Ep. 597: Rut Hunting Lessons, Successes, and Sorrows

in the peak best of the year. Time to be deer hunting. It should be great. And what I want to do for you today is share some important lessons learned, some high level ideas and specific tactics and different things that you can do to have success over the coming days and weeks. And the way I want to do that is by telling you the story of the hunt that I just finished up. I just finished up hunting

one Week in November. This is UH as part of a show that we film called One Week in November, and basically, if you are not familiar with the show, it follows myself and this year, four other hunters as we hunt different parts of the country for the first seven days of November and you get to see what each day of that month looks like as we go through, you know everything the RUT can throw at you. So

I want to tell you my story. I want to break down how things went for me and use that as as kind of a canvas to cover a number of different deer hunting ideas, specifically for how to have success at the time of the year. But before we get into that, I want to, uh, I want to kind of shine a spot let on something that you might have missed last week. I just mentioned this is the best time of year, right, you might say it's

the most wonderful time to kill deer. Now if you miss this, at the end of last week's podcast, we had a special little surprise for all of you, a song that was produced by our two podcast producers, Phil and Hayden, who put together an amazing original rendition of what we are now calling the most Wonderful time to kill deer. It is a riff on the most wonderful time of the year, the Christmas Carol, which we talked

about uh last week. I guess in RUT Fresh Radio me, Casey and Tyler, we're talking about how somebody needs to write a song about this, but a deer hunting version of it, you know, taking the Christmas carol and making it a deer hunting song. Well, Hayden and Phil went ahead and did that, and they included it at the end of last week. But I know some of you may not have made it all the way to the

end of the show. So I want you to listen to it now, so to say, at the mood for today's episode, to really get our spirits right, we're gonna listen to this truly amazing Christmas slash run hunting song. Hayden, cue the music boys. Good to see you, Hayden. It's been a while. Hey, sorry, I'm late. I crashed my ponty at gast. I can do a light pool and how to walk the rest of the way. But I'm here now. That's what matters. Give me a glass of Scotch, please, Hayden.

Just two rocks in there. I don't like ice. We're starting already, this is happening, Okay, just give me the give me the glass, thank you. Okay, here we go. It's the most wonderful time to kill dear with the run now, just starting and dashing and dotting and things cutting clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. There's far too much ice in this glass. It's the half happyest season of all. There's gotta be at least twelve with grunting and bleeding and called fronts AND's leading

the last weeks of fun. It's the half puppy seasing of all. There'll be pictures for posting and bragging and boasting and trunk beds with big bucks and tow there will be narrow missed stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks missed with our bows. It's the most wonderful time to kill dear, not just one baby two. There will be no toos of blowing and loomennox blowing and blood trail so clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill dean. Excuse me? Can I have a napkin? Please?

I just spilt some scotch on my loafers. I can't have dirty loafers in the studio. Thank you, tail gay fearsful drinking and big bucks of slinking and chasing and sent checking dose. They'll be fighting and scraping and no more escaping and arrow shot true hitting home key change. But no one told me it's the most wonderful time to kill deer. I was very unprepared for this. There will be much morning sitting in cold fronts, hitting the dawn, crispin clean. It's the most s wonderful time. Oh, the

most swonderful time. Yes, the most wonderful time to kill dean. There's too much ice in the glass. Two rocks, now, come on, I mean that is uh, that's pretty legendary. I mean I when I first heard it, I was I was shocked at how well it turned out. I laughed a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope you did too. And now with that kind of set the mood, all right, your palette is cleansed. You're ready to discuss the rut. Let's talk about my week and what we can all learn from it and what we can all

do better from it. Last week if you remember it, not last week last year, if you remember, I did one of these shows immediately after my week hunt, and I kind of broke down everything that happened, the good, the bad, the ugly, and uh. I wanted to kind of do that same format because it's very different than our usual show right, there's no guest, it's pretty raw. It's completely unplanned. I have no notes, I have no anything.

I'm just going top of mind here. But sometimes that's the best way to to kind of relive and learn from something is to just immediately after it spill your guts. And so that's that's what I'm gonna do, and I hope this is helpful. So let's set the stage. My plan for this week was to have two states lined up that I could hunt. I was going to first go to Nebraska, and then if I filled my tag in Nebraska, I was gonna go to Ohio. Now let's talk about these two locations. Uh. The Nebraska location was

something that I came to last year. Well, actually several years ago. I learned about this general region when me and my buddy Andy May went for a hunt in Nebraska together. Had a lot of fun on that, really enjoyed the country, saw some deer kill the nice buck. So I knew someday, you know, I'd be interested in going back. Well, last year, I was trying to plan a great Plains hunt of some sort to uh foul with Tony Treach and learn his method for decoying white

tails on the ground. So if you watched my show Dear Country this year, you'll see that episode. And what I did is I found some public land out there and set footing up for the first time and ended up, you know, seeing some nice deer having a good time. But I bring all this up to say that at the end of that trip, we actually bumped into a guy who owned some land in the same general region and we asked for hunting permission there as well, and he was incredibly generous enough to let us do that.

So the last two evenings of that hunt was on this private land and on those two nights, you know, it was very short. I just kind of went in for like the last two hours of the night on both evenings, and again we're just doing this on the ground thing with the decourse. I basically was just kind of stalking my way across this property and glassing. But I ended up seeing some deer, including one nice buck,

really nice buck. So that was, you know, on my mind this year when thinking about where do I want to go from my November hunt, and I decided, you know, as some of you might remember, in the you know, weeks and months I've led up to this. I've talked a lot about my goals this season, and one of those main goals is to just get back to the fun of it. Do you know, do things make decisions um because it's fun, Because that's what hunting is supposed

to be. And I at times have been guilty of making it a mission and an obsession and losing the fun because of that. So when I was planning out wherever I want to spend my rut, I thought there would be a lot of fun, and this Nebraska location was that for me. I love these kind of wide open terrain type locations. I like being able to see long ways. I like to be in a spot where it's just beautiful and not a lot of people, and

that is what this location is. So I thought, hey, let's go out to the places gorgeous where I know there's some decent deer where I think it would set up well for the rut because this is kind of wide open terrain with some creek bottoms and river bottom kind of stuff. And you know, typically in that kind of scenario, like you'll find in Nebraska, some of the Dakota's, uh Kansas, of course, parts of Oklahoma, probably eastern Colorado in those types of areas, you know, dear funnel along

tight stretches of cover. There's not a lot of cover, and so where there is, it funnels the deer movement really nicely. So I thought, man, that would work great for the rut out there. So, uh, that's what I decided to do. I decided to head to Nebraska and I would hunt it, you know, the way I would normally hunt that being you know, from a saddle up in a tree. But I'd also bring my decoy so that if I wanted to try the thing I learned

last year with the heads up decoy, I could. And I was also going to bring my full body decoy so that if I want to set up in the tree but put a duke kiy in the ground, I could do that too. Um And basically just you know, go back to a place I love a lot, but hunting in a different way than I did last year. And also I would have, you know, hopefully be able to hunt that public land as well if I needed to to. So that was you know, part one of

the plan, part two of the plan. If I were to kill a buck in Nebraska, I needed somewhere else. I could go for the rest of the week, and that location was going to be Ohio. Now there's like a long winding story of how I came to find a place to hunt in Ohio this year. Um, I spent a lot of time this summer just talking to a bunch of people, asking around, trying to trying to get a spot, trying to get access to a good thing.

And um, you know, I think I mentioned this already with Dan the other day, but had a spot that came together at the very beginning of October, and again, very last minute, nothing happened in the summer despite my efforts. Finally something came together in early October, and then like a week later that fell apart, and then found another thing that kind of found my lap in mid October. So all I was able to do to prepare this Ohio property was get down one day in October and

do a speed scout. I literally got to the property, ran around as much of it as I could, got eyes on as much as I could, and put up some trail cameras. And that's it. So let's discuss what that Ohio property looks like this, you know, in comparison to the Nebraska piece which is a very large ranch. This Ohio stuff was two very small parcels. I had a thirty some acre piece and then a seventy acre piece, and and that's what I was gonna have to work with. Now.

When I got in step foot on those parcels, uh, they were a little bit different than I was expecting. But I guess we can get into that. Um as we move into this story. Let's let's start in Nebraska. All right. It is October. Me and my cameraman, justin Michow hit the road and we drive west west on eighty, heading towards the promised land, heading towards all good things tend to be in the west, and uh, we're really excited. I had very high hopes for the hunt, except for

one thing. There was one problem that was concerning me, and that was the weather forecast. And if any of you hunted over the last ten, twelve, thirteen days, you know what I'm talking about here. We just had a very very warm November. So I saw that in the upcoming forecast, and uh, you know, was worried about it. Even though and we'll talk about this more, even though I know you can have success in hot weather during the rut. You know, none of us are looking forward

to that. No one wants that. Um. It almost always does dampen things, sometimes a little bit, sometimes significantly when it comes to deer movements. So that was staring me in the hairy eyeball. But we're heading west anyways. And we got to Nebraska the next day on Halloween, and spent that first part of the day, you know, meeting with the landowner, thanking him, uh, kind of getting situation,

setting up our spot. He actually had a little bunk house on his property he let us stay at, so we just got situated, and then that evening we decided we were going to go out and glass. Um. The way the plan for the show was was that we were all going to hunt November one through seven, so we weren't going to hunt the evening of October one, but we could scout. So this property, this ranch is mostly big wine up in grasslands except for um a handful of little blocks of timber that some other folks

were hunting. And then there was the river corridor, which was gonna be where we were going to focus our efforts. And basically I'm not exactly sure how long this corridor is but very well might be I don't know, a half mile long, three cores of a mile long, maybe maybe longer. It's a big stretch of river, and all of the covers is tight along that river. So there were two actually three four ish parts across this corridor

where when I had been studying the maps I've been interested. Um, when I had gone and hunted those two evenings last year, I had literally only, like I said, glassed a tiny chunk like a five seven acre nine acre chunk of cover that I had watched. Um, there was a lot more out there that I had no idea what was going on there. So that first night, me and Justin

decided to split up. Justin was gonna go to the far western corner of the property and glass this little stretch of river that bumped up next to some pivot fields on a neighboring property. And I was going to glass the far east corner of this property where it bumped up to some more really big cover on a neighboring property. And I was curious to see if dear would be coming out of the big cover and pinching down into the narrow stuff along where we could hunt.

