Ep. 505: Behind the Scenes Big Buck Management and My Wisconsin Hunt with Tom Indrebo

my deer hunting season. This is the final episode in the series we've done this fall, recapping my travels um doing this kind of of across the country adventure. If you haven't heard those, you know I went to Washington, d C. I went to Arkansas, I went to Alabama, I went to Nebraska, and I went to oh Maine. Yes, thank you, Dylan. I forgot about Maine. So those are the places I've went. And that other voice you heard was Dylan Lens one of my partners on those adventures.

Dylan is one of the cameramen we've had joining me because we're filming these hunts for a new show will be launching next year for Meat Eater and the idea here was to put me into brand new situations in different regions of the country and meet up with a local legend of sorts to find out how these people hunt learned about what they do, and then after that go out on my own and try to kind of

guinea pig what it is that they taught me. So I just completed my last hunt of this series, and that last hunt was going to Wisconsin with Dylan and another cameraman, and what I want to do today is explain to you what this hunt was all about, why I wanted to go on this hunt in Wisconsin, what some of my thoughts were going into it, and then Dylan and I are going to recap what actually happened.

This is a little bit different than some of the past podcast we've done about this because I'm not actually able to get my expert uh here with me right now, So it's gonna be me and Dylan talking first, and then we'll be joined by our regional expert afterwards, and just me and him will speak, and that regional expert is Tom Injurbo. I want to give you a little bit of background on Tom right now, and then we'll have a lot more into his story in his history

when he joins us. But here's the basic gist of of what we're wanting to do with this hunt. As you've heard in some of these past episodes, I've been exploring all these different regions and subcultures of the white tail hunting world. But up until this point, I'd ignored one big elephant in the room, and that was the mainstream white tail culture that most of us talk about and are part of, which is kind of that Midwestern white tail, big buck management, all that kind of stuff.

Most of what you see on tv UM, we hadn't touched anything like that. So we wanted to have at least one of these episodes though, where we did explore that main thing that gets talked about, but we wanted to explore it in a different way and kind of

look at it from a different perspective. So my idea, and Dylan, you can tell me if you think this is a stupid idea or not, But my idea in the beginning was why don't we go find one of the O g s. Why don't we go and talk to one of the people that started this culture of these think you found the the guy, the man that is synonymous with, you know, big Midwest white tails. Well I'm glad you think so, because that's what I was thinking too, because Tom and about, like you said, he

is that guy. Well you know what, rather me introduce him, Dilan, why don't you introduce him? Because when you found out we were doing this hunt, you were very, very excited. My eyes perked up when I heard that we were going to Tom's place, and it was I mean, Tom is just I mean, I'm gonna get a lot of these facts wrong, I'm sure, but just hearing his name all growing up. He is the guy that built Buffalo County into what it is now as far as you know,

people knowing that that's a big buck destination. He was, I believe, the first outfitter in Buffalo County, and um, you know has been infatuated with big bucks, you know, for the past forty years and he started guiding uh there back you know, I think it's the early nineties, and I don't think he's he said, he hasn't killed a deer in those thirty years. He literally just lives to grow and watch and see other people hunt big bucks. So he's a guy that you know, me growing up

and you know, loving big deer. I knew his name, and I actually had the chance to meet him a couple of times growing up, but just knowing how into big deer he is was just something that I really admired. Yeah, like you said, he he was probably the first, if not, you know, very close to the first big time outfit are like this. You really put Buffalo County on the map.

And then in the subsequent years, you know, starting in the late eighties early nineties, all these folks kind of flocked to Tom to learn from him, to hunt with him, to see what he was doing, and a lot of folks from TV and magazines and all that, and then everything he was doing got shared and utilized by all

those people then kind of spread across the whole country. So, you know, one of my theories come into this, based on talking to a lot of folks, was that Tom was one of the most influential people in really getting us to where we are now with this you know, whitetail management, quality, deer management, big bucks. Uh. You know, everything that we hear about in the Midwest, a lot of it comes from or was at least influenced by Tom. So my idea here was Let's go and meet with

Tom and let's get his perspective. Let's hear his story, Let's hear what he thinks the history was, and if he actually, you know, feels like he was involved in this beginning of mainstream white tail culture, and then kind of see how that actually started, where these things came from, what motivated Tom, what it looked like in the early days, and then actually find out how did he do it? So I wanted to break down with him, you know, how he improved his properties and why is Buffalo County

so great? And why does he have so much success? And what does he do on his properties to make him so successful? Those are the things I wanted to learn about. Rather than doing the same old, same old midwestern white tail hunt where you to show up somewhere and you shoot a big buck. I thought, let's explore this interesting story with this really interesting guy, and and then yeah, learned something from him from a hunting person active.

So that was the hope with this hunt and with the story I was hoping we could tell That's why I went to Tom. Now, I guess short short teaser here, Dylan, do you feel like with our trip there we just finished. Do you feel like we achieved that part of it? Do you feel like, man, absolutely, you you grilled him with all those questions that just mentioned in a good way. I mean, Tom absolutely loves talking about deer and management

and you know, history of Buffalo County. So I think you guys worked really well together when we were doing these discussions, and so many of these you know, things that I had been curious about, you know, historically from Buffalo County were answered and I learned so much more about not only Buffalo County, but you know, just even his theories on you know, how to kill Big Bucks. And to me, it was really eye opening and just

an absolute blast to be around for it. Yeah. Yeah, I think Gum, there was a lot of surprising things that we'll get into here in a second. I think there's a lot of stuff that you and I were both like, really, um, it was different a lot of ways, which is which is pretty cool. It just kind of you know, I love the fact that I'm constantly surprised when I talked to different people that do this whole white tail hounety thing. It's it's not gotten stale yet.

So that's been that's been encouraging, but what we're to do here One Tim does join me later, I'm gonna ask him to explore some of these same topics. So I want to hear from him again for for everybody listening today, a little bit about that history, a little bit about that story, um, and then break down some of the tactical and management decisions he makes out there.

But like I said before he joins us, you and be Dylan need to kind of break down, you know, the hunting side of it, and then some of the stuff I was thinking about ahead of time. And and here's here's where this hunt got kind of weird for me, um, and you you heard me kind of I know, you had a lot of inhibitions coming into this, and it was kind of kind of interesting for me to see that side because I mean me going into this the whole time, I was like this is awesome, Like I

can't wait. Yeah. So so this was a weird one, like like I told you, and like we kind of reflected on throughout the hunt. Um, Tom, as you mentioned your intro right, Tom is an outfitter. He runs Bluff Country Outfitters, which is this you know, famous operation brings a bunch of hunters in every year. They target great

big bucks. They have a lot of success. Um. And you know, most people within the white tailed world, especially like within the media, go to outfitters all the time, Like that's just kind of a normal thing that almost everybody does. But I actually have not, uh and purposefully, I I kind of made it a personal Oh what would you call it? It was just a thing like a rule for me was I'm going to do all this stuff on my own. I don't want to go with an outfitter. I don't think that would be satisfying

to me. UM. I want to do this the quote unquote hard way. So that was that was my thoughts over the last decade plus. So I never went on an outfitted hunt like this um for white tails, and I kind of thought I never would. But when we started looking into like what do we how do we explore this Midwest white culture? Who were going to go talk to? And when when I kind of struck upon the Tom Injurwell idea, I had to kind of come to terms with, well, do I want to change that?

Do I want to meet with him and do this thing that we want to do? Um? Can I do that? In a way that's that's going to be interesting and satisfying and challenging to me, even though it would be an outfitted type experience. And so I kind of wrestled with that, and I was uncomfortable with that, and I kind of I don't know, I had a lot of

preconceived notions about outfitted hunts. But what I think finally made me realize that I should do this was when I got to thinking about, like what the whole premise of this year was, which was go experience these things that other folks do so that you aren't judging him or making us sumptions about them from the outside, but

actually knowing what it entails firsthand. Right, Like, how can I sit here on the podcast and talk about, well, you should do this in the South when I've never hunt in the South, Or how could I ever do a podcast talking about, you know, track and doing the snow with someone when I never had the context of doing it myself to speak to. So the same thing goes for outfited hunts, like thousands of folks going outfitted hunts every year, and I have no idea what that's

actually like. Um, So I figured, you know, what I can do double duty with this hunt. I can explore this history and the story and learn from someone who's managing a property really well, and then also see, you know, what is this outfit hunt like? Is it really what I've always assumed this like? Is it harder than I realized? Is it less fun or more fun? Is it different? Um? Rather than judging it from the outside and figure maybe you should give it a try, just like everything else,

and see what the reality is. So getting out of outside of your comfort zone by getting pretty comfortable. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. It. It definitely was the most well in certain ways, it was the most comfortable hunt. In other ways less so. But we'll get into that. Um. But yeah, that was I mean, that was where my head was at, um coming into it. What did you What did you think about that? Like when you said you were a little surprised by my concerns.

When when you kind of heard me explain all this, did you think I sounded like a I don't know, like A no, not at all, because I I'm pretty much in the same boat. I've never hunted at an outfitter before either for the same reason of I want to do the work. I've filmed at a ton of outfitters and every everyone you go to is a different experience. You know, a lot of more hands on, a lot more Here, here's what we got. You can figure it

out on your own. And um, before we got there, it was kind of not knowing what it was gonna be. If we're gonna have our hands held the whole time, or if it's kind of, hey, you got the reins, go try and kill a deer. And I think that this was a really good experience. Um, you know that was kind of on both ends of the spectrum there. It was what you wanted to make it, and um, you know, coming into it not knowing what it was

going to be, I've open minded. I guess, yeah, yeah, I think that's I think that's a fair way to describe it. Um, so let's let's let's walk let's walk through it. Let's break down what happened day by day and kind of what we experienced, what I thought about it, what you thought about how things went, what we learned. Um, you know, I was really looking at this hunt as a learning experience. This wasn't like I want to go

and kill a big deer. This was Hey, we're here to explore something new, learn a bunch and and yeah, of course try to kill a deer. Um. But you know, this was this is like a larger thing going on. And so that first day we got there and in the morning we met with Tom, you me, our other cameraman,

and how do we start that? Well, you know, I guess we started at his house and it was just kind of break down the history with him, you know, talking about that stuff that you and I kind of teed up, learning about how he got started, learning a little bit about um, his his story, his hopes and dreams leading into this. And then we hit the woods and hopped in aside by side, and basically my ask was, could just show me around? Could you show me some

of the most important habitat improvements you make? Could you show me some hunting setups? Could you kind of walk me through how you do what you do and why you do it? Um? This was this was gonna be my opportunity to learn the how of how does somebody manage a property like this and set up folks for success in manage farmland. Um. So that was the plan going into it. It was sorry, what we're gonna say, I'm just curious, you know, as we were out there,

I mean, what were you kind of expecting? How did it you know, how did it tee up to what you had preconceived, you know before we got there. Well, you know, I think the first thing I noticed at the very beginning, like we we set off from his like his lodge set up right, He's got a house. His house is there, and there's a bunch of cabins around it for for guests to stand, and then there's

kind of like a main dining area, um. And so we set off from there in the side by side, and right away he did something that surprised me, which was that we set off right from the house straight up this big ridgeline, right into the middle of what looked like some primo bedding cover. That was very surprised, right and as we're going I kind of kept glancing at him, like, Uh, isn't this not the best isn't

this not the best idea? I sure hope we're not going to hunt somewhere anywhere around this, because he just drove right up into the middle of all this timber, heading straight up these hills, and very quickly, you know, I asked him about that, and he explained one of the main things that ended up being a trend the whole week was that, right, other than obsessing over minimizing

his presence on these properties, he does the opposite. And this is this is like the theme of the whole week maybe, which was instead of minimizing presence, which is what I obsess over on most of the properties I hunt, and what you know, you're always worried about when you're hunting new places, and how to keep pressure low? How do you get in here and out of here without

deer ever knowing you were there. He's the opposite. His idea seems to be in what's proven to be successful for him is be there all the time, make your presence known all the time, and the deer eventually come to accept it, and they know what's normal and they'll let you keep doing it. Now, if you do something

that's abnormal, then yeah, you're gonna get in trouble. But if you stick to the normal and you do the normal enough, you can get away with a lot more So, he drives around this property his his farms very very often. He goes and checks trail cameras very often. He checks a whole lot of trail cameras. He is checking out betting areas, checking out trans a scenario, is checking out ponds, checking out food sources. All the time. It was mind boggling.

