Ep. 579: 5 Hard-Earned Lessons for This Deer Hunting Season

to you by First Light. And I'm back. I'm back from whatever thing Tony has been saying I've been doing. I don't know if it's been, uh, filming a fantasy movie with Spencer, or collecting seashells or god knows what, but I'm back from it. And hunting season has kicked off for me and my partner in crime, Tony. So today we are back together and we're here to discuss what we learned from our first hunts of the year.

We've had some highs, we've had some lows, and we've had a whole bunch of what i'd call learning opportunities in between. And I think Tony, I think you'd agree that there's been some hard earned lessons here. Early on like right out the gate that we can you know, as an individuals, but then I think also for everybody else listening, I think we can all learn from some of these things and take it through the rest of the Deer season. So we're gonna talk through our first

couple hunts of the year. You know, that would be my early season hunt in Idaho with further and your hunt Tony in Wisconsin, or your hunts I should say, with your daughters. Um, And then what I want to do is as we use these stories, as we talk through these stories, we're gonna highlight and break down maybe four five, six major lessons that we can taking these that we can take from these hunts, and then you know, used throughout the rest of the year. So that's that's

my game plan, Tony. Uh, good plan, bad plan? Are you indifferent? Are you already bored? What do you think? No? I think it's a good plan, man. I Uh. I'm just continually amazed at how often I bump into something out there that just teaches me a valuable lesson. And I think you and I have both gone through some stuff already this season. That's that's worth sharing in this episode. Yeah, that's uh. It's it's both depressing and encouraging that we can You know, I've been hunting since I was three

or four. You've been hunting for gosh knows how long, and we're still learning stuff or being reminded of stuff, or bumping up against something and saying, damn it, what do we do now? You just never stop learning. So that's that's a good thing. I think. Oh I do. I do too. I mean, I think you know. There's one one reminder you get when you're when you create content in this space, you know, doing the job that you and I do. It's like you hit March and

you're like, I don't know what to talk about. I don't know what to write about. And then you hit September and you're like, I have a million different ideas I want to cover because you're out there living it and there's so many of those things that happened to you were like, man, you're just just such a valuable lessons and in that encounter or that experience or that blood trail or whatever, it's just this is this is a wild time year. I'm excited for this Mark. Yeah,

I agree. Hey, real quick, I just remember before we get into these hunts. I do have to make a couple of plugs. Uh, first off season eleven of meat Eater, the newest season, the brand new season of meat Eater is going to be Oh gosh, I'm gonna get real trouble here if I get the date wrong. So I better get this date right. Um. The new season is going to be launching, uh on October twenty six. Yes, October twenty six, the new season will be launching. But

here's the kicker. This is different than before. The new season is only going to be available on the meat Eater website. It's gonna be free. You don't need a new account for anything, Like, you don't have to pay for anything. You just need to be signed into the Mediator website and then you can watch that new season for free October. And in the weeks leading up to that, we're gonna be putting season seven, season eight, season nine, and season ten all on the website to watch. Two.

So that's plug number one. If you want to see some cool new Mediator stuff that's coming your way, to the meat eater dot com to miss anything on that one, Tony, you're you're on the same emails as a mean they get that right. I think you nailed it, buddy. Okay, plug number two and this one I know pretty well because I've been so involved in it. Uh my show Deer Country, my brand new whitetail show Deer Country. We

now have three. No, by the time you're listening to this, there will have been four episodes up on the meat Eater YouTube channel. So you've heard me mention the Washington d C. Hunt. You've heard me mentioned the Arkansas back country hunt. You last week hopefully saw me chase white tails with a handheld decoy and the great planes. And this week's episode, I went up to Maine to learn how to track deer in the snow, um and learning under the tutelage of how blood just like a legend

in that world. Uh, really really interesting hunt Like. There's a lot of great learning opportunities in that one. So highly recommend you check that stuff out. Tony. Pretend I'm not here. You don't need to, you don't need to butter me up, you don't need to fluff me. Can you give us your review so far off Dear Country? Or what should people expect or be looking for if

they haven't watched it yet? I think they should check check it out because it is not like any other You're Hunting show out there, And I truly mean that that. The concept is great and it's just a different thing than the industry has been delivering for a long long time. So they should check it on. On that recommendation alone, there you go, I think, I think that's accurate, and uh, I think it's worth watching. Like you said, it's different. It's not a bunch of big trophy bucks delivered on

a platter. It's all about new places, new styles of hunting, and learning and uh that's what we try to hear on the podcast too, So I'm proud of it. Well, and the good thing about it too is you're right. It does highlight the reality of so many different hunting situations based around white tails, and we tend to get so myopic and almost like xenophobic over our own white tail hunting, and we forget that there's this huge world out there of people hunting all these different styles and

all these different places. And it's kind of nice to be reminded of that because if you consume a lot of hunting media, you you tend to see hunts that occur in the same places in the same style because you know, usually they're filmed or whatever, and it's like you kind of got to go to some of these places to get an easy hunt on film, and that's what happens over and over again. And this is I would not say that, this is that. I would say this is a different thing. Yeah, we don't need any

more hunts over a food plot in Iowa, do we Noh? Yeah, Okay, So speaking of that, then let's let's continue talking about some different kind of stuff because the hunts that you and I are talking about today are not the kind of thing that gets shown on TV either. Um, so you want to kick it off, you you had a lot of interesting stuff happened in your first couple of hunts. Can you can you fill me in on what happened and what you learn from it? Should we start with

a good story? Yeah? Yeah, good story first, because because I know we're gonna we're gonna break bad here eventually

on this one. Uh yeah, you know. Was we go over to Wisconsin a lot, and my my little girls started hunting last year because there's no minimum major limit over there, and you know, they were nine last year, and my one daughter killed the dough and my other daughter killed a dough in a little buck, and so, you know, my plan this year was to get him over there every weekend I could that I was gonna be home, and my one daughter, who hadn't killed a buck,

she was up first. And so we had gone over in the summer and put up some blinds and some cameras and caught some trout and kind of made a

made a couple of weekends out of it. And when we went over there the friday before the opener, it was hot, like I don't I don't know if you dealt with this level of heat out and Idaho on your hunts, but it was it was like humid hot, which is the worst you know when you're when you go out in the morning and you're like, oh, it's you know, opening day of deer season, but it's like sixty five degrees with like a hundred percent humidity. It just feels it feels weird, you know, like is it

not not what you typically expect. But I knew from running cameras, I knew we had a decent chance of of running into a door or a buck. And she was she was hunting anything that didn't have funds or anything that didn't have spots, and we sat, you know, opening day, we sat you know, basically four hours in the morning, four hours in the evening, never saw a deer,

which is really typical up there where we're hunting. And then the following morning we got in super early because I think, I keep thinking it's more more important to let let our spots settle down, especially when I take these girls out, because we have to go into a blind. You know, it's not like we're super mobile, so the spot the blind is in, I need to preserve that

movement around there as much as possible. And so they get they get kind of pisted about it, but I've been making them get up earlier and earlier and earlier, and we get in there way before first light. And you know, the second morning of the season, we did that and just randomly looked up and here's this bike buck walking in from like twenty yards out. And my daughter that was with me is like really good at rushing her shots, like you never know what's going to happen.