So both of us got up on hills. We both had at least I had a spotting scope. I think Justin had binos in a tripod and we watched. And I think this is an example of, you know, uh, an important thing to think about when you're heading out for a hunting trip. If you are setting foot on a property for the first time, which is basically what we're doing. I, you know, spent two hours there the previous year, I knew very very little about this property.

UM in this kind of situation where you're brand new and you've got a weak hunt, you might want to consider that first evening or that first day, or some portion of the beginning of your property, putting yourself in learned mode, putting yourself in scout mode, even during the rut. Getting good intel is incredibly valuable. Really good intel and fewer hunts is almost always more valuable than more hunts

that are blind. Right. I think if you've taken one thing from a lot of the great deer hunts we talked to, they all scout a lot. They all prioritize scouting, glassing, walking trail cameras, studying sign whatever it is that's so important. Just randomly sitting in a place is almost never a good idea, even during the rut, even at this time of year when stuff can be kind of crazy, when

anything is possible, even now, you need that intel. And so in this case, I spent that first evening trying to gather some intel, trying to either confirm or disprove my assumptions about how deer might be using this terrain in this November time period. So here's what we saw justin glasses area down there. And he saw maybe ten or twelve does and two pretty nice possible shooter bucks come out of this kind of bushy brushy stuff. I

don't even know what it's called. Um, just some bushes, thick nasty bramble bushes that are down on these river bends, um, kind of the oxbow, like the inside corner of the s curve of a river. There's all that thick nasty stuff down by the river. And then they were scattered cottonwoods and some cedars and stuff like that. And these deer were bedding down by the river, popping out, walking into the grass and slowly kind of working their way

towards those pivot fields. Um, you know, towards the end of the evening, now I should point out it's hot. It was a seventy five degree day here on our first night there, and these deer did move still, but they're moving late, all right. This is Halloween night and one of the best days of the rout right, everybody's excited for the kickoff of the route being Halloween. But there was no movement until that last like forty five

minutes thirty minutes of daylight. But when that arrived, bam, here comes the deer and they start working their way out. And what he noticed was all these deer were still kind of in feed mode. There was no chasing, there was no bumping, there was none of that hard rut kind of stuff. Now on the other side of the property where I was, same kind of deal, nothing, nothing, nothing.

And then forty five minutes before dark, I see a dough, and then about forty minutes before dark, I see another dough and offer another on a corner, another dough, and same kind of deal. Where there's these s bends in the river. So imagine like drawing s river right, a river that's making these s is up and down or left or right, left or right, left or right, and on the insides of each of those bends, there's thick cover, there's some trees, there's bushes. On the outside corner of

each of those ses, there's not as much cover. There might be just a few scattered cotton woods, the little strips of timber, So you've got these bedding areas on the insides, and then you've got these little pinches of timber on the outsides of the s bend. So that's important because this terrain really dictated things that I did. Once we start hunting. So I see these doughs starting to pop out from these little inside corn or betting arears.

I'm watching, and I've got my spotting scope on him, and I look over onto the other property which I can see in the distance, and I see antlers, and I pull up my binos and look at it, and it's a really nice buck. It's a definite solid shooter buck. And then a little bit later, I see another deer pop out back on the other side of the property line our side, and I can see a bigger body deer and it's a buck. And I can't tell how

big this deer is. He definitely was as big as the first one, but I can see him kind of nosing around the does, and over the course of the next minutes, I ended up seeing two bucks cruise along one of those little pinch points I was talking about on the outside bend of the river in between the two betting years. And then I saw that big, big

buck on the neighbor's property. And at last light, another nice buck popped out all of this betting area where he had been, and these dey are all kind of slowly worked their way out from the river cover out towards the hut, towards the grass, heading to parts unknown. So that's when I saw this first night, very encouraging first night sign. All right, So that was how that, you know, early first night scouting went. But I gotta tell you, guys, we have a guest appearance now out

of nowhere. Cameraman Justin Michelle is on the show. Well hello, thanks for hopping on the podcast. Man. It was getting a little bit tough just myself recapping, and when you happen to show up at my truck, I thought, why not have you contribute? So I don't know. So so what I'm doing, man, is just recapping our trip and using it hopefully as a as a kind of a platform to talk about different lessons learned and ideas for hunting the rup. Okay, so I just recapped the scouting

on a first night in the ASCA. I talked about what you saw. I talked about what I saw, um, and coming out of that that evening, basically what I was trying to do is trying to figure out where we should start our hunt, which side of the property we should start, um, and then use that as a you know, an observation and a just kind of strategy from there right. Um, Like we talked about, you know, when we started, I wanted to have a decent place to begin and then we would just watch what happens

and uh and go from there. So based on what I saw what you saw both good. But in my corner, I saw some bigger deer than what you had seen. So decided to you know, start on the east side. And I think that evening we basically just prepared our bags, got our gear ready, UM, and we're gonna head it in the dark and set up a step you know,

stepping foot in that corner for the first time. UM. So day one, November one, Basically, all I'm going on here was what I saw that evening while glassing, and then the map and I described already to folks what the terrain looks like. There's basically the river and the s bends. The bedding is on the inside of these river bends. Then there's these little strips of timber on the outside. And we had a south wind that was basically blowing from our side of the river to the

other side of the river. And so what I wanted to do was set up in a pinch point between these two bedding areas right along the river, so that my wind would blow across the river and not you know, over any terrain where deer could be. Um. So basically, imagine this river that we're making, but have the river you know, kind of run horizontally from left or right,

and there's these s bends going up and down. And I am on the outside bend of one of these river curves with an inside curve on either side that has this thick, brushy, nasty stuff. Um. So we got in there early that morning. I think we headed in like right around two hours before daylight to give us enough time to drive out there, to hike out to this region and then to you know, in the dark, look for a tree that would work. Um, it was a little harder to find the perfect tree than I

thought it was going to be. There. Yeah, it was a bit surprising because even in the dark, they seem deceiving you and you and you don't want to leave sent everywhere, so you're like, oh, there's a good one, and you go twenty thirty yards and it ends up being a little bit too small and yeah, and then every one of them had branches all the way to the ground, so so many little tiny junkie branches everywhere. Um. So yeah, eventually we found what we thought was the best,

you know, given what we were trying to do. And the main things I was trying to do is I want to be in the pinch, but I also wanted to be tight enough to the river that I could have the wind blow while also being kind of close to one of the betting ears, so at least we can kind of be seeing what's going on in there a little bit. So basically I was looking where that piece of timber pinched down to the narrowest at the very beginning of that pinch, and then trying to get

my wind blowing over the river. And and we eventually found a tree that that did that. Um. Took a while head to trim a bunch of those branches off as we were climbing up there to get situated and make a room for both of us. But we got in there daylight arrives, and do we see. I think the first dear was a dope and she came from the grassy stuff, headed into our river corridor and head into the bedding area. Um. And then I think the second deer was a buck, right, I think that was

when we saw that nice. I think it was a ten pointer, but a couple of busted times on one side. And he came from the grassy plain stuff as well, and then headed to this little patch of like three little scrubby trees out in the middle of nowhere and just walked straight to them and then just started working them, made a couple of scrapes, rubbed up on some bushes,

just put on a show. Um. I mean it was beautiful, isn't the sun hitting the back of it his sunlight hitting the back of his breath, and it was just picture perfect. Yeah, everything you could ask for. He was. Unfortunately though, he he just did that and then turned and headed straight uh north. I guess it would have been headed straight down to one of the betting areas,

but on the other side of the property line. We were about a hundred hundred twenty yards or something from the edge of the property and he was on the other side and heading into a betting area over there. Um. I tried grunting and I tried rattling, and neither one of those things really turned him at all. Um did he did he even look? I can't remember. I do think he looked, but I think he had a mission. Yeah, he was. He was determined to do something different. So

he went off that way and disappeared. And from there we saw I think four more white tail does and then four mui does actually um, and then that was it for the morning. Yeah, And it was just very interesting to observe. Um. You know this group of trees which is maybe two three out in the middle of nowhere along a fence line, and that's that was the hub.

