Ep. 661: How We've Evolved As Deer Hunters Over the Last Decade with Dan Johnson

one star, try something different, like not good, and so I it kind of sparked in my brain. I go, Okay, I have to go back to the very first podcast that I ever did with Mark and I want to listen to our conversation and to see how different it was, you know, today than it was. Damn you're ten years ago.

And so I kind of thought for today, you and I could kind of do that on air. We could think back to that episode and where we were ten years ago, talk a little bit about that, and then talk about the progress we have or have not made. Now and then also I want to do a little

bit more reflection and steal another idea from that episode. So, if you recall, from episode one of the Wired Hunt podcast, our topic of discussion was the best and worst moments of our twenty thirteen season, right, So I thought to end today's episode, we could do the best and worst moments of our twenty twenty two season, since you and I have not talked about that together on the show yet, So that's my idea for today, is a little bit of looking back ten years ago to where we are now,

and then stealing the idea from that episode's topic to kind of round it out. What do you think about that?

weekend and that's kind of what kicked it off. And at that time I was kind of transitioning out of White Knuckle and didn't really have anything planned, anything to do, and so I was just like, you know what, let's and when you asked me, I was like, it was a no brainer. It's just like, I don't have anything else to do, Let's do it.

I am no longer part of the next generation. We were like, this is now like deer Hunting for Geriatrics. Now we're both getting pretty old. So I don't know how that happened, but I wondered what your thoughts were now looking back on those good old days when we were so young and fresh shot the womb. What did you think about how the podcast itself went. Did you think that we did you think that we sounded like idiots? Did we hold our own from that perspective what we're thinking?

We sounded really rehearsed. We sounded really like prepared. We sounded really I don't know, like we wanted it both to work, and so I think we were really kind of tight and tense at the beginning, and then it took us a while to loosen up and relax. And once once we started to do that, I felt like, then it then it caught, and then it became something special. Yeah.

But when I listened to my own voice back then, it sounded like it sounded like I had just come out of getting my wisdom teeth pulled, and like I was still like waking up from a drug induced nap, or had no vacane still in my mouth or something. Yeah, mumble mouth, sleepy mouth. I don't know what it was, but I sound like I'm not quite there. I don't know what about. But I also have the same thing. I went and listened. I went and watched one of

my first YouTube videos, and it is absolutely painful. It's the same thing. It's like that same like I've I don't even know how anybody could listen to me back then after watching that. So, if nothing else, we've both gotten a little bit better at communicating, I guess, yeah, yeah, but what about the content of our conversation. So, like I just said, we talked through the best and worst

moments of our twenty thirteen season. Yeah, And listening to that, I was kind of struck a by how much hasn't changed. But then there were some things like where I thought to myself, all right, we both come a long way in certain ways. And at the same time, I was shaking my head at the man, you're still battling with the same things. Yeah, what what about you? What kind of stood up for you when you look back on you know, what you were saying back then to where

you're in now. Yeah, and so maybe can you point out those things?

practices to our own hunting strategy. Maybe we got some results, maybe we didn't, but it allowed us to form some different unique opinions about our own methods and really, I don't know, and really not only change our interviewing styles because we now we had this, we were gaining experience. So because we were gaining experience, we had the ability

to ask better questions to these people. And I think once that that damn broke out of the first two years, then it's just it started clicking, and that's when the content really really started getting good.

So much of my understanding of deer came from what I'd read and watched and listened to, you know, my childhood of deer hunting experience, Like my first fifteen years were up north hunting in Michigan, where I hardly ever saw any deer. I had some basic deer hunting knowledge that my family gave me. But basically that was don't move, don't make too much noise, sit in the woods for a long time, and there's this thing called a rub

and there's a thing called a scrape, and that's good. Yeah, and that's kind of all I knew for the first fifteen years. So then, you know, when I started the website, it was, well, Okay, I've read this book, I've heard this thing, I saw this on the show, so this is what you're supposed to do. And it took a

long time. Like you just mentioned to actually, you know, you could understand it like in a textbook kind of way, but until you have that real world experience where you've done seeing it, seeing when it works, seeing when it doesn't work, understand the context. You know, all of that builds like a foundation and you can't really have things start clicking till you have that real world foundation where you've ran all these textbook ideas through your real world filter.

