Ep. 726: How I Killed The Wide 9

I want to tell that full story. You know, we talked several weeks ago about, you know, when I got a shot at him with a bow and hit him in the shoulder. We talked last week about how I was still bumming about it and processing it, and we had a rapid set of events here recently that changed

that whole story. So here's my thoughts, Tony, And you tell me if this is a stupid I but I'm thinking of going all the way to the beginning, like go way back in time and walk us through like the steps from years ago, and then break down a more detail what happened this year, and then throughout anywhere you've got questions or anywhere you want to press me, or anywhere you think there's like a larger less than that we can jump on, let's stop and let's talk

through that kind of stuff and try to make this as universally helpful to people as we can.

can hunt him, sometimes I can't. Sometimes there's other people, sometimes there's not. But this year I have permission on three pieces in this zone, and three seasons ago, well four four seasons ago, I guess. So twenty twenty, I was after that big, tall eight pointer that we called Tran. I was hunting that deer and everywhere that deer. Everywhere I was going to hunt that deer, I saw this wide, short time nine pointer and I just saw him. Everyone was at He looked like a two year old. He

was very active. He was in this thick brushy bedding area that Tran was in a lot, and I just couldn't get away from this deer. So every time I go in there for Tran this year would be like right up at the base of my tree, just hanging out like doing dumb two year old stuff. So he was noticeable because of how wide he was, and I don't get many young deer that are that wide. So start calling the wide and nine just so I could have something to refer to this deer when I would die,

I saw that wide nine again. So that's twenty twenty. I end up killing that deer Tran. The following year, twenty twenty one, I did not hunt this zone as much as I historically do because that was a year I was like just traveling like crazy. But the wide nine's back. He's a ten pointer. Now he's very similar, just wider and taller and heavier, but a nice looking deer. Like I remember getting pictures of him the summer and being like, man, he looks like that's a nice deer.

And I was pretty sure, like I'm not going to shoot that deer. But when you see that big wide frame running through the woods like I saw him a couple of times, like running away, I was like whoa Like is that a shooter? And again he was in this North Betting year, same place I saw him last year, same place that Tran was in that year. And so you know, at this point he's very noticeable and I'm

starting to kind of keep tabs on him. And what I try to do when you're in one of these properties where I've hunted a long time, I'm just when a deer stands out and a deer start it's you know, showing up on my radar again and again. I start cataloging that, just thinking like, okay, hopefully year or two down the road, if he's still alive, you know, this

might be helpful. And so now I'm noticing, okay, like every time I see him, he's in this bedding area, this like five to eight acre betting zone that I'm hunting in and around, so he's in there again. But the deer I was hunting that year ended up not being in that zone very much. He ended up being on one of the southern properties in the south of me.

So I didn't hunt up in the wide Nines cors a whole lot that year, but I had some cameras, had a bunch of encounters, passed him two different times at the bow, and saw him a few other times too. Twenty twenty two season. He's going to be a four year old that year, and so now I'm thinking, man, he might be a deer. You know, I'd be interested in shooting. If he survives, I shed out him like crazy trying to find his antlers, because I did see him after the season, so I knew he'd made it

through the year. And then there's one other deer junior who had made it through. So I scoured trying to find his sheds, and I stually do it time out and mention that the year prior I did find his shed, and I think I mentioned this on one of the podcasts, but I did find one of his antlers from his two year old set with my dog Boon. So that was the last antler that my dog Boone ever found before he passed away. So that was like a special

thing that that last antler came from this deer. So coming into his four year old year, I started picking up pictures him again in the summer, and as you might recall from last year, I killed the deer early and then wasn't going to shoot another deer on this property except for maybe my number one buck, which had been kind of in and around some of his other properties. And he disappeared for a long time. And I told

that whole story last December. But in late November I start getting pictures and a couple times when I was out there glassing, I saw the Y nine show up towards the west side of that betting year, actually out of one of my food plots and out on a cup beanfield, and I saw him, I think, two different nights when I wasn't hunting, I was just checking it out, and he was out there in daylight, and I have a blind up there, and so I got to thinking, like, man,