You know, those white tails. The does that came in after him went to that same scrape, and I mean that tree had to have been you know, a hunt a couple of hundred yards hundred fifty yards from even the river corridor that we were on. So it was just so unique to watch how these deer using this terrain, you know, and you and I are so like eastern focus for the most part that it's just really cool to train and wrap our heads around, like what the

heck these things are doing? And you know, coming out of that, like seeing what that buck did and where he had going back into that betting are in the neighbors, and then you know, not seeing any cruising bucks working the river the way I thought they would. Um. You know, I was a little disappointed and concerned with that, um enough that I was thinking, like, man, do we need to push down closer to that betting area on the neighbors Do we need to move over there somehow? Are

all the deer coming in and out of there? You know? Two of the good bucks I saw the night before had come out of there. Um, So I was a little worried about this spot I picked, but unsure, So I ended up getting out of the tree, leaving everything in the tree, but getting out and just signed just like scout down a little bit and just see like is there another tree that would still work for our wind and still work at this pinch? Point, but give

us a view at least into the neighboring bedding area. UM. So I snuck over there, and long story short, I just couldn't find anything that would check all the boxes. I really, um, I really didn't want to blow my wind into one of these inside corners where there's likely deer bedded and if I went any further than basically where we were, you were going to have that. And I just didn't in the end think that whatever we would get in a little bit better view would be

worth you know, possibly spooking deer coming through there. Um. And this brings me to another kind of rut foundational question, like a thing I constantly debating with myself when I'm hunting, and that is do you move to new spots when

you're not seeing what you want to see? Or do you stick it out in a location and give it time because it's the rut And if you're in a feature or terrain feature or funnel, or if you're in a bedding area, eventually, if you picked your spots right, if you pick something that should have deer during the rut, you just have to give it time and eventually a buck will come through. Um. And so in this case,

that's what I was debating. I felt like this was a rock solid set up as far as a pinch point with my wind blowing over the water and bedding on either side of the river. Cort or there should be bucks cruising up and down eventually, but we didn't see him that morning. UM. So I had, you know, little questions like do I need to bounce somewhere new, but decide no, trust the feature, give us some more time. UM. That said, we did want to try to learn more

about the area. And this goes back to what I talked about the very beginning, this idea of scouting early in a trip like this. You gotta learn, you gotta figure out what's going on so you can have well, you know, you need data to make good decisions. So I did climb out of the tree, and I think New Nish noon or one o'clock or something like that. Um, we went and kind of lightly scouted to other spots.

We UM did like a speed scout on the outside of some of this kind of cover along the river, and I hung two different cell cameras, um in two different regions, so that you know, we could basically have eyes into you know, well dispersed areas to get a sense of where the most bucks were, where these bucks were cruising, where they're doing what we thought they were gonna be doing. UM, basically just trying to figure out, like, where's the hot spot along this river we need to

focus on. UM. So that's how we spent the midday hours that day. UM. Hot weather again, super hot day. It end up being like eighty degrees I think that day, or close to it at least. UM. But I thought that was a good use of those midday hours when we didn't think that there was gonna be daylight activity in the middle of the day like you sometimes hope poor in the rut. UM. But I thought, hey, this is a good way to still, you know, in a

way be hunting, where we're doing something that's gonna help us. UM. We ended up then heading back out to the tree at like three thirty or four something like that, climb back in, got settled and just kind of crossed all our fingers and toes that there would be more buck activity than there was in the morning. UM. Now from here things take a turn. UM. We oh, I have a pretty slow start to the evening hunt. But the last hour arrives. I think we got to like six fifteen.

I think it's right, And it was just about the same time I saw the first year the night before, and you would be made a bet when we thought we could see the first year two minutes you were really close, so you you won the bat And um, that first dear is a dough shot up at six fifteen, coming out of one of those betting areas that could see off the distance, probably a hundred and fifty yards away or something. And then here comes another dough a

little bit later, there's another dough in a few minutes later. Yep, there's another one. And I think that continued for maybe twenty minutes, something like that. Fifteen twenty minutes and then bam, I see antlers and right on the good buck, good buck at buck right along the edge of that river, following one of these inside bends of the river. Coming out of that bed and cover, here's a nice ten point buck. Um, like a really slid like three or four year old nice deer. And um, he's just slowly

working his way along the river. He's not chasing does he's not even like hard cruising. He's just kind of slowly working his way, kind of like nibbling grass as he goes. And he does that for I don't know, ten minutes as we're trying to get in position and you're trying to find him. Yeah, it was not ideal. From that, he's just always behind trees of something light. He eventually comes out of that river bend and gets into our pinch point and starts walking right towards us.

But there's actually a little barbed wire fence that the rancher has out there along this edge, and he worked that fence, which runs right beneath us eventually, so I've got I've got my bow, and I'm getting all set and you are turned around trying to find him, and he ends up turning and walking like straight at us, and there's branches along this line, and he ends up walking to maybe forty yards, you know, something like that, and then freezes and just kind of stands and he's

looking around, and I think at this point you finally kind of sawing right. Yeah, I can see him. I can see him through the tree at that point. But I'm thinking to myself, this is amazing that we've got a shooter buck almost in range right now. But he's on this line that you know, I'm not gonna get a shot. I can't shoot him right now. He's kind of nervous, he's he's he's just kind of checking things out. I don't know if he was nervous, but he was

just checking things out. And I'm thinking to myself, if he continues as he is, he's gonna walk right to the base of our tree and I will never have an opportunity in this whole way. Um. So I'm concerned about the whole situation. But just prior to that, I guess I forgot. Just prior to him getting there, I spotted another buck coming behind him, and my first words were giant a pointer. So another buck had come out behind him out of that same betting area, and he

kind of slowly follows behind the ten pointer. And this buck looks like an eight point of me, really tall, really heavy, bigger deer. Um. So now back to where I was, that eight point kind of disappears in the cover. The ten pointer had turned the corner and walked right to our edge, and he's now, you know, right in front of us, but we can't shoot now. Next thing

that happens, I hear coming from behind me. And as I told you guys, there's this river, and I had set up so that we would be blowing our wind off into the river, but we weren't able to get a tree that was right on the edge of the water. We had like a twenty thirty yards strip of grass that kind of fell down the hill from us to the water, and that, you know, was the best we could get. Well. Of course, as there's two shooter bucks coming our way. Of course, the one little place in

any direction that you could possibly get our wind. This dough goes and then a second dough, So we've got two doughs slowly coming up behind us downwind. We've got this nice ten point buck forty yards away, just kind of standing looking around, trying to figure out why something

is a little bit off. He's behind branches, and then the big eight steps out and he walks out of the bedding cover into this little kind of meadowy opening, walks across, he's maybe eighty yards away, starts rubbing on a bush, and at this point I don't think you saw him, yeah, because yeah, I he was tucked into that bush still and kind of behind some limbs, and you were so focused on that other buck. Um. I just remember being like, justin, do you see the eight now?

And no, I'm like, he's right there, He's right in the open, Like you stupid idiot, what are you looking at something like that? And then after that it just got worse. But we didn't catch anything, and you you vent yourself because it was right out there and they open and what was your first reaction when you saw that here? How tall? I was just blown away by how tall he was, and I knew like he was

like the next caliber. You know. I could see the tin pointer enough to figure out like he he's a shooter. But then this this other deer was just kind of like so unique, just had such sweet character and um, yeah I thought he was a big eight as well. But yeah, I was just like all you could see was his his antlers were half, you know, as tall

as his body. So um. At that point, I was like still just trying not to get busted by this tin pointer because I knew if we screw up, um, then he's gonna blow this eight out and a week and just like hold it together that you know, the tin was like standing there for you know, what seemed like forever but that eight was making his way in just kind of doing like pre ruddy kind of stuff, and uh, you know, I wasn't at first. I was

thinking like this, this tin pointer has us pegged. But then you know, after the fact, I think I realized that he was probably like could see those doughs before we could, So he must have been like either. I'm not saying he wasn't onto us, but I it did make sense after that he was just like trying to figure out what was going on. Yeah, he he never

he never fully spooted. But what did happen is as that big eight kind of turns and starts angling our way a little bit, he starts making scrapes and stuff like that, and those does, as I mentioned, were coming up behind us, and eventually they headed right to the base of our tree, and they did get down wind of us, and they they never fully blew out, but they knew something wasn't quite right, and one of them eventually did like a little bound bound you know, like

the jump jump off of it way, and then kind of flagged her tail and started walking away. At that point, the ten pointer then crossed the fence and started heading towards those doughs, and then another dough kind of bounded off, so they got kind of spooky, and I don't think they blew. I can't remember, but I don't think they blew, but they kind of bounded off nervous, and that ten points kind of jogged off their direction, and you know, ran within twenty yards of me in the open for

a brief second. But I, you know, I don't see any way I can spin and move without that other bucks seeing us, because he's now looking over us, and you know that that first buck freaking out too, So I just held still, let the ten pointer bounce off away from us, with hopes that the big eight would continue working our way. And I was like, I was, that's the dilemma of the cameraman, is not knowing what

the shooter is gonna do, and all the times. So I kept whispering to you, like what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? And I thought you were gonna pull this, you know, spin three sixty uh shot on this tin, and I'm like tucked into uh my little cubby hole, trying not to get seen. And there was no way I was gonna be able to do it. So we're gonna have to do like this team spin if we were going to do that. So I was

glad you decided not to shoot. I was sitting there debating back and forth, back and forth in the moments, and I just I saw no way that we could pull that off. And I did see a way, like if the eight keeps coming, I do see a way we can pull that off. So so that's what I that's what I leaned towards. And uh so the buck of the two doughs kind of bounce off behind us. The big eight is just staring in our general direction at these deer, wondering why did that buck kind of

bounce off? Why did those dos go the other direction? And he just stood there for a very long time. I mean I don't know how long it was, but it was a long time. He's still there, um and then I'm just in my head just praying like please, please don't freak out, Please don't freak out, Please don't freak out. And this is one of those things where the rut helped us out a little bit. Maybe, you know, because at this time of year, I think deer are

used to seeing does running off in different directions. There used to seeing bucks go run after doughs, and they're used to kind of even some dear blowing and doing funky things like that kind of stuff does happen now? And what was so cool about that is like, I mean, from the moment that buck popped out of that brush, uh, he just like took his time and put on a show. I mean, he was hitting any branch that he could

lick between that spot and where he ended up. He was starting a new screen and uh, you know, licking and just like he was really I mean some of the best footage I feel like I've ever captured of uh dear doing dear things. You know. It was so cool.