I guess you know, yeah, and I think that's that's that's exactly what happened.

I hadn't found success. So the cool thing about that is that over that period of time, I struck out, struck out, struck out, and then I don't know, you know, I can't necessarily speak for you, but for me, when it started to click in twenty sixteen, then it was like, I don't know if you could see a progression, or if there was clips that you could go in and listen to us talk about certain things and then kind

of mark the time that it sunk in. For me, I would love to go back and hear those conversations.

you know. And so what took us years he was listening to over the course of months, you know, and seeing it all happen kind of fast forwarded. And I think you're right. I think that has been hopefully the same experience that the listeners have had over this decade. Right is I've always thought that you and I have kind of been like a stand in for the listener, Like we are learning right with the audience, Yes, throughout

this whole process, week by week, year by year. Yeah, And and I think I hope what has been happening is what has happened for you and I, which is like, and I've always tried to say this, I've always tried to remind people this, like take it all in, don't don't don't make assumptions that this guy won't be interesting, or that this person won't be useful or that this person is one hundred percent right and everybody else is Wrongly, try to take it all in and then filter it

through your own circumstances, and then test it, test it, test it like go out, try all these things, use all these ideas, think about these things, and then you'll slowly over time start seeing like, let's throw all the spaghetti at the wall. It's our unique wall, right, My wall is different than your wall, which is different than Joe Blow's wall. That's listening, like, we all have different

things will stick for different people. But find what sticks in your place, with your goals, with your circumstances, with your resources, and keep going like that. And that I think has been I've tried doing that, and that has been what's worked well for me is I've tried all of these things, and then a lot of my dropped, a lot of I said, you know, this isn't for me, or this isn't for my area, or this doesn't work you know in this situation. But maybe if I travel

to X place or why place, maybe it will work there. Right, And that's you know, that's been kind of the superpower I guess of this podcast, I think is just getting so many different ideas and and and what I've tried to do, and I know what you've tried to do is the two of us in these conversations, whether it was on this podcast or then on your podcast subsequently, you know, trying to dig into people's process, you know, like understand why they do things, because if you understand

why they do things, then you can start to better apply that to your situation. So even if even if Justin Holland's Worth is hunting a property that's so different than you or I, if we understand why he, you know, only hunts with X and Y wind on these days, then even though I have a very different property, maybe I can understand how to apply that same idea. So that's that I think has accounted for a lot of the growth that we and and probably a lot of listeners have had.

do I put this. I think this podcast happened at the very beginning of what I'm going to call in awakening in the hunting community and hunting industry, and you know everybody, and what I mean by awakening is we had some of the biggest names in the industry on the podcast and we were able to interview them about how they how they do it and what that did, and this is my opinion, what that did was not necessarily relate, but open the eyes up to the rest

of the listeners, going, oh my god, I've been trying to do this, apply this strategy to maybe a five acre or a ten acre farm, when the people who I've been taking advice from and doing all this stuff, you know, like looking up to have thousands of acres

of managed property. And so what it did was it allowed people to realize that those groups of people are the one percenters, and I need to focus on my own property kind of just what you said, but look other places for serious content that are more relatable to the style in which I hunt.

from the guy with four two hundred inches or whatever it is exactly, You're right, like there was like a sheet pulled off of the the magic hat with a rabbit in it or something like that. It was like the democratization of knowledge, and.

fifth big deer of the year. Whatever. Now, yeah, that might be unrealistic for ninety nine percent of us, but still there was a ton of work. There was a ton of effort, there was a lot of planning, there was a lot of you know, different kind of stuff. So I think it also gave us all a new understanding of if that is what you actually want, here's what it takes, and do you still want to do that? Is that still what you want? Are you willing to commit so much money, so much time, so much equipment.