It really was just to you know, it's almost like he treats his farm like like a park, Like he's all over the place, and the deer just kind of do their thing, you know, they're used to it. Yeah, And I think what's interesting is that one of the coolest things about Tom that I picked up was just like this childlike fascination with deer and being around them and seeing them and watching them and studying them. You know,

he is just in love with these critters. I mean, I mean, really, really, really is fascinated interesting by them. I mean we we talked about this one night when you and I were hunting. I recounted one of these stories he told me, and I might get the details wrong, but he was telling me about this time when he had been out just driving around or I think just

walking around. He was walking around somewhere in the middle of the summer, I think it was, and came into some bedding areas walking through there, and he bumped a deer out of his bed. I can't remember if he is a dough or fawn or young buck. Something like that bumped this deer off his bed. The deer bounded off like ten paces and then stopped and then just stared at Tom. And Tom thought, huh, let's see off

close and get to him. So he just starts walking towards that deer and then decides, I'm gonna walk right to the deer's bed. So he walks right to where that deer had been bedded. The whole time just kind of softly talking to the deer, just kind of saying, hey, little guy, how you doing it? Looks like a nice day. This is a great spot to bed. And he eventually gets to the deer's bed. The deer meanwhile still standing ten paces away, not moving, just standing in there watching Tom.

Tom then lays down into the bed and this great. He lays down into the bed, all the while still talking, still looking at the deer. Then he starts picking up acorns or leaves and kind of starts pretending like he's eating them and kind of dropping them. So he's kind of bringing up to his mouth and dropping it, kind of just acting like another animal. I think was what he was trying to do here. Then he curled up in that bed as if he was going to sleep.

And then here's the really he said, he literally fell asleep. He fell asleep, took a cat nap in the deer's bed while the deer was just standing there watching them all the while, just to kind of see what would happen, what would the deer do, what would you think about this? And if I remember the ending here, he woke up like a couple of minutes later something or five minutes later, and the deer was still there just watching him, thinking

what is this guy doing? Um? Yeah, I just feel like like that's like the perfect like illustration of a mad, curious scientist, right, like just that's how infatuated he is with these animals, like he just wants to experiment with them. Pretty cool. I think that was like perfectly illustrated, Like it was a perfect character portrait of Tom injerbo Um and so and so we got to kind of see a little bit of that that first morning when we

drove up there. We went to this first big timber point and he showed us like, hey, this is one of these main betting years, these deer like to bet on. I'd say it was like standard what you would expect in hill country. Right, it's like big timber. This is coming off of high fields and off of these points. There's doze better. There's bucks better down off of them a little bit. Um. You know these bucks at these deer in general could bet up there, they could seed

down the valley in front of them. They could smell stuff coming up from behind him if the wind was blowing down that direction. Pretty ideal stuff. Um. He's got ponds put in, many different ponds, put into ideal locations back on these betting knobs and ridges. Um. And then he sets up you know, hunter setups off of these betting areas. Um. It seems like he likes to put these ponds back in the cover tight to the betting areas, off these like kind of edges where wind where your

wind could blow off the top if you wanted. Um. I'm trying to think of any other details of that first specific setup we went to. We kind of grilled him on how he makes these ponds, what he's thinking about, but he's when he makes his ponds. Um. But more than the specifics of that, one thing stood out to me at that first location. I'm wondering if it's the same thing that stood out to you, do you can

you guess what I'm thinking of? Um, there was a lot that stood out to me, but I guess the one thing that I was kind of shocked by was the camera placement. I don't know if that's where you're going with this, but yes, yes, okay, cameras man. This is more of this mad scientist thing that I kind of gathered from Tom throughout the week, But just an overabundance of trail cameras, right, I don't know what what scientists needs as much data. You know. Tom takes trail

cameras to a level I've never seen before. Absolutely, I mean unbelievable. And what's what's interesting is it's not just that he has like a lot of cameras screwed out across the property. Like if someone said, hey, I've got a hundred cameras over my thousand acres or acres or something, it's like, well, that's a lot of cameras, but that's not necessarily what makes Tom's trail camera strategy so unique. Yes, he has a lot of cameras, but he has a

lot of cameras in the exact same places. I mean this spot, this first location we drove up to to give you an example of this, there's this this point. Imagine this point coming off of the ridge and there's a pond. The pond is like ten yards by ten yards wide maybe give or take it's that size. And then this little bedding area that this little flat point on the top of the point is maybe an acre

ish acre and a half maybe something like that. Wouldn't you say, like the reason we could just kind of see from the pond and just from this spot that we could see from the pond, this little acre ishu little flat spot. There were two cameras on the pond. There was two cameras about thirty yards down the hill pointing at two different spots where deerhead bedded. And there was I think three more cameras up the point within

the next fifty yards on different trails. So he had I think seven cameras in an acre in one acre in got you know, like within a seventy yard span of space. I think seven cameras. Just this wasn't unique in this spot, I mean this was the property, yeah exactly, I mean that was like the thing is that you'd find spots like this, these hot spots where he would

have it blanket coverage. There was a little turnip food plot we eventually get to that we'll talk about later where just in this little food plot within a thirty yard wide circle, there was four of them and two of them were three cameras. So they're cameras that take pictures in all directions too. So I mean he double triple quadruple, you know, checks every possible place hit hit.

And his whole point is when I asked him about with this, was that you know, you miss a ton when you have just one or two cameras out there, because deer don't always do what you think they go in front of it, they go to the side of it, even if they pass in front of it. Cameras miss a lot of deer sometimes, and he doesn't want to

miss anything. So so the main thing I saw Allen was first the situation we just described, whether they'd be like this betting area or that food plot, where he'd have these clusters of cameras, four or five, s eight cameras all in a tiny little area um seemingly a hotspot of sorts he had that this betting area. I think there's another betting area we explored later that day that had something kind of similar. The turnip plot stood out to me. Um. He then also had individual cameras

on basically every trail. It seemed like almost every time you saw a trail somewhere there would be a camera point on it. Any random location coming off of a ridge, coming down off a field, there was cameras hitting all of those major runways at least, and you could see you could very clearly see the major runways because there's snow on the ground, so you know these are spots I guess historically always get used. Tom knows that puts

cameras on them. Um. And then at least when I'm thinking back on some of the fields that we drove around, UM he had a lot like lining field ed just like every I don't know, fifty two a hundred yards. On several of these fields we checked, there was cameras along the edge. They're kind of on these like two tracks that run around the outside edges. So here's a lot. I can't remember what the total number of cameras was

that he runs. Do you remember I think I remember him saying somewhere between a hundred and seventy and two hundred for some reason, sounds familiar. I know he had because I think he counts the degree cameras as three cameras because they take three photos. Okay, so he's been a lot in short um. So Yeah, that was that was really interesting. That was one of those things that stood out. And actually, you know, I could see myself taking a little something from that and applying it to

some of the places I hunt. Not to the same degree he does, but I mean there's there's basically nowhere where I run multiple cameras in the same small area. I think I've got one food plot where I've done that before, But you know, it makes a lot of sense.

He's probably right. And I actually sometimes many times have cameras just sitting in my barn that I don't end of using, you know, for one reason or another that I've just kind of deployed him in various properties and I end up having more than I need for that time of the season or whatever. I probably could better utilize them by you know, double covering or triple covering

these very very very best spots. Yeah, that was really eye opening and I know, you you know, you think about it and a lot of times you are hunting and you see a deer that skirts, you know, just outside out of range or just behind a camera that you would have never known about. So that that really did kind of open my eyes to the same kind of thing of you know, maybe I am missing quite

a bit of intel. Yeah, I think I think I'll be trying to change that a little bit this year, at least on the properties that I'm hunting, you know, frequently year every year. Kind of some of my local spots that I'd like to know really really well and that I can monitor, you know, all year long or all season long. You know, it makes sense to really really blanket covers those things just from just the learning perspective, right, I mean, it's just fun to see what's out there.

And I realized, you know, even checking cameras where there's a like, for example, there's a spot on one of my local farms where I do have two cameras on either side of a field where there's there's a field that narrows down into a little finger and it it's at its narrowest point, it's probably eight yards across, maybe a little less maybe seventy eight yards across, and at that narrowest point, I have a camera on either side pointing into the middle of the field, and I can

see many times where there's deer near. So let's say Camera A is on the north side and it is taking a picture of what's closest to you, but it can also you know, capture stuff that's on the other side of the field just by luck, right, And there's a lot of times where I will get pictures of a big buck on this one just by luck. Like it's actually taking a picture of a doll that's ten

yards in front of it. But then the far background you can see, oh wow, there's a big deer over there that's on the side where the other camera is. That that other camera never happens to pick up because that deer popped out behind it or around it, or it was never quite close enough for you know, there's all these different ways that can happen. So I mean,

I think that we miss out on a ton. So that's one change I'm I'm gonna make next year is just pick that up a little bit in a few spots um, And you know, I think outside of that, you know, we we we went around his property, about half of the property his main property. That first day, we got to see two of those big betting knobs. You know. See how he implements these ponds, which is

a really big part of his strategy. It seems like he puts in a pond like every one of these good Um locations, almost every one of his main hunter setups, that seems like in these high ridges and points has

a pond near it. Um. He also I saw a pretty somewhat frequent trend where he would have these very best points that come off so there's a crowd field the very top, and and these points come off of those tops into the timber, and then he would have a little tiny food plot inside the timber waves like a little staging plot. And then further behind that, so farther down the point, he'd have a pond. And then at the very end of that is just straight timber,

good cover. That's where the betting is happening. And there was several different places that we saw that looked just like that, right, Yeah, And that was pretty cool because that's replicable, right, I mean, you can have the setups in several different locations as they're heading off to these you know, bigger food sources. So it made complete sense to me. Um, you know for for hunting very smart

you know, um uh defined movements. Yeah, it was sort of you know, there were certain things like that that were like Jeff stir just light like take some of the things that you and Jeff do and applied in like Tom's own way. Right, He's got He's creating a line of movement there that's going to get deer moving through a place that you can hunt but in daylight. So that was a cool thing to see. He also made a point about how important those water holes are

during the rut. You know, deer aren't very well bucks aren't very food focused during the rut, but when they're cruising from betting area to betting area to betting area looking for does, they're going to need that water. And so he really finds that those ponds help suck deer just a little bit closer to the stand locations and stopped them along these routes. So Hunterson get a shop. Um So, so that was a big thing that stood out.

So the the ponds, the kind of transition lines where pat where kind of package those things altogether the trail cameras, those things stood out. And then the other big thing was that, you know, there's a ton of food. I mean, he had a lot of food out there. He rents out his main farm fields to a farmer, but then

he's got spots where he leaves crops standing. So, for example, down the bottom of one of these areas, he had a ton of standing beans, and on another area he had some standing corn and he had turn up food plot that we talked about. There are a couple other turnip food plots like we discussed kind of in this cover.

So food is another big part of what he's doing. Um. I think this main section that we were hunting or kind of exploring was he's got like a three acre farm of his own, and then he had access to a neighboring property that was I don't know, something similar to that. And so you know, across all that, I

don't know. I mean, if you think about all the standing food we saw between the corn on the top, the turnip plots, I can think of like three or four food plots like that, then the standing beans in the bottom, the standing corn and beans, and the second valley that we hunted that first night, there was some standing corn across the way. I mean, if I had to make a very just like gut guess there's probably five to ten acres of standing up food think something

like that. Yeah, so was another thing, right, I mean, and I think that's a pretty consistent thing anyone who's managing property for deers, you know, dear live and breathe with their stomachs, like their world revolves around their stomach. So making sure you've got that, um, and and that was that was the stuff that really stood out from what's he done to his property kind of perspective? Was there anything else that you noticed outside of that? Now?

I think a lot of those things were you know, very significantly eye opening um to me, especially just the way that he approaches his property and accesses it. But other than that was you know, relatively straightforward. Yeah. So I think it's a perfect segue then into like our hunt, because that's when we got into like some of his

hunt setups and his access and exit kind of methodology. Um. You know, as I've tried to do in all these hunts this year, I've I've really tried to take the local experts, uh perspective and and trust it and try it right and and try to do things the way they do and you know, see if I can learn from that and figure that out. And so that's where some stuff in Tom's playbook kind of threw me for

a loop. Um. You know, after that first kind of midday scouting around, driving around, seeing the place, picking his brain about stuff, you know, we started looking into like, okay, we're some different spots that might make sense to start hunting. And of course, you know, hunting food sources in the late seasons is the name of the game. Let's find where the best food sources are. Let's find out where

the most dear activity is. And then you know, let's pick a spot where we can hunt without getting picked off and blown out. And so I thought, you know, we'd be really thinking about win direction, we'd be really thinking about Okay, let's find a spot we can access without spook and deer um. And Tom had a couple of surprising perspectives on this. And when he gets on here later, I'll press him on this a little bit

more and have him explained. Um. But in short, he was not as worried about excess and exit as I was. And he was not as worried about the wind direction many times as I was in both cases because of kind of going back to the original original kind of thing he does, which is make his presence known all the time. And so his idea was, Man, I wouldn't worry about your wind too much here, because the wind's gonna do crazy things. With all these hills, there's not a lot you can do to get away with it.