And so our our deal is, you know, like I want you to aim at them and then you tell me when you're ready. Then I'm going to take the safety off because there uses a crossbow and then you you choose your shot. So I'm kind of eyeball in the situation until they square up up in their broadside or quartering away, and you know, it's kind of like a little team effort that way, because if I didn't do that, especially with this daughter, she'd probably shoot the

moment he stuck his nose. Always like to just get it over. And so this buck walks into like twelve yards and poses up up and I take that safety off and I'm I'm like, I'm thinking, you know, she's gonna take a little time or whatever. And I popped that safety off, and that crossbow goes off like point one seconds later, and all I hear is that bolt slam into a tree and I just go, honey, you you have to take your time and aim. And she's like, Dad,

the crosshairs were right on its chest. It was perfect, And I'm like, I don't think so I thought she missed completely. So we have this little argument in the blind because she's like, I think we could go get him right now. And when he ran off, you know, I lost sight of him right away. But it's sounded like he fell over. So I was like, maybe maybe I am wrong, Maybe she zipped it right through him.

And so we gave him a half hour and got up and as soon as we got out there, I could see blood all over the brush, and so I let her start blood trailing and he only made it maybe maybe fifty yards, and she had hit him perfect. But it was like in my in my head with her, and if you met her, you'd be like, Okay, I get I get his concern a little bit because she's

real squirrely, but she's just perfect, just lay stems. So that was that was a lot better than the second week and when I brought my second daughter over, which we can talk later, but it really was, you know, it was a good lesson on two fronts, right, Like I always preach about hot weather, cold weather, windy, rainy would ever go, especially in the early season, because those deer used to that and it was not nice deer

hunting weather. And the other thing was, you know, you we're putting in enough time in these spots and and trying to preserve the movement so much that I feel like it's just paying off in you know, not like tons of deer sightings because we'd never have them there but good encounters and it just it just worked out for us. So so tell me a little bit more about you know, this is something you teased up before

we start recording. You were talking about how the amount of time you let something settle matters on a hunt like this, even and you you kind of I thought it was interesting mentioning the fact that this warm weather, cold weather, whatever, you know, get out there. But I think one thing that I have been guilty of sometimes is that when the weather is not that good, if it's like really warm or lousy, like a day you're

talking about, I'll go in late. I'll be like, they're not going to move to the last half hour or something like that. So like those of the days are tempted to get in late or you know, whatever might be. If it's raining and nasty, you might be like, well, I'm not gonna get in there an hour before dark, you know, or before daylight in the morning. I'll get out there right at daylight and just go out because

I don't want to get silk and wet um. But I know you're someone who sometimes advised, you know, putting in that time regardless. Yeah, I mean I think I think it's so important man, And I learned this, you know,

at least I should say. This is sort of drilled home in my head when I go on these hunts where you know, you're hunt in public land somewhere and you don't have anything else to do, and so I'm like, well, am I I'm better off being in a tree if the if the wind is gonna work for me, then being back at camp and you know, you start killing

deer at off times. And you know, when I when I elk hunted earlier in September, I was primarily sitting water, and I kept thinking about that, like, you know, I don't know when a bull is gonna get thirsty and come in, but I know if I'm back at camp taking a nap, it's gonna suck if that's when he comes in. And so it's like, I'd rather just be out there as much as possible. And you know, for me, it's different. I can go sit all day and I can you know, not go too crazy. When I've got

ten year olds with me, there's a different consideration. But I'm trying to get them to learn that lesson to that, like you know, yeah, you might be tired at nine o'clock in the morning, but why not just sit till ten just in case, let's figure out a way to make it happen. And the more that we do that or you know, I know they don't like getting up early, but man, I'd rather get in there pretty early. Not as early as you did on the back forty when

we filmed together. That was ridiculous, but like somewhat some happy medium there in between where you're not pushing it, Like you're like, I feel really good about us getting in super quiet, and that's that's the other thing, you know, if you're talking about getting in the morning or getting out a little bit later in the afternoon, if you're if you're like, man, you know, I'm kind of pushing

it here. You're gonna go faster, and you're gonna make more noise, and you're gonna notice fewer things, right, Like you're not going to notice the signs the same way you might run into one walking in, or you're just you're just not in the zone quite as well as what's just make mistakes to Like, if you're rushing, you're more prone to all sorts of mistakes. Yeah, I mean,

you forget stuff, you step on sticks. It's just like it's not a good state to be in when you want to go out there and really not have your presence be known by everything. Yeah. Yeah, so true. So if we're if we're tying a bow on something here that you know we should think about for the rest of the year, it's always give yourself some extra time and don't assume the worst. Always assume you know what this might work out. I'm going to give myself proper time.

Don't give into that temptation to say it's not going that great, I'll go I'll sleep in for half hour more. It's not that great, I'll lay in the couch for half an hour more. The half hours always more valuable in the field, whether even if it's just because it gives you a better state of mind. I think that's that's so true and something that's hard to stick with, especially as you go throughout the year and you get more and more exhausted. It's easy to start, you know,

giving into that. Yeah, And I mean, you just feel better about yourself, even even if you go out and blank. If you're like I'm hunting until ten o'clock, in the morning because I feel like there's my chance. It's kind of like, you know, if you if you're like I'm going for a six mile run after we do this, I don't like I could feel okay about myself if I quit after three I'm like, well, it's still ran

three miles. But that's not what I'm there for. You know, like, you feel better if you just get it done and go do go do the work you need, and that's that's part of being successful as a deer hunters. Like, I'm gonna this, this is my plan and I'm going to see it through until something tells me I really should you know, abandon it and do something else? Yeah? Yeah, true. Well what happened next? What was the what was the next weekend? You want to get into that one? I

think so so. Uh like a good dad, I pulled my daughter out of school early so we could drive over and sit, and then I took her out of school the next day. Uh, so we could make a long weekend out of it. Because you know how it is, once you get into October, you're you've got a lot of stuff going on for work in the in the field, and not necessarily enough time to take the kids out, and so I said, let's make a long weekend of

it and go see what we can do. And we got over there, man, and it was like, you know, the first night we had to do on a fun come in close like eight maybe eight ft from the blind, and they winded us right before they came out. But it was a really cool encounter because it was a beautiful night, and you know, by then the weather had gotten really good, like it was, you know, sixties and kind of overcast, and you know, in the morning it was maybe like fort and so it was it was

gonna happen. And then you know, the next day of rain starting, the rain started move in. We still we still, we saw some deer got really close to shooting a dough and just didn't didn't quite step out where we needed it too. But up there, you know, if you have deer encounters every day, I feel really good about it. So then we went into the third morning and it was pouring rain. We got up and there was just

it was coming down. But I told my daughter, I'm like, well, we're gonna get wet going through the woods, but we get into the blind will be pretty dry. And it was supposed to end at like eight thirty nine o'clock in the morning, and I was like, we need to get out there and just be there for a while. And we get out there, you know, it's one of those mornings it takes four ever to get light out because it's overcast and rainy and you're in the woods.

And finally got light out nothing and she was pretty tired, and you know, it just randomly, maybe forty five minutes into shooting light I looked up and there's a little five pointer coming in and he he either winded us a little bit or he saw uce because and I I think he saw us because the the light was so low and so even it was just not great scenario to be in a blind, like they're gonna be

able to see him there pretty well. But you know, he's a little buck and he wasn't that smart, so he started get a little wiggy, and she got on the crossbow and he kind of started to trot a little bit, and I just murped at him, and he stopped twenty yards quartered away, and I took her safety off, and a couple of seconds later, she shot, and I heard that that bolt zipped through him and he bounced off there, and I was like, man, I can't believe

that just happened. And I asked her and she said it felt really good, you know, like I think I hit him really well. And so I thought, man, we're gonna have another blood trail and be back in town eating pancakes. And we gave him, you know, some time, and got out there because I really needed I was really fighting the urge to go right away because of the rain, but the light just was like not great like he was. It was light enough to see anything, but looking for like backs of blood on the wet

ground while it was raining. I was like, let's just let's give it time. We don't we don't need to rush it. So we got out there and started looking and there's blood everywhere, and I'm like, okay, this is pretty good. But then we hit that point of the blood trail where it was like a hundred yards and I just told her. I was like, honey, I don't think I don't think this is going to break the way we think it's going to now, because this is

not making me feel great. And then you know, he's like, okay,

do we push it or do we go back? But the rain was heavy enough and we had a good enough blood trail where I was like, I was really conflicted, like I don't know, I don't really know what to do here, Like I don't want to push it, but I know this blood is going to wash away, and then I'm mad at myself for even hunting in it, you know, because then you're like, if we lose this deer because of these decisions, I'm like, this that really sucks.