Is that what you want or not? And I think that we have seen now as a community like you can do that, but there are also other opportunities too, and there's it's fun all the way across the board. There's just different goals, there's different ways, there's different styles, and I hope I don't know if this is true or not, but I hope that part of what maybe our impact with the podcast and other podcasts and things like that, hopefully some of the impact has been that

it has helped shift people's idea of success a little bit. Yep, you know, maybe maybe fifteen years ago, success was man, you gotta get a booner, you gotta get the two hundred, you gotta and not saying there's still an obsession there's not. I mean, yes, there is still an obsession and interest in those things. Today, I'm as guilty as anyone of

like a big deer. But I hope to some degree we have shifted it a little bit away from Antler's being the only measure of success to now, you know, experience being part of the success, Overcoming challenges, learning, growing, setting your own realistic goals for what you want, what's enjoyable for you, what's realistic for your area, all these things,

you know, giving back hopefully, hopefully success. I guess I can't speak for anybody else, but I can speak for myself, and that success for me is a much more mixed pot than it was ten years ago when I thought, man, I just got to kill one hundred and fifty in four year bucks, and if I can do that, I am validated.

So when you're talking to guys like Matt Ross or Bronson Strickland and they start dropping some facts about deer, you know, like like I used to think that if you killed small antler deer genetically inferior deer, that it would mean less of those deer, right, And so when I heard this information, like, hey, guess what, it doesn't do anything, you know, like like calling deer or that quote unquote management buck that you shoot every year, It

doesn't it doesn't do anything. And so that type of information is brought to the light as well, and it just kind of exposes that and you're like, oh my god, people are telling you not necessarily lies, but half truths. And it was it's just kind of like a really type moment.

Just a few hardcore folks would, but a whole lot of people would listen to an hour and a half with Bronson Strickland as he dives deep into that kind of stuff, like you said, So that's that's certainly helped a big, a big substantial kind of way. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, it's been it's been really interesting personally. What you know, I could say two things. I can

say one. Over the last ten years to your point, like, I feel like I have grown like leaps and bounds as a deer hunter, Like I feel like a completely different human being when it comes to you know, just understanding what to do, how to do it, when to do it. Like I remember, back before the podcast, going onto a new property with a buddy of mine letting me hunt some property he had access to, and I just remember feeling so lost, like I had no idea

where to start. I walked out there, I'm like, man, I don't really know. I mean I can walk. I'm going to walk around, find some rubs, some trails, and just kind of hope and now you know, I can set foot on new properties and just right away be like, okay, I know this, I know this, I don't know this in this, let's go figure it out and let's make an assessment. And just like there's so many examples like that where I feel a million times more confident yeah.

But I say all this to bring up two big things that I heard in episode number one that I am still experiencing today, Okay, And so I thought it might be interesting if you have anything that you heard that you're still experienced, I can lead with mine. Yeah. I so, listening to that first podcast, there were two things when we talked about when it came to you know, we talked about the best and worst moments of our

twenty thirteen season. And one of the things that I talked about is that I was having this really rough twenty thirteen season. I had had all these close calls, nothing came together, made mistakes, YadA, YadA, YadA. And I talked about how I had let myself get overstressed, overworked up, bummed out about it. Just got too much pressure on put too much pressure on myself to have success, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that ended up being like a ten year thing for me, right, I mean, that

has been an annual thing. Listeners have heard me talk about me just working through that, and it really wasn't until last year that I felt like I had a breakthrough and felt like I was finally getting past that so that was interesting to me. That took me about ten years to finally stop, to finally mature enough maybe to stop being so worked up about a whether or not I was able to achieve like the ultimate success of my goal of killing a big deer and older

or whatever it was. And then also not caring what other other people thought, and then if I could remove those two things then just focus on, you know, the experience itself and having fun. Like it took me ten years, even in twenty thirteen, I knew it was a problem, and it still took me ten years to you know, work through that. And I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying it's a thing that I maybe will ever fully move past. Maybe that's just part of my personality.