But these deer in many cases will forgive that. Um. Same thing with access and exit. I was worried about coming into For example, one of these fields we ended up hunting was in the bottom, and then there was timber on these ridges all around it, and I thought, man, there's gonna be deer betting off these points and these ridges, and if we go walking into this bottom, they're gonna

see us and they're never gonna come down and feed. Yeah, a lot of it, like the access really just felt kind of like taboo, like you know, you're getting in, like, man, this this can't be right, This can't be how this is done, you know, and go and behold. It ended

up working out, yeah, exactly. And so that first night, you know, we decide, okay, let's just hunt an easy spot for the first night, and just kind of it was kind of I don't want to say it was a throwaway hunt, but it was, let's just get a good intro for the show, let's kind of observe, let's bring both cameraman along someone. We can bring both guys along and film a bunch of different kind of discussions and stuff like that. So we hunted one of these

bottom fields. This setup I just described, there was a narrow valley, the headed you know, off of the main valley, and in there was a strip of standing corn and a strip of standing beans, and Tom had a kind of elevated box blind of sorts. Um it was like one of those cloth sided box blinds that's on like a five ft tower. Then would be a spot that you, me and Tyler could all fit in and we could

film and do a bunch of stuff like that. And then, like I said, there's kind of this this v almost right, there's this v of two points and timber on all those and thick bedding cover and stuff, and you know, to make a long story short, on that night's hunt, the idea was hopefully deer would come off of those ridges,

dropped down and feed into our field. Uh, some did not as many as that we thought there would be, but this was a warmer day and I think we saw like five does come down started feeding, and then a coyote ran through and spooked everything. So, you know, who knows what impact that coyote had another deer that might have been coming our direction, but they were definitely on edge by that yoke. I mean they bugged out

of their heart. So that was the first day. That was, you know, just let's learn the lay of the land kind of day. Now the second day we you know, as is the case with most late season hunts, usually

it's a evening focus. Right. Typically morning hunts are very low odds because a lot of these deer, especially if you're trying to kill the mature buck, they get back to bed very early, and so it's hard to get into these places without spooking deer off the food sources or spooking deer that have already come into the betting

areas um. And so why a lot of people don't hunt mornings is that, man, you might have like a chance of spooking those deer in the morning if you're trying to hunt them, but have a very low chance of killing anything. And so what you're doing is you're educating your deer and then screwing up your chances for an evening success when these deer do seem to move a lot more during daylight in late season. So you know,

that's been my typical experience most places. I asked Tom, and you know these guys, if that's what they see here too. They said that, yes, that is usually the case. So we decided at the beginning of the trip at least we would focus just on trying to have like some really great evening hunts and then if it, you know, if we got desperate towards the end, we might switch things up. Um. So that second day it was another scouting day and then we're gonna hunt that evening. So

what do we do. We filmed more stuff with Tom, and then midday we've hopped on the side by side again and then had him kind of give us a tour of the other half of the farm that we hadn't seen yet. Yeah, and that was awesome area. I mean, after seeing you know, the area on the first day and then going to this other area and just the amount of sign uh you know, tracks and you know, just obvious sign that hey, there's a heck of a lot of deer hanging out here during the daylight. You know.

It was kind of cool to see all that, and that that was the big thing. Was like, okay, for this kind of hunt in this kind of place, it's just a matter of like, figure out what's the food source the deer keying in on it right now. And pretty quickly when we drove up to that other half of the farm and went to the top fields there, we realized like, oh wow, this is where all the deer are. You know, compared to everything else, there was way more activity, way more tracks. Um, And it was

just very clearly spelled out in the snow. You can see him just tearing up this turnip plot in the top. You can see lots of tracks in the cut corn. Um. We we did another one of those drive up through the bedding areas kind of things, so we saw tons of trails through there. We saw tons of beds. You could just see like, okay, there's a lot of deer in here. Pretty quickly I realized, all right, this is this is the region I want to hunt tonight. Um. This seems like where most of the food action is

and so this is another thing that surprised me. We get up there and we're looking at stuff and there's a little turnip food plot I don't know, like a half acre something like that, and just ripped up. So I was thinking, man, this looks great. Um. Then I was talking through like, okay, what's the wind gonna do today? And was you know, I thought, oh, this is due, this would be just fine. And again Tom was like, man,

don't don't worry about the wind too much. Appear. I was like okay, um, but it seemed it could be okay. But the big thing that surprised me, um, you know, I asked him if he had pop up blinds and if we could use one. He said, yeah, definitely, he said, but don't try to hide it. And I said what he said, Yeah, don't don't try to hide the blind,

just pop it out in the open um. And that one really surprised me too, because you know, if ever I'm going to use a ground blind, I either want it, you know, set up way way ahead of the season so it's just there forever and the deer get used to it, or if I have to pop it up and hunt it soon I'm gonna try to brush it in and hide it as best as possible so that the deer just can't notice it. And that was not Tom's program, again, just against every instinct that we had

coming into it, right. His his explanation was that if you try to hide it, they're still going to see it, and that's actually gonna surprise them more because they won't notice it until they get closer, until they like kind of see something a little bit off, and then they study it for a while and then they'll freak out because it was it was jarring. His his recommendation was to instead put it out in the open and they'll notice it from afar and they'll kind of examine it

and then they'll be okay with it. Um And I think, you know, he didn't exactly say this, but after I thought about it and watch what happened, you know, I think pop up blinds like this and big new pieces of farm equipment or new blinds or new vehicles. I think those kinds of things just kind of show up all over his farm at different times of the year and are there, and the deer see that and they're

used to it. So a big block showing up in the middle of nowhere is like, that's just another day and day in the life around here for these deers, and they don't have negative consequences. I think that's probably the big things. Like, you know, most of the year, all the stuff's going on, and people aren't shooting these deer. Right, Um, the vast majority of the bucks aren't getting shot at,

a lot of the does aren't getting shot at. So ninety probably of the deer that live in these hundreds of acres are never having a negative consequence to a blind popping up brand new. So they're just used to seeing these things pop up and there's nothing bad to happen, so they just carry on. And so I think they're just conditioned to, you know, seeing intrusion and being okay

with it. Yeah, And so you know, even though you and I are both like, man, this feels like it's not gonna work, we we decided to try it anyway. So we went back up to that turnip plot later that night and set up a pop up blind right on the edge of this plot, basically right out in the open, I mean, very visible. Did not put anything around it, did not try to brush it in at all, and you know, basically two make a cliff notes version

of this hunt. Had a bunch of deer come out towards the end of the night, and these deer come came right into that food plot, right around it, and pretty much didn't give that blind care in the world. Yeah. Yeah, that was shocking. And if a few deer were like stopped and looked at it for a little bit, but then they just kept on feeding. We had deer that fed within five yards of it, ten yards of it um this brand new blind that had been sitting there no more than a couple of hours, and they were

just like, yeah, let's eat. So I think it helps. When it was you know, what was the temperature that day, I think zero degrees or four degrees or something like that with a wind chill, so yeah, so much you know, harsher windfields. So yes, that's got very good point. That second day, the the temperature dropped out of the bottom and we got to you know, negative temperatures and these deer obviously we're really key done the food then. And that was another thing Tom set both about the wind

and like intrusion. He basically said, these deer are going to be so food crazy right now. They're just not going to care about a whole lot else. And you know, we saw it that night. But the big thing that stood out to us was that while we had a decent number deer that came into our location, um I don't know, I mean, you know, there was like maybe six seven eight deer that came out to feed in daylight, and then after shooting light, another group of deer started

working in. But that whole time, about a hundred and fifty yards or so down the field was where this patch of standing corn was, and we saw just a boatload of deer hitting that all night. It just seemed like every time we looked down there, there's another deer popping out, another deer popping out, another deer popping out. So the big take way for us then after that night was I think we really need to be down there. They seem to be keying in on that corn more

than the turnips. So that was a big aha. Night number two got really really cold and they hit up on the corn. They really want those grains, I guess, right, getting the carbs, getting the energy, kind of recouping from the Arctic tundra temperatures. So that was day two. So then day three, you know, same deal. Weren't gonna hunt

the morning, We're going to hunt the evening. And I knew that we wanted to be on that standing corn, and there was another box blind set up on that standing corn that seemed like, hey, you know there's a location there where we want to be. It is abolished, these deer should be used to it. That probably makes sense.

But we had this wind that was kind of blowing from the timber out towards the field, and I remember talking to Tom and saying, hey, you know, I'm gonna want to go towards that standing corn, that groundbl or that box blind is there. The wind's gonna kind of blow out to the edge. Though, Um, you know, I'm a little unsure if I want to hunt there because if deer dew come out on the far left of us, they might wind us. So once again Tom said, no,

don't worry about that, hunt that spot. If you like it, Um, you'll be okay. And again I decided to trust him on it because he proved to be true the night before. And so this is this is the this is an interesting part of the night because we go get into this box blind this box blind is very tight. It's tighter than what we're expecting. So sure. Yeah, so we're worried, like, how in the world are we both gonna fit in here and have room for you to film and me

be able to shoot. We ended up taking there was two chairs in there. We took one of the chairs out and hit it underneath the blind and that gave us just barely enough for him to operate. You had to sit on your knees while I was in this little tiny chair thingy um. Yeah. It was not ideal at all, but we made it work. Yeah, And and we kind of had to choose a side that I would shoot out of. And you know, we we based which direction I faced based on what we saw the

night before. It seemed like most of the deer had come out on the north side, so I positioned my shot myself to be able to shoot to that side. And we said, well, if something comes out to the south, fish, we'll have to do like a little fire drill and switch positions. So let's not do that unless we absolutely have to. Um, and we kind of practice what are we gonna do in this situation? What are we gonna

do in this situation. We got the windows set and situated, and as I don't know, within an hour ish deer star coming out, and yeah, the parade really took off from there. Yeah. It was you know, dough dough, dough, little dough, little buck dough dough, and pretty quickly deer were coming out on our down wind side and giving us, you know, a free pass, not not winding us. So that was encouraging. I remember thinking to myself, all right, you know this could work. And it was super duper cold.

This was you know, I don't I can't remember what the temperature was that day, but again in the negative you know, I think negative ten or something windshill probably something like that. I think the real temperature was like zero or negative one, something like that. And you know,

these deer one of that corn. So the highlights of this evening came I think the last hour hour fifteen probably when we looked across the way and in the way to envision this is we're on this this box blind is on the edge of the timber and a cut corn field. But the top of the center of this field is high, like the center of the field

is the ice point of this hill. This ridge and then the field drops down towards us in the timber, so we are lower on the hill looking acrossed, you know, at the side the hill slope kind of And like I said, most of us cut corn except for this patch just right in front of us. That the patch of standing corn was maybe I don't know, maybe half acre standing corn around the um, and it's cut for the first like fifteen yards or so in front of us,

and then the standing corn begins. And then they're standing corn to the left and to the right of us, about forty five yards or so down give or take maybe a fifty and and that's the setup. And with about an hour and fifty minutes left in daylight, I camera if it's you or me who spotted him first, But a buck came over the top of that hill off to our south, coming in our direction, and then

another buck behind it. The first buck was what ended up being what looked like a two year old, like I don't eight year eight point or something like that. I think it had a split on one side, so he was first, and then behind it was a big buck and this deer was like I think it was a nine point right um, tight and tall, like imagine like a fifteen maybe fifty inches wide, sixty inches wide

something like that. Um, and then like really tall twos and threes, And right away I'm like, Okay, that's that's a shooter buck. And something we didn't talk about at the beginning, which we probably should have, was what qualifies the shooter buck out here? And this is a brand new thing for me, So so this is something we should explain. Um, I've never hunted a place where I

couldn't shoot whatever I wanted. Um, but here on on, you know Tom's place, because he has you know, clients coming in and wanted to hunt with him that are coming here and wanting to get a crack at a good deer, at a big buck. You know, he's set kind of minimum size guidelines to try to, you know, get people to pass on younger bucks so there can

be more older, bigger deer for future people. So basically, what he told us was that a hundred and forty is the minimum size for a buck that you can shoot unless it is like an obviously big mature buck that has like poor antler genetics. And I think that's something that he was kind of telling us because you know, I demonstrate to him that I know what a mature buck is and I could tell, like, what would qualifies that.