And I remember at one point thinking to myself, like just kind of I stepped out of the situation for a brief second, I think when he was just frozen there, or maybe when he was making a scrape, and I just remember thinking to myself, this is so cool, no matter what happens, this is so cool, um because it really was spectacular. I mean, seeing an absolute specimen of

a buck doing that stuff, um man, that was awesome. Yeah, And I think it kind of I don't know about you, but it kind of put me at ease that like, Okay, he you know, he's curious about what's going on with these other dear, but he's not distracted enough that he's not just gonna do what he was gonna do. Yeah, as soon as he started making another scrape, like my worries disappeared and I'm like, okay, We're in the game again, Like this is this is possible. And then my next

thing was like, where's he get go? Is he going to? Basically he was in kind of a low spot, and this timber pinched down towards us, but I didn't know if he was going to go straight across out towards the grass or if he was going to turn left and come down through our pinch, and he he had begun coming our way, but there was still like an option he could possibly pop up to the top and leave,

but he kept angling our direction. And there was a trail that I remember ranging that came by and pinched right in towards us at thirty yards, and he kept angling that direction as he made these scrapes, and I'm just thinking, please please take that trail, Please take that trail, Please take that trail. And sure enough, I mean over

a long process. There was another point where he got to like maybe forty two yards I think he got but he's behind branches, and he did another stop and just look and just like kind of staring, looking around, looking around, looking around for a long time, another like I don't know, five minutes or something, and I'm just, you know, praying that he's going to eventually keep walking and get to that trail. And then he turns and takes a step and then takes another step. Now he's,

you know, thirty eight yards still behind branches. Takes another step, thirty five years behind branches, thirty three yards still behind branches, and then he turns. I remember thinking this, remember this specifically because he turned in instead of heading right across, which would have given me a broadside shop. He took a step hard to the right, as if he was almost going to turn and start going directly away from me,

and I had a moment of panic. I'm like, no, please, no, like you're so close to stepping up behind these limbs and give me a perfect thirty yard bread side shot. Please do not turn directly away and start walking away from me. I remember having a moment of like, no, don't do that, and he took that one step and then turned again and came out broadside and stepped out from the branches. And now at this moment I drawn back,

drawing back, he steps into that lane. And here's what's going through my head at this moment, I just come off of the panic of him walking directly away for a half second. And now he had taken like a step and stopped and then took a step, and they stopped like for the last few seconds. That was the pattern. Step stop for half a second, step stop for half a second. And so he steps and pauses. I'm not drawn.

I get my pin on him and remember thinking, don't let him like, I don't want him to step like I'm worried he's going to take a step just as I'm shooting the bow, and so on impulse, I go, Matt, And I did it very quietly and subtly. I must have had like enough thought in my brain. I remember thinking, like, you don't want to freak him out. So I just as a very light man. It was. It was as light as I could do it. I just wanted him to pause. I just didn't want him to take that step. Well,

when I did that sound. He I mean he spun and mediately and right at that moment I released the arrow. M so the arrows in the air. And the next thing I remember was just thinking, Hi. I think it seemed like it's hard for me to remember exactly what came first, But my first gut reaction was a hit high or I missed. I just remember thinking like, oh shit, I screwed up. Something went wrong. Did he duck the arrow? Did I shoot over its back? Did it hit the

top of his back? Day Rick chet off? It's back. Something didn't look right, And I think I'd like to go back and look at the footage. I still haven't seen it, but I feel like the first thing I said to you was what happened? Or did I miss or something like that. I can't remember exactly is it did I miss? Yeah? And I couldn't answer you because

it was the lighting was just bad enough. All I could do is use like that you know that audio sound, which is we listened for that pop and I didn't hear the pop and so that was like my gut And then the way he ran excuse me, the way he ran off At the same time you were saying I missed or something like that. I think I missed, and so I had immediately thought, Okay, well you must have missed because I didn't hear what I should have heard, and then you immediately had doubt. And then we're watching

him just run like a racehorse. Um often in no man's land. Yeah, I mean, he ran like a bat out of hell. And I remember thinking, first, didn't miss And then I remember seeing him running away, and the one visual I remember seeing clearly was he hit this patch of dirt and it seemed like his feet were going a million miles an hour and there's a dust everyone. I thought, he's like crashing into the ground. I thought, for secondly to hit him. Did I actually get him?

He's gonna die right there? But then he kept going and just like just like a race car flying out of there. Um. But then that's when I thought, well, maybe I did hit him. And then the next moments were just like a whole lot of like self loathing, like, oh my gosh, what did you do wrong? What happened?

How could this happen again? Um? Because if you'll remember last year, on one week in November, I missed a giant eight pointer on the last day of the hunt and then this whole off season, and this has been well documented. I've talked about before this whole offseason, I've worked really really, really really hard to try to rebuild my shot process, trying to better handle and control my shots, and then to have this that this situation that seemed like I either missed or hit this deer at the

top of his back or something. I was just really upset, and so everything in my head was you know, assuming worst case, and like you said, with it being as dark as it was, um, I could not clearly see where the hit was either. And I think it was you know, within a few minutes of legal shooting, like five minutes of legal shooting lights or something like that, when I end up getting the shot. So you know, I couldn't see where the arrow hit. I just remember

thinking high or did I hit bad? I don't know, but just a lot of unsure and I think, you know, I asked you what you saw, and you didn't know. And then I was like, well, can we see the footage? And I don't think like we looked at it, but that screen, yeah, we couldn't tell in the screen. So then I just said, okay, well let's go check the arrow, figure out what's what, what's what? And get down go to the arrow, and the arrow was fully covered. Blood

like good. Blood look like good. And so now all of a sudden, now I don't know what to think. I still feel like in my mind's eye could like I did not see a perfect hit where it should have been. Um, so I'm trying to like figure out what what does this mean? Then I was very confused and like, okay, so I hit it, So I must have hit really high. Um, but I didn't spine him. So where where is this hit? Daego? Just underneath the spine, Togo just over the spine. I just get a meat

hit on the top. I don't know, but the arrow looks pretty good. We start looking for blood, don't find anything for a long time. No blood, no blood, no blood. And I'm close to worthless when it comes to blood trailing after dark. So I'm counting on you to to find it. You know, I have to really go slow and focus to see the right after dark like that. Um. But thankfully we circled further and further and further, and finally we got to the spot where there was this

dust this dusty patch that's talking about. I think that's I think what we said is eventually said, Okay, we couldn't find blood, Let's go to the last place I saw him. I know he hit this dust bowl. Let's go check out the dust bowl. We get to the dust bowl and like right away, like, here's blood up and down this tree trunk right up, gonna have feet

off the ground. Yeah. So now I'm thinking, man, this is this is a different animal than we originally thought, because when we couldn't find blood for a long time. Now I'm thinking, okay, meat hit. He's hardly wounded. He's gonna survive. I screwed up. Now we see the sprayed blood up under the tree, and like pretty good blood. And now all of a sudden, I'm thinking, well, what in the world could this be? How could this be? How do you get up a spray shot with a

high hit like that? Right? I don't think I've ever processed as much of a hit as we did that one, because we kept going back there like the air looks good, but it didn't pop, and there's not a lot of blood, so it must be like some kind of muscle. And then we get to the spray and it's like muscle doesn't spray. So and then I was like, okay, well maybe we hit an artery up there, and so we

see this spread. And then I remember thinking, okay, let's you know, let's pull in somebody, let's pull another opinion. And we even wanted to connect with the other guys on the show, so I thought this would be a great opportunity. Let's face time with Tony, talk to him what he thinks about the shots. We talked to Tony and he's like pretty pessimistic about it. He's like, well, you know, I don't know those high shots. You could be a backstrap. I've seen those like meat shots sometimes

bled good for a little bit and then it dries up. Um. He basically brought me down, down, down, mostly. And then he said, but but you know, you could go follow blood for ways, but maybe you know, if it goes anymore like a hundred yards, maybe back out. I'm thinking, okay, yeah, but I still don't like make I can't make sense of like the blood being like three and a half feet up the up the tree and all the way down and all over the place, Like, um, how is that not? I mean, it's got to be lungs or

an artery. Um. But we keep going and there's no blood for a while, and then we come over this little hill and then there's a bunch of sprayed blood across this log. Again looks really good. I'm thinking, well, let's keep going. But I constantly have this voice in the back of my head, which is, you're gonna push it too far. You want to like I so desperately we all have this right, you so desperately want to find it. I couldn't imagine backing out and waiting until

the next day. And I I just wanted the crappy feeling to go away, the crappy feeling being I mess this up somehow. Um. So we keep going, and there's blood. There's a little blood. There's a little blood. There's not a lot like after that jump over the log where we found some spray, and now it's like drip, drip, drip,

little stuff, little stuff. And we follow something like that for like fifty six seventy yards stuff like that, and then we go down a little hill and then at the bottom of this hill, all of a sudden, another spray and then like a splash and a splash, splash, and then We're like, oh man, he's dead. And then there's no blood. No blood for five yards, no blood for ten yards, none for fifteen twenty, and now all

of a sudden, like, oh man, the blood's gone. Now, all of a sudden, I I go back to the paint cans and like that blood looks really fresh, doesn't it? And like, did we just bump him? Was he just standing here somewhere? Did he bed down somewhere? And now because we pushed too far, we bumped him? And so now all of a sudden, I'm getting all worried again and pessimistic, and Tony's voices in my head saying I'm not feeling good about man. I don't feel I don't.

