept on it and kept on it, kept on it, and it went up all on the off the end of this mountain, and it still headed and kind of a westerly direction, and then all of a sudden it got to where there was some more deer in it. It kind of turned back towards the logging road, and the next thing you know, it crossed the logging road and there was a bunch of other deer tracks there and it crossed. So I crossed it and it and

I'm now I'm probably I'm about a mile. He crosses the road about a mile from the truck, and now he's headed back over in the country he was headed in the first place. So he goes over on these knobs and heast I can you know what he's doing. He's checking all these green knobs the does and there was I crossed paths with another smaller buck track in the handsome does. And he kept going, and that's what he was doing. He was searching, searching, searching. Then then

he starts to swing back east. And I stopped thinking to myself, could this possibly be the same buck? I was thinking it might be where I crossed paths with it in that little hidewood bowl. I said, could this be the same buck there? And I go, I can't believe it would be, So I stayed on it next, singing, oh, I crossed this old we call it a winter road, like a grassy road. And he got down and see these beaver bogs doing the same thing, just doing his thing.

But he's all he's headed east, but he's he's a half a mile back in there, and all of a sudden he swings back south and now he's making a circle, and not like I'm kind of saying to myself, I can't believe it is, but there's a good chance this is the same buck. And he was. He started chasing the doll around in one place and make a long story short. Four hours later, just like you said, I'm right back in I wasn't in that highwood bowl. I

was back where I discounted that first track. I hadn't been in the woods fifty yards when this other track come back across that. I completely discounted that one to one. When I made a decision in the bowl. It was the right decision, but I just I didn't discount that

first one where I did discount it. Well, he had crossed the road like not even fifty yards from where he came out, dragging the stick he'd gone up in, he'd come out and made, went back in, made that little loop, went made the whole great big loop, and was back across the road again. And it was eleven o'clock when I got back there, from seven to eleven, and he went across the stream and upon these other bluffs, and I said to myself, well that's a good place.

He's probably gonna be over there anyway. Well, the time we got across the stream and get over in there, there was moose tracks and deer tracks all over his tracks because it had been half the day and the moose were feeding all through there. And all I could do was I kept circling successively bigger circles to try to find his track because it would be completely obliterated with other tracks between, mostly moose. But there was some

deer in there too, stomping around. And I finally picked up a track I thought was his, and I didn't go very fire on. It was fresh and I see it, I see it go, but I couldn't see the head. And then I could see where it had been in their feeding and stuff, and it didn't look like I decided it wasn't the same one. It was another one pretty much the same size track, because this one I was on, he dragged that stick out there and he

didn't go through any narrow openings with his antles. He'd walk around narrow stuff, and this other one I jumped was he was just come through some thick stuff, feeding and stuff. I go, that ain't the same buck. And I made another big circle over half a mile circle and couldn't get his track coming out. Now it's three o'clock in the afternoon and I'm like, I guess I'm done for the day. So same thing. It was like, you can't call it a wasted day because you learned

some things, you know what I mean? You saw some things, you learned from things, but it does happen, so you didn't do anything wrong. But it's actually quite calm, and that they make them big oracles and end up back again. Yeah, well, you're right about the practice thing. I definitely felt like even while I was doing it and thinking to myself, like, after we lost it, picked it up again, when it looped back through, I thought, well, at least this is practice.

Probably will never catch up with this deer, but just doing the thing, interpreting the tracks, following them, getting through tough spots where it disappears or gets confused. I mean, I could definitely see how this is a skill that takes a while to develop, and and doing it that day felt really good, um, even though we never you know, even came close to anything, Um, but it did set

me up a lot better for the next day. On day three, UM had been talking to another guy in camp and he'd mentioned he was going to go to a new area this day and said we were welcome to fill him to drive up to this zone and he could kind of, you know, drive us into a general direction where he thought that would be a good idea for us to explore, and then he would keep drying and driving and go find an area he would walk. So we end up driving up to this general area.