So I think when he was talking with us, he was basically saying, hey, you know, if it's a deer like this, so he obviously knows a big old buck that doesn't have potential from an antler perspective, that would be a good one to shoot. And I guess but he says, nobody else really wants to shoot those deer, but I would be happy to shoot those deers. So I told him, man, yeah, I'd happily take one of those, you know, those bully bucks that no one else wants.

But other than that, you know, you had to make a quick judgment on you know, what's a one forty plus buck or not. And this buck that came out, you know, right away I thought, man, that's definitely a one forty plus buck, but it did look like a possible three year old. Um, you know, there could be tricks being playing of this time of year because this is very very late in the year. They've been run down from the rut, so this is definitely the smallest

these deer will look at this time of year. So that's you know, if he was four, it wouldn't shock me either. Um. But the one thing I did know is like, man, he definitely meets the antler size minimum. Um, that's that's a buck you gotta take. Ye. So you know, we all got we were super excited, we got into position, we're getting ready, and his running buddy comes. He walks right to the corner of the corn and then comes into the cut part in front of it and starts

walking down the edge in front. And I'm thinking, my goodness, these deer are gonna walk right in. They're gonna walk right in the edge of the standing in the cut corn, and they're coming across. And I thought, wow, these bucks are gonna come right across, and I'm gonna have a fifteen yard shop broadside shot hopefully at this buck. Um. And I just remember thinking, as this buck was approaching, like all right, man, just like this is business time.

Just focus on what you gotta do. You focus on you know, getting a good you know, get get your anchor points right, tak your time. You know. I just was kind of like coaching myself through that moment because it seemed like this is going to happen. And then that big one got to the same corner as the younger buck did and stopped there and I'm not thinking, okay, you know, he's gonna turn, and he turned, but instead of turning walking down the edge, he slipped into the

standing corn, and from there we progressed. I don't know how this how long this was, Dylan, It seemed like forever. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe it was a half hour.

I don't know how long it actually was. But for a long time I sat there, clipped on holding my boat, waiting as this buck kind of worked his way into the standing corn, and then he'd work his way down to the edge of the standing corn, but not quite come out, and then he'd go back up for lear in the standing corn, all the while like slowly working his way down closer to us, but never coming all

the way out. Yeah, extremely frustrating, you know, especially for you know, kind of the position that we were in and that small blind and trying to hold still this whole time. Was it was difficult, super difficult, And I just needed him to come down a little further and step out of the corn, and he just wouldn't do it. He he just kitt he kind of get really close, he'd angle that way and then up, angle that way,

up and slowly working his way down across. He eventually made it to the point that if that standing corn wasn't there. Um, you don't trying to remember if he ever was shootable through the front window, I think he would have been shootable through the front window. And yeah, um but again corn in the way couldn't do it. Yeah, but it just seemed like any moment he was going to and his his running buddy was right in front

of us in range easy shot at him. So I just thought like, eventually, this guy is gonna work with it down there. But these deer, who had been given us the free pass on so much else, finally kind of gave us a hard time. When one of these doughes got close to our blind and noticed that chair that we had hidden underneath the blind, and she just got spooked by it was something out of place, but I guess different enough from what they usually see, and

she couldn't pin it. She couldn't figure out what it was or something enough that she freaked out and she blew at it and bounded off. And one thing I will say about these deer, while they gave us a lot of grace and a lot of other places. They definitely have like a a mass. They act like a swarm, like if you ever watched each other, they do trust

each other. And if you've ever seen like a video of bait fish in the ocean, when like if one fish goes one direction, the entire school of fish all goes with it, right, like a big, huge bait fish ball. That's kind of how these deer worked. There was probably like twenty maybe more deer in the standing corn by this point, and when that one deer spooked, everything went running like the whole school of bait. It's just like

just like a bomb exploding. This like half acre patch of corn exploded in in dear and they all go running out of there, including the shooter buck. They all go running off. They stopped like they all run like fifty yards sixty yards something like that and stop and then look back and kind of I this situation. And then of the deer just slowly worked their way back to the corn. But the one deer that didn't was the shooter and he just kind of slowly worked his

way away. Yeah, of course, so he slowly walked away walked back in the woods. It seemed like that was going to be the end of it. Was super exciting to see a good one. Disappointed that it worked out. And then like ten fifty minutes later, look over that same hill that the bucks came from the first time, here comes another big buck, like big buck coming and I remember thinking, kind of looked at the first dear first glance, and I thought, man, like, how did he

get all the way over there? And then it pulled him a binoculars and I realized it was a different deer. This one was like just a standard kind of heavy ish eight pointer, you know, maybe like the one twenties, But pretty quickly you could just see like a bigger, heftier body like this was a dear deer, no doubt, definitely a mature bucks. So I thought, okay, this is one of those bucks that Tom would really like, misshoot um. So that I got re excited, and we again got repositioned,

got all set. He came into the exact same thing that that first buck did. He worked his way down to the front corner of the corn, stopped there, kind of looked around, and then instead of working along the front edge, he stepped into the standing corner again, yep, and the exact same thing played out. He kind of slowly fed his way through, sometimes very close to the front, but never all the way out, working his way across, closer and closer and closer to us, and eventually was

right in front of us. I mean, the most perfect, beautiful broadside twenty yard shot you could ever ask for, except it was blocked by you know, six rows of standing corn. There's just no way you could shoot through. And that's what happened all the way until dark. That buck stayed there, every once in a while, angling like he might come a little closer and step up, but

never doing it. And we were just stuck there, freezing our hands off, ready for it, hoping he would come, but never would, and she didn't ended, and we were never able to get a crack at either one of those deer. That was a very sombry ride back, Yes

it was. It was. It was a fun hunt. I mean I really thought, for you know, for an hour and fifteen minutes or an hour and a half or an hour whatever that time period ended up being, from the time that first buck showed up, I mean that entire time, it basically felt like we're going to get a shot, like we're in it on edge, and you know, every little thing you do has you worried because there's

a ba jillion deer around you. I mean there was thirty forty plus deer around the whole time, so so many eyeballs, so many noses, so much potential for something

to go wrong. That was just you know, trying to make sure you don't make any off move make sure you don't make any low click or clank or movement or I mean it was it was very tense, tense hunt exciting, but tense um And I know you were struggling because you were kind of like on your knees and just not having a chair, and you know, with how cold the temperatures were, I couldn't have a tripod, so I was holding the cameras and fingers were freezing and blood was getting cut off too my toes because

I was sitting funny and having to try and Readjust it was just I was very relieved when we finally got out, if that makes sense. As for as much fun as it was, it was kind of like who we made it? Yeah, for sure, And uh, the one of the thing of note that happened that night were you know, we we drove in a side by side up there, and we had parked it on the other side of the hill and walked down and so we had to walk out again. And so I'm thinking, man, there's no way this is gonna work, or not that

it's not gonna work. But I remember stressing about this access thing too. This is another deal where I thought, man, how are we ever going to get out of these field setups without spooking deer again? Tom told me, don't worry about it. You could just walk out, hop on the side by side, drive out. They're not really gonna care. Um. And I guess the I guess this happened the night before.

Maybe I don't know what night this happened, but it was either that the first night that we hunted the turnips or the second night when we hunted that standing corn. We we I use a coyote howl to scare the deer away out of sight, and then we worked our way down. I remember walking though to the canam or

to the side by side whatever. I don't know. Brandon's so used to saying that, uh, walking to the side by side, and we got to it, and you could see all these deer on the other side of the hill just standing and watching you, and they don't care in the world. Hey, just get out here so we can go back to eat, please exactly. They wouldn't spook.

And I just remember kind of looking at you and laughing and shaking my head, and we hopped in the side by started and started driving away, and the whole rest of the drive, going down the side of the field and the woods, I was just kind of looking around for deer and like just kind of marveling to myself, Man, this is crazy out here, while also thinking, man, my fingers are so cold, and I've got these two competing thoughts. Man,

these deer crazy, and man, my fingers are cold. And I'm just kind of scanning this way and that, and then all of a sudden, behind me, you say, Mark, and I spin kind of I looked towards you, thinking like, oh, there must be a big box somewhere. The very first thing I thought was like, he sees a big giant buck.

And as I kind of turned to look towards you, I kind of turned the steering wheel a little bit more too, and then then just smash You're telling this story, and I actually I smashed right into one of his trail cameras that he had on, like a trail camera steak on the edge of the field. I'm like, oh, and You're like, oh, man, you just you just shattered that thing into a million pieces. And then by the time I kind of registered what had happened, I had

already driven like forty yards past it. I was like, oh, come back get it tomorrow. And so so that was a little embarrassing, but um but that was that was that night. I mean, that was a heck of a hunt, super close call. Um well, that was fun. And I remember at this point in the hunt, I had a couple of thoughts about the whole outfited hunt experience. I

remember thinking, like, it's weird. I did feel like just uncomfortable still playing Like it was like it's like when you go to an Airbnb or something, you go and you realize, like, I'm in somebody's else, I'm in somebody else's house. That's a good way to think about it. That's an interesting, interesting perspective. But yeah, I could totally see that. Yeah, So I mean I felt like, hey, it's a nice house, it's a very nice house, and I'm glad they're letting me use it. Um. It's very

conveniently located. It's well stocked with food in the pantry. But the whole time I just felt kind of like, like it just felt a little uncomfortable. I didn't feel quite at home because like I hadn't set these places up and I wasn't doing it quite the way I do it usually, and uh, like I didn't have control over the situation, and that still made me feel uncomfortable. Um. At the same time, though, I was like recognizing, like

I get why people like to go to Airbnb's. You know, I can see that it's nice to have a place like this that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. And it's nice to be able to go somewhere and see a lot of deer, and it's nice to have a chance to experience these things that you hear about. Um. And I recognized that most people don't have as much time as I have to put into doing all this

kind of stuff myself. UM, So so I could I could see why, you know, it's an appealing thing and why you know, Tom brings a lot of value to a lot of people because of that. So that was kind of like my midway through the hunt. I was starting to see that side of things too. Now I'm going to kind of fast forward through the next two hunts, two days worth the hunts, because I hate to say it, but we kind of peaked on night number three. I'll just kind of I'll just give you the give you

the headline right there. We peaked shooters at twenty yards and don't get a shot off. It's kind of hard to top that again because that is that's a feed in itself, especially as late in the season as we had it. It really is. And I remember thinking, like I didn't want to say it out loud, but you know,

you usually don't get more chances than that. You usually, if you if you do everything right at a place, you know, on a hunt, on a trip, if you get a shooter buck in range, it's usually like your best chance, and it's gonna be hard to repeat it again. You get two of them in the same night, Like gosh, just gonna be hard to have that happen again so perfectly. Now this is a special place. These are different kinds of deer. So I remember telling myself, man, maybe this

is the kind of spot that magic can happen twice. Um. And so we had two more days to hunt, and it was time to pull out all the stops. So we decided to start hunting mornings. So we found some different betting locations that were farther away from this food source than I thought. Man, if we hunt these spots, we might be hunting different deer and we might you know, not mess up our evening location. Temperatures got real cold again. Um. The first morning it was like negative for something. It

wasn't as bad. I didn't see hardly anything. Saw one little buck in one dope before shooting light. That next night or that night, we tried to adjust our set up on the standing corn further down so that we could intercept these deer when they came to the corner before they went into the standing corn. But we tried the pop up blind trick there, and that day the deer weren't buying it. For whatever reason. The pop up blind,

they're kind of got deer uncomfortable. And then when they eventually did get down wind in certain locations, those deer got wiggy. And so several times throughout the night we had Dear Good uncome infortable and kind of bust up the bait fish pile. Um, the bait fish ball what I'm trying to say. So then day five we go hunt another bedding year in the morning. It's like negative twenty that day, very cold day on stand and that

was a cold one. Got in there super early too, because this is a spot like I really wanted to get into. This seemed like an absolute dynamite betting point way back in there. Um we got in there an hour and a half before daylight, and I thought, man, we're gonna go for it, and we did, and we froze our tails off and just saw some does. So

then it's the last hunt last night. I'm knowing these bucks are coming to the standing corn, but like, how can we get to a spot where we can intercept these deer when they come from the other side, Because it seemed like all the bucks we saw were coming from the other side of the hill, coming over the field,

then dropping down to us. And so I knew I wanted to be down on the south uh southwest corner, but you know, doing what the pop up blind wasn't working, and so I thought, Okay, let's get rid of everything that has made deer uncomfortable. So let's go Let's get that office chair that we put underneath that one blind, Let's hide that again. Let's tear down the pop up

blind again. Let's take that out of here. Let's remove everything, and let's set up with my sticks and saddles in a tree down in this corner and see if we can hunt this location without the deer wigging out. The night before and when you told me this plan, I was like, you really thought of everything here here, You're covering all your basis. Well, I just really wanted to work out I really, I really thought, man, there was still a ton of deer hitting this food source. They