He kept on saying things like I don't have the good feelings for you right now. Like you know, most of your friends are always like, oh man, it's gonna be alright, You're gonna find him. No, the whole time, Tony was like, Nope, don't feel good about this. Yeah, not sounding good. What I knew though, was like Tony only had what we were describing to him, and you and I were like seeing this blood, and now he's like I hear what Tony is saying, but this blood

is telling me something different. So I was with you. I felt like, you kind of want to keep going. You kind of want to keep going, until like that last time where we just about totally lost blood, I was like, this just not makes sense. I mean that like we had just seen a log that had been sprayed three or four feet wide and then no no drops. So I still couldn't wrap my head around that. But yeah, when we got to the paint can, we thought, dang, this buck has bedded down, and then we just bumped

it and it popped up. And so we've had both like good feelings and bad feelings. I think we're back. We're debating, Okay, you know, if this deer is bleeding, but it's not like a mortal wound, like if he's ran this fart, it's not an arterial shot. And if it was a double long shot, he should have been dead by now. And now we're worried. We just bumped him. And then I was debating, well do you back out or do you keep following him and you try to

make sure he bleeds out. So I debated a thousand different things, but in the end we we walked a little bit further, like twenty yards from the paint cans still couldn't find in blood. And then we heard like a deer moving in front of us, like off in the woods, like kind of just like a step here, step there. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, what if this deer if we did bump the deer um and I lost all confidences. I was like, all right,

we we're gonna back out. I don't know if that's our dear ahead or not, but we've gone way further than I thought I was originally gonna go. We've gone more than two yards now, according to the app, and I just thought, I'm gonna push too far, like I so badly wanted. I know what I'm going to be tempted to do, don't do it. So I said, we're pulling the plug. I put my hat down and last Blood marked it and went home, and I just felt horrible, Like it was a very quiet car drive back to

the bunk house that night. Well, I was trying to process the shot and the feelings of failure and knowing too that I mean, this place is littered with coyotes, just littered, so we're like, well, if we leave it, we don't find it, chances are it is gonna just

be gone by morning, because I'll find it. And then we were like probably fifty yards from the river, so we're like, if we bump it and try a cross this river, then we're gonna have a heck with time on the other the other side trying to find blood. So there was just yeah, it was a rough, rough moment. Yeah.

So I was also thinking, if they're like, what did I do wrong in the shop, And so one thing we did is we went and looked at the footage, and while we could not for the life of us see where the arrow hit, we could see that deer ducked seriously on the shot, like significantly jumped the string. So I felt partly better because the high hit was not because I pulled it in some kind of horror way. That the high hit was because the deer reacted to the shot in a significant way. But I made two

mistakes still. Number one A big mistake was that I had put him on alert by going Matt. I didn't. I probably didn't have to do that. I did it out of an abundance of caution because I didn't want a moving shot. But maybe if I had been able to wait another second more, he would have stayed fully still and I could have gotten that shot just the same.

But my impulse paranoia of him moving caused me to make a sound to keep him still, even though I could have instead fired right then and probably would have been fine. That was a mistake, big mistake, And I think if I had not made that sound, I think he would have not react to the shot at all, and I probably would have got him perfect. But I didn't. I made that rookie move in that kind of heat of the moment situation. Secondly, I've talked about this like

shot process that I've been working on. I did not use my shot process all the way I rushed it. I wish I could tell you that I did it all perfect, but I didn't. I did not make it through all the steps. Again, I made it through like two steps in my first bucket killed this year. Same thing with the dough I killed a week and a half ago, and still same with this one. Like I'm I'm still I'm still not a hundred percent there. I

wish I could tell you I was um. I wish I could tell you that I perfectly said, every step of my mantra just the way it was and was fully slowed down. Mhm. I'm still fighting it, and in this case I was. I was able to be burning that pin and him, but I did not get to that next step and the arrow was on its way. Now I feel pretty strongly that why. I'm sure that if that buck had not jumped the string, it would

have been a great double long hit. Is a little bit farther back than perfect, but I air a little bit back from the shoulder anyways. Um, so if he had not jumped the string, I'd be sitting here very happy with a shot, while also knowing I didn't follow my process perfectly and still need to work on that.

That said, my two mistakes compounded, made the noise when I shouldn't have, and then still rushed that shot a little bit, leading to being a little bit a little bit back up perfect and very high because of the jumped string. So that's where that's where things did that night, And so I'm beating myself up about all that, beating myself up, beating myself up. You've you're not going to find this deer. It's probably a meat hit or something. You wounded a deer. Now, not what you're gonna do

for the rest of the week. Are you gonna punch your tag and be done in Nebraska and go to Ohio? Do you keep hunting? Do you quit your job and become a salesman? Used car lot um? I mean I was low that night, very low. The next morning I went to bed, like as soon as we got home, I went right to bed. You stayed up and we're doing stuff in your computer. But I just like lay it in bed and just like wallowed and self pity

until I fell asleep. The next morning, I wake up and I asked you, hey, did you get to look at that photogen a computer? Could you see any better? Could you see the hit? And you said no, not really. I looked at and stuff, and I said, well, do you have any photo of him running away at all? And he said, well, yeah, I do. So then I watched that, and I watched him go running over the

dirt pile where I had seen him last. And then I see him keep going and keep going and keep going way way around, running full bore all the way out, and I realized he was running like a bat out of hell all the way until he went down that last little hill, which is basically right where we stopped. So he never stopped and stood around for us to bump him. He never bedded down for us to bump him. He was running full out. We could actually see on the footage all the way to almost where we stopped.

And so that's when I started thinking, Man, there's no way this the situation I was worried about happened now. Like he was run and run and run, and he very well could be dead right out there somewhere still having died less than thirty seconds from the shot. Um. Maybe it was the artery shot, maybe it was something better. Maybe I didn't catch the top of a long um. So I had renewed hope a little bit after that.

And and maybe I'm getting too long winded with this whole process, but this whole thing was was a huge, huge, um highlight of the trip, both starting airs low and then later something more because we get out there at first light that next day. After I reviewed that photo, I'm feeling a little bit better. We jammed to Fred Bearer by Ted Nugent on the drive out there, and um,

we hike out to this rise. We're coming down to that river bottom and I can just finally see this um, this little s bend where the betting was and when we left the blood at and I'm about like fifty six yards away, and I'm just come over the hill and I see down there, and right away I see white belly, and I pull up my bios and I look and I'm like, oh my gosh, and I just spun around you as a turn on the camera, and that buck was dead fifteen yards from where we had

stopped the night before. He was right there, right there the whole time, dead as a door knumb right in front of us, and even closer to where I stopped because I I had you stand on blood and then I moved out ten yards further, and I mean I could have I could have probably you touched him if I jumped, But yeah, I mean we were just didn't know what to feel that night, you know. So our guy was telling us that we had we're doing the right thing, and we actually were, you know, but you

know such a relief too, ma'am. And you went over that hill and you picked up the buyers and you turned around and kind of shook your head. I was like, all that stuff just fell off and I was like, we got him. We got him. The best feeling in the world. It was amazing, and the coyotes did not get to him, zero coyote damage, which was wonderful, and I mean, I was the happiest camper in the world. It was just an unbelievable buck. I mean a gorgeous

he's a seven point. He is a tiny g three on one side, almost just like a big six um and heavy, like just big old baseball bat beams and basses and just a really cool slob of a buck, huge body, big, super sure um, just really cool. Dear. Um looked at the hit. The hit was high, like I thought, but it ended up getting both lungs. He got the top of one long and then through the second lung. Um, so it was a double long shot

is what killed it. I think he was dead within you know, seconds of running across over there, and we you know, the biggest thing was just not being able to see that hit well and just not knowing that threw so much uncertainty into it. Um. But I'm I'm you know, I think most cases, if you're unsure, if you're uncomfortable, giving it more time is usually a safer

about and so I'm glad I did that. My big takeaways as far as rooms for room for improving here is again, you know, knowing when to stop a deer verbal and when not to. And that's a thing like I intellectually know, I know not to make that noise unless the deer absolutely needs to be stopped, But in that moment it's I'm also arey paranoid about taking a moving shot, and so in the moment, like it was an impulse thing, and my my body knew too. My body I knew, like my my reptile brain knew enough

to be like very subtle with it. I was, like I was, it was a very subtle, little one. So I was I was aware of that this was like treading on thin ice um, But I still had to do it because I was so worried he was gonna take another step. Yeah, but I mean he had told us though that he may take another step. So it was tough because I when you did it, I was like, man,

the deer was stopped. Why did you do that? But I noticed that you did it very quietly, and you know, I think if that deer wouldn't have been on edge because of those other deer, you know, probably would have been an issue, but man, you don't know that that deer might have taken another step and then you'd have

been even further back. So it's it's hard to say a you know, I definitely it's something to process, But I can't tell you that I know that you did the wrong thing because we had just watched that you're kindn't do that same thing for fifteen yards and every time he moved, so it is I don't. Yeah, this stuff is always so so subjective, and you know, right or wrong can be the tiniest little thing. So that was the thing, and then you know, continued, you know,

work on my process. I still gotta keep working. I just need to go home and keep shooting doughs and just keep working through because I can do this a million times in the backyard perfectly, but it's still just always different in the moment, especially when there's a buck in front of you moving acrossed. Um. So I feel like I'm making progress. I feel like my first buck was great, my second dough was okay, and this one was okay. So you know, I'm a work in progress

on this new shop process. I'm gonna keep going with it, but big things that happened you're outside of that. With this kill, I think the real key to success was location. Um finding a spot that was just like a best of both world's kind of runt location was what killed this deer, and then trusting the features despite not seeing

the movement that morning. So again, if you are hunting in the rut, the pillars of run hunting success are dough betting areas or hotspots or funnels if you can somehow combine those two hunting a funnel next to a betting area, or a funnel that is adjacent or funnels into or out of a betting are those are perfect situations where you can concentrate dear movement where bucks want to be going this time of year, which is checking doe betting airs or leaving doe betting airs to go

to a dough food store or something like that. And so in this situation, this is a tiny pinch point in between tube do betting areas, and these bucks were just gonna cruise right between them along that river. And then I had the wind in a bulletproof location going out over that water. And even though in that morning situation. I was tempted to move, tempted to look for something else. I said, no, I believe in this terrain. I believe

in this idea here, like you have to. Like deer hunting is all about, you know, making predictions or making assumptions about some future outcome, and sometimes you need to look in the situation like this. And you said, all right, I believe in this set up enough that I believe, you know, it will happen. I trust in the location, I trust in these features. I have confidence that there are deer here that we'll use that. And then you need to give a time to actually come to fruition.