But I feel like, you know, last year was a big fork in the road where I really moved past something. So that was interesting to me, and I've talked about on the show, and you and I have talked about on the show. But I think it's just worth re emphasizing, like I don't think there's been anything more important. I'm guessing this because at the very beginning of it, but I'm guessing this will have been the most important I've made in my hunting journey being able to get past that,

you know, obsession with am I good enough? Do people think I'm good enough? Is this deer big enough? Did I do good enough? And getting so worked up about that and beating myself up for not doing it right, or beating myself up if I didn't feel like I gave it two thousand percent or everything went right, you know, as soon as I was able to move past that and start just focusing on enjoying it, you know, so many things just it's like turning a movie from black

and white to color, is what it felt like last year. Yeah, So I hope that's something that maybe other people can learn from my mistakes. And maybe it's one of those things you got to go through it on your own, but maybe by hearing my tenure journey on that front, some people have, you know, maybe followed along on that same journey as me. The second thing I noticed that I am still working through was I mentioned in twenty thirteen that the worst moment of my season was when

I was hunting Ohio, big old blizzard pushed through. I drove down to hunt southern Ohio to catch his coal front. I got set up, couldn't climb into a tree stand because it's too icy. So I'm hiding behind a tree, standing on the edge of a bedding area and a cup bean field, and this nice eight point buck comes walking out, and I remember lining up on him and taking a crack, and he just stands there. So I reload the muzzleloader, take another crack, he just stands there.

Reload a third time, and then before I get fully reloaded, he runs off. And I can't remember if I mentioned the episode or not, but I also scoped myself on one of those shots, so I had blood dripping down too. So I talked about rushing the shot and like not being fully in control in that moment, and that has been a thing that has again been a reoccurring topic of conversation these last ten years. I mean, I missed

that deer that year. The next year was the year that I rushed the shot a little bit on Jawbreaker and hit him, you know, back in then testines, Oh, I don't know, I mean a handful. I've missed a couple other deer since then. I missed that deer two years ago in Iowa, missed an eight pointer in Michigan somewhere in that window. So I had my I've had my share of screwed up shots over these years, and I've like tried different releases, and I've tried different processes,

and I've practiced my tail off. And last year I went to an archery coach and totally rebuilt my shooting style and process and I think that's helped, but I know I'm still still not one hundred percent there. My goal, one of my two goals last year, as you know we talked about this. One of them was to have fun, like to focus on what we just talked about, just

having fun. And then goal number two was only good shots, like you got it, make good shots, and that was so important to me, and so I kind of and we'll talk about this in a little bit more, but I kind of had I would give myself like a b on that I only took good shots. So I was really glad about that. I had opportunities at some shots that I could have taken, but I chose not to because like I just didn't want any I want

nothing but perfect. So I passed on a mature buck two different times, once a little out of range and once just I was not comfortable and steady, and I just I didn't want to risk ruining a great season with a bad hit or miss. So I was glad about that I had. The first year I killed, I felt really good about that shot. The second dear I killed, felt decent about the shot. The third dear I killed, I felt like I still rushed it a little bit. And so I'm working through like these steps. I've got

this like four step process for my shot process. I'm still not getting one hundred percent of the way through, one hundred percent slow, one hundred percent of control. I'm getting better, but I'm not on the way there. So this is all to say that, like that has been another one of those like always working on it kind of issues for me that maybe that's the case. Maybe I know there's some people that don't deal with that

issue at all. And then I think there's probably other people like me that you're probably good enough most of the time, but is that okay? Do you want to be just good enough most of the time or do you want to get to the point where you are locked in perfect every time? And if that's what you're trying to do, I think that is for some people,