this deer's moving in daylight out where I have this blind, that I could probably have a successful hunt with my son. And I know I wasn't going to shoot another deer, and I wasn't going to shoot him necessarily. He was my number two buck, and I kind of felt like I'd killed a few other deer I didn't need to. But then I got to think, like, man, if I could have ever, that would be amazing, and this is

a setup that might actually work. So I bundle Everett up the next day and we have the right wind and we sneak out there and I've got the mister buddy heater, and I've got all sorts of snacks and books and hot cocoa and the whole thing, and we get in this elevated box blind that I've guy and it was just, you know, perfect setup for a four

year old. And we sit there and read a couple of stories and we have hot cocoa, and we go through like four of his snacks already in the first two hours, and then deer start pouring out into this cut beanfield and it was one of those like kind of like dreary, dark cloudy days, like a light misting of rain, and just a bunch of deer came out. This would have been like November twenty sixth, I think

last year. And long story short on that is he ends up coming out, but he comes out at two hundred yards and I'm looking at him, and I know my gun can shoot, you know, it's it could be a two hundred yard gun, but I've always been like a one fifty and in with this gun is like myself imposed limit. This is a three point fifty is what is what it is. And so I'm looking at him in the scope and Everett's all excited. He's like, Dad, shoot him, shoot him. And I just did not want.

I just didn't want that first time he's around me shooting a deer to be anything but the most guaranteed slam dunk. Ever, so decide I'm not going to take this shot. It's not perfect and this needs to be perfect, perfect, perfect, So we just watched him. It was very fun. Ever was stoked. The next day. We have a wind shift a little bit to where I can't hunt that blind again. But I've got hayball blind about one hundred some yards away that would give you. I'd be in the same

general zone. I could get away with it. And so I asked, Everr, Hey, do you want to try one more time? Because he's been very active. He's out there, he's like checking dose, he's still doing his late November thing. He very well might come again. Do you want to give a shot. He's like, yeah, yeah, we gotta do it, Dad. We gotta kill the Y nine. We gotta kill the y nine. So we slip out there and bring the cocoa and the snacks and the books and the magazines

and all that kind of stuff. We do the whole thing all over again, and no deer show up, like zero deer, and so he's bummed out and I'm thinking, like, geez, did we blow it up this bad last night? Like I didn't think anything winded us like we got out of there good. I thought like we would have another good hunt. And it was actually colder that day. I thought it'd be a little bit better conditions. But for

whatever reason, nothing wanted to come out. But at very last light, I actually think I had stood up in the blind and poked my head out the top, so I had glass over some tall grass to see to the very back corner of that bean field, and there he is. He's standing right in that inside corner, just right on the edge of the tall grass, just kind of looking around, surveying the field, like probably wondering where

the hecker all the rest of the deer. And so I grabbed my gun and I put the scope out the top of the blind, and I can see him in the scope and I'm looking at him, but I'm like thinking it's dark, and I tell Ever I look back at Ever. I'm like, hey, cover your ears, Like

sit back and cover your ears. And so I look in the scope again, and I look at my phone and it's like, you know, if I remember it's one minute before legal light's done, or on the minute that legal light's done, and I remember looking at him and thinking like you could do this, but I'm standing up but crouched and rest my gun on the top bar of the blind, like sticking it out of the roof of the haybell blind to get this. And again, same thing.