And so in this case I made the right call, trusted the location, and sure enough that evening the deer did the thing we need them to do. So that's what killed that buck on November one. Um, he wasn't chasing a doll. He wasn't, you know, really do anything crazy ruddy. He was simply leaving a bedding area, kind of cruising over to the next one, laying down sign and we were in a sweet little pinch point with

good wind. And that's what did it. The next day, well, no, that day we finished up all the projects we had to do with that deer. We skinned him out, cord him, deboned him, put him in the cooler, um, cleaned up our place, packed up, headed out and started driving to my next destination, which was Ohio. And now we're riding high. I mean, we killed a buck on the very we're shout a buck on the very first day. On the second day of the trip, we recovered him. We're feeling great.

We were covered all the meat. We've got a beautiful buck in the truck. Um. And now we're heading to the next day, which is Ohio where there's supposed to be a big giant bucks everywhere. You really talked that spot up. So I was like, man, like, how much higher can we get here? This is gonna be incredible, Like I'm gonna have I'm gonna have time to really hunt it. Uh. So we drive that night for a few hours, get a hotel room the next day, to

drive the entire day to get there. Finally we got to a hotel room late on day three and we're gonna start hunting day four. So, as I mentioned, um, this Ohio stuff I have, there's a small third acre

piece and there's like a seven y acre piece. Both of these are in the general region of where I used to hunt in southern Ohio ME and further had a place back in the day, so I knew the neighborhood, and I knew the neighborhood was really good, Like we'd killed some really nice bucks when I had driven around the summers and when we scouted and shut hunting and stuff like, we knew there was really good deer in the area. So I felt confident that anywhere in this

neighborhood it should be pretty darn decent um. So that gave me confidence coming to this week. Despite the fact that all I had done is one day of speed scouting in mid October, the trail cameras were not terribly encouraging. On the seventy acre piece, I had not gotten a single shooter buck, not a single mature buck. From mid October on, I had only one cell camera, though it's working. On the thirty five acre piece, I had um to

cell cameras, and I had gotten two possible shooters. One was like a not a very large antler deer like a hundred pointer, but big body, mature deer, and then one was a giant eight pointer but he's only shown up two nights. Um. And then there was a third buck that was probably four, but he busted off his entire left side already, so he was dear. I was like, gosh, I don't want to shoot him. Um, he would have been a nice deer. So I was kind of surprised

that the cameras weren't showing me that much. I thought it would have been, you know, a lot more, especially on the property, the bigger one. Um. But I thought, well, you know, cameras can only tell you so much. Once you get there, you're gonna start seeing deer and you make adjustments and you'll figure out what's been, you know, avoiding the cameras. So the first morning, again, I have nothing set up. I have no experience in these properties.

What I didn't know and when I had tried to find when I did the scouting was like where's the dough betting? Where the bedding areas at? And I found what looked like some bedding on a property neighboring our piece, on the seventy acre piece. Basically, what I did find on my scouting trip was that the property is cut in half by a fenced in area. Half the property is fenced in with like a five foot tall barbed

wire fence, and inside that fence is cattle. So I've pretty bummed about that when I saw there was a bunch of cattle in there, because you know, I've hundred places that have cattle, and bucks will sometimes still use it. Deer will still sometimes use it, but they definitely don't

like to be around the cattle. And so I just didn't know how frequently they were in there, and especially with it being entirely fenced in and like tight new tall fence where they go out of their way to jump over a five foot tall fence to go into a cattle pasture with nothing else in there, I didn't know. So I put two cameras and these fingers of timber

there and put mox scrapes under them. And this is all back in October, and I thought, well, this will tell me whether or not, you know, when I come back here. This will tell me if these deer are in here, because there should be deer working these fingers, There should be deer working along these um If there are not pictures of bucks on here, that means they are not using this area because the kettle. So that's

half the property. The other half the property is like a twenty ten acre maybe bean field cut being field, and then all that's left is like a five acre little wood lot which is mostly kind of open hardwoods. So after the scouting trip in October, I'm thinking, well, this is not too promising, especially if they're not using the cattle pastuts. But there was some thick cover on the neighbors. So morning number one, this is November four,

I decide, all right, let's hunt with this wind. We can hunt downwind of that thick stuff on the neighbors, so we can be on our side with the wind blowing from the thick stuff in the neighbors down to ours. Hypothetically, bucks should be traveling that down one side and would probably be on our edge and we might be able to get a shot. This is an area that's close to some properties that aren't allowed to be hunted, kind of sanctuary kind of stuff. So I felt like, gosh,

there's gotta be something good cruising out of there. Um during the rut, they'll be bucks moving through. That morning, we sneak in before daylight, well ahead of time, find a tree. I had marked a tree on my scouting trip in October that I thought would be good for this wind in that location, and I got set up in there. There's poison ivy in the tree. Um. Yeah, and uh, we see just one dough nothing else. It wasn't too keen on that, no, and it looked pretty

promising too. Once the sun came up, I was like, yeah, well there could be something that's going on here, and yeah, we just had that one come through. And then as some dogs run through that betting area, we saw dogs run through. So at midday I decided, all right, I'm gonna get out of here, and I want to go check the trail cameras and that'll give you a much

better sense of what's going on with here. I had the two cameras and the fingers and the cattle pasture, and then I had one cell camera on the edge of the field on a big scrape that had not been sending to me. So we pull all those cards, check all the cards, and there's nothing, just that million and a half pictures at cows. Yeah, Like we got I think one dough in the cattle pasture over the course of three weeks, and then on the scrape that

wasn't in the cattle pasture. There was one three year old buck and a few doughs here and there, and lots of raccoons and dogs too, and that was it for like three and a half weeks or something. And we're kind of banking on that too. So that was like a bit of a yeah, let the air out of the balloon. Huge, huge, So with that I kind of felt like writing that essentially wrote off the entire property, that seventy acre piece, which you know, if I if I write off the whole, you know, forty cell makers

that's the cattle pasture. And then you see that there's nothing visiting those two cameras on the outside at all. And we sat there saw nothing. I said, all right, let's sit one more time this evening and see this field somehow and see, you know, see what's coming out to feet if maybe there's does here. There was some winter wheat growing up in the field now, so I had a little bit of hope, Well maybe this is like a draw, maybe there'll be some does out here,

and if those does, we got a chance. We ended up because of the wind being a direction, it's tough to hunt over there. I decided let's throw the decoy out in the field and hunt on the ground, tucked in a fence row. So we end up doing that. We tucked into a back corner of this fence row, put out the decoy about twenty yards out in front of us. We've got a good view of the field and then we can see back into a neighbor's field a little bit too. I can see into the cattle

pasture as well. Um. And we sat there for the evening and hoping, all right, we'll see some does, maybe some young bucks. Maybe we'll see a big boy roll through off from the distance or something. And what do we see? Saw a decoy? How many times did you like see a buck out of the corner of your eye, like jolt, And then all of a sudden realized, well, that's just my decoy. That happened to bunch. We did see a single deer that night. Um, that was this

is the start of the downhill. Yeah, I know. Again it was hot though, right, so I put some of this on this hot weather is not helping us. But you'd still think something would come out, you know, last light or something, but nothing. So now I feel really

negative about this piece. And I just said, all right, that thirty five acre pieces probably where we need to focus, because I had gotten those good bucks on camera there, and I had found some really really good betting cover inside there, so I knew from that scouting trip there's

like an epic betting area in there. There's this big point that extends out into the middle of the timber and there was like an old cut or something on top of it that is now overgrown and brambles and cedar trees and grass and just awesome thick stuff about two acres of really really good looking bedding, and the rest of the timor is pretty good and thick, and there's these nice ridges, and had found these benches on the side of the ridge where there was just scrapes

littered up and down this bench um And as I mentioned, I had gotten several nice bucks on camera over there, so I felt at least there, I know there's some shooters. It's got great habitat, it's got great dough bedding. If we get in there into the interior, which would be a plunge, but if we get in there and set it out, there's gonna be bucks cruising. So that's gonna be the plan for the next day. So the next morning, with the wind direction we had, I had to hunt

the outside edge of that betting area. What was cool about that though, and I knew this from when I walked it. On the outside of that bedding are there's like a steep drop off on the property line and it drops down to a creek and then a corn field on the neighbors. And so I found a spot where you could sit and you'd be on the downwind edge of this thicket and you would blow your wind off that cliff for that like you know, steve embankment and blow your window over this creek and field up

behind you. Um, you know, nothing would be able to wind you. Um you know, anything that did come down one of you would be within twenty yards and then otherwise to be off that steep drop off. So I was excited about that. This looked like a dynamite cruising spot. Um. So the plan was to sneak in there early, find a tree, gets set up, and then sit there all day because there's no way to get out from there without having to walk back through all that bedding. And

so that's what we did. We had a dough betting area. We were downwind of it. We were in thick cover. There was tons of big rubs and scrapes and sign in the area fromhen I scouted, and then again when we came in there now during the rut, we could see it again too. There's a big old cedar tree like six seven inches around there was all shredded up. Um it looked great. And we sat all day and we saw zero deer on the property. The only thing we saw was a guy walking on the edge of