And so real quick stepping back one half second, that the dilemma is you can follow right now because you have the good blood, but there's the risk that the hit wasn't as good as you thought. That deer might still be alive and you might be pushing that deer and then you'll never find it. But on the flip side, if you wait, that deer might bet up and die

and you'll find them up there. But the risk is that if you wait, the blood trail might disappear with the rain, and then you've nothing to go off of and you have a really hard time finding. So that's that's the two. You know, possible paths and passable sets of outcomes in these kind of rainy situations, and it's it's a hard decision. Well it is, and what kind of ultimately, you know, put its finger on the scale there. For me was the fact that this is like Northwood's thick, nasty.

This is not like a nice deciduous forest where grid searching is going to be like a real good possibility. And I knew if we lost that blood trail, it was really going to be like a needle in a hay stack type of thing, because this is even the higher woods they're they're just thick and nasty. They're like good grouse cover type of stuff. And I knew the

direction he was heading. There's an enormous swamp there. You know, it's part of cat tails, part alder thickets, part willows, just just like rough stuff to to a grid search. And so I said, we're gonna go slow, but we're gonna stay on this blood and see how it shakes out. And you know, you get two hundred yards into it and you go, now, I know this is not what I thought it was. Right. There's no way she shot

him through the ribs the way we were hoping. But you've got good blood, and so you keep pushing it and sneaking along. And it was It was really rough because you know, a couple of hundred yards into it and you're soaked, and it's like there's you know, every every advancement you make on the trail, you're like, well this this feels good because we're still on blood, but we're going farther and the odds of us running across

this dear dead, you know. And so what I started thinking, and I'm sure, but listening to this, they're going, I was a muscle hit And that's what I started thinking. She hit it too low, or she hit it too far forward, and you know, hit a whole bunch of muscle right away, and you get a lot of that promising bright red blood, and then you start to lose

it a little bit. And I would say probably, I don't know, maybe between like four hundred and five yards into it, I started finding just like clotted up blood on stuff that he would brush up against. And then I was like, oh, this is this does not make me feel good. And it hadn't stopped raining when I was supposed to, and so we got into that swamp and I lost it completely, Like I'm like, I got no more blood and I was just standing there and

this happens a lot. I'm just standing there and I'm looking at her, and she's soaked and she's cold, and it's been hours, and that buck got up and ran away through that swamp like he wasn't even hurt. And what he went through I was. I stayed. I had her stay there, and I went to get on it again and and I was like up to my nuts and swamp water, I'm like, I can't even go anymore. And it was just like he went through there like

he had no problem. And so we ended up trying to get around there and and pick him up again and lost it again. And it was just like one of those deals where you're like we're blood trailing or you know, now we're just like looking for sign on a deer that I don't think it's dead. And it just was one of those deals where it was like just not fun. It went it went from real fun to real frustrating and disappointing, and it was a long day.

How did how did she take it? Like, what did you say to your daughter to get through something like that? You know, she was really beating up on herself on the blood trail, especially, you know, being out there and being soaked and just knowing because she was she went from you know, like she went on the roller coaster. Man. She was she was convinced she smoked it. And then when we started a greanell that this wasn't the case, I think she started to accept it and she was

really bummed, like really bummed. But you know, by the time we got back and got dried out, you know, she was asking me about the deer I've hit loss. I'm like, I don't we have how much time do you have? You know, like, if you do this stuff long enough, that happens, And you know, I think with her especially, I think you'll leave a real mark. And I think she'll think long and hard about her shots in the future, and I think she'll take better shots and it. And it's not like this wasn't a good

shot to take. I think it just happened fast, and I think she rushed it. And she's she's usually really solid with that stuff, like she's killed deer in turkeys and usually pretty good at it. And I think this one she'll go, I'm gonna make sure that I'm going to hit that deer right where I want to from here on out, And so it was, you know, it went okay. So what's the what's the takeaway from this one? Is it to do with the shot? Is to do

with the tracking? Like, is there any major lesson you're reminded of or that you can learn that we can all think about from this, you know, I think I think the lesson is, you know, you you can say, Okay, well I hit like this, you need to wait six hours or eight hours, or hit like that you need to wait this amount of time or this kind of blood or this kind of reaction, and all of that stuff is okay. But really, what this, you know, the

post shot recovery boils down to is experience level. And when you go through something like this, it just reminds you that even you know, even I've been on I don't know how many blood shils now, you know, hundreds between me and all my buddies and everybody, like you still go through those emotions and that those times on

a blood trail where you're like, I don't know. And what I felt the worst about on this one was like I felt like I had to push it because of the rain, and I'm norm only really cautious about blood trails like I'd rather give them way more time than not enough. And on this one, I was just like, should I even have been hunting in this stuff? You know, like should I? Because I know one of the things that I can't stand is when I feel rushed on a blood trail. And you know, when you walk out

there and it's pouring rain. Unless you're a total idiot, you're like, Okay, well, if we shoot one and it doesn't go perfectly, we're gonna be rushed on this blood trail. So my my biggest regret there was not really factoring that in and and deciding whether it was worth it to hunt in those conditions or not. So what do you stand on that, now, Tony, As far as do you hunt when you know there's gonna be a steady

rain or not? I mean that's something that for a long time I thought, oh for sure, because I grew up in the school of of a certain person who reaches always hunting in the rain, it's great hunting. And and so I started hunting all the time in the rain and saw a lot of good actions. So I was like, Okay, I'm into it. But then you know, the more you have bad things happen. Like what you discussed.

The more I start to think more and more about, gosh, what happens if I do have that blood trail disappear. And so I've I've gone back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on it myself. Um, when I'm in a spot where I'm close to home with with a buddy that has a tracking dog, that makes me a lot more comfortable because they can do very well in the rain. Actually, Um, but I'm curious what your take is because I don't I don't have a I don't have a conclusive answer for every situation.

It's kind of up in the air for me, still on kind of situation dependent. Yeah, you know, for me, I'm the same way. I love hunting in the rain. I just you know, the deer moving the rain big time. But I'll probably be a little more cautious because this was This wasn't like a nice drizzle where they're gonna come on the beans and it's gonna be awesome. This was like pretty heavy and it was probably too heavy to take a ten year old in, you know. Like that.

That was my lesson there. If it was me, you know, and I was sitting out there, I would hunt that situation, but I would be I'd be like it's twenty yards or in or I'd be really really selective. And this one, I don't. You know, I'm hoping this buck shows back up on camera. I'm hoping he didn't die. But I suspect what she did was just shot a little too far forward, and so she probably wasn't off by much. It might have been a couple inch difference or something

like that. But it doesn't matter, you know, Like this is this is the outcome that happened from it, and so it just does make you think, like, and it might be different for me. If I took her to my buddy's place in southwestern Wisconsin with nice open woods and deciduous forests, that might be a different deal than being up in northern Wisconsin where it's just thick and nasty, you know, I mean, you might have the same consideration.