We get down a logging road. There had been a little fresh coating of snow overnight, and so there's actually some snow on the road. And sure enough he stops. The truck hops out and we look at this track and there's a buck track and a dough track crossing the road seemingly, you know, relatively fresh. Had to be fresh, since that snow had just come overnight. And we talked about it and decide, hey, you know what, not a big,

big track, but a buck um, let's do it. So he kept going to find a different place, and then me and Jimmer, we're gonna get on the track because this day I decided to bring just one cameraman because it seemed pretty impossible to pull it off with two. So Dylan, what, you just stayed back at camp and slept in and eight pizza and just relaxed all days and there, right, Yeah, I was. But but me and me and Jimmy we're gonna get after it. So we

parked the truck. We both were so excited about having a fresh buck track that we both needed to use the bathroom at the same time. So we're like, all right, you go on that side of the road. I go on the side of the road. Let's take care of that, and then let let's follow this track. So it gets light and we get on the track and and really it looked really fresh. I mean it was like fresh, powdery snow, and the track was crispy. I mean it looked it had to be the freshest we'd seen since

we got there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Hale, when you said it looks like someone through sugar down, it was that kind of thing. Um. And so you know, right away we started walking down and and within fifteen minutes of walking, I already started thinking do I need to be slowing down? Do I need to Could this deer be right up here? Um? And we we tracked it down through an area had been cut a decent bit,

and it wasn't like they were on a tear. They were kind of milling around and then they'd walk straight for ways and then they kind of spin around the mill. And there was a different deer that kind of popped

in and out a couple of different times. Um. But we came up over this ridge and we're there was a valley down below, and then another ridge that came up the other side, and I remember thinking I wouldn't be shocked if this buck is within view of this Um, I don't really know, but it just seems like he could be. I could be within side of this buck. Already. It just seemed like we weren't very far behind it all based on what we're seeing. I mean, the tracks

weren't frozen. Um, you know, you're seeing the light tufts of snow that it kicked up when he drags his toe and all that kind of stuff. And sure enough we you know, I basically slowed down a decent bit. Now I was just kind of ready, um and go down the ridge, dropped down in the valley, follow the tracks up the other side of the ridge, and then sure enough, there's a bed on that opposite ridge. Now

there wasn't two beds, there was just one bed. And I could see the one bed, and then I could see what looked like a couple jumping, you know, sets where they like. The tracks showed that he jumped out of the bed, jumped again, jumped again. Um, And so I saw that and thought, okay, we probably bumped this buck. And so we decided to sit down and do our sandwich break thing. Now, this hell is a question I

have for you. I never did see the dough bed so I could see dough tracks, and I saw the buck tracks, and I saw a single bed um, and then I assumed that we had bumped him and did the sandwich break. But then later in the day I started thinking, did I not bump that buck? Was that buck actually did? He lay down for a second, and then the dough kept going, and then he just jumped up to go follow the dope and they kept on going their merry way. They didn't run a long ways

after after that jumping. I remember seeing the jumping tracks, and then there was a little bit of running for maybe like I don't know, fifty yards, maybe a hundred yards, Jim does that something about right? Maybe? And then they were back to just like walking along. What are you? Yeah? What do you think about that? Hell? Should I have taken the break like I did? Or should I have kept pushing in that case? I don't know. I wasn't

there fair enough. I think more than likely if you saw, if the two sets of tracks were running from there, that that one of them just got laid down. The other one hadn't laid down yet. Maybe it was feeding or whatever it was doing, and you just happened to come along at that minute, you know, before they both got laid down. That's what I'm thinking went on there, And in which case taking the break was the right move?

Uh what did they when? They just did? They just go about their business and see if you if it's a buck in the doll. Like I said, I wouldn't have taken the break necessarily. Uh, dependent on the time. To a lot of times, I'm like, well it's nine o'clock. I eight o'clock. I'm not going to take a break yet. I'm gonna keep hunting here and see what happens. But sometimes I just take it because it's around ten anyway, you know. Yeah, I mean it was early it we

hadn't been going for more. It was an hour or less into the day, and I saw that bump, and so I took the break, not having remembered or known about the dough with the buck being a different situation, so I just thought, Okay, we bumped the deer. We gotta sit down, even though we hadn't been going more than an hour. Um, So we took the thirty minute

break and then picked up the track again. And you know, like I said, I think we had like some running tracks for a hundred some yards or something like that, give or take um. And then they basically were just walking again, and they were walking on a mostly straight line. They kind of did a straight shot and then a little curve, and we followed them. You know, from that

they've been on this ridge hill. When they left the bed, they went downhill down into a flat like at the bottom of the valley, and they walked through a bunch of old cuttings, you know, I don't know, a couple of year old cut or something, and a bunch of piles of slash and tops and all this kind of stuff, and they basically did a long straight shot. They crossed back over the road that we drove into and started heading towards the mountain, towards a big mountain ridge that

ran along the north section that we were hunting. And then they crossed the creek, went up this ridge, and then started going straight up the ridge. They go straight up the ridge, we get to what I think is like two thirds of the way up or something, and then they hooked to the right. They take a hard