were all focusing in this little area. Um. You know. We did consider like should we go to the other side of the field and try to guess where they're popping out? Like should we set up closer to the bedding and try to guess where they're coming out of that? But it just seemed like, man, there's a million places they could bet over there. We don't have any intelligence on that specifically, we didn't have more days to observe

and then make an adjustment. I just I felt like there was a great chance we'd go over there and see the bucks come out, but you know, we'd have like a one and ten chance of picking the right trail that they come out on. So I just felt more comfortable having seen what the deer were doing at the food with my own eyes, that I could pick the right location. And so there was one tree we could get in that spot. It was a bitch of

a tree to get in. We had a heav time, but we got up in it, and uh, the story of that night was that it worked mostly in that tons of deer came out and the deer didn't spot us up in that tree because we picked a tree that had good cover. We got up high, we were well positioned. So we we beat their eyes that night like we did not do the day before, and we beat their noses like we couldn't the night before. We

you know, we got super high. So I thought, was okay, the winds a little better today, we'll hopefully blow over some of these deer. I use a lot of it was jammer, and I used the ozonics machine that night too, and I think between all those things we were able to get away with it. So we beat him. We beat their noses, We beat their eyes. We were in the right position. The temperature was super duper cold, it's really high bare metric pressure. It just seemed like this

is it. And you know, as the deer were filing out, I mean they started early. It was, you know, two hours at least two hours before daylight, and deer were the dear prey was going on. Um. But unfortunately shooter

bucks never showed up by us. We did see in the last like twenty minutes or something, two decent bucks did come over that came out on the other side of the field, and one of them was a buck that we knew for sure we couldn't shoot because he had a busted main beam on one side, and they knew that was a buck that Tom had specifically shown us pictures of him, said that that's when he wants to make it. And the other one, you know, I

don't know if that was a shooter or not. It was, Yeah, it was like it would have been a tough one to pass on the last night of the season, right, Yeah, I think he he would have been one of those deer that was like, he's an eight pointer that probably doesn't have a whole lot going on from an antler perspective, Um, that was probably mature, and so I think that was

one thing we'd be okay taking. So if you would have come out in our direction, I probably you know, if I could have got a better eye on him and confirmed my thoughts. He was when I was thinking that I'd take a crack app but they came out on the other side and he end up chasing some does over there and running way off the other direction, and then you know, that was that was basically the night. We saw tons of deer, but yeah, they didn't quite do what we needed the right buck didn't quite do

what we needed him. That was a hunt man, Yeah, and that was I mean, that was a blast. It was a great way to wrap things up to to actually, you know, at least be in deer the last night and feel like you were in the game till the

very end. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I felt good about the fact that, you know, we tried a couple of different variations on hunting this little patch, we figured out the spot that would work really well, and you know, they didn't show up that night, but it was it was still like a small, a little, tiny, small victory. Um and you know, it showed to me that you know, these things aren't guaranteed outfitted hunts, you know, are not a shoeing that it's it's still hunting in a lot

of ways. You know. Um I I would tell you that, like Tom, a lot of my enjoyment comes from everything that leads up to the hunt. You know, he talked about the fact that he doesn't shoot deer himself anymore, but he's still studying the trail cameras and hanging the cameras and putting up sets and putting food plots and doing all the you know, all the different work throughout the year. Like that's his fun and and that's definitely

for me a lot of it too. And so I missed that, Like I missed what I love so much about hunting some of the farmland stuff and hunt in the Midwest is the fact that I got to have, you know, the summer and the scouting and the trail camera work, and I got to maybe do some habitat improvement, or I got to set up trees, or I got to pick out these things. Like all that puzzle work is is really my favorite thing. So I missed that.

I missed not being able to do that. But you know, from like a simple type one fun of going somewhere and getting to see a lot of deer and you know, learning some stuff about how people do it in different places. Like it was. It was super fun from that perspective. So do you think, like looking forward, would it have to be a kind of a similar situation to this to do another outfitted hunt or you know, is this something that you're just gonna kind of, you know, maybe

pass on in the future. You know. I I don't want to say never, because who knows, maybe there'll be something like this where there's a person or a story or an experience I want to explore. Um. But I

don't see me doing an outfit hunt again. Um. And and I say that in no way because of like my experience there with Tom, because like the setup he has it is incredible, really really nice people, I mean, great experience, and I can I'd recommend you know, this place to anyone who wants to try hunt like this. My my dad was saying like maybe I want to do something like that when I was explaining to him, and I was like, yeah, this would be perfect for you. Um, you love it. Um. So this is in no way

a negative comment about Tom's outfit there. It's just that I think that I really get a lot of my enjoyment out of like the type two stuff that leads to the fun eventually, and and I think that's more of what I want to keep going for. So I'm glad I did it, though, like I'm glad I experienced it. I'm glad I got to meet Tom and see how he does does things and pick his brain, and UM, super glad that I got to see that and experience it.

And UM, you know, I think coming out of it, two big things stand out other than like all the tactical stuff we talked about, but more experientially, two things stand out. Number One, you know, Tom's just we we mentioned this already, but just his his love, like his deep seated passion for this stuff just comes through so clearly. He is just obsessed with these critters. And I think what makes it so cool to me is that he's

not shooting these deer himself. Ever, He's not spending hundreds of hours studying trail cameras, and I mean he studies them NonStop. It seems like every single time you go into there, he's in there. Looking at pictures. He just loves it so much. And he's out there watching these deer, filming them at nights in the summer, scouting shed hunting, doing all this work and he's not doing it to post a picture on Instagram and tell people the great hunter.

That was also, you know, just crazy for me because I'm you know, there's so many names in this industry that it's so ego driven, and people want to do a lot of this research and stuff just so they can almost like put their patent on it. Right, I figured this out. This is the way it works, this is what you have to do. And Tom comes at it from just such a stance of curiosity that he literally just wants to figure them out for it for

his own amusement, you know, his own enjoyment. And he's not trying to put a spin on and of hey, this is the way it has to be done. This, you know, I figured this out. It's he just enjoys it. Yeah, exactly. And that was just like that was so impressive to me and refreshing and and it just it just came out of this thinking so highly of Tom because of that.

The second thing that really stood up to me and this is an aspect of like this kind of outfitted hunting experience that I did not expect or wasn't thinking of at all. But you know, we got to meet a lot of other people there camp. There was other hunters in camp. There was guys like we're just like coming in to help out um, and everyone we talked to talked about the fact that it's it's such a community that's been built there. Like everyone that hunts there

now is buddies. Everyone there like is almost like family. It's a very very you know, very community based kind of experience, which is pretty cool considering you know, he was one of the first outfitters to do it, and you know, so many other places don't have that feel of you know, returning guests every year and everybody being a family. So for this place to be one of the first and still be this way where it's not just profit driven it's about you know, a community and

a sense of family, is pretty darn cool. I think, Yeah, I think that's that's the big thing is you know, he said, mostly everyone that comes now is a long time repeat guests. They don't advertise, they don't try to get new people. It's just basically the people have been

coming forever that keep coming. They just keep coming. So now it's it's like a group of hunting buddies that just gets together at different points in the season and they all come together and they eat, you know, lunch together, and they eat dinner together, and they tell stories and they look at pictures and they watch videos, and they go down there and shoot pool and and it's it's

really about that for a lot of these guys. I think a lot of people love to go there and hunt, and they know that Tom's got a great area and there's great deer um. But there's numerous people they told us about, including a guy there, Dave, who was there for a few days, who you know, he's technically a paying customer, but he comes down in the spring, in

the summer, in the fall just to help. He's out there like blowing off the driveway, he's out there helping hang stands, he's doing all these things because because this community of folks that started out as outfitted paying clients have now become a part of this extended family um. And and that's something that I just thought was really interesting.

It was cool to see and I can kind of understand the appeal of that for for people that maybe don't have a tight group of hunting buddies already, or that don't come from like a family who did this or community that does this. Like I can very much see how being able to go to one of these camps like this right away can give you a headstart on on you know, emerging yourself in a community of like minded people that have a passion for this that

can teach you things that. Um, I could really like that. That surprised me. That was interesting to me. And and I can just see the love for this place and in each other that you know is in this camp, So that that was a big thing for me too. So I don't know, man, that was That's where I was at coming out of this. I thought, I thought, Tom obviously knows what he's doing. He's super passionate about it. Was was very interesting and surprising how we did some

of it. I thought it was a cool property. I enjoyed seeing the deer. Was really impressed with that community aspect. UM. I like the fact that Tom really just kind of he gave us the tools, but and he give us the access, but then he kind of just let us do what ever wanted. I appreciated that. That was surprising me, and I was very very thankful of that too. It wasn't here's where you're gonna sit, here's the way you gotta do it. It was kind of, hey, this is

what you make it. Yeah, I was. I was very worried about that too leading into it, like are they gonna hand hold us or not? Let us kind of do our own thing, And so I thought that was super cool, and um, you know, overall, a really positive experience him. We didn't kill anything. But as I've learned on this this whole season, it's it's it's a lot more about the process than it is about the end result. And while this was a different process, this wasn't the

kind of process I've had in other places. It was still a cool learning experience and it was still a great peek behind the curtains of a really interesting way of doing things, an interesting person, and um, in short, you know, just another expression of the crazy things we do because we love white tails. That's right. So any final thoughts from you, Dylan or should we uh should we wrap this segment up and then get Tom on here? Um?

I think get Tom on here get his expertise. I mean, I'm just I just want to express how grateful I was to be along for this, because this is a dream come true. It's a very full circle trip for me, so it was awesome to be along for it. Well, I'm glad you were. You've been a great addition to the team, my friend. I've always felt really confident when you were out there with me. I knew you'd be able to handle yourself well, get some great footage and

and not screw up the hunt. So kudus, kudos to you, buddy. Right on. Man, all right, let's take a break here and then I'll go Tom on to uh discuss some of these things in more detail. Okay, Now with me is the man himself, Tom Injurbro. Tom, thank you so much for being here with me. Oh it's a pleasure. Yeah,

I really, I really enjoyed our time down there with you. Uh, I guess so we can have two weeks ago and uh, you know, Dylan and I just finished a conversation in which I kind of talked through day by day, what we did, what we saw, you know, some of the things we were asking you about. But I wan to get you on here to give me the real story straight from straight from you, rather than me trying to

recount everything. So, um, I guess if you're up for it, Tim, I want to rewind the tape way back to the beginning, because you know, one of the things that both Dylan and I agreed on, and really why I was so excited to come down there and meet with you this year was your early impact on deer and deer hunting and really where we're at now, so much of that, A lot of that began with you know, some of the work and some of the videos and some of

the influence you had back in the eighties and nineties. So can you just can you tell me that story again? Can you tell me how you ended up in Buffalo County, how you ended up filming deer and and then eventually managing and helping other people hunt them. Where did that begin? Oh? Well, I guess it was love of actually guess after uh

in the sixties, getting out of the navy. Of them in the navy for four years, and they came back, went back to college for a while, and I kind of got lost in the hills down here knowing that big boxers showing up and coming out about can here. But we were kind of the first bowl hunters in here. Back at that time, there wasn't not much written on whitetail deer, and so we kind of had to just

learning on our own. We I just couldn't get enough in the hills and hunting in the fall, so I tried to spend as much time down here as I could. And as time progressed, h you know, other people caught onto the the potential in the area here and and it took off from there and we ended up years later started losing at that. When we started out, we could hunt on any farm, all farmers that welcome you there. They were eating up their crops and they wanted to,

you know, get rid of them as they could. So anyway, we we uh had kind of the run of the place for years. And then and then I started catching on and what was here for bucks? And and we started filming deer and we were trying to shoot big ones, and it got to be kind of a passionate when the partner of hunting was who could get the biggest one on film every year? If we weren't true and then we always we didn't want it. We loved our time in the woods so much that, uh, we didn't

want to use our tag up. So even if we'd probably been counter hundering for the ends deer, I still had a day left the hunt. We'd probably passed them in film because I said I still had one more day. Yeah. It was this love of love of hunting and you know, they're enjoying nature. And that's why I started filming dere

and that just kind of grew from there. As years went by, we started losing land, the leasing and stuff, and and I realized that if we if I didn't buy a farm or something down here in place to hunt out, what's going to have a place to hunt. So I ended up buying this, I said tonox and was the intention of hunting. And now I've been in

there thirty years. And the first year I was here, I was trying to figure out how to pay for it, because I I wouldn't know what money I was spending most of my time money and uh anyway, I was asked by a local taxi river uh shot, that if I take some guys hunting that year, and which I did, and I enjoyed it. A company and stuff and and it took off on me, and I just think it

was kind of by accident that I got it. No outfitting, but it was it was the fun of it allowed me the time to be in the woods every day and in film deer and studied deer, and that's just kind of part right from there and grew and I got to spend full time hunting deer year round, getting set up for hunters to come. And I as what enjoyed was you know, the studying deer and trying to

figure them out. And it was the challenge of it, I think that And if I could put a hunter on a good buck, it was just a feather in my hat, you know. It was exciting for me, you know, as if I was going to shoot it. So I didn't. That's all it all came about. And ended up buying a farm here, and the outfit anything took all off on me, and it just allowed me, h time, more time to spend you know, studying deer, hunting deer and film them in the summers, you know, and when they're

on their summer feed. And and I actually started with when I first started hunting down here, video cameras just came out and uh my my brother in law bought a VHS camera at the time and were just all new one the market to take that downer and fill some of the big bucks, and which I did, and at the end of the year, I had a lot of photos of hours and hours of it, and I kind of so I'm always going to sit and watch all this, So I kind of took the highlights and

copied them over onto the tape, and and the tape ax. I gave it to the neighbors that which were basically, you know, the meat hunters are like we used to hunt the earth back in the day, and and they only hunted the farmers only hunted opening weekend usually with their relatives and stuff. So I gave them a copy

of this tape. But it was boxed in there that we were grunting in and and bucks that they were shooting that year, and they were pretty excited about seeing that, and it was a whole new aspect of hunting kind of form. So they showed it to their all the relatives are hunting, you know, they're hunting gang, and they showed it to their friends and they all started calling me and wanted a copy of this tape and and ended up I had six hundred calls on the wanted

wanting this copy of this table. At the time, uh, you know, editing and stuff was kind of an infancy, and I ended up I tried, couldn't find a place to, you know, at the time, to get him copied over.