You know, if you live in Nebraska, you might hunt in the downpour all the time and never worry about losing a deer, But if you hunt Louisiana, you might you know, Yeah, that's a good point. Well, ah, that is the toughest of lessons, right there, No doubt about that. Yeah, it was. It was a pain. And what really sucks is that little five point was like the buck we were hunting. I was like, that's the guy who's living here,

and I think that's the one we're gonna kill. And now we don't have anything to work with, so I gotta wait for somebody else to move in. But you know, it is what it is. It's it's a learning experience every year, and that one, that one was a lesson that she was going to learn eventually and I was gonna be reminded of and it just happened to happen this year. Yeah. Well, I hope things trend back up for you and your daughters here in the coming weeks. Do you wanna want to hear about my story and

lessons learned? I do. I can't wait. All right, So Idaho year three. I've done full recaps of the previous two years of hunts here on the podcast, so any long time listeners should should know what's happened here. But I'm gonna give you a really quick cliff notes to lead you up to this point. Because when I set out for the first hunt, first day of our season, I said, all right, this is like day sixteen, and our buddy Sam who tagged along for some of it. Uh,

I was like, what do you mean day sixteen? This day one. I'm like, no, this is like day sixteen because we hunted two different times the previous two years. And I feel like now today is like the accumulation of all these other hunts leading up to it, Like I've been whittling away, whittling away of figuring out, figuring out, and finally like I know the spots within the spots, I have a plan A, and I have a Plan B, and I know where these things are and like I've

got it nailed finally. Okay, That's how I thought going into this. And um so year one, the very quick cliff notes like me and my buddy Josh further showed up to this brand new piece of public that I had just like Blast one night in summer was the extent of experience I had out there in Year one. We start hunting it and right away like we're seeing a lot of deer and like we have some close

calls with nice bucks. But then very quickly like we're seeing people like every night walking past us or walking or we're walking past them or we're seeing trucks at the trailheads, and like every day there was some kind of bump, some kind of running with folks, and like very quickly, dear behavior change. I saw a couple of really nice bucks, but then had like a bunch of kids drive UTVs all around me and like just destroy

the whole area. So that was year one. It was promising in a way because we saw a good deer and a bunch of deer, but discouraging because like hunting pressure like blew up everything. We thought we might be able to make a move on. That was year one. Year two we go back in and we said, all right, hunting pressure is a problem. We're gonna just get past them, like we're gonna get deeper and both like farther in from the access points and then also deeper towards the

deep deep bedding cover that's along this river corridor. And we start doing that, and right away we uh start you know, seeing dear, we kind of edge in a little bit further. Each day we have close calls. Josh had several nice close calls with good bucks. Missed a buck twice. I had to throw that. I always have to throw that in is that why he isn't on this podcast. Yeah, he didn't want to relive that again.

And then I pushed in discover this new betting here on these islands and had you know, two different shooter bucks within the arrangement behind brush and saw a bunch more movement that you know, really gave me a firm idea of okay, like we're so close, but we just ran out of time. So that was year two. Again though we're seeing people like there were folks going in

two miles with us. I couldn't believe it. There was you know, bumped into folks here and there, trail cameras, so we knew pressure was still a thing, but we were we were in it, like we were getting deep enough that we were still in it. So year three I've said, okay, I know we have to get into where we kind of finally settled on there at the end last year. Um, I know it'll be deer moving back there. I know their patterns. We just have to

tweak things. We are so close. So this summer I went back in there and did a little more scouting, scouting out a few more areas, went further than I've gone in the past, kind of the spots that I had observed last year from afar, I went and walked on foot and so, okay, this is why the deer were doing this thing, and okay, this is why they were doing that other thing. So, for example, at the end of year two, I had been on working this island, and you might remember this, Tony, I was texting you.

I was like, I had these bucks come through heading kind of northwest to southeast and the head of that way in the evening, and then the morning they came up the opposite side of the island, like seventy yards across this little opening and went back the other way. And then the next day they went back that way again. And so I was trying to figure out, like, are they gonna come on the north side of the island to the south side of the island, and why did they always kind of hook down at the end of

this island. I didn't quite know the answer to that. So the summer, when I back in there, I walked it all and I found that there's this channel that where I've been crossing. It was pretty narrow and relatively easy to cross, but if you kept going down to the east, that channel went from being like a creek to all of a sudden expanding into like a great big backwater and basically impassable, like they could if they wanted.

But none of these deer, we're going to go across this like fifty yard sixty yard wide big pond when they could just cross here at the beginning of that little shallow spot. And what I realized when I got there, I saw that, and then all this sign showed like oh wow, all of those deer, they're they're going on opposite sides of the island, but when they get to this point, they're all coming. They're all funneling down to this crossing. So I realized, like, all right, I found

the spot within the spot here. And then I found like a similar kind of thing, different specifics, but another one of these like spots within the spot on another section of the public and another zone I kind of explored a little bit. Year one and two, I found another one. So I had like three of these spots that were fine too, And I thought this summer, so coming into the hunt, when I talked to Sam, like man,

this is day sixteen. I got him dialed. I knew, like, all right, I've got this Plan A that is like keyed up, and then that that doesn't work, Okay, I've got this other Plan B that I think is just going to be a great opportunity to and if that doesn't work, I still know this other spot that I've really you know, worked and figuring it out, and they're

gonna be there. I should at one other point, which is that because of all that hunting pressure we experienced in year one and year two, that first week, we got to thinking that this might be like the opening week effect that you've experienced and I have experienced, and a lot of folks I think over the last I don't know, five plus a or something like that. As as kind of this early season opener hunting has gotten

more and more popular. It seems like everybody's out there opening day in these early states, Nebraska, Kentucky, North Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, wherever. If you've got that early September thing, it's it's kind of rare still, right, Not all states are open, so everybody floods to these states to hunt those first few days.

So I thought, how about I just devoid that first week of crazy, come back two and a half three weeks later and come in like late ish September, when maybe all these guys that have been hunting or off to other states now or they're off to hunt Elk or Mulety or something, and maybe we'll have the woods to ourselves now and hopefully, you know, with three weeks under their belts, maybe these deer have like they got blown up that first week and got really pressured, but

if it died off the next two two and a half weeks, maybe they'd get back to being comfortable again, and you know, we'd have this shanger a lot of type situation. That was my hope and my theory. So we decided to show up on September I don't know, or something like that to hunt that like third and fourth week of September. So those are my thoughts letting into it, Tony and listening to this, does it just

make you laugh? Are you just sitting Chuck? You're just like following I feel like you're just following my thought process from like the last couple of years. And I know how it shakes out. I know how it chok out for you, and I know how it chook out for me. And man, there is just a saturation point out there with pressure that it takes a while to overcome.

And I know your thought process seems sound when you're like, well, it's been a couple of weeks the opening, the opening week for first should have died down and things should be back to normal. That has not been my experience in some of these early opener states. It's like maybe maybe a month later, maybe five weeks later, you can start getting back on them in a in a natural

kind of movement pattern. But man, it's it's tough when you hunt those states that open early in the in the velvet pressure is real, and it's just it's just a lot of people out there pushing them around. It changes things in a hurry, and it changes them for a while. Yeah, And and that's that's what we came to see two. Unfortunately, because that first night I went to this that location I told you about with the island and the backwater and everything, and I felt really

good about it. And Josh went into this location last year that heat hunted and fine tuned and had these close calls over the nice Buck. We both went and there feeling really good. But I got a couple pieces of bad news leading up to it, Like a day or two before this, another hunter that I bumped into their last year and then exchanged phone numbers texted me and said that, man, it doesn't look good in there.