right turn and start side hilling across the ridge. And when that happened, I thought to myself, Okay, this seems like this seems like the these deer were heading up the hill and now they turned, they're gonna look for somewhere to bed soon. So I started slowing down. I started thinking, I bet you any moment now we're gonna come across the bed or we're gonna see these deer run. At least we're getting closer to that. But we end

up following this. Um, We're up following it, sidehiling for longer ways than I was expecting, without them like stopping and feeding. I was looking. I was. I kept on looking for signs of them stopping and feeding. I kept looking for signs of them stopping and milling around or spinning around or changing direction that might indicate like they're getting ready to bed or something. UM. So I would say at this point, I was like medium pace. I

wasn't creeping, but I wasn't cruising either. Um. And what they did is they they side hill for ways, and they kind of went up a saddle and then turned, and then instead of going over the saddle and down the other side, they turned up and continued going higher up this ridge. UM. And this is when they got into some thick green stuff. And as soon as I saw their going to thick green stuff, now, I thought, okay, now they're definitely gonna bed Like this looked like this

had to be where they're gonna bed. And I remember looking at jim Or and saying, Okay, we're gonna slip into ultimate death creep mode. They can be anywhere around here. Um, I really believe like they're up here. And just at that moment, like a little bit of a breeze started blowing, and I thought, this is perfect, Like we couldn't have asked for better timing for this breeze to start, because I've been worried about our sound of course, the whole time,

and it just seemed ideal. And so I kind of was holding the gun at the ready, and we just, I mean acted as if there was a buck within fifty yards or within a hundred yards. I was, you know, taking just the slowest creeps, and I was crawling underneath branches, and we were in some really thick stuff where you couldn't see it all unless you were down on your

knees and looking underneath it. And we were crawling through things, climbing over dead falls, under dead falls, belly crawling under branches, um, going through this stuff that just screamed betting. I mean just absolutely every ounce of my being, all my hairs were on edge. It was just like, Okay, it's we're gonna see this deer or we're gonna spook this deer. But it's happening. Um. Now, before we go any further, Jim or what did you think about this part of

it when when we slipped into this new mode? What were you thinking about what I was doing? What were you thinking about the situation? What were your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think you're describing it completely accurate. Um. Is it healthy to have your adrenaline that high for as long as that day? I mean we started the day off on such fresh tracks, and I felt like, like you said, I felt like we were fifty yards behind these deer all day. But this specific moment, I mean I just

went especially at this time. I try to step when you step, but boy, that was that was some thick brush. Um. But yeah, it just felt like this was it. Were there there there on this nice ridge overlooking as how says, looking back from where they came. Uh, it had to be that moment. Yeah, And with that kind of situation

ended up lasting an hour. I think at least at least an hour, if not more, because we kept on slow moving our way through this stuff, and then we come over a little like every little new area, could see every little rise, we'd peek over. I kept thinking like, we're gonna peek over one of these bits, and we're gonna see a beded deer. We're gonna see a back, we'll see an ear twitching, We'll see a little patch of white tail, we'll see an antler. Time moving the sunlight.

I just kept stopping and looking and glassing and thinking like anywhere here it's gonna be. But we never came on them, and they just kept We kept being on the tracks and they started doing the thing though that again they hooked up to the top. They came up this little knob. Now they were milling. They'd stop. You can see where they're feeding and nibbling and stuff. They're

kind of spinning around milling. You can see one of the deer would kind of loop around the other and up and down and around in this little zone, and um it just they kept doing that for quite a ways, I mean for at least an hour and I don't know how much time that was or how much distance that actually was. I would bet it was at least, I don't know, a couple hundred yards of that kind of behavior that we were like slow creeping through. Don't

you think something like that? Jim? Yeah. And there was a many moments where we just had to pause and maybe even backtrack just to keep track of where their their prints were going because they were just kind of over the place. Yeah, they'd loop and then we'd be like, oh, did they just come back there we were and then come back here and there, and um to to to

go from there. Basically that was like an hour long creep fest thinking we'd find him and and never did until we finally went several hundred yards doing that to three yards two hundred yards of that something like that, and then um, it kind of opened up a little bit more and they're still going and it starts opening up. It wasn't as thick as it had been. I was thinking, man,

are they just gonna keep cruising? And probably just as I started having that thought, here's a bed, here's a big bed, and it's fresh, like very fresh, and I realized, oh, we just bumped this buck out of here. Um. And so then I'm thinking, well, we've already done a sandwich break. Now I just bumped this buck a second time. And right as I did that, right as we bumped that deer, a snow squall moved through and it starts like dumping

snow on us. And I remember being unsure of what to do next, because I thought, I remember the sandwich break rule, But at the same time, this is the second time. Does it Does it count on the second time or not? I couldn't remember that. And the second thing I thought is, Man, if this snow squall keeps on going at this rate, well I lose the tracks. So I was torn, should I sit? Should I keep going? Do I sit for a little while and then keep going? Um?