It's one hundred yard shot. Now he's much closer. But again I'm thinking, this is not this is not a deal. Right at the end of legal light. It's shaky kind of shot, just just this is not I'm not gonna do this. So again I set that back down and everetts like his ears cover. He's like, Dad, did you shoot yet? Did you shoot yet? I'm like, no, but take your hands after your ears, and no, I didn't shoot. Wasn't quite right, So I had to explain to him why I didn't take the shot and all that kind

of good stuff. But super fun hunts, like you know, two times getting to see a four and a half year old buck with a four year old that's nuts. So those are two of like my favorite hunts of all last year, just getting to have those encounters see this deer. Now, Everett's got like a connection to the deer, so he's always asking me if I'm gonna shoot him orf we're gonna go hunting for him again and anything like that. So I end up, you know, after that

kind of fizzle didn't happen. He disappeared again a little bit, and then a week or two later, Junior, that number one dear showed up and I got a shot at him. And so now I was tagged out in Michigan. Wasn't going to go out for the y nine anymore because I couldn't. And so then I just kind of stayed

out of there and let him hang out. And he continued to hang out in the late season, got some pictures of him, and season wrapped up, scoured all these areas that I can shed hunt, no sheds, but I did have pictures of him into January, so I knew he survived. And so coming into this second.

into this year with this buck. It's like it's a different thing when you take a shot where you're like, I can make this, but I'm kind of hoping I make this, versus being like so when you have him out there and you're like, I have this shot I could make, it's too far, I'm not gonna do it.

Like it's been the opposite. It's like don't shoot, don't shoot, don't shoot unless it's like so so perfect, but it's

the reverse when you're on there own. And never I've never actually thought about that, but it would be really great if I could have the same level of self control when I'm hunting solo, you know, because how many times have you and I and so many other hunters you know, felt that, like you gotta get the shot, gotta get the shot, and then you maybe you do the very best you could, or maybe you rush it a little bit or something, or maybe the situation is

a little bit off and you can't get that arrowback, can't get that bullet back, and we're left shaking our head, losing sleep. Whatever.

moving in the rud or whatever. Like I've got to believe that ninety five percent of shooting opportunities or something feel like this is a brief moment we have here. You know, I don't know many times, at least I've never had the time where deer's sitting in a bean field in front of me for five minutes and I'm just sitting there thinking, oh shit, shoot, should not shoot? No, I've never heard that.

little bit at the very least. If you have that deer at a stupid awesome range, it helps so much.

that we all get kind of tricked by a few outliers. So, like, we watch a few freaks of nature who don't get impacted by these things, and so they consistently kill deer fifty years six or whatever, and we see that on TV a few times where we talk to them on a podcast, or we've got one friend who's like that, and then you start thinking like, oh, that's just normal, and you start thinking that forty yard shots aren't that

far that I, oh, yeah, I can shoot. I can shoot great at sixty all the times, so I could kill one at fifty or whatever. But it's so it's so, so, so so different, And I think that what I'm learning now is like every year, to your point, I'm shrinking instead of increasing my maximum range, I'm actually shrinking it because I'm learning, Like there's I'm just by experience learning how there's so many different things that go wrong. And I would much rather just try to avoid failure versus

stretching myself to hope to maybe get lucky. I want to be one for one versus two for seven. You know, I would much rather get that one perfect thing then mess it up a time or two. I'm so sick of dealing with error in some kind of way like that.

And there's so many opportunities for air yes, like pass them, pass on those shots, wait for the right opportunity, like that's I need to write that on my gun, rite that on my bow, like put that everywhere, because there's nothing more important these days.

you know. And he was telling me about it, and he's like, it was just like he just ran smack dab into a reality he had sort of forgotten about because he's been hunting a specific kind of pretty good place. And man, when you when you see people go out and try this stuff and hunt new environments or do new things, that's sort of when you figure this stuff out the most. You know, it's like, yeah, you can screw up in the box blind that you sit ten times a year just as easily, or maybe not just

as easily. But when you put yourself in those situations where it's like a new spot, a new kind of level of pressure, then you realize how important these rules are to have for yourself because it's so easy to screw up.