the betting area with his Jeremy shepherd. Yes, so we did see that, and then it lasts light. In that cornfield way down on the neighbors a dode did pop out, but that was it for the day. Um. So that was day two in Ohio. Day three in Ohio. I decided, well, let's let's hunt. Let's give that spot a little more time. I just believe like it seems such a great area, had a great wind situation. We're down one of this amazing betting tons of signing there. Um, we just gotta

give a time. I know that from previous history this is a relatively low deer density kind of area. Um, we had days like this one we hunted down Ohio where you only see like three or four deer or something, and you just have to push the slow days because eventually a big one would come through. So I decided to go back there that morning. We sit it all morning, the guy comes walking by again with his dog, and

we again see no dear. So now is one of those rut conundrums that I'm always faced with where you're torn between and I talked about this earlier. You're torn between the idea of staying or going. Do you stick with something, do you trust a plan, do you trust

a feature, do you trust history? Or do you bounce around trying to find fresh sign or trying to find something that makes you feel good or trying to see dear or whatever it is um And in this case, I knew that we had a windshift coming up the next day, going from the south wind to a north wind, and I knew that with that north wind, I could hunt the interior of the Betting Air, which was the number one spot I've found, And I thought, well, that's

where I want to be. And now I've sat a day and a half in this location and we still haven't seen what I want to see. Maybe we do need to move. Maybe there's more stuff going on, and I forgot to mention the night prior, we got a trail camera picture of a giant buck stepping into that edge of the interior bedding, uh like fifteen minutes before dark, so he'd been in there, and then we exited, you know,

kind of past wherever he went. Um, so I knew there had been a big buck in that general era of the night prior, so now I want to get in there. So at midday we pulled on our set and we kind of waited till the wind rose up to give us a little bit of sound cover, and then we just really really really slowly worked our way down wind of the bedding area as far out as

I could get circled around it. Did a really big like half moon shaped to work around the bedding are to get to the other side where now with the west southwest wind we are now getting, we could blow along the edge of the bedding, which is a little risky, but at this point I'm trying to make moves. And the next day when that wind blows north, you know, blows straight back behind us down into this creek bottom.

So the new set up, the new tree we're in we're on the opposite side of that two acre bedding thicket. We're on the lee side of this ridge, so the wind will be blowing from the ridge past us and then down to a creek at the bottom of the hill. And there's a bench that runs along the side of this ridge that is littered with scrapes, and I had a camera on that bench and they had gotten me pictures of some of those bucks that mentioned. So that is what we set up on for our day three

in Ohio. Middle of the day set up. And so again the tactic I'm using here is being on the edge of bedding cover and being on the downward side of it. And then also now we're in an interior location where we can see across this creek bottom and we can see the other side and a couple of different spots and maybe possibly call to something if it's out of range thick cover. We're on a bedding area and there's tons of fresh hot sign in here and I can see the call. That was basically what we're

doing here for this rout hunt. And I believed, you know, be in that best betting and something will come through. That was what I was leaning on when hunted that night, I saw nothing. Nothing At last, like we did, hear buck grunt on the other side of the valley. Um and that was it. All that takes us to day seven, that's today, And now again I'm trusting this feature. I believed in this location. I believed in the habitat, the way that thick cover in that terrain would funnel deer

through there. And so we're going right back to that same tree, and we're setting out for the day and we get into early this morning. I'm feeling good about it. And before daylight we hear there's a buck running or deer running towards us. And then it stops and then takes a few steps and stops and takes a few more steps, and I realized that creates right down wind of us. It was dark. I can't see anything, I

can't think of anything in the binoculars. Stands there for I don't know, five minutes, ten mins, I don't It felt like a long time. It did feel like a long time, and I just thinking, Man, he just hangs out there and the sun comes up, He's going to be in trouble. But he decided to move off. He eventually turned went back the way it came. Didn't like freak out at all, didn't blow, but just turned and

just walked back the way it came. And daylight came and I thought, for sure, all right, it's a colder morning. It was like ten degrees colder than it was the morning before, thick betting, this seemed like a great morning location. And uh, man, there's a cedar tree like tenants diameter cedar tree now about twenty yards from the tree just tore to shreds you later pointed out like a pile, like a huge pile of uh barked what would you call shavings that came off the tree, and they were

piled at the bottom and very very impressive. Um. And we sat all morning and how many did it was to zero? Zero deer? Sat all the way through the middle of the day. How many dear did we see the middle of the day? Zero one coyote, turkeys, a million and a half squirrels, zero deer. Then we sat the rest of the evening. How many deer do we

see that evening? Zero? We sat four days in Ohio, so one dough within the first hour on that first property, and then three days on the other property on which we saw zero deer on that property, We saw just the one dough for one minute on the neighbors, and we put in you know, three full all days sits there at the end, and then that other day we were scouting most of the middle of the day. So essentially, yeah, essentially you've got full for four full days there um

with not a single buck to show for him. It was the worst four days of hunting in the rut I think I've ever had. Um, I've never sat for so long and seen so few dear and not a single buck. So that then raises a lot of questions for me. It raised a lot of questions like what did I do wrong? What do we do wrong here these last four days, or what was going on that

led to this being so bad. So this is something I've been thinking about and curious what your thoughts are justin but I think we made a few things go On one, the warm weather absolutely is not helping. I know, you know, I proved it on day one. You can kill deer on hot weather days during the ruts still possible. It just uses more tight time firms. Right this this movement earlier in the morning, there's movement late in the day, but not as much in the middle of the day.

But it's still possible. All that said, it's it doesn't help. It certainly dampens things. It certainly makes things worse. You do not get that that, you know, intense daylight activity, you might otherwise. So I think the fact that we had seven straight days of seventy plus gregree weather absolutely slowed things down and kept us from seeing the kind

of activity we could have. Um. I think another thing that hurt us was that, you know, these areas were even lower deer density than I realized, and I had almost no preparation or knowledge about these properties ahead of time. And that's on me. Um. You know, I was trying to find something throughout the summer, nothing came together, and when it finally did, it was, you know, mid season, and I was excited to have anything, so I jumped

on it. My lesson here is that you know, this time we have is so um precious that I'm just wasting my time hunting stuff that I have not adequately prepared for. Can you show up at a brand new proper and figure it out? Yes? Have I done it? Yes? Is it a lot of fun? Yes? In Nebraska. We did in Nebraska. Um. But at the same time, if there's any way to avoid that by being able to get started in the winter spring, why not do it.

So I I'm going to rededicate myself in this off season to try to nail down my Ohio or whatever. My out of state option is going to be like a really find a really good spot and know it well and arrived comes season dialed in and knowing that, Okay, there are deer here. I know what's going on, I know what to expect. I hated the fact that we came here with like cameras aren't showing very much, but I hope it's good. I know that the areas should be decent. And then we get here and it's like

a ghost town. I mean, the most ghost town of a property I've ever spent time on, and I'm just like, well, I don't know. I'm trusting the feature in the sign. I know there are deer here. There should be deer here, but maybe not many. Um And and so the rut can cover up a lot of um inadequacies. The rut can make up for a lack of knowledge. You can make up for a lack of um, scouting and preparation, all that kind of stuff sometimes, but you don't want

to depend on that. You want to have everything lined up as best as you possibly can, and then if the rut gives you a little extra luck, great, take advantage of it. But I think in this case, you know, due to the weird set of circumstances, I was just forced in this issue where I had so little planning,

and I think that hurt us. Yeah, while excuse me, While it can help you with the unpreparedness because you never know what might happen, it can also be uh, you know, amplified if you and the fact that if you're not in the right place, you haven't done that preseason or spent time, because then you're dedicating yourself to a spot that is they can be completely dead and and you know, I don't know, I still don't know

why this spot wasn't a hot spot. It's sure screen about the ship for three days they're still and so so here's the possibilities. One possibility could have been that we just were unlucky and that there was a situation where there was a hot dough somewhere with our big buck locked onto her and all the other satellite bucks hanging out around it, and that was just in a different corner than we were, And you know, that's something

that's not out of the question. That's something like that could happen for two or three days, and we were only there for three days, so that could have been what happened. Another possibility, maybe this thick betting area that I thought was so awesome, maybe mostly bucks are just using that. Maybe that's a buck betting area and the

does are betting somewhere else. Maybe I pinned all my hopes on a place thinking that's a dough hot spot, when instead all the bucks were down in some other corner where the does like to hang out more often. That's a possibility. This place was littered with buck sign but we never saw a dough, never bumped a dough. I don't have tons of pictures of dos in there.

I do have buck pick is in there. Um, So I might have dedicated our three days to a buckbed and um a buck bedroom like a buck palace, um at a time when you don't want to be hunting a buck bedroom. So that's possibility. It was still the

best option for this property. Yeah, I mean I I think you gotta gree so credit because while you may not have done the preseason or had you know, the opportunity to go in ahead of season and figure all that out, it's still you made the best decision based on the time allotment that you had, M so and and sometimes we have to do that, which is essentially what we did in Nebraska. But um, yeah, I mean even even if you were like, Okay, this is buck bedding,

that's still the property we were dedicated to. So we still I think made the best decision based on the sign and what should have been happening during the ruck. Yeah. So then that brings me to the third question, which is, you know, I dedicated myself to this betting are hunting a day and a half on one side of it and a day and a half on the other side of it, when you know, was it simply happening somewhere else?