What I ended up doing is we ended up stopping, and we took a short break, like a fifteen minute break, and then we picked it back up. Hell, what do you think about that piece of what we were doing there? Both my my death creep mode there and then secondly my decision when it came to that second bump. Yeah, well, obviously you knew you had you had an idea he might be laying and and he was, So that worked for you. He didn't see him, but it worked for

her anyway. And then, Um I would have used I wouldn't because I don't, like I said, I only stopped taking break the first time, so I wouldn't have done that. Plus combined with the fact that it was snow squall, and I'd use the snow squall as my my buck killing time, you know what I mean, it helps your out, you know, it blowing around the snow and stuff. You know, Yeah, that makes sense, Jimmer, Why don't you tell me do that? Just kicking myself right now? Ye could he could? He

used that nudge. Um, I needed the standard break. So yeah, that was. It was good at that break because that was really I mean that hour or two of creep mode. I mean that was that was excruciating. The level of attention to detail I was trying to put into our movements there. I mean, that was the sneakiest I've ever tried to be, probably for as long of a period of time, and moving slowly and like thick cover like

that that I can remember. Um, I really thought like this is gonna be our one chance, this is it, um, But that didn't happen. So we end up getting back on the trail and trying to cover ground again. I remember seeing running tracks for a while. We can still follow even though it's snowing, And at this point, I'm thinking, Okay, he knows we're on him. This is the second time we bumped him. He's moving and I kept thinking to myself, Man, what would Hall do in this situation? I just I

couldn't remember getting to this point. In our conversations with you, Haley, we talked about if you bump a deer once, I didn't really know what do you do when you bump about twice or three times? Like what's how's this dear? Is this deer ever gonna slow down and chill out or is he just gonna be really on edge the whole time and I'll never be able to catch up to him. But I thought to myself, Okay, we bumped him twice. I'm just gonna push him at this point

and and try to try to get lucky. And so I was like, I need to cover around, take advantage of the snow, and not lose the track. So we started moving faster at this point, like right back up to full speed probably, and we he went running down. If I remember it, he went running side hill on the ridge and then start going down the ridge and then sidehilling more. And then he turned to go back down the hill and then looped slightly. It was like

it was downhill. And then he started curving to the right and then boom, there's another bed and he was out of that bed. And you could I mean it was, this was as fresh as you could possibly possibly. I could still see like hair marks from where his tail had been laying in the snow. You could see like that level of detail. So now I bumped him three times and and now and now I kind of feel like, is this a lost cause? Um, this book is just

running and running, and so we keep going. And I just look back at Jim and I just said, man, we're just gonna we'll probably never see this book, but we're just gonna run them down and we're just gonna go and go and go. And I remember saying something like this. This reminded me of I don't know if you've heard these stories hell, but there's talk of some uh like tribes in Africa and different parts of the world where they have historically done something called persistence hunting.

Where they would just run after an antelope or something and they would run for hours and hours and hours and hours, and eventually humans actually have an endurance advantage over a lot of animals that can't cool as well as we can in the middle of an event like that, and they would actually be able to run an animal to exhaustion and then you know, be a spirit or something like that. I remember thinking, am I gonna try to do a persistent persistence hunt on this book and

just keep going and going and going. And I mean, Jim, I remember you. I stopped at one point and you looked at me, like, dude, you're just running in the woods, and I even it wasn't the were his tracks pretty pretty like he was speeding up quite a bit at this point, I mean he was. He was basically kept on running. And then I was like, well, we needed

to keep moving, so we were. I was just going as quickly as I could through the woods, just on him, and we just went and went and went and went, and in my head I thought like, we're never going to see this deer like he he knows we're behind us. And this was my next point in decision where I was like Okay, we bumped him three times. I don't see any I just couldn't imagine a scenario in which

we could kill this deer. And I kept wondering, is the is the way to go to just keep going and going and going and hope to get lucky, and like, I'll just happen to come over a hill one time a little bit faster than he expects. And I get a side of him, like do I need to hope for that luck? Or is there some other trick that Hale does you know that I don't know about yet