So I ended up buying six at old VHS players copying them over, and at home did five at a time, and and then from there I got a call from Robert Manning, which was q d M was just kind of getting started at the time, and their advisory board was the thirteen biologists and the different universities that had dear study programs. It was James Crowle from Texas and Harry Jacobson's Mississippi, David Gwen from Clemson, and the Robert Manning was the chairman of the board for the new

organizations started up. And they asked me if I could send a copy of this tape to those thirteen biologists. And basically all it was was my year of hunting and what I saw, and they all looked at the tape. They were having a meeting in Atlanta for the organization and and they were in the process of doing a video tape to promote their organization, and after the meeting

invited me down there. I didn't actually go on, but they after the meeting they called me and asked me if they could use my tape and and they would fly up here and do a three minute blurk about their organization at the end of the tape, and that you could do this anywhere and that, and that's kind of how it all took off on me. And uh, you know, one thing, I do another and the first

so I had this tape anyway I they had. I had to go in and re edit it because back in the day, every time you copied it over you lost the generation and quality, and so I had to get all the original footage and redo it. So they paid me to go. I went to a public TV station it goes down to ten at night and opened a date in the morning. I'd work all night, and I worked about a month on it and put it all back together again and put there in their little

burp in it about their organization. And then they sent it out to all their members that would join them. So that kind of was took off. And and uh back the first you know, at the time, there was really nothing out there. There wasn't no Old Door Channel or any other hunting. The first shows that were on on hunting and white tails was Jackie Bushman was on TNN and he came and hunted with me here and

he held up the tape. And that's what I really realized what national advertising was because my phone ranking off the hawk steady for three days straight until you know, from five in the morning until midnight, and it was it was crazy. So it took off on me. But it was all by accident. It wasn't that I planned on making a tape or doing anything. And the same

as my own plating business. So when I got this place, I I thought, well, I know what I liked in a white tail hunt, and every year I would make a list of what would make the hunting better for all clients that came in and make my life easier, basically make it more efficient. So we would we would make a list and prioritizes and have the do the every year. I had to do the things that would were the biggest issues that would make it easier and more efficient than and then all took off from there.

I I thought at the time too, that maybe you know, how am I going to get poping young bucks for these hunters? And it's hard enough for me to try to shoot one myself. And uh so anyway, but I didn't realize the time, but by having hunters and when I had in the follow during the rut, but if I had twelve guys in the woods on stands, I set up an approach. You get them into a certain

approaches and stuff. I was learning it, you know, twelve friends as fast as if I was just doing it on my own, because I'd be sitting in one spot versus twelve, you know. And it really taught me, you know past I mean it was like you you saw trends and things and and that's how it kind of all began. And so here we are down the road, and I'm loving it as much as ever around cameras now. And you know, of course, everybody you know over the years has progressed to a point where it's it's uh,

it's still a real fun for me. But was and I don't think i'd be doing it. But the challenge of hunting older bucks is this fun because they're a different animal than you know, two or three year old deer. So once they get AIDS on them, they they live a different lifestyle, which is it is the fun part

about trying to figure them out. So I love, I love that you still have that same genuine passion for I mean that came through so clearly to me spending that time down there with you that you are just as eight up with this stuff now as you were thirty five years ago or whatever it was when these things began. Um, But I'm curious, Tom, you know you you you had this videotape that you just were trying to share the neighbors, and then it ended up exploding

and spreading around the country. All these people watched these videos, um, seeing what you're doing, seeing the deer you were passing on, seeing what was possible. Then you started improving your own property, and you had clients coming down, and like you said, there was folks and TV shows and folks and magazines and all these different guys came down a hunted with you, and they saw what you were doing and how you

were doing it. And so you had this massive network of people that were either watching you or learning from people that hunted with you and learned from you. And all these folks now are picking up on the things that you in many ways started or popularized. How does it How does it make you feel when you hear about that impact that you had and how many people have come to hunting or learned about hunting from you in some way? What does that bring to mind for you?

How do you feel about that? You know, it isn't you know what I mean? I guess it. I guess I don't look at it as any big deal. Really, it's that It's just I just feel pretty humble about you know, it was just a passion of trying to learn about something that then I still have, I guess because you never really mastered on a white tailor or the hardest big game animal or is to uh, you

know that we ever achieved any now. And I realized that over what I learned from my hunters too was good because there's some good hunters that have come through here, and just about everybody in the industry hunted here, you know, sometimes one time or another. But the people you met, and and I don't really feel like it's it was just something I enjoyed doing, and and it this is what it is that is that all developed, you know,

it's likely. I guess if you spend enough time at anything, I guess I feel blessed that I was a lot of the time to spend that at which I still do. You know something right now after season here and I I've spent the last month to running cameras, getting a new inventory of what there are left out there. And as they say, final shid yesterday, if I saw the deer, I saw him out of the house, commanu was once

I gone, and knowing the deer very well. And when I'm checked my cameras and there's orm light there yesterday, so he I know, I knew was the day he said last year, and I know the day said this year. He's about two weeks earlier this year. A lot of times they said just about the same day every year. But to be able to have the time to do that, I think that's what I've been. You know, if you really feel blessed about that, that it's all evolved into that. So it is your own job for me kind of

that I enjoy doing. Now, what about what about the impact you felt? So so tell me if this is true or not. But my reading of the situation is that you know, in the years after that videotape caught fire, and in the years after you started outfitting, you know, more and more people in Buffalo County started practicing some

form of deer management, some kind of habitat management. And the same thing happened across the Midwest right to the point where we are today, where it's one of the main ways that people participating hunting is managing the property for deer quality. Deer management pretty prevalent in one form or another. So this thing that was kind of a little idea thirty years ago is now almost everywhere. What have been the would have been the pros and cons of that for you personally in your little neck of

the woods. Have you seen things change? Have you seen the neighborhood change? Has been good? Has it been bad?

What's what's that looked like in your experience? Well, I you know, looking at the whole picture of it, I mean back when we started hunting, and back high school and back where everybody went up north funning because it was the North Woods had been logged off, and back in the fifties and sixties and even before that that was where over there were the Midwest here, Um, you know, hunting was basically family groups that did your drives and

and shot there for meat. And I guess the enjoying the hunting tool, and there was the hunting camps up north and stuff do management. I think a lot of people had the wrong I had the wrong idea on it. As far as all people on big horns or something, it isn't really about the horns at all for me

at all. It's just it's about a mature animal that is wiser, and it's just a challenge of going after and not just seeing something run across the field shooting it, you know, it was like following him and watching him from your year what and learning about his lifestyle kind of. I think overall impact, I mean a lot of people were really against you them because they they basically enjoyed what they were doing and shooting any deer or whatever,

you know. And of course they only spent Most people were busy with their jobs and their lifestyles which they only had a weekend or two to get out there in the year. They did couldn't have the time to spend in the woods to you know, so what if they weren't used to seeing a lot of deer, just that one or two days year maybe you know. And and the impact I mean not that there. People nobody likes to change. People are big creatures I have, but in a way too so they don't like to change

any thing in their life style. But you know, as far as how much it caught on around all over the country, you can really see that and what's harvested every year now for age class deer or what people are doing that, I mean, it's they must of them come through here. All the big ones shot around Canada

or the US every year come here. My son works with the closely brack and they you know, and paints hand oil, paints these antlers off the original they do, you know, replicas of especially the world class deer that are shot every year around the country. So I get to see all those and stuff. But I mean the amounted deer. There was never any numbers of deer shot years ago like there is now that are you know, all are huge deer two hundred deer plus and you

never saw that years ago. Too much one here and there, you know. No, I don't know impact on you know, it's just up to people what they what they get out of it or what they like They what they like out of their hunting or whatever. It's important for me and has been for years for young hunters to shoot their first deer, that's probably the most memorable hunt

they'll ever have in their lifetime. And I had too young twin girls shoot their first deer here this year the Cross Bowl and they're they're nine years old and they the satisfaction I got as watson them was just tremendous. And so it is all about, you know, big handler dear for everybody's I hunted over the years or thirty years, most you know, we shot just whatever. I uh, first

time hunters. I've probably had a hundred of them in here the shot their first here that that was probably the most exciting thing they'll ever have in their life, you know. So I guess, I guess impact on the area here and stuff it It definitely is a big impact because land prices one out of site. It's that's a I guess that I don't know if that's good or bad or whatever. They came in and brought up

land for honey. It did allow you know, landowners or farmers and stuff to sell off these of Atlanta and it really increased the value of their properties for them. But then then also taxes go up because of that. It's you know, there's it's a catch twenty two kind of all the way around when you look at it, for as that aspect that a lot of people can't afford to you know, by land, especially for you know in certain areas where it has gone on a site like that. Um and I say, taxes go up as

land prices go up. Also, so the people who are forced to sell off pieces of the small problem of farmers, especially sell off of woodland or something that they didn't really use anyway, you know, they to be able to keep their family farms stuff. And it's everywhere you go. I mean, when when it gets more people in the world, there's more in demand for things, and and there's so many things that cost that even crop prices or anything.

You know, you can see that in a in Iowa if you look at over the years where land prices have gone, the price of corn goes off, the price of land coach away up and everything. So it's a there's a lot of ways to look at it, but it's I don't know, it's been just a fun time for me for really being able to spend the time at it, you know, and follow these deer and learn about them. And and I've been here thirty years and I have not shot a deer in my offen thirty

year or so. That's pretty that's pretty crazy when they think about it. So why why is that? I wondered about that? That shocks me. You've been in arguably the best place to hunt deer in the world, quite possibly, or one of the very best at least, and you love this thing more than almost anyone. You're ate up by it. But you've chosen not to kill a deer in thirty some years. Why, well, I get, I guess was the hunters I have in here? You know, Uh, this year we got we shot fourteen pop and young

bucks that were twelve or more. And uh, for me to get a mature deer like that. And once you get over get over the hump of getting age on deer in your area, you can shoot you know, big deer like that every year. It basically common sense to say, well, if I don't shoot him at one or two or three years old, he's going to be there at four

or a great percentage of them will be. So we'll just shoot the four year olds, and but if you shoot them all off every year before they get to that age and never have there like that, Um I I I get my satisfaction out of being able to learn from every year. And it just kind of cast

my too, because I follow some of these bucks. I follow some of them up over ten years old every year, and and every time I see him and learn a little bit more about him, I realized that, you know, such a small percentage ever get that age, because there's there's so many ways that they die from infections or hit by cars or you know, fight and they get it. Uh, there's just a small percentage that ever get that old.