I guess I can't speak for anyone by myself. For me, that has been a year by year continued challenge to keep on trying to work on getting one percent better whatever it is, because it's a it's a wild crazy moment and says situations that I at least have continued to have to work on. So those two things stood up to me as like man, of of all the things I made a ton of progress on, those two things have still been like my thing to bear over

this decade. Yeah, what about you? What are your thoughts on that or yourself?

in the woods is always a benefit. But if you're sacrificing just to be in the woods versus laying off and accomplishing something else. I didn't necessarily understand the importance of that yet, and so man, I feel like I was hunting really hard when I didn't need to be, Especially like I knew that the first three weeks of October, I probably didn't have that good of a shot at going in and knocking down a good deer, and so

I was just I was going. And I think that over the last ten years, one thing that I feel like I've gotten better at is just sitting back and observing.

And that doesn't mean in the tree stand. That also means at home, watching watching weather, watching cold fronts, watching and observing deer behavior, you know, listening or learning from what the trail cameras are telling me, taking all of the past information that I've gained throughout the years and kind of forming it into things that my brain could digest and say, Okay, listen, dude, you don't need to

be doing this right now. Or hey, last year this, you know, this terrain feature was really you know, was really good. You should probably get back in there, or you know that that paralysis by analysis type of thought process, and really what's happened out of that has come more of this fluid a strike when the iron's hot type mentality, and I'm not I'm not worrying about being in the woods when I necessarily don't need to be.

Was just like death by persistence somehow, you know, And you're right, like I think we both have found the power of efficiency and doing things smarter versus like the blunt force approach, a brute force approach. But I wonder this could we have Could you really get to where we are now, to where you can actually be efficient successfully and know how to apply and when to strike

at the right moments? Can you ever get there if you don't first go through the brute force approach of just spending a ton of time out there, Like if you couldn't if someone see That's what I'm wondering, is I think that maybe that almost you almost have to go through that to get that foundation of experience and knowledge to ever be able to understand, you know, when's the right moment, when's not, or when's the right time to push versus when's the right time to stay back.

Even though we can look back and say there was a mistake, maybe it was a good mistake, you know what I mean?

to be more efficient with my hunting. Episode number one, I had a one month old baby, my first child, a one month old baby in the house, and so I mean, there's no other reason way to to put a halt to hunting, like kids, right, having having kids, especially a newborn in the house, and so my time then was more on not necessarily hunting itself, but thinking about hunting, and with that came planning for hunting and kind of changing my mindset to you know, the old

style of war where two people would line up across from each other and just just battle it out instead of being tactical and flanking, and you know, you know what I mean. And so yeah, it's it's that twenty thirteen. Right when we started it. I feel like you were still in it and I was not. I was still in it, but I was on my way out of it because I had to. Yeah.

just hammer on this a lot. Don't make excuses not to be in the woods. Don't look for excuses not to be in the woods, especially when you're still in this like real figuring out kind of stage.

you have a foundation. Now, certainly think about that efficiency, think about the things we're talking about and try to help, you know, let that help you use your quantity it more effectively. Right, But but don't use these things as excuses not to go, because early on there's nothing more useful.

You know, we talked about this in the beginning, right, I mean it's like we couldn't we couldn't even understand what our podcast guests were saying during those first ten episodes or whatever in a real full way because we didn't even have enough of a foundation in context ourselves if we were to listen to those episodes now, like when we talk to these other expert guests, I bet you we would get a lot more from it now because we have ten more years of personal experience, ten

more years of context, ten more years of success and failure that now you know, we've got to We've going back to like the throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, like we have a much stickier wall. Probably now, like we a lot of more of these things will make sense to us or we will be able to use just because we've we've built this level of understanding that's going to make everything else so much more useful. So don't don't think that you can skip

that process. So get out there and you can be smarter about how you do that, right. I mean, if I were to look back at what I did you know in twenty thirteen, I guess I'll use this as an example. Twenty thirteen season I was definitely in the quantity over quality kind of mode. I thought, Man, every single day, I got to be out there. So I had a Michigan property that I've just pounded to death because I felt like I had to be out there.