that would allow me to get on this deer? Um. I remember reading about you doing like a loop around trick Hall, where sometimes you'll loop around ahead of a buck, and I was trying to think, you know, what's the scenario that I would do that? How could I loop around and try to get ahead of this deers? Do I know this area well enough? And I just couldn't. I couldn't think they're a way to do it in a way that would actually be useful without just being

like a hail marry in the dark. Um. So we just walked and walked and walked until finally it was almost the end of the day. My question to you, Hall is after that third bump, in this indecision I had at that moment, how would you have handled that? Is there any other trick in your bag of tools that you would have pulled out of this point? Or is it just walk, keep walking and hope to get luckier? Is there something else? Well, there's two kinds of deer

uh habits that they do once in a while. I think it's about I figure it's probably one out of ten you'll get these bucks. I call them runners, and they will do that from the time you jump on the first time. But this one wasn't like that, so it's a little different situation. But sometimes you get a runner, and that's what he that's how he learned how to escape a coyo was he'd run for a mile and then just lay down and watch his track again, and

if you jumped him again, he'd run another mile. Those bucks there are nearly impossible to kill on the track because they're gonna just they're gonna just they might just drop right in the track somewhere. They might run across and open him and just drop down and watch, so you never get an indication of where they You know that they might be laying down. You never get that because they just they run and stop and lay down. It's almost impossible to kill those bucks like that tracking

them then. But but you just got this buck frightened because you jumped him out of his bed again, and you usually by running after him like that, you're not gonna get him that way usually because they just wait when they see movement coming. Now, they're not even gonna let you do anything. When they see movement coming, they just take off again and keep going. On those, all I try to do on those is is um, I just try to go. It depends what they're doing when

they run. If they're running, and they're usually that buck, if he runs, slows down, starts walking again, he's gonna wait and look again. That's just almost always what they do. They're gonna keep They're gonna keep watching because they're alerted to something's after him. But all I'm doing is hoping that he makes the mistake once and stops where I in a place where I can see him first, So I don't run after him because I'm more I'm more

looking a lot more now, not that I'm going. I don't like slow down to a creep, but I just go along. If he's running, I move along. Once he stopped running again, I started going easy again because I know he's gonna be there looking somewhere up and I'm just hoping I can catch him in the right place. And and I guess a good good example that you can see of that or anybody can is on that my brutus film there on YouTube. Is that's all I did with that buck was I finally got his m

all what he would do. He would run, but he didn't run that fire. And then he'd walk. And then when he would be like like quick walking, and then when he would start dragging his feet, that man he was gonna lay down. Took me a little bit to figure that out. But every time he dragged his feet, he'd be laying there pretty close watch him back. So when I finally shot him, he had run down off this ridge for quite a ways. He just wanted to get out of there because I just shot at him.

And he crossed the road again, the gravel road, and got down into some kind of mixed growth, some green and stuff, and then it got into kind of a thick thing, and then he started dragging his feet so I said, he's gonna be laying here somewhere. So I just started going easy and he kind of cleared up the end of this. He was in a little skin of trail, and then he turned abruptly to the left

and I didn't step out. I stopped and I just kind of peeked through the limbs of the spruce trees there, and I could see him laying there looking back, about thirty five old yards maybe thirty five yards, and I just got my foot swung around and let him have it, laying in his bed there. So if i'd have stepped out, I was just hurrying too much. He had just jump up and took off again, right, So I just I

guess that's what you call catching him looking. You know, he was looking, but I just kind of I anticipated that and I saw her him first. You know. Yeah, there's definitely a it's a certain artistry to knowing how to handle these different moments, these like inflection points with an attract job. It feels like you know, like what to do when you catch up, what to do when you see these different behaviors, how to handle different conditions.

I mean, there's all these different little variables that I suppose just with time and experience, you develop an intuition for how to deal it um and you know, having not done it before. I guess I can't feel I don't feel too bad that I didn't know some of these things. But I do feel like every one of these experiences you get, we'll certainly change is how you approached the next one. I could just see that, even day after daily, each day I'd go along and be like, Okay,