But when they when they do get shot, it's like, well, it's kind of a anticlimatic for me because you know, you get you've in so much time with idea for many years, and you know where he lived, what he does or whatever. But realizing that they're at the end of their their lifestyle. And that's why I realized that there they're they're gonna be dead anyway in a year or so. So it isn't it isn't. It doesn't affect

me so too much. Like some people ask me that, oh, what do you feel about that when he gets out, Well, it isn't there. They're a commodity like raising the crop, you know, and it's like a farmer raising cattle or beef cattle or butcher in them for the you know, the meat and whatever. You know that. I mean, it's it's really no different. You're almost just you're raising I look at it like this raising cattle in a way. You know, you're you just kind of target certain ones.

And there's there's I would say eight percent of the deer out there never are trophy potential. They may may get one fifty and at the tops and stay there with this beautiful box, but there they're never going to be, you know, a monster buck or whatever. So probably should be shot at a younger age. For the genetics, you do what you look at these game farms that are raised deer and they got two deer their first reacts and all, and there's it's all genetics and less stress

and whatever. We're there in the wild, they're stressed all the time. Basically we have we have a lot of predators here, basically kyles and and bobcasts and there's like they're wolf on once in a while in this area. But I mean in certain areas that they're they're constantly stressed for their life, so they don't they never have. That's a big as far as growth wise on a deer that keeps them, you know, not like these deer that are not stressed on game farms and the genetic

lines on them. But the genetics are here and there are in a lot of areas that I I've seen over the years or around the country, it's producing big deer and all once they started doing you know, q d M and getting some age on them, there there's a good genetics most all over, you know. So this this kind of brings to mind one of the a popular critique on deer management, which is when when some people hear stuff like, you know, managing deer like like

a hearticle, it's like you're managing cattle. You're harvesting these deer, you're selectively kind of choosing which ones make it to older age classes. You're kind of nurturing them along. Some people look at this and they say, well, you're taking the wildness out of hunting, You're taking the difficulty out of hunting. You know, this isn't really quote unquote hunting anymore. That is that's a critique that sometimes gets thrown at this style a way of experiencing deer hunting. What do

you what's your take on that? Is that rubbish? Do you? What do you think on that? Well, you know, I don't think you know, I guess I guess the probably is how you look at it. I mean, it's to me, it's it's just more of a challenge. Is the harder thing to to achieve to get uh a deer with age on it there, they're much more there there. It Actually it's a harder hunt because you you there's so many things that there are different animal and they have

learned over the years that that's how they survived. So um it it's fun. I mean, and it doesn't I guess if you look at it's not for everybody. Probably

that once they're culture. If they want to go on on a weekend and shoot a deer, that's you know, especially you know, that's up to it's an each individual and if they don't have time to spend out there, you know and really see nature how it is all these Uh that was the thing with archery hunting versus gun hunting, where uh it allows you that you have to be close to it there, you know, and get you get to watch them more and and see the reaction,

and you you have to make your reactions in close range. That's changed a little bit now with cross bowls and stuff, where they're more like rifles where you can just shoot it when you see it out there somewhere. Used to be they got to be within like twenty yards or last or thirty yards, you know, to get close, and you've got to see a lot of interaction and in deer and family groups and bucks and you know, and and then to make your move when they're close to you.

Where I'd say probably of uh, you know, hunts that went bad because they couldn't get away with any movement or anything, whether they're that close to them because they

are so alert. But I don't know, you know, it's something it's each individual what they want out of hunting, I guess, you know, And and I don't know if there's a you know what quite The answer is there, I guess is it's a personal thing to everybody that does hunt, I guess, and all they want to or what they want out of it, and what you put into it is really what you get out of it, you know, I guess that's oh, I guess that's sort

of Oh. I look at the more you put into something, the more effort it is, and the more work you do at it, the more meaning it has to you in the end. You know. Yeah, Well, it's it's evident watching you, the the investment you put into these these places and animals that you hunt or help other people hunt. I mean, that's it's pretty apparent you you live for this stuff. So why why don't shift a little bit into that side of things and how you do that,

what you're actually doing out there on the land. Um. You know, I got the chance to right around with you and do some scouting to check out the property, to see different parts of your farm. Um, I noticed there were handful things that stood out to me. Is is something that seemingly you find really valuable? But I'm curious.

Rather than me putting my assumptions on you, I would just like to know from your perspective, what do you think have been the very most important habitat improvements you've made over the years to make this property, this farm what it is now. Well, I looked at it, but he's agree logically and say, well, Okay, you're hunting an animal that lives. He has his senses and he has

that's how he stays alive. Basically with this is sight, smell, and and and then there it's all about feed for animals and and habitat of of where you know, security where they can live and not get bothered basically and exists. And so I think, what I looked at that and some of that stuff you when you you just you observed sign and what deer were doing, and then you said, well what could I do to make that better or whatever?

And one thing I noticed was like, uh, watering holes or like I remember hunting area years ago and I'd walk in on a log and road and there was spots where the skids and top of skitters and you know, dug holes, and and there were mud holes when it rained, and there was peppered with deer tracks around them. I thought, you know, water is a key, especially in country like this where there's these high ridges and there's no water on top. They gotta go all the way down the

bottom of the water. And I thought, well, if you put in a little pond or a little watering hole, even just a mud hole, Uh, they could hold water. So we ended up putting in ponds and at little

ponds that were there with a small cat. We probably dig them, push the top dirt off and then dig the clay out, dig a little deeper and then just making a you know, impression there and push the clay back in, drive over with a cat, and and where the spots we put them in, we learned quick that you don't want to put them in any kind of a drainage or wash or anything. You want to almost put them in on a flat or just off the

hillside a little bit. And the other thing was were the deer for their senses would be that they could see around. They if they put them in down in the hole or something, they were always literally going there because they're down in the hole and for predators to you know, come in on them or whatever. So they like to be more open when they can see out.

And the other thing was putting them in and where you have good oaks or good trees for shades, so they didn't it was just rain water, so vote would evaporate out. It was out in the middle of a field or something musically hot spells, it all evaporated out pretty fast. Where and then we just probably bulows in a little fly above the pond to just to run

water into it when they did rain. So they're all just you know, rainfill pond and most have been very good and they worked out put them in um you know, and then thinking well during the rout these bucks are they're not feeding or anything, they're not interested in feed, so they that they got a water so they'd end up we put them in on these ridges where there was big betting areas for those and put them in just off the sides of them where they travels in

and out. For these bucks that come in during the rout to get in there looking for a doll. But invariably they go to that pond of water because and we have a pond up on a hill area. We've shot over off that pond when well it isn't we've got a couple of years, we've got three off there in in in a week. You know, there's different bucks coming in there looking for those. So there's different bucks

there every day from maybe off the ways. They're not not even a resident box that would come in there trying to push out some those that are coming into heat or check it out and they go to the pond. So that's why probably one of the big things feed is. You know in this country, you know there there to get used at certain things, like people adapt for food. Uh, you have likes and dislikes. And I noticed that we

used to go to Canada. I was to a Saskatchewan shed hunt, and every year got up there and they didn't have much feed anywhere in the winter. If there were a stand in the wheatfield or whatever you're in the area, was there, or they were all in the feed lots at the at the ranchers. So they all bunched up wherever there was feed. Well, they said, oh, you gotta plant sunflowers. They god, they just demolish those things.

And well I did, and it was all birds and there was no dear because here they had so many other good you know, much other good food to eat like alfalfa, clover, acorns and and apples, and they got everything else that they didn't touch. The sunflowers. The only reason they ate them up there was the only feed they had to eat, you know, So they that's why they ended up there. But I'd look at things like that and said, well, what what is the most important

thing and food is one which I'd leave soybeans. Every year I leave fields so soybeans and and corn to corn. I noticed it's more of a filler. I don't know how they'll eat. They like grazing it off the ground, but versus on the stock. The only reason I at least standing fields around here and there Sometimes if we get deep snow and ice storms, or they can still get at it. It's a little harder for them to eat the office of a cob hanging there. But the

beans are good year around. They eat the leaves off, and I film, you know, fashion groups of boxed in them, and in July and August, and then they eat the leaves off, and they'll eat every leaf off the whole field, and the beans are still on there. And then in the fall and now at the time, right now I can look out there and poundered order under the bean

fields I haven't around my house. I'll have a hundred deer in here wintering in the beans, and they'll usually eat them out if you've got depending on how big you heard is or how many jeer, and they'll come from several miles away. The fine feet if it gets you know, Spiarce in the winter if it like a lot of farms take all the crops off so there is nothing to eat. But uh and and and even in winters. I found out that if you have a mile winter here with these steep slopes and buffalo here,

they melt off fairly easy. But it's twenty degrees they saw slopes melt off and they get at you know, acorns. If you had a good acorn cropper, they got browlers they can eat. They'd rather eat that than standing corn or something or ah. Even beans that they will be on beans at night, but I mean during the day they're browsing on and they'll they'll lose the natural browls if they can get out of us sold I try to fill in those gaps. You know what what is important?

Water is the key. Even one one interesting thing I figured always on our ponds when we put them in, thinking that yeah, there they're gonna use them during the rut when they're dehydrated, their run steady, and they they got a drink that they come in. But early in the year in September October sometimes we'd have like a long dry feller drought kind of and the ponds ithology that there should be on those ponds steady, you know, and they weren't. I'd sit those ponds and when't see nothing.

You finally figured out that early in September and October it's usually at nine it gets real foggy at night and and there's so much uh really didn't do on on the plants on it. So they're getting there h helf water off the plants. So it came down to if it was windy or not. So if it was windy, it would dry out the fell fulfill tos standing crops and they wouldn't get any moisture off them, so they'd

have to go to the ponds. But if they didn't if it was windy, it wasn't windy and it was a real heavy do they get plenty of moisture just eating, you know, with thelfelf our clover or something, and they didn't have to go to the pond. So, uh, that was kind of an eye opener for me. But I started to watch the wind and and you could tell when they were going to be on the ponds or not.

So real quick on the pond topic, before going further, can you can you give me a little bit more detail on how to do those right, because I think that was really one of the things thattood out to me is just how many ponds you put in and the care you put into those. You mentioned that you like to put them on the ridges, You like to use a you know, a doze or to carve out a hole. You mentioned that you like to put them

back there, you know, near oaks off those points. But can you give me any more specifics on how big, how deep, what you use to line them, any mistakes people used to make? Okay, so you first thing we do I have we ended up actually is I had die with a small cat that put in all my ponds, and I actually only guys call me and we go and look at other areas and layout ponds for them

or to put them. The key to orders I look at a like a ridge system or something, or where there's big bedding areas off these you know, tops of these ridges off just off the sides, and trying to look at travel routes in and out of the ridge is just all over the edges, a little bit off the tops and not like I said, if there's a drainage, if it's a valley or anything that drops you get

a heavy rain, it's gonna wash your pondo. So all we put them in it would be taking place out of the drainage, just upper ways on the side a little bit and uh, you know, travel cord or in and auto origin and then take a small cat, probably dig him down. I say, you push off the Usually this area has a lot of clay in it, and usually we push off all of the like the leaves and black dirt on top and which would be just loose,

you know, fairly loose dirt and push that off. So you hit the clay and push the clay out and then probably dig that thing. You're probably done, i'd say, probably end up down about six seven eight ft and then you and then you don't don't have to be a very big area. You just wanted big enough so when you get rain in it, it's not can evaporate out over the summer if you get a dry spell, so you probably just probably then you push the clay back in it and then drive over with a cat.

You just make like a bowl. Um and it's probably only it's probably I don't know, at across maybe and then my own maybe or however you are a put it then it don't make any difference. Just those holes enough water that it won't evaporate out in a dry spell, you know, so they always have water, even if it gets down to you know, an insu or two water

mud and stuff. They they'll be in their use. And you know, then it gets to be like a gathering spot form, you know where they always hang around those spots because family groups are there all the time and and there's always there at those spots. That's just I As far as putting those ponds in there, I don't, like I said, they're not, the only reason with the trees around it is to keep it from evaporated and to have a you are hunting that you want to get.

I always look at the predominant wind on no things,

because yeah, that's always an issue. If it's always it's the predominant winds are usually in the fall or north northwest here, so we'd probably put them in over on there on the leeward side of the ridge, you know, on the south southeast side of the ridge, you know, where the wind would come over the top and and it would be more out of the window there too, and there would be the reason that there would be there he could send the whole ridge from there for

the north or north it's wind. The trees you look at the I was looking at me where I got a couple of fairly good, nice trees around it, maybe on you know, the down wind side of the of the pond when you put it in. So you gotta play a good place, put a tree, stand in there, and get hid in there where you can shoot the pond.