So I probably hunted it. I don't know, twenty thirty days something like that of you know, a three month season, and this is like seventy acres or something like that, seventy eighty acres that I was out there that many times, maybe more than that, and I think I've probably did like two weeks straight of like all day sits, So I mean a ton of hours in the same place and getting the same results, like not seeing the deer

I was after. So maybe in a different world, what I could have done if I'm still at that phase where I need time and feel to build that foundation, but I could have spread it out. I could have hunted a couple days on that property and then do some more public land stuff, or I probably should have knocked on more doors and got permission on some other places. Like spreading out your pressure is one of those things

that still to this day is super important. And that was something that I knew that back then, like I knew it intellectually, but I did not know how to do that or wasn't willing to put in the right kind of work to make that possible. So I guess that's my point here is there's something to be said for hunting smarter versus just pounding your head against the wall a thousand times. But there is value in that pounding your head against the wall, and you can't skip it.

Like there's no fast forward button, there's no silver bullet. There's nothing that someone could have told me, or there's no product I could have bought. There's no book I could have read. There's nothing that I could have done on Spring twenty thirteen, right then and there that would have gotten me to where I am today. Right easily.

I had to go through these ten years of mistakes, failures, successes, lessons, lots of days in the field, and you got to just go through that with that constant, open eyed perspective of what kind of learned from this? Why did this happen, Why did this work, why did this not work? What

should I try different? I mean that if anything out of the last ten years has been like hammered into me, it's like taking that approach to this learning, learning, learning, asking why testing, testing, testing, If you do those things, you can get you can make progress.

kids at that point. But then I also, like I really wanted it, and so I was getting frustrated when things weren't Like when I would make the perfect access route, I would go in and the target animal just wouldn't show up, so I would I would hold that frustration these days, dude, like if I don't see a deer, I understand, right, I get it, And now I don't

get frustrated anymore. I know that deer don't always do the same thing all the time, and there's very rarely ever like a slam dunk sure thing in this world when it comes to bow hunting mature white tails specifically, and so I you just gotta go with the flow and stay calm, and and you know it doesn't work out, you know, try it again the next time and and then it will then it'll work out. But I don't know,

I was. I can just remember getting so worked up when I would when I would apply the strategy perfectly and nothing would happen out of it, which just kind of leads us to say, you're not in control at all.

to be fun. This is like, this is our hobby, this is our passion, this is our lifestyle, this is this thing that we claim to love so much. Why in the world are we sitting out there beating ourselves up and making ourselves miserable while we're doing it. I don't think people do that when they like, I don't know, when their hobby is a video game and they like playing a video game, or when people like to watch sports, or when people like to play maybe people play golf

beat themselves up, but I don't know. You know, you're doing this because you're trying to have fun. Why are you letting. Why are you making it so serious that you are stealing that away from yourself? Yeah, I mean I just go back and over and over, like nobody cares if you kill a deer.

thirteen to now, how we've progressed. I think the twenty twenty two season, I guess is a perfect example of what that progression could be because we can compare twenty twenty two to twenty twenty thirteen. And so what we probably should have done was I should have probably told people the week before this to go back and listen to episode one that everyone listening now would have had the same context that we have. But maybe people can

do that afterwards. But anyways, worst moment of your twenty twenty two season and then the best moments of our twenty two two season, does it? Does something come to mind for you were out the gate? Or do you want me to start and let's start with the worst. We'll start with the bad, will I'm with the good?