So like I want to talk about later, but simplifying my pins, simplifying and maybe adjusting some things of the arrow abroad and all those kinds of things, just assuming like, hey, stuff goes wrong, so remove is much chance for air. So instead of stretching out, instead of trying to get more opportunities, I'm now changing my hunting strategy and shooting or weapons is in ways to instead avoid mistakes versus trying to get a little more opportunity. Let's let's circle

back to twenty twenty three spring. I know he survived, and he's the only deer I know of that would be five and a half and coming into him thinking like, all right, man, he should be five and a half because I've followed him last three years and I believe he made it, and I had all these encounters over the previous years. I've seen where he spends a lot of time, I've found his shed. I think he's probably gonna be the one that he's going to be the

deer I'm after this year. So this spring I started preparing to hunt him specifically, I was like, all right, he's gonna be the one old deer. He's gonna be the one I'm after. So what are the things I need to do or what are the things I know? Number one thing I know about this deer is that he spent a lot of time on the north properties I've permissioned on and almost no time on the South properties.

So spend some extra time walking around the north just like just trying to look at the property of the New Eyes again, like all right, just just think through like big picture, what have we seen in the past, Howard dear you doing this kind of stuff. Just tried to like make sure I've got the puzzle pieces right in my head. Did that earlier this year, shed hunting, and then I was able to make a couple of habitat improvements on one of the properties I've got access to.

I can make some improvement, So I, you know, try to do my food plots in a different kind of way this year to make them like I really really really want to try to get these food plots to work out right. This year, I frost seeded and actually seated a two track trail that I used to not have planted. I planted that did some hinge cutting. Long story short on all of this is that the two track came as a nice clover path, which is great. The food plots were really hard to make work because

of drought this summer. I'm doing trying to do no till, so I'm trying to not till it all up, trying to do like a rotation. I was able to get something going in both of these two plots I can plant, but I had to do it multiple seedings and all sorts of stuff. So it's kind of like a nightmare this summer trying to make all that work. But I just knew, like one of the best opportunities I have for these deer is I've got these two little plots right on the west and south side of his main bedroom.

And so anytime any deer is in this big north bedding area, a lot like if that's like their favorite place to be, which a couple of these deer I've hundred over the years. It has been if you've got a deer like that, you've got a good chance either on those plots or as they transition to those plots, if you can get them to actually come in well. And I've had some years that they have not come in well, especially as I've been trying to do this

no tail thing. So I've been trying to test no till, trying to do better stuff for the soil and use less herbicide and all that, and that's been like hit or miss. Some of the plots have been okay, some years not so much. But I just really tried to make them work this year, and I would give them like a B plus maybe be so did all that, you know checked. I've got a handful of tree stands that have been up forever that I keep up and

just check every summer. And then I'm also always trying to like add a spot or two or prep another tree or two for my saddle. So there's a couple places that I've just kind of thought through locations I have or haven't a hunt in the past, you know, what might be a good tree to add to the mix, just to have already ahead of time. So I've added a couple spots like that. I just tried to this year. I've been hunting here a long time, so it's easy to just like fall back into the same old, same old.

What I tried to do leading to this year was like think about specific situations that it might have with this deer and try to like tighten things up a little bit. So, for example, on the back food plot, there's this is the food plot that is on the southern edge of that betting zone. I've had a tree stand out there forever. I've had some success there but had not killed any well, I did kill one buck

out of the food plot. But what I'm getting at here is that I thought, like, there's a situation here where you might be able to get a shot out of deer here. But there's a couple of situations where I found where things don't work out, Like if you've got any kind of south in the west wind, if there's any kind of movement with that wind, you can

end up getting winded by deer. So I thought, you know what, I need to have a second stand location on this plot for when I've got you know, any bit of like southwest or south southwest, or just give me a few more options. I'm going to do another stand over here and then I'm going to put slay some tree tops down on one side to make sure that if deer do come in the food plot, there's a better chance that they come out in range of this side of the plot instead of the other plot.

So it's like just stuff like that, like and a bunch of my different stand setups. I was just trying to, you know, look for what's the little detail thing I could do better this year. So in this case, was trying to make sure that if anything came this half acre plot, I would have a shot at it. And you know, in the past, maybe I'd be good sixty five percent of the time, and now I'm good eighty

five percent of the time. So I was doing those types of things all around this main core area that I thought he would spend the most time on, and then late summer put out my cameras and bailed out at the end of August and stayed out of there in September. I take that back. One other thing to take note of is I went out a couple times in August and glassed a neighboring field that was beans that was adjacent to all this, and saw him twice.