I've been in there. There's very little sign um and there had been like some development on neighboring private lands, some new stuff had been built, and he was just like, I just don't know what's going on. Doesn't look as good. Because I was a little concerning. And then when we drove up one of the access points, not the one that we're going to use, but one of them had three trucks, and so that made me think like, oh, man,

that doesn't bode well for my theory. Um. But we go in, I go to this spot I set up, feels great. I was very confident going in. We brought e bikes this year so that we could come in and out faster and hopefully lower impact on these deer when we're rolling by them in the mornings or late at night. Um, because it's like a two plus mile previously have been a hike, So we were doing like two miles in the morning, two miles out midday, two miles in the afternoon, two miles out in the evening,

so we're doing eight mile days. So this year we brought quiet cats and that was huge, really really nice to have that. Uh So we get in there. I'm feeling great. I'm buzzing along on my bike, just like thinking about how nice it's gonna be to roll one of these bucks out here tonight on my little trailer that I've got back in the truck, and YadA, YadA, YadA, and uh get in the tree and I see one dough for the entire night, one dough previously in this spot.

You know, you're seeing fifteen twenty plus deer, bunch of bucks. One dough on our first hunt. Josh same thing. First hunt of his in this general area last year, he saw like two shooters a bunch of deer. He saw nothing, zero deer. That's day one. I'm gonna fast forward and move quickly through some of these events here because day two we have very similar situations. I decide based on what I saw Day one and based on kind of

some funky wind stuff that was happening night number one. Um, you know, one thing I did have that that made me a little bit up in the air was that when the wind died, I had like a weird kind of like thermal thing with my wind. It was supposed to be going southwest, and every once in a while it would push east, and I think that was what I found is in some of these spots along this river, it doesn't happen all the time, so it's like you don't you don't know it until you're in this situation.

I haven't been able to figure out why or what features of the land causes, but in some areas you'll get this effect where the current of the river kind of pushes your wind along. It seems to be like a very low wind speed um in certain like if you're deep enough or close enough to this like canyons wretch,

it pulls. In other places it will be true to the forecast, and in this particular area that particular night, it just gave me a handful of times where it pulled more from an easterly direction, and that wasn't good for the movement I was expecting. So after that first night, I was like, Wow, it might have been bad wind ish, but also like that was not the way it should have panned out. I should have still saw more than that.

Josh still should have been seeing something with a good wind he had, So I decided to one second, mark, can we can we hit on that point with the river quick? Because I think I think something there that's worth talking about is you know, probably with that the river situation, it's probably the temperature differentiation. Don't we think like the water is colder and it's that's probably have an effect on the wind there, or do you think

it was a train thing? Well, I think it's it's definitely a combination of those things, right, because there's like a big hill above the river. So you've got two different things possibly happening. You've got a normal thermal dropping off of these hills right in the evening of things cooled down, so you have that possible thermal feature, uh, And then you do have like you said, the water

temperature difference that's gonna pull things um. And then you also have just like how like how might a south wind? So this hill is big hill, like almost a canyon. It's like a one I don't know how to describe. It's like almost a cliff on the north side of this river corridor, but nothing to the south. So if you have a pure south wind, it's like coming from the south and hitting that cliff and then is that cycling back and doing funky things too. Um, so there's

like three different possible things happening. And over the last three years I've seen I've seen the number of different funky things, but the most consistent thing that I've realized is that if you have a very low wind, more often than not, it's gonna suck. It's gonna turn into a wind that kind of goes with the current of

the river which is going from east to west. So yeah, I mean, I think we don't it's really hard to pin that stuff down, but you know how common it is to like encounter that right And you know, we we talked about thermals, and we write about thermals, and you know, anybody who's ever hunted in the mountains probably understands thermals better than somebody who hasn't, because they're so

extreme typically in the mountains. But even even when you do that and you're in a situation like we were this year when we were out hunting where it was hot, like really hot for out conditions that especially at the elevation we were at, and it wasn't getting that cold, you didn't get that huge rush of thermals in the afternoon coming down. It took a while for it to switch, so you had this like because it wasn't such a

drastic change in temperature. It was more of a like a subdued thermal, which like was terrible because you couldn't count on it for a long time doing you know, you're like, hey, you're supposed to be rushing down the mountain here pretty soon, and it's doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And I see that in the white tailed world to where it's like if your temperatures aren't, like if it's not really changing throughout the day, sometimes you

don't get like really reliable thermals. If it's you know, only drop in a few degrees is the sunsets, you're gonna get a thermal, but it's not the same thing as if it was really gonna get cold and you know, drop ten or fifteen degrees in the next hour and a half or something. And that's that's like a spot situational type of thing, and it saves a lot of freaking deer. Yeah, And it's yes, it's it's hard to predict to like you can't really peg like, oh, it's

going to happen this situation or not. It's you have to assess quickly and then make a gut decision on like is this gonna stick? Like is it gonna is this what it's gonna keep doing? And if so, then you need to adjust. But then there's always like I always worry, like you find like a weird wind thing that's going on, and then you're stuck thinking, Okay, do I trust that this funky thing that's happening right now is going to continue? Or in half hour is it

going to switch back to the predicted wind? And then I'm going to be like s O L because I didn't set up for that. That's I don't know the right answer, just making a gut decision in the moment based on you know, experience in the conditions. I guess yeah. And it's it's so it's so tied to so many

different things, right. It's tied to the temperature and probably partially to the seasonality of it, but also, like you said, if you have one weird terrain feature around you, like I've I've got a spot in North Dakota that I've killed some bucks on and it it's like next to a huge rock wall, like I don't know how tall it is, but if you fell off, you'd be dead if you hit the rocks halfway down, Like it's it's tall, and it's always kind of a crapshoot when you get

in there, like, well, how is that going to affect the wind? Because depending on which way the wind coming from, it might be blowing over you and you might not have any wind hardly, or if it's coming the other way and it's it's blasting against that rock wall, it's like, man, I shouldn't even be here, and it's you know, that's only one little small spot there. I bet you if you were, you know, five yards away from that, you'd have vastly different experience with the same wind. True, I

think that. I think the takeaway there is just do not trust your wind forecast as gospel ever. Yeah, always takeaway, yes, always, always, always be monitoring as you're going along, and and be willing to adjust and accept your new reality. I think

that's that's a big one right there. Right, So excuse me, so back to my next day and kind of a big kind of I don't know if this is a lesson I learned, but this is like a thing I kept reminding myself of on the trip, so like a like a maxim or a like don't ever forget this mark as I'm talking to myself is like, you have to be willing to pivot fast on these kinds of hunts. When I only have a way, it's six days. You don't have a lot of time to ride a dead horse.

So that first day it was dead. This other hunter was telling me how was dead. I had one trail camera back there that had been dead leading up to this. Josh hunts his honey hole, and that's dead. And even though I had been in love with this place leading up to the hunt, I just had a lot of red alarm bells going off. And I, like the previous me would have been like a guy, that place is so good, you gotta you gotta go on there more.