And I guess I kind of are one of these options, was like, there could possibly be buck locked on a door somewhere else, But maybe I was just wrong, and maybe actually the hot betting area was over on the far other corner, on the neighbors that we didn't know about, over where there was a cornfield or something or some other draw that all the doors were hanging out over there,

and I never even explored those spots. Right now, I mean, maybe something I should have done or could have done midday is like, all right, we're gonna walk about and just walk around til we start bumping deer or till we figure out what's happening right now. Um, some people would do that. I instead trusted in that location. So I believe in this betting air, eventually something has to cruise by. And nothing ever did um right, wrong or and different. That's what we did. Um, But I I

do not know what the right call was. I don't know if there's I guess I'm still just scratching my head. I don't know it. I'm perplexed. I'm very perplexed. We could see a decent area tonight, we could hear long ways. I mean nothing came through. Yeah, there was nothing going through there without I was seeing it. I mean thirteen hours today and one deer came through before daylight and

that was it. And it was a big area covered. Yeah, you know, I think what you were saying is a good point where you started with, like what could have been the issue. I think. You know, with the rut, you know, these deer are used to having a day or to pop up right where it's sixty seventy degrees and they they they're like in pre rot rot mode.

But day four, day five, like at some point that hot weather, I feel like it's going to hit them and they're gonna be like, I'm not sure what's going on, but like we're not doing this so and I think that's probably what happened. Is like like you said, like I can't remember a prolonged like hot spell like this during the rut. It's usually like again, you get a day or two and I think they just keep rolling.

But with the combination of that and um, the possibility that those books that we had that where you're targeting could have been, you know, just on the very next property over lockdown and there's just nothing you can do, just never know, except put time in the stand time in the stand. And we did that. I mean, we gave it everything we could. We We sat from dark to dark all three days there and then that one day we just scouted midday and had lunch. Um, So

we certainly gave it an a effort. We gave it an a effort, Nebraska pulled it off, gave an effort in Ohio and got blanked. And I think that's an important lesson to take from this as well, is that when it comes to the white tail rut, you can do everything right and still not get a buck. You can also make mistakes sometimes and get your buck. The rut. It can shine a spotlight on inadequacies. It can also

put duct tape over a big old hole. It can do crazy things, and you simply need to go out there, put together the best possible plan you have, work, put in the time, and see where the chips fall, and appreciate it for what it is like somehow embrace whatever it is. This is a hard one to embrace the last four days because I mean zero bucks for four days and just two tiny dough settings across all those

hours in the tree. That was tough. But I kept on thinking back to the November or November one, thinking break to great that moment was, how great that day and a half two days was. And so I think when it comes to the rut, when the good times are good, like soak them in, really really enjoy it, because you got to know that the bad times are

gonna come. Like I was talking about this earlier this week, I think one of the best things we could do as deer hunters during the rut is reset our expectations right now. If you are listening right now, this might be the very most important thing you get out this entire podcast. Right now. I want you to reset your expectations for your upcoming rut hunts. They will not all be like a Drewary Outdoors video. They are not all

going to be chasing, fighting, grunting, mating bucks NonStop. You are not going to have the super Bowl of the white tail rut dream scenario your entire trip or your entire hunt. In fact, most of your hunt will not be that. You should assume that of your hunt will be slow, monotonous, and boring. It will not be what you're dreaming of. You might get lucky and have a few of those special moments or one of those special days,

or a couple of those special days. Set your expectations there and be okay with that, and be prepared to have fun with that, make the most of that, enjoy that for what it is. If you can go into the game with that expectation, I think, then whatever reality dishes out, you will then enjoy more. But when we go into it, and I do it every year every year, I'm like, oh my gosh, the what's gonna be amazing, It's gonna be magical. It's gonna be fourteen days of

NonStop grunting and chasing. And it never lives up to that standard ever. If I just better prepared myself for it and just new like, all right, man, this is gonna be a grind and we're gonna have a couple of good times and then the rest is gonna be like but you weather that and you enjoy it for what it is, and then you're there and ready and able to take it offer tunity when it does present itself.

So reset for reality. No, it's gonna be tough, and then you want me disappointed what it is and you will be super stoked when you do have those special days which are possible, and they do happen, and then what we live for, but they don't come by that often. Man. We had one special day out of seven and it was awesome. When we look back on this week, you know, next year and we look back on it, and that was great. We won't even remember the four days of misery.

We'll think back to that one special day and I think that's you know, there's the we keep on hearing this analogy, but there's like the analogy of like a pregnancy. Like my wife right after giving birth to our firstborn child was like, no way am I ever doing that again, But then like six months later she's like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited to have another child. Um, you gloss over the tough stuff with a little bit of time, and you just remember the good. And I think that's

the case of the rut. So be prepared for some tough times and some slow times, and uh you'll be You'll be that much more excited and ready to take advantage of the good ones when they do come. That was a big takeaway from me and reminder out of this hunt. Um, were there any other main big things that stood to you as far as things either mistakes I made or lesson as we learned observations. That's a different podcast. No, man, I think, Um, I think what

you're saying is good. I think it's a good time to like to if if something's not working, like make a change, like if you have the option to if you're you sit a morning or two mornings, or you know, a full day sit and it's just not happening, and you have the flexibility to find where it's happening, do it. You know, I felt like that movie we made mid Day was great, even we only went hundred d twenty yards, but that really could have put us in the game.

Um So it could be that small but I think, you know, you have to you're not on like a bed to food pattern necessarily during this time of year. So it's it's a good time to think outside the box. And also, you know the night where we were like, we don't have that great of a wind, what's the used to climb in a tree? You know, get the decoy, yot.

It's a great time to decoy and um, you know it also, especially for us on a property we've never been on, gave us an opportunity to learn more because if for some reason that night we saw a deer coming out of that's the you know jump in the fence where the cows were, saw a deer coming across one corner, it could have made a you know, a lot of our just Asians for the next day or

the next couple of days. So I would encourage uh to you use that time to grow as a hunter, just in general, like you don't have to PLoP yourself, you know, the peg in the hole. Just put your head on a swivel and if it's not working, find him. Yeah. Yeah, just observing the just observing the just that's the tricks. So I think big things here, even during the rut, gather until at the beginning of your hunt. Well that's scouting preseason, or scouting the first day or scouting midday.

The last thing. Doing observations says if you don't know what the heck you're doing, figure something out. Don't commit before you know something. That's a big one. I think what you said is another big lesson. Continue to pivot, observe a just pivot. Observe a just pivot. Don't lock yourself into something unless you have confidence. When you do have confidence in the terrain feature or a habitat type, give it some time to produce. But you need this

part comes out to experience. I think you need to know from experience or gut when it's time to pull the plug, Like for me, you know, giving it a day and a half in that first spot was like, Okay, that's enough I get. I got two morning sits in which where I was really really expecting something, and then an evening sit that was enough where I was like, okay,

I really love this feature. I love this spot. But pulling the plug on it um that is something though, that is always easier so than done knowing when the right move is and that should That's a sliding scale too, based on deer density. You know, if we're in a very high deer deer density area, you might be able to make a decision more quickly when you see like

all the deer do something different. But in a low deer density area, you do need to sit a longer period of time sometimes to ever have a chance for something to come through, because good deer movement in a low deer density area might be too dear coming through your you know, ten acres in a day, and you gotta know for that or be prepared for that. So

it was a weird rut. It was a weird trip, Like I'm still processing, I'm still thinking through I don't know what to make of this second half in Ohio. I loved what we did in Nebraska. I've got work still do with my shooting, but I'm making progress. The ruts amazing, the ruts brutal. Um. I feel a heck of a lot better on this episode than I did in the episode I recorded after my one we Can November trip last year. I'll tell you that missing that

buck last year was devastating. Killing this buck this year was an incredible relief and so gratifying. Um. And maybe the final thing I should mention is that I'm having a great hunting season and I'm doing it while having fun. I've removed a lot of the pressure I used to put on myself. I'm spending more time with my family, spend some time with some buddies. I'm getting out and doing stuff when I'm excited about. Given time to mentoring

new hunters. I'm not traveling to ten thou states. Instead, I'm close to home, but still doing a future trips, trying to find balance, and I'm just not trying to do it for anyone else but me now. And I'm having a great time. And I think everyone's got to find their own way to do that in their own hunts, finding the fun, find how to fulfill your own goals and not do it for anybody else, and enjoy this stuff. The rut we always talk about, you got to grind

it out. It's a marathon. You gotta put in the time. You gotta work, work, work, work, work. It's all true, But at what expense if you are not having fun. You're out there hunting during the rut because it's fun. So don't make it like a tactical battle plan that you have to suffer through. Enjoy it. There's a lot of stuff in life that sucks. There's a lot of stuff in life that's hard. We're all gonna face tough challenges. There's gonna be tough, disappointing, tragic things happen in our lives.

We don't need to add any more nasty, bummer kind of situations to her life. If we're gonna add deer hunting as is a part of our lifestyle, make sure it's a positive. Make sure it's a fun thing. Make sure you're not going hunting because you feel obligated to go hunting, but go because you actually want to go. Don't sit all day because you feel obligated. Because if you don't kill a big buck your you think your buddy is gonna look at you differently. No sit all

day because you're stoked about it. If you're not stoked about it, spend time with your family, or go do something with your kids, or go do some of some friends. Don't do it to impress anyone. Don't do it because I tell you should do it, or because someone on TV told you should do it. Have fun. And I think that's my final message for for our little recap podcast here Justin I can agree with that. Any other thoughts, Nope, And I need to get home to Hunt. I know

you've been working on as a cameraman. Now it's trying to be the shooter. All right, Well we'll we'll wrap this one up. Thanks for tuning in for this long winding discussion post Hunt recap episode. Hopefully learned a few things you enjoyed the story. I'm still reveling in the glory of that Nebraska buck. You can check out pictures of it over on my Instagram account at wired to

Hunt and UH. You'll get to see the hunt on one week in November season two, which will come out in UH, and Justin nailed some sweet footage of that of that deer. We unfortunately has zero buck footage for the rest of the trip, but it was really good at the beginning. Um So that said, thank you for tuning in, appreciate you being a part of this community. Best of luck out there in the woods. Enjoy the rut, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.