And so that just confirmed for me like, all right, you know, he's doing the things he used to do. He's in this core area. I started to get a few pictures. So all of this just basically says, all right, your plan will work. He's here, he's doing his thing. He's big bodied, he's he's who he was. Then September rolls around. I stay out. I basically for like my local properties, try to leave them untouched until opening the day.

The night before opening day, I wanted to try to get an idea of like, you know, is he coming out to one of these spots. Can I see where he's crossing one of these openings? Can I see into this little bedding zone. There's some thick brushy grass. So I go and actually get out to this hilltop and bring a step leader out and put a step leadder in the standing corn on a hilltop so I can

see over the standing corn. I do that, and I actually glass him up in this grassy bottom down beneath me, which is a spot I had never seen him before, so not in the core zone where I thought he was. Instead, he's like way up by the road. So you and I were talking about this, you know, a month ago or two months ago whenever this happened, right, And you said he might be doing that more often, right, I mean,

it's it's a safe spot. I never go in there, nobody ever goes in there, so it's one hundred percent pressure free. He's close to the road but also close to where I access, so you know, he maybe knows some of the time when I'm coming and out because I go along the south edge of this grassy swale to get in and out of the property most of the time. So that was like an eye opening moment for me where I was like, huh, I wonder if this is a thing that has happened more often. And

see him that night. Next day, hunt over in that zone and I don't see him, And if I can fast forward here a little bit, over the course of the next three ish weeks, the next two weeks, I spot him one night when I couldn't hunt, but I could it was either a night or morning. But I saw him another time in that grassy swale, So he's twice now that I've seen him in that grassy swale, betted and standing up. And then I got a picture

of him in daylight on the back plot. So the south of the edge of his betting air on like the eighth So there was like, you know, I can't remember with the specifics, but basically once a week I was getting at some kind of daylight sighting of him, which continued into the month of October, which was surprising to me because lots of times like I'll have these deer you know, around, but then once opening day hits,

then it's pretty much ghost town for a while. But he kept like kind of showing up and a little different different spots every time. It wasn't like he was always going towards the west or always going to the south. There was no kind of pattern that I could kind of figure out as far as like how to predict

where he might daylight. I knew it was just around this core like ten acre ish bedding zone, but how he left that, you know, I had no idea, And so as we talked about throughout this fall, that was like my challenge throughout October. I was trying to figure out, how do I make sure I'm in the right place because I know this deer, this deer still feels comfortable. Fortunately, I was able to be you know, careful with when I hunted him where I hunted in a way that

was low impact. So I just try to really careful about how I access, really careful about how to get out of there, and enough so that he was still showing up every once in a while. But I just couldn't find a rhyme or reason to why he might go in any one direction. So finally one of the things we talked about was, hey, maybe we just need to like volume hunt a spot and sit a location for two or three evenings in a row or something like that. And so I did try that maybe like

in the twenties of October or something like that. Still didn't see him take off for a week, go to deer camp, do a thing up there. I come back from deer camp, and now it's late October and we're moving into the rut, and this is basically my window that I think, like, this is probably my last best chance to kill him, because I had like four or five days I could hunt from late October through like the first of November, and then I had to leave

for Nebraska. And over past years he disappeared for parts of November. And it just becomes harder killes deer during the rut because they're off doing other things. So I thought, man, like I got a push into the good stuff. So throughout most of October I was hunting around the exterior of that betting zone and just trying to catch him when he moved out, and now I was going to

go into it. So I go in that first morning, push in like right to the edge of like the core of the core, and see him locked on a dough, watch him kind of follow a dough just stand around with her maybe one hundred some one hundred and fifty yards away something like that. And this is in this like thick, tall brushy grassy stuff. I can just kind