But I decided to pull the plug, and I decided, you know what I got, you gotta pivot, Like, there's a whole bunch of things here that do not seem to be where you want them to. You need to find where the deer are. Now. The pressure thing must be more than you thought it was gonna be. These deer have been impacted more than you were hoping they

would be. You gotta find him. So day two I went past my night my day one location, worked my way um into a new area about about a half third to a half mile further than my original location. Scouted my way into a spot and found a spot that was about is deep from like distance between cover and like the distance from river to food was um, but gave me a little bit of an observation zone. So this is the zone I've never been into before. I could see, like in a couple of different windows

out to a good distance. I had a number of decent runs that were all kind of converging in this um I don't know how to describe it. There's like this little pockety open stuff and then it pinches down to thick cedars heading towards these crop fields like four yards away or something. And I thought, Okay, this is a nice observation location. If deer are in this new chunk, there's gonna be some that passed through here. And all I wanted to do on this day was like, I

just want to know I'm back in the deer. Where are these deer? Where have they been pushed to? So my theories that they were pushed, you know, another third, two a half mile back into this stuff. So now we're like two and a half miles from the nearest road access long story shore. In this I sat at the ground because I didn't find the right tree, decided I wanted to be in the right spot. And I saw almost nothing. Again, I saw one little tiny buck like a year probably a year and a half old,

maybe the worst two year olds you ever saw. Um, but that was it. And so again, and this is stuff that should be good. Like in previous years, you hunt this kind of place, this far back off the road, you'd be seeing a lot of deer. Again, nearly blinked. Josh stuck it out kind of near his little honey hoole. He tweaked it a little bit, but again blanked or saw like one spike or something. So again, now I'm thinking, all right, you gotta pivot. You can't ride a dead horse.

Day three now I'm in real desperate search mode, like this is this is not at all like what we're expecting. There not any of the places we thought they'd be. I haven't been seeing fresh tracks, I've not seen a lot of droppings. I've not seen a single rub, nothing like no early velot rubs, nothing like that. So Day three, I go hard. I go all the way to that area that I hunted day two and then decide, okay,

I'm gonna take this. There's like there's old two tracks and stuff that cut through a lot of this public land because ranchers run cattle and stuff, there's some of these places certain times of the year. So I decided, okay, I'm gonna ride my bike as far as I can take it, which is about two and a half miles. I'm gonna get off the bike, lock it up, and then I'm gonna walk this two track all the way to the river. I'm gonna go all the way. Is is far away from the food as I can possibly get.

And what I've learned is that they're they're bedding along this river. So I'm gonna go right to the river and then I'm gonna work that river up. And I had a unique situation here, and this brings me to my third I think it's my third major lesson, major takeaway, which is do not ignore tracks. And this is something like early on my deer hunting career. I didn't give him much attention at all. Trail cameras are very sexy,

all that kind of stuff. But the more and more I'd spend time in the woods in different places, the more I find myself falling back on tracks just like they're the thing. They're the thing. And I had a perfect situation here because the night prior it rained a bunch, and so I knew, okay, that big rain hit. Anything I see today is going to be from the last

you know, fourteen hours. I can I can know with one certainty where the deer are right now, and I'm gonna walk until I find where there are significant numbers of deer. And so I pushed. I mean I went back into some good stuff. I went way back to the river, and I crossed all these different tracks, like two tracks, sandy areas where like you could very very

clear clearly see if there's any deer. I watched this two track the whole way I biked out, and there was like zero deer for almost three miles, Tony, I mean, they were gone, gone, And so I just kept going and I kept pushing. I walked into stuff that like the last two years, I never would have touched with a ten foot poll because I've been so paranoid I was gonna spook deer, so paranoid I blow it up. But I just had came into this with this idea like you're I'm not gonna settle, Like I'm not just

gonna ride something because it looks good. I'm not gonna ride something because it should be good. I'm gonna go until I know there's deer and tracks. We're gonna tell me that story. And so I walked and walked and walked and worked my way past this whole island that last year had been loaded with deer. Nothing. This year worked my way aving further. Now I'm three miles back and I get to this next island, and this was like,

this is the farthest point from the access points. Like if you came in from the way we were coming, you'd be about three point two miles or something. If you came in from the farthest other side, the far western side, you'd be another three point two miles to come from that way. So this is like as as deep as you can get from east to west waves and this last island, I'm thinking, well, this has got to be where they're at. There should be deer, here.

It's really hard to get to. I don't know anyone crazy enough from white tail hunting perspective out here that would do this. And so there was a channel where some parts of the year there was water running through it off of the river, but right now it was dry. It was covered in rocks on the bottom, but there

was kind of raised banks on either side. And so I walked the not on the island, but the main land side where you could see trails and stuff where deer head you know, dropped off the bank and got into the channel to cross, and you could just perfectly see where deer historically had gone down because there's this beaten down you know, kind of gullies, little trails where they coming off that cut off bank, and you can

see where there's there's nothing, there's nothing. And then tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks, all right, my first like good fresh set of tracks. And based on what the wind was doing, I knew like with this kind of river poll with the current, I was like, okay, I gotta get in the west side of this island. So I'm gonna scout my way all the way down this and check and see if

this continues to be a thing. Like, are there more dear crossing onto this island different spots, And once I get all the way to the west side, I'll have I'll know what's going on, and I'll be west of where this wind is gonna pull. And so I worked my way down this channel, and like, here's a crossing with a bunch of tracks. Here's a crossing with a bunch of tracks. Here's a crossing with a bunch of tracks.

I would say a bunch. I'm not saying like dozens of deer, but like a few deer per track per crossing, a few deer per crossing, which was like monumentally more than anywhere else. It's a long story short. I felt great about this. I finally thought, all right, like I found the deer there in this farthest nastiest part and their back bedded on this like willow nasty thicket island right in the edge of the river set up, and ended up feeling like I was in the game and

thought I was gonna like make it happen. I had a little buck pop out of the island, go across. Another little buck popped out of the island, goes across. Another little buck pops out of the island goes across. I see a couple of dolls come out and do it. I actually had some elk pop out, which I was not expecting. Oh, and then it last light to an unidentified deer cross like as far away from me as

I can see down the channel they go out. So that night I felt pretty good, like I saw deer, I saw some year and a half old Bucks, and I saw a couple of dolls. That was good. That was like as good as it's been. I felt like I'm kind of in the game. I just said, Okay, tomorrow morning, I'm gonna get up on this mountain and I'm gonna glass down into this channel, and I'm gonna confirm where these deer coming in the most, and i'm

gonna see some bucks. Like I'm gonna dial it in and I'm gonna come back in here and kill him

that next night. So I get out there early the next morning, climb this mountain on the other side of the river, get up top their glass this thing, and I watched this channel for four hours or whatever, and I just saw two doors the whole morning come back in there, and it just like shattered my my idea I was really confident this thing I found, and then I watched this whole area and man, like, there's just

nothing going in there. So now it's day four, and again I'm thinking, you're just not in them, like they're just they've they've been blown out of town. And we were actually driving around at mid day that day and right across the road i'm private land where there was no hunting allowed. Apparently there was like twenty thirty deer, not thirty, maybe twenty deer feeding in an alfalfa field at noon, including like a couple of nice shooter bucks.

So now I'm starting to think, man, did all the deer get pushed off the public onto private Like they're not even here anymore. So now I'm in kind of this this continue with this theme of pivoting and not settling. I decide, okay, we really got to rethink things and see, like what other opportunities are out there. So midday on day four, we went and went to like four totally

different public land parcels like half an hour away. Like we explored every different unit for every different like piece of public in our unit, and we went and drove around, looked at parking areas trying to see whether the's truck tracks. We went and walked a bunch of stuff. We went and glassed a bunch of stuff, just to see like what's here, what's it looked like? Um, and we ended

up hunting. We end up splitting up that night. Me, Josh and Sam hunted three different areas that night to just try to find like, hey, can we find deer anywhere? Can we just get into a place that hasn't been pillaged and that might have deer? And um, we didn't really find him any of those spots. Josh saw like ten tree stands and five trail cameras. I had a bunch of cameras and tree stands. Sam did see a nice buck at last light, but it busted him in

his location, But that was the only deer he saw. Um. And I should also add that day earlier we had found like three different dead bucks on the original piece of public Maybe this is the day prior, But the picture I'm trying to paint here is like what we were discovering was that everywhere we'd been had been like raped and pillaged. I've I think it'd be conservative to say we we saw at least thirty or more tree stands. At least twenty or more trail cameras we found the

three dead deer. One of them had its head cut off. One of them was a really nice buck that looked like it had been hit in the guts and just not recovered. Um, so it was not a pretty picture anywhere. Mark, do you think that this is a there's an outfitter situation going on there, or do you think this is just recreational hunter is just flooding the spot, you know, because that's a lot of tree stands. It's a good question, and I han't the only I guess. I don't know.