I better know how to deal with this. I kind of get what I'm seeing here. I understand this part. You could see that rapid accumulation of information happening real time. Yeah. And then the other thing you always got to remember, though, is they're all individuals and they don't all do the exact same thing. So you've got to try the key on, key in on what your buck that day is doing. What is a little thing that he might do that's different that that clues you to how you can react

to that. Yeah. I had I had one of my books saying this story in about this buck for some reason, when he was going to lay down, he would he would abruptly turned off his track and take a couple of jumps and then then go lay down. So I just keyed in on that, and uh, I didn't end up shooting that Bucky. I knew he was laying down, and I circled this piece of woods that he was in and he didn't come out, So I knew he was laying there, but I didn't have enough time done

go back and hunt it. I mean I didn't say go back to say it, but I didn't have time too well. Knew what it would have taken to get him because it was too late. I was three o'clock in the afternoon, I had an hour to I had about five miles to get out of there, and I had about an hour left the daylight. So there was another one of them long walks out in the dock. Yeah, it's uh, it seems like you could do this for nearly a lifetime and still sometimes be surprised by things

and find something new. And I think that's what I liked about it. Having done it, tried it, um and and we're running not time, so I'm gonna really fast forward through stuff because I didn't anticipate this taking as much time as it has um. But you know, that day, it didn't catch up to that buck when the next day didn't find a track until the last couple of hours followed one never took us anywhere really, and that was it, you know, I we did it. We gave

it a good shot. I had a couple tracks to follow. I had one really good one that you know, I thought we were we could have pulled it off. So that was it was really cool to be on that one and to be that in the moment and feeling like he could be just ahead of us at any moment um. That was. That was absolutely high point. Never did see one though, um and that was the trip.

I remember. One main thing at the end of it was that this one left me with like left me with like a I don't I don't want to say like h that I wanted to scratch, but like a like a clawing desire to get back and pull it off. Was basically like this one. I didn't want this idea of this type of hunting to defeat me. I don't know if that's what I'm trying to say, but I want to figure out some way to do it. So so yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm gonna be back, I'm

gonna be trying this thing again. In one way or another. Um, really quick, we just have a couple of minutes for I actually have to run too. But Dylan final thoughts or impressions. After having gone through all this and seeing this yourself real quick, I think I'm in the same boat as you in that I really want to see success in doing this, you know, whether that's behind the camera or you know, someday getting to do it on

my own. But you know, just that feeling of following an animal and feeling like you know it by the end. You know, you follow it for so long you feel like you know it's happened, and to catch up to it and finalize, you know, clothes on it. I think it's something that, um, I look forward to trying again in the future. Yeah, what about you, Jimmer. I thought it was fascinating how fast time actually went. I mean, from first light to last You're so involved in this mystery,

like Dylan says, learning the patterns of this dear. You've only you've probably got it only this day, this amount of light to figure out this person or this dear, this personality of this deer. Um, it's just amazing how fast the time went, because all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, we're we're an hour till sundown and we're still it still feels like we're fifty yards from

this deer. Yeah, that was something. Hell. I just want to reiterate again what we said when we were down there with you, and I'll say to you every time I see again, which is just thank you, thank you, thank you. Can't tell you how much we appreciate you taking the time to to walk around with us out there, to show us what you do to to teach us

your ways. Um. It was an absolute blast. Um, And I guess I want to give you an opportunity here for people that want to learn more are from you, who wanna participate in your classes or read your books, or watch your videos or anything. Where should they go to find that stuff and to get more information, Well, you can find everything really at bigwoods bucks dot com. And uh, they want to watch any of the films

on YouTube, it's the Big Woods Box YouTube channel. Uh, the outfitter part of it, the hunts on the same website, Big Woods Boxes, just as an outfitter tab they had and that that has the classes on it too. You know, I do those in the spring. They're actually all booked the next spring. But um, I'm just starting to book the hunts for next fall, you know, I'm getting to return people booked in then whatever I have for openings, I'll fill in with with new people and go from there.

So but yeah, uh, it's just a different way to do things. And like I said, I tell everybody, it's a it's a way of hunt. And you either you either love the big woods so you hate it. It doesn't seem to be any in between. But I ended up loving it when I first started doing it forty years ago with forty some old years ago and going to hunt somewhere else. Now was you know, like in rural farm country. I just can't seem to do it.

You know. Well, I'm starting to understand where you're coming from. Hell, And I hope that we can get on and do another one of these episodes next year or two years from how or whenever it is someday to to talk through my first successful track. I am. I'm counting on having that conversation with you someday down the road soon. Hell sounds good, all right, Dylan, Jimmy, everybody, thanks so much for joining me for this one guys, thank you all right, thank you brow or not all right, And

that is today's episode. Hope you enjoyed this one. Thank you for tuning in. If you're still hunting, best of luck out there, have some fun, eat some venison. Until next time, stay wired,