of barely see him through this tall grass. Disappears midday, I pulled on the set, try to relocate to another spot that gets me closer to them, but then also in between the direction they think they're going to transition out to end up not seeing him again that night, but saw a bunch of deer and it looked to me like he was still in this little tiny thicket where I last saw him all throughout the evening, because you know when those satellite bucks just kind of like

stand around looking like dummies, staring into a thicket, just standing there and then another buck comes out and they're all just kind of standing around staring when there's a buck locked on doe in there there's hot dough. It was that kind of deal. So next morning, I'll go really fast this part because we did talk about this, you know, two weeks ago or three weeks ago or

whatever it was when it happened. The next morning is the morning when I had the wind issue part way through the morning hunt, and we decided, like, man, this wind is awful. It's blowing into the bedding area. You know, it shifted on me. This just isn't gonna work. So I decided part way through the morning hunt that I had to bail because I was just ruining the property with this wind that was doing what was not supposed

to do. So as I'm climbing out of the tree, were about to climb out of the tree, I'm lower my bow, I hear something, and of course the wide nine is right next to me going through this twenty yard lane and he walks through before me able to get my bow up in the tow row. Boff, and he catches this swirl of wind and kind of trots off, not like fully, like out of there. Like a bat

out of hell. But no, something's not right, so he books it back into the thick thick I hang or pull down the set, and then we do a big half circle all the way around to the other side of the property, to the other side of the bedding area. Have a hell of a time trying to find somewhere to set up there that night. Eventually find a tree that'll work. And what I'm setting up now. Previously I was just off. I was like doing a downwind of the dough betting air kind of set up that morning,

but the wind shifted. So now to be downwind of this main dough betting ara, I have to be to the other side. Gets set up there in the saddle, and as you know, about an hour before dark or forty five minutes before dark something like that. Here he comes cruising out on this side. I snort, reads him in. He circles into forty yards. I take the shot. He jumps, the string, hits him in the shoulder, runs off. You can see a big like what seems like almost the

entire arrow hanging out of him and like flopping. When he runs off, I'm immediately think shoulder shot. We wait, I don't know a few hours till my friends get there and pick up the trail. We have blood for you know, a long ways, but not good blood. We'll have like drop here, smear here, drop here, smear here.

We're able to follow that blood. Plus with my buddy's dog that he always brings, we covered three quarters of a mile, much of which was like he was just walking, like he went down a single corn row for like half a mile or something like that, like just just follow that row, just forever, and then he jay hooked back into his bedroom, lost blood, kept looking, didn't find anything, and you know, at that point we're all what we all thought from the beginning, but had to make sure.

It was like man looking at footage, looking at everything, it looks like this shot just hit the shoulder, and you know, either it poked through or was just behind the shoulder enough that had got into the vitals. And if that's the case, that'd be a dead deer like fast and we would have seen a great blood trail or hits the shoulder and there's this blood trail that

Peter's out and you know he's alive. So you know, we talked about how devastating that was for me, and frustrating that was for me, you know, to what we were talking about earlier, Tony. This is just another huge reminder of why I just want to focus more and more on minimizing any kind of error versus trying to get more you know, poking out there for more opportunities, just because I hate, hate, hate that feeling of missing a deer or wounding a deer. You know, it was

you know, it's the worst, it's the absolute worst. It changes you, yeah, it does. And this was the I'm trying to think of. This is right. This is the first buck that I have ever hit and not recovered that I can think of. And so I've missed I've missed you plenty of deer, but this was the first one that I hit and wounded it and couldn't recover it. And I take that back. I did hit like ten years ago or something. I hit that buck back and it killed him, but I missed him didn't find him

until later in the year. But so so point being, this was like the thing that everyone talks about and this dreaded and it's like always the worst case scenario, and I had just gotten, you know, been lucky that it hadn't happened yet to me in this kind of way, but now it had, and it just so happened to be a deer. You know, I'd been chasing for four years and had put all this time and energy into and was you know, really really really invested in and