There's two things. One like there's always a lot of trucks of these different trail heads. It's different like access points, which makes me thinks just like average dudes, and we've bumped into average dudes and talked to average dudes. This is like it's too close to a population center, and I should preface this, like you and I have talked

about this a little bit. But I've been trying to make this work, this place work because it's close to my cabin out there, and I've wanted, like to have a cool white tail spot near my Idaho cabin and so like I forced the issue even though it's relatively close to a pretty decent population center, and and I kept hoping, like, oh, you can find a way to

make it work. And we're seeing deer, so like you kind of could make it work sort of, But what I'm seeing is that it's it's maybe just not the juice isn't worth the squeeze, because you know, there's just

so many people. And I will say that when I've done my when I did my summer scouting this year, and when I did more scouting last summer, I guess it would have been when I pushed into like some of this, like three miles back in stuff, I found a bunch of double sets, So someone was in there with two tree stands per tree, Which makes me think that someone was going in there and filming hunts, right, I mean, why else would you have Like I probably

found like six seven maybe more tree stands that were set up as double's, Like why else would you do that? Um So, I don't know what the deal is, but it was it was pounded and um to to make what's becoming a long story, I guess a little bit shorter. Day five is pretty uneventful. We end up hunting in the morning and some new spots. We end up hunting in the evening. On the west side access point, which we hadn't hunted yet, but there've been cars in that.

They've been cars in that parking lot, so we've been avoiding it, but they've been gone the last two or three days and we hadn't been able to find anything on our side. So I said, all right, well, let's let's give that a shot. I'd scouted some sweet looking locations over there. Maybe these guys are just hunting close up towards the food sources. And if I go deep into the riverbed stuff again and get back on these islands, maybe they're pushed back in there. UM went deep on that.

One thing I felt good about this trip was like I and this is like one of those lessons or one of those like takeaways for me, It is like, just don't settle for good enough, don't settle for and it looks like it should be good. I decided this year, like I'm not just gonna ride something that should be good. I'm gonna confirm that it is good. So I'm gonna go until I see that concentration of sign, whether it be you know, you know, if it was a rout

hunted be rutting signer. Right now, I'm looking for the fresh tracks or fresh droppings or something. So I kept pushing and went deeper than I've ever been on that

side and got into a location it looked money. It was like there was a crossing of the main river, and then there was like a flooded ditch that converged with that, that had a crossing over that, and I could see back into two of these different willow covered islands, um, and they all came together right there, and I thought, gosh, there's gotta be something that's gonna come through here, and all I saw was a dough and a moose. Um. So this brings us all to the last evening, which

is the last kind of interesting thing that happened. So everything I just told you is now in the rearver mirror. We had our plan a's and Plan b's, and those ended up, you know, being devoid of deer. So then I kept pushing and exploring new places, and I really didn't find anything except for that one island, that three point two miles in island where I had the fresh tracks going in there, but you know, and I didn't see anything but the does and the year and a

half old. And when I glassed at the next morning, I just saw few does. So I kind of, you know, lost the confidence in that. And then we went and we hammered. We kind of did like a like a shotgun approach, and tried to look at all these different parcels around there to try to see if there's maybe been a hidden gem that nobody else is hitting, but all the signs pointed to it just being pillaged across

the board. So now we're to our last night, and I look at like everything I have available to me and everything I've learned, and I tried to think back, like is there any place that is there any rock I've left unturned? Is there anything that seems worth my time again? And the only thing I could come back to was that island, that three point two miles in their island where I found the fresh tracks going in and we're I saw less than I expected, but I

still did see like that was the best movement I saw. Yeah, So I decided, like, all right, I'm gonna give that one more try. A little bit of me thought like that just seems like it could work if if the deer haven't been completely pushed off. The sign you saw indicates that it should be decent, even though you didn't see a good buck like you were hoping and thought you would. And I get in there, I find a good spot to set up along the crossings. They're based

on what the wind was doing. And last three minutes of daylight, three or four or five minutes of daylight, a buck steps out into the channel about a hundred yards down from me, and then a second one and they're both nice mature bucks step out in this channel, make a scrape, like both of them. Like one makes a scrape, one the next one walks up, makes a scrape, and then they spar and then it's dark and they I see them like in fading light. I see them

turn and they don't cross the channel. They go right back into the island. They didn't even leave this island before dark, and that was the end of the hunt. Way to leave the next morning. So my take away from that, I had two thoughts coming out of that experience that night. One part of me said, one part of me countered that as a win, like a small win, because I had done I had thoroughly explored and tested and tried and examined all my options, and finally the

last night I found a shooter Buck. I found mature bucks in this place that just been pillaged. I finally found him kind of confirmed, you know, that I was on the right track, and if I had more time, maybe I could have made a move now that I saw him, and maybe would have had a chance. So a part of me said, hey, cool, you you worked hard and you kind of found him. The other side of me said, was I too fast to judge, to

make a judgment on that spot. So I talked earlier about some of my takeaways and lessons were, don't settle, pivot fast, you know, exploring the move on. But in this case, I checked it out and I made a judgment on it after a night in the morning, and then I moved on, when in fact, there were two mature Bucks there that I didn't know, and now I, you know, had skipped the last three days there, that I could have spent their fine tuning and maybe seeing them and making a move on them, and instead I

was elsewhere. And now when I finally do see him, it's too late. So that's that's how the hunt ended. Those were like the things I was thinking about, the lessons I learned, or the questions I had, um, what what's your analysis of that last day question? And anything

else that talked about. Man, I think you got you got sucked into the conundrum of do I do I put my resources into finding a really good spot or do I put my resources into figuring a spot so I can figuring out a specific spot so I can hunt it really well. And it's tough, man, I mean, it's it's really hard to overcome that level of pressure.

But when you keep pushing it like that and you find those bucks on that island and you see that behavior, you go, Okay, they didn't leave, Like there's there's still dear there to work with, but you've got to figure out how to how to beat him at that new game and they're not giving you much and so it's like,