That's a that's a really good thing. So if you take that layer off of it then, And you want to talk about things that didn't go right, man, I don't like I don't it would It would be hard for me to nitpick something in my twenty twenty two

season where I was like, oh, that sucks. I got bit by a dog in South Dakota and that is the that was literally the worst part of my season from a strategy standpoint, I'm not one hundred percent sure of what I could have done better in order to you know, from from a Western Yeah, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of things, but I'm in that learning process still. Iowa tree stand saddle hunting. Man, I don't

think I did anything too terribly wrong. I just applied the method that I have been for the last ten years, and you know, I got the job done.

good shots only right. I just wanted to make perfect shots. That was this thing that I worked on so hard last year and just wanted to be perfect. And so this deer that I got a shot at, it was the first night of this hunt in Nebraska. This great, big, giant seven pointer comes in and I shoot him, and in the moment, it was right before the end of shooting light, and he dropped and I just couldn't tell

where I hit him. I thought I maybe shot right over him, and the like the first second after I shot him, I thought I shot over and I thought I missed. So I was pissed off that I thought I missed this deer. I couldn't believe I blew it. And I think about all these things I just said. I rebuilt my shooting process. I'd worked so hard with this, you know, just shot a doll last week, killed a nice belt a couple weeks before that. Like, I thought

I was making such good progress, and then this thing happened. Again. So I was devastating that moment that I let it happen again, went down, checked the arrow and actually did have pretty good blood on the arrow, and so, okay, now, so I did hit it. I must have hit him high, because I just felt like in that moment, I just felt like it it was high and I couldn't tell if I grazed the top or hit high or missed above.

It was something like that. So now see the blood, see the arrow, get in the blood trail, end up having pretty good blood, track the deer a couple hundred yards, and then the blood kinds of dries up, and now I'm more like, man, are we pushing this deer? I just don't know, and end up backing out for the night, decide I'm gonna come back in the next morning and

try to pick it up with daylight. So that night was the worst moment of my season, because I mean, we've all been most of us have been there where you just don't know if you're gonna find that deer, if you wounded it, if you killed it, if you didn't you know what happened, Like those moments when you're on a blood trail and it's just like not going the way you wanted to, and you're just not sure what's gonna happen, and you're feeling increasingly increasingly anxious, Like

those are those are tough moments. And so that night, laying in bed, I was just like you know, leading into the season, I was just sick of I don't I don't want any more missus. I don't want any more bad hits. I'm just so over that and trying everything I possibly can do to eliminate that, even though I know you can't on one hundred percent eliminate it. So I was beating myself up pretty bad about that. That was my low point.

I would have done something a little bit different. But also it's a perfect example of you kind of got to be ready for anything, and and you know that that was a that was the low part of that story.

This deer is ruining this dog scent because he can't find a scent trail if this dead deer is in the area. So I went back out there later that afternoon and ended up finding him.

trail camera like I threw up one trail camera. I started the process of e scouting. I didn't want to go in and do it. I hunted a couple times in October, started to figure it out a little bit. And so the positive or the good takeaway there is that I applied my method to this farm and I got success. And so it just I don't know it it kept encouraging me that hey, what I'm doing is right, it is working, so keep doing it.

about it. It's worked for the last ten seasons since twenty sixteen, well not ten seasons, but twenty sixteen. And so it's re encouraging that that, you know, I mean ten years of shooting a target buck. That's that's that's reassuring to me that, hey, man, you just keep just keep doing what you're doing, be able to be mobile, be able to have different thoughts and ideas, and then apply it how you see fit. And when it works like that, man, it feels pretty good. Yeah.

to kill big deer, and instead like prioritize fun. And part of that is prioritize, like your family, and and so that led to some experiences that are, without a doubt, like highlights of my season. So one of those highlights was carving out a big chunk of time to go to my family deer camp and be up there with my dad and take my son effort first first, like full deer camp kind of weak almost like four days