That's that's basically what I look for. And then put the pond in accordingly to so you you said, and the wind you know or you yep, that makes that makes a lot of sense, uh, you speak of your ponds. One of the things that I thought about as you're discussing this was that first pond that you and me went and looked at together. And I remember, you know, kind of asking you some of these similar questions and

taking a look at that pond. But what stood out around the pond was the fact that you had two trail cameras point at the pond. You had two trail cameras just thirty yards down the hill pointing at some beds, and then another two trail cameras up the point on different trails, and and I remember being just very surprised, and Dylan and I were talking about this earlier. Just at your your comprehensiveness when it comes to putting trail cameras in you know, areas like this and covering a

lot of different angles and different spots. Can you give me your take on on why you do that, on how you think about placing cameras, like like, why was that the spot that you wanted six or seven cameras? And how do you go about thinking through that when you set up other locations. Uh, what I first thing I do is look at, uh what the deer doing at what time of year? Those cameras we saw there were basically put in there for late season in the snow.

Uh And um, when I when I look at this in cocate, So when I start out the year, I'll put ah in the summer. They're in the bassard groups on summer feet. So I'll place my cameras um along a corner. I'll drive along the cornfield with the LFL far or clover next to it, and I'll look at where they're eating along the side of the cornfield, and where I see some sign of where they're eating, I'll stick a camera right in the lf off on the edge of the corn, facing kind of down along the

corn edge. And and then I'll or I'll put it out in the middle of the alfalfa field. If it's got I have some three sixty cameras, it'll swing and take a picture six different directions with whatever sensor is

triggered and put them out in the field. So you because all those they are in groups and baschard groups at that time, you can get just about every buck it's using that on that camera in a week, and so you know what's they're kind of UH as the season for granted, I move those cameras once they leave they make a transition, you know, from UH grazing into browsing, and they'll go when once the acorns fall in the apples fallen in the fall, and on October they move

their feed food source from what they eat in the summer, they'll move back into UH browsing more. And then I moved my cameras that they those big box relocate, they leave their bachelord groups and they become more nurse name back into the security spots and rubs show up. I'll put my cameras on rubs in and scrapes that show up and run them on that a while. And so when we were when you were here late season, I'll move them out there. Those ponds freeze over. I'll try

to keep them open as much as I can. Uh, that one when to start freezing. But there that's still that's a betting point and that's where they spend the winners. And that that the point that it was right above the pond there we went all to Jackson was dear there when we drove up there, that ran off. Uh, And I had cameras there right, so I have them, um go, I faced some of the cameras towards each other because I get there behind cameras that never get

in front of them. So I just learned that over the years that h and the trails coming in and out, and there's certain dear use certain trails so they don't. I might have it on a trail twenty yards over and not get them on and then they're using the next trail over. So uh, that's why I have a lot of cameras in certain spots like that. I put them in bedding points and which was there where they all the beds there and snow when we're up there.

And then so that time of the year, I moved the other ones out to the food sources that I've left, like the bean fields, and I up on top on the other side there where you guys were hunting to those turn ups up there, and they were pretty much pounding those things. Uh, the crops themselves. Those turn ups especially, you want to plant them late so they don't get real big because you plan them. I always plan them

towards the end of August. Uh. If you put them into early, they get big and they get sour and they don't hit them as much as they would younger. They like younger shoots on all their feet, even even you know, off of clover or anything. It's if clover gets olden stems. Oh, they don't like. They like the new shoots as they come up and more tender food. I guess more better easy. Uh. We certainly, like you said, we certainly saw the deer hammer and those turn ups

that you had there no doubt about that. Um. And that was another spot where, like you said, you had multiple cameras set up all around that plot to catch

deer and all the different places they might be. One of the things that always kind of not always, but one of the things that perplexed me or that I wondered about with all those cameras that you have, I mean hundreds of cameras that you're running in different places at different times, it seems like, what's what's your process for organizing and studying those photos that you can actually get actionable data out of them. I know you spend a lot of time at your computer studying those pictures.

What's what's like the strategy there. How do you go about doing it in a way that you can keep track of deer and and learn stuff from those pictures to act done. Yeah, what what I do is if

you know there's the different age class there. You know they're a year and a half, two and a half, three, four or five h I have a folder on every year, so when I get it on a camera, I'll put it in a folder, and then I put them in there by month because different times of the year there do different things, and they live in different areas, like in the summer and summer feed some of these older bucks, they may be a mile or two or they where they where their home security spot is where they will

spend a month of October. Then during the rut there wandering all over. But so I put them by a month, and then I keep them from year to year. So if I, if we if I get a buck on it is a notable buck, I'll go back and find him the year before, the year before, the year before, and I'll look at one month where he's at, and then I can tell from year to year they kind of repeat that we've been able to shoot box from

one year to the next. On the on the day they show up in a new spot that they haven't been all summer, I'll have cameras are year round on the spot, and the deer will show up maybe maybe be the first of October, maybe via in November. And a year later, right to the day he shows up there again and he hasn't been there all year. And we're able to harvard some good bucks that way. So I try to keep a full and what what what

else it teaches me is growth patterns on deer. If I've been interesting to see, you know, dear following from one year to the next and see what they develop into and to see that, you know, what the hell why did they go there? I've noticed on some deer that I by accident, just by finding the sheds and realizing, hey, this is the sheds off this deer. And they have

some notable features about them. But they gone from a real nice, you know, realized buck or maybe a hundred and fifty sixties deer and dropped down to something you see out there, and hope, I thought it was a two year old deer, you know the rack size. He went down enough, but he got wounded and and this this health wasn't there, and he just didn't grow in the act the next year. And then once he got

his health back, it's following here, he came back. So those cameras showed me a lot of different things on there. What they what they how they develop, what they can you know, what the injuries due to him, what you can just see so much many things on him. So maybe being able to have each deer and have five sixty years of folders and growth on him and a lot of pictures of them each year. Uh, it's interesting to follow that and see what what they what they

do or what affects him. And oh yeah, and the weather has a lot to do with a lot of things. And that was something was an eye opener on me too, as we had a real early sprained one year, and I thought, boy, that they are are gonna be good on them. And then it was in the seventies and eighties in March and April and all my tree but it all. And then we had an ice storm, hailstorm and a florado and it shredded all the buds off

all the trees. It actually destroyed all the nut crops, the acorns, and all all the apples, and we had nothing in the fall, and there went into the winter with nothing to eat. It just what was ever in the in the spring with that, I mean when we had the ice storm and the hailstorm and stuff, stuff, the fields were so wet and stuff of farmers, we had rain all of me and they couldn't get in the plant crops or nothing got planted. And they went

into the winter here. So the only times probably two hundred your under your thing where they had absolutely no feed and they were eating bark off the trees. And I never ever saw that, especially in Buffalo here that year. It was in two thousand and twelve. In two thousands, that winter involved in thirteen state severity index winner was the worst one in over a hundred years for cold and deep snow and stuff. They came off in the spring and they looked at their exca on the camera.

They were just getting boning and they had nothing to eat in the spring, and so they they when they actually when they got the feed in the fall, when we because of all the rain, had main and stuff they had they had all the feed. The farmers planted. They had to plant a crop and they had to put it in after August. First they couldn't couldn't harvest it. And they basically planted brassicas with his radishes and turn

ups and stuff to break up the soil. And because of all the rain and may, we had a bumper crop of acorns and apples and everything. So once they got that feed, they put this weight on and they put it on in a matter of two months. And and uh, my son's wife shot her first bucket was a six year old buck. We've been following for several years and had the sheds up and they actually lost twenty inches on hornboath to scored one two. We waited live weight. It was three thirteen and he put that

weight on in two months. But he was already hard horn when he got the feed, so he sprung back so fast and put all that weight on. But the rats all dropped that year and I looked into been in the record book, there was only a couple of bucks over on fifty register that you're in the bucking Bar in Wisconsin. And it was all to do with that that winter and that spring was all to do with the feed and losing all those crops in the

spring or all the acorns and stuff. So that showed me home important acorns, war toolma and apples, but mostly acorns, I think really is a key, you know, for developing good growth on there stuff. I remember you showing me some of these pictures of these bucks that you know lived through that and and seeing exactly what you're talking about.

But I also just it stands out to me just how good of records you keep, you know, and the fact that, like you said, you've got these files for every single buck and then you go back in there and you you seem to study them and think about what's going on and connect it, like you said, to weather patterns or food or all these different things going on. I mean, I don't know that that that goes above

and beyond what most people do. And obviously that's something that's been helping you, you know, have years like this. We're would you say, seventeen or sixteen or how many how many bucks did you guys kill this year? Fourteen just a ton of and fourteen you know, we're pping younger head. Those two young girls shuit, those two younger deer their first deer and the one one of them was the open young actually scored one thirty. But uh, yeah, it was. It was Yeah, it was a great year.

I mean it. And we had they were like I said, we had I think we had twelves that were from over the average the hundred and fifty two inches, which was they were up the pool went down to you one fifty right in there. It's incredible. Well, Tom, I want to I want to be respectfu for your time here and start to wrap this one up, but I do want to ask you one last kind of wide arranging question here. Um. You know, I see I see

you in your story as as one about legacy. You know, you seem to have had this far reaching impact, whether or not you meant to, whether or not that's something that you even pay attention to. Um. You know, the people you've influenced, the people you've taught, the things you've done have have trickled out of Buffalo County all across the country, and you you really in a way shaped

a whole generation of of folks within the hunting world. Um. And just being there, you know, in person with you and talking to other people in camp, you could just see how you know, everyone everybody that was there. Tom was there because they had developed really close relationships with you and other hunters there, and it really felt like a family. There was guys coming in, you know that have been coming in for years and years and years.

There was you know, Matt was there, who had his own farm in the past, and he said, you know, I'd rather not have my own farm and get to go to Tom's more often because of the people there, because of the stories and the camaraderie and and everything else that you've built there, Which is which is all tied into what I want to ask you about, Tom, which is this Now that you know you are, you're you're one of the godfathers of the hunting world. Now you you've you've seen it all, You've shaped a lot

of it. When you look into the future, and you think about the next generation of hunters, those folks that are teenagers now or in their twenties or thirties like me, who are going to be the folks that shape the next next generation. What's the message you want to leave with them? If you could tell those people now something that you hope they can do, or hope they think about, or or anything you would pass on to them, now,

what would that message be. I would think the key there is trying to get them an opportunity to just get out there and sit in the tree and and see nature. And I think it would if that would spur them into not being able to get enough of it, I would think that that would be the key to Uh. They've got to experience it too to want to, you know, get the passion for it. And I think they you

need to do that at a young age. I think you know this usually you know, his life goes on and myself too, and being able to grow up as a kid and do that is the key, because things in life take your other directions, you know, for years and the naybe and stuff and and and you get that age. The teenagers you're chasing girls whatever, and you get away from it, but you always go back to it. Once you get that passion, you don't lose it, you know.

And I think the key is is trying to create opportunities to get you know, the opportunity for people to get get out there and do that. A lot of the trouble is so great populations in the cities and suburbs and they don't have the opportunity to be able

to experience that, you know, and it uh. I think it would be important for some ideas to you know, start maybe they maybe they could fund something like that, would you know, even pheasants on the Limited or Maimon Foundation, but to have areas where you could they could bring kids in and just to get them to experience that. And I think they get they get hooked theirselfs on

it once they once they were able to experience it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that message of of sharing this hunting lifestyle that we have and helping more people get out there, I think that that definitely resonates. And something you told me last week and we're together that you know, it was interesting to me. You talked about the fact that if this farm that you own right now, if that had been owned by by a single individual who just

hunted themselves. You know, maybe there'll be one or two or three people to hunt this farm every year, but in your case, by running the operation you do, you know, dozens of different people get to experience it. And and you've been able to do that year after year after year, introducing or helping dozens and dozens of other folks learn about hunting, experience hunting, sharing that passion you have, um,

And I think that's more than anything. I think that's the legacy when I when I from the outside looking in, uh, you know, kind of examine what you've done. That's what stands out to me. And that's what ah, yeah, what makes me admire you. Ton. So, thank you for for being such a great teacher an introducer to the woods for so many folks. And I'm certainly inspired by that, and I hope a lot of other folks are too. I've been a place you're talking with you and I

always enjoy talking hunting. Yes, me too, Tom, So, thank you for taking this time. All right, Thank you all right, and that's gonna be it. Thank you for tuning in. I appreciate you following along with this series of stories as I travel the country, hunted in different places, with different people and trying different styles. It has been eye opening, it has been challenging, it has been fun and interesting.

It's it's been kind of everything, and eventually I'm gonna be able to unpack all that makes sense of it, see what I can learn from it, see how I'm going to change things or do things more like it in the future. UM been a heck of a year, so appreciate you coming along with that journey and hopefully you've learned something along the way. So that said, let's wrap this sucker up. Thanks for tuning in, have a great rest of your week, and stay wired to hunt.