I don't know, I consider that a pretty big win. Honestly, like to see those deer and at least get to that point with them, because you know, I mean, if you if you go check out these other spots there and you guys kind of divide and conquer and you go this is this is the same story everywhere else. Then it's time to go back and just figure out

what you're missing. And I think I think the not settling approach to that is really really important because it did put you in a position to find those deer, even though you didn't kill them. Like I think, I think that's a good lesson there. I think it just really sucks to learn. Yeah, yeah it was. It was a doozy and I learned. Like you said, like, I mean,

there's there, there's that whole not settling thing. The thing I don't have a firm sense of yet is like there's this fine line right as you describe there, Like there's the don't settle, but then there's also like sometimes though you don't want to be too fast to judge, and like how do you like, how much time do you give a spot? How much you know, how do you make that decision? I think that just comes down to the experience and gut feel and how much time

you have in general. Right Like in my case, I had six days. I just didn't have much time to work with. I think if I had a season to work this area, I would have been much more patient and willing to give a spot time right, but in this case is like I gotta I gotta get eyes on something, or like I need some kind of confirming sign that I'm in the right zone so then I can start fine tuning. But until I have something that confirms them in the right zone at least, this is

my theory. My theory was like, I'm not going to dedicate real time to a spot until I know I'm in the zone. And I just wasn't seeing anything that made me think like this was a this was a spot except for that island. That spot. That island was the one where like I thought, gosh, it should be but I got I got deflated by that morning where I thought like I would see something really great coming in, I'd see a bunch of deer, I would see what should have been there, what the sign told me should

be there, And there's just a couple of dolls. And that made me think, yah, more the same and maybe maybe I don't know, maybe I should maybe that was a mistake, or maybe hey, that just was the luck of the draw. And they didn't. They didn't come through that that morning, and they did the next night, and that's you know, that's just hunting. Sometimes they do things

and they don't repeat them. Sometimes they do something wonky one day and they do something differently next And no matter what you do, you wouldn't know um on a short hunt like that, So it was it was an interesting challenge. I did feel decent about that kind of

small wind there at the end. I was happy with the way that I kind of pushed through places and explored things, was more aggressive in my scouting, and I really think tracks were big thing that I used all of these hunts that you know, I've used more and more every year, and I think last year, you know, on the Deer Country tour, when I went to all these different places, like very different styles, very different regions, I didn't have trail camera information, I didn't have like history,

it was all brand new. I kept on finding myself falling back on tracks more and more when you're in those types of situations and getting more comfortable with interpreting. And I think that, you know, even though I didn't kill I think like that was like a really clutch part of my small wind um. I think I think that's one of the biggest benefits of doing on It's like this is you realize what your crutches are at home, and you know you I've talked about this a lot.

When you go on the road and you've got four or five, six days to kill one on public land,

those trail cameras aren't doing you any good. Like, it's just it's not to me, it's not worth even bringing them along because when you can go out and find fresh sign rubs and scrapes and you can see those tracks, especially if you're on a riverbo the situation, that's the best you can do because you can you can gauge how current it is and and how heavy the traffic is so important and you're just not gonna get that. You don't have enough time to make a trail camera

work for you that way. Yeah, yeah, that's Um, it's an easy trap to get sucked into these days of how prevalent cameras are and how short term satisfying cell cameras are. Right, Um, but I'm finding more and more the same thing that, um, they can they're almost like golden handcuffs, Like they seem so great that you don't want to leave him behind. But if you get too dependent on them, you can get stuck in a marriage

you don't want to be in. Yeah, so let me let me ask you the question that everybody really wants to know the answer to. Mark. Uh, how come you're going out to Idaho in mid September and you're not hunting elk? You're going back to the same pressured public land for white tails when you could be out there hunting elk. What's going on there? Yeah? Man, me and Josh when we were driving home, we said, we asked ourselves the same questions. We're like, all right, this is stupid.

We've been. We've been just like I said, we're trying to make this spot work for white tails because I want to be at my cabin and get my money's worth out of those mortgage payments. And uh, the thing is that we've got running elk two yards away from the cabin. Like what am I doing? Um? So, yeah, one of two things is gonna happen next year. I'll tell you one. We're done with this spot for white tails,

like I've done. I've given it three years. Every year after the hunt, we're like, probably shouldn't do that again, and then we get sucked into it. Um we're done. Uh. So I'm gonna do one of two options. Either Number one, I could try to get some private permission in some of these places, Like I still I still love being out there in my place. I still want to have a white tail spot, So I might explore some private options, knock on some doors, talk to some ranchers, that kind

of thing. That's a possibility. Or number two, I'm gonna say forget the white tails. I can hunt those other places. I'm gonna finally get back to elk hunting and uh scratch that it so tb D my friend. Yeah, I want everybody to remember that you said you're done with Idaho white tails in that spot, because I'm curious what happens next summer when we're bearing down on this season. But my my vote would be to say, you know what, those white tails, the other guys with seven thousand stands

in there can have them. I would go chase those

googling bowls for a couple of days. Yeah, man, I'm I'm over it, And I do think you know, in all seriousness, there is like a lesson there that should be just like keyed in on again, Like you can sometimes do almost everything right and do all the things you're supposed to do on a public land hunt, and sometimes you know that that pressure is just maybe not one insurmountable because you know, maybe you could, but is it still fun or or could you just explore some

new areas and find some places it's a little bit less pounded, or explore some different opportunities. Um, I don't know, there's a there's something to be said for I just not dealing with that bullshit. I guess I'm adress say well, I mean, I honestly think that, you know, when you talk about that, I'm sitting here and I'm like, I'm

thinking about hunts myself. I've had that are just like that, and it happens a lot, and it's probably a pretty good thing to talk about in the industry because we've been just painting this picture that you know, go on public land white Tales, it's gonna be a blast. You'll challenge yourself, you'll kill the best trophy of your life.

But so often when you go, this is more of the outcome where you're like, man, there's way more people here and wayfeer dear, and this is a real heavy lift to get around any decent buck, And you know you don't see that part in a YouTube video or an Instagram post for the most part, Like it's hard to kind of like wrap your head around what that kind of hunt really entails until you're in it, and

it's a vastly different thing, and it's real common. It's and like we said earlier, it's really common now that this is so popular and people are really you know, turned onto the early season hunts and some of these destination hunts like this is this is not like an unusual outcome or experience, and people should be aware of that. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean, like there's to your point about how

popular some of the stuff has gotten. And I've heard you talk about this in the past two Like right, there's some media these days that show public Land like incredible success on public Land all over the place, and it makes you think like it's a piece of cake almost, But what you forget is that there's like ninety days of time being invested and there's like ten guys out there all scouting and hunting and doing all this stuff, and they still just have like a handful of winds

along the way. Um, you shouldn't beat yourself up if you go out there's a solo person and try to pull it off in six or seven days and instead have a a tough, a tough week. Um. And I don't want to paint any of this is like complaining about people being out there right, because I'm like, personally it makes things hard. But at the same time, like, I'm glad there's other folks that are getting hunting like this is this is not an indictment of folks getting

out there and learning to hunt. Like I'm glad there's folks learning hunt. I'm glad people are out there enjoying our public lands. Um. All the things are are good things, but on an individual basis, it does make for challenges sometimes and you just gotta learn how to work around it. Yeah, well,

and I don't. I don't know about you, but when I deal with something like that, and the thing that just like constantly, like that little voice in my head always tells me like somebody is figuring it out, you know, like somebody's in there getting that right, and you're not. And that drives me crazy. Oh. I was almost that somebody to those other thirty seven guys out there, and you said one more day, tony, Yeah, one more day, one more day, and would have been another ship show probably,

but I'm gonna take my small win. I'm gonna run with it. I'm gonna say that the season got off to an interesting start. Learn some stuff, and uh I'm ready for Michigan open. Nice, nice, alright, buddy, I think that should be a rap today. Um any other final thoughts? No, just get out there and hunt hot weather, cold weather, Be careful of your shots in the rain. Don't go hana ida ha white tales. That's the takeaway, right, that's the big one, and flashing lights on the billboard. All right, man,

thanks for joining me. Thanks all right, and that's a rap. Thank you for tuning in. Just a reminder, Season eleven of meat Eater coming to the meat eater dot com on October, and my show Deer Country new episodes out every Tuesday on the meat Eater YouTube channel. Check it out. Like those videos, leave me a comment, subscribe and watch Deer Country. I thank you, I appreciate you keep me in a job, folks. Thanks a lot, and until next time, stay wired to hum