I think we have. And so just getting to have him up the cabin for an extended period of time hunting with me every day, you know, just like seeing his joy in those experiences was just so cool. Like one day we found a buck track and so it's basically let's do whatever's fun. So I was like, do you want to track this buck? It's like, yeah, let's do it. And so We're tracking this buck through the snow, and I'm assuming it's a buck based on the track,

and We're in this thick pine stand. It was very deep snow, and every once in a while there was like big clumps of snow that would fall out of the pine trees and collapse down the ground. And so sometimes that would happen like way off in the distance, and it would look like like a big dark thing

moving off in the distance. Okay. So at one point we're tracking along and he's so excited and I'm, you know, getting them pumped up about it and stuff, and all of a sudden he sees what must have been, at least I'm assuming must have been one of these clumps of snow falling way off in the distance. Like, Dad, I just saw the buck go off from the distance. I just saw him, Dad, I saw him, and I was like, oh man, that's awesome. He's just up there.

We were both really excited. And then he turns to me because he's facing towards it, towards this what I assumed to be a fake deer. He turns back towards me and he says, I have tears in my eyes because I'm so excited, and I see tears coming down his cheeks. He's so excited and fired up by the fact that we maybe saw this buck. He was crying from joy. I mean, that was just like, I mean, can you imagine anything better than that?

And this is the first year that Colt, my youngest, was like old enough to really get it too. And uh, just having them there, being on the blood trail, having them be so excited to walk up on the deer and all that kind of stuff. That was by far the coolest stuff of the year. Just being there with the boys, having them experience that, having them actually like understand, be excited about it, geeked out about it, getting to interact and see the things out there. Those were hugh

two highlights. Yeah, and just such a great reminder of you know what really matters?

is really secondary to everything else in my life. And so if I can get my kids to come and do these things with me, which so far they like to do, awesome. But if not, man, I don't care.

that much. Like I still have my kid, my kids are healthy, I've got a wonderful family. I'm gonna go home, you know, next week and get to give them a hug at night, read them a story like that's the only thing that really really really matters. So that perspective is so important. Absolutely, so that said, Dan, And that's another thing like I've been saying that said for ten years now, over and over again, an obnoxious amount of

the time. So that being said, quickly, let's preview for folks a little snippet of what they have to look forward to as far as our stories for the twenty twenty three season. What do you have planned so far?

it's just life. And this is going to sound crazy, maybe it's not crazy, but like I said, man, I really do like spending time with my kids. And one one way I spend time with my kids and is coaching them in sports. And recently I have fallen in love with coaching and especially little kids that they don't necessarily have egos yet they're not they don't think they're the best type of scenarios. And so I coached my son's uh first and second he's a second grader. I

coach his first and second grade football. I'm coaching is baseball. I'll probably coach my son's T ball league this this summer. And you know, I just I love doing that type of stuff and I want to continue to do to more of that on top of you know, the fishing and all the other outdoor activities.

Wisconsin and do a deer hunt. So I'm gonna pair. I'm gonna do like a deer hunting Upper Great Lakes road trip that showcases like the diversity of experiences you can have, Like you can do one of these trips, and it's not just about killing big buck. It's about having a cool, diverse experience. So camping, canoeing, fishing, hunting, I'm gonna I'm gonna do that. Yeah, so I'm excited about that one.

made out there, so that'll be a fun hunt. We're gonna do a longer hunt, like maybe a week or so up at my northern Michigan property with my dad again and try to get him his first buck up there in a long time. And we've been doing some big habitat work this spring. We did a bunch of cutting and making some wildlife openings and a couple of new food plots and really expanding kind of the quality habitat there. So I'm gonna hopefully really set it up nicely for my dad to have a chance at a

deer up there, which would be really cool. So pumped for that. And then I think I'll be going back to Nebraska again during the rut and trying to line up a Illinois property been working on all year. Has not come together yet, but I'm still banking on an Illinois hunt too. So that's my That's what my season looks like this year.