then I go and screw this whole thing up. And so you know, that just got me thinking about again, like this, it's a game of inches, and if it had been a couple of inches back or you know whatever, it might be a couple of inches lower, probably less than that, it would have been smoke city game over, high fives, hugs, all the good stuff. And instead I'm losing sleep at night and just very very disappointed with the whole thing. So that was you know where our

podcast a couple of weeks ago left off, right. You know, we talked about me trying to change my archery set, get to a quieter setup, maybe because you know, I had a bunch of deer jumping the string with my current setup. This was the second buck this year that made a significant move jump in a spin at the shop,

both forty yard shots to our earlier points. So I started thinking through all that kind of stuff and you know, we talked about pulling in range, you know, maybe not taking those forty yard shots anymore, which I've not decided I'm not doing. I'm a thirty yard pinner now for a while at least, and proud of it. And someone texted me or sent me a message or something after that, hearing that podcast, and they just said, like, you know, that's something like we've been. We've been like, what's the

way I'm looking for here? Glorifying long shots too much? Right, We're like, oh, man, that guy's so awesome. Look at this guy can shoot one hundred yards and well that's incredible. And so now it's almost like a badge of honors, say, oh, yeah, killed them at sixty, but we should be glorifying like I killed them at ten. Yeah, Like, how about let's let's get like under twenty yards, Like, man, that that's

the most hunting skills. Can you get that close to a deer and not know you or not know that you're there?

is what I'm trying to say. That's that's what I want to start, really positioning myself for no more of this forty yard stuff.

it go up and down, up and down. So I'm like thinking, there's hardly anything in there that's gonna pop out, and he's just gonna be off to the races again. So I take off. I have to go to the Braska Mark.

and he'll be there, hopefully. But he wasn't. And what my plan was is that I would I brought in cameras and I was hunting in the interior of the interior again, because now we're in like November six, November sex of November eighth, like your best possible day is probably in pretty good weather and all that kind of stuff. So I've hunted right in there and I wasn't seeing

him and didn't have pictures anywhere. But I thought, you know, let's since I'm gonna be in this is the one hunt of the year, I'm gonna be in this stuff, like, let's hand camera. So I hung a couple of cameras right in the belly of the beast. And then after three, three or four days of hunting with no sightings, nothing, I started thinking I think I gotta just like pull out and wait because I'm just like putting a bunch of pressure on this place, and I'm not feeling like

he's here right now. I don't know what's going on if he's like I had all the worries going through my mind, and I don't think I told you this story, but the first day back from Nebraska, and if I told you this, tell me, because I'm We've talked about all this stuff, like so many different little bits and pieces over the years. I don't know what's what. But my first hunt back after returning from Nebraska, we go to hunt and I'm slipping into a tree. I'm and go set up and hanging hunt and I see a

white belly. They tell you about this, And I see a white belly and I'm like, oh no. And this isn't that far away from where we stop tracking. I'm within one hundred yards of where we finally gave up. And so I see a white belly and I'm like, oh no. And so I'm like, we got to go see this. And we get closer and then I can see antlers. I'm like, holy shit, he's here dead. And we were one hundred yards away or eighty yards away

from him, and he was right here. So I had, like my stomach fell to my knees, and I'm walking up and thinking like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. And then I get up to a close enough point I can see it. It's actually just a dead year and a half old. But for like a minute or two,

there serious panic. So so all that happens, and eventually I just said, Okay, I just got to get out of here, and I don't know what's going on, but I'm not going to blow this place up if he's gone or if he's you know, so either One thing I thought was maybe the shot did kill him somehow. I start having, like, you know, all the worst case scenarios running through my mind. So is there any way

this could have killed him? So you had, like I was texting you and we were talking on the podcast, like is there some way this deer did die and he's actually laying out there somewhere? Do I need to go and like search more of this place than I did? Do I need to like call off the season? And then the other thing was like is he somewhere else? Do I need to start? I don't know, try to get permission on other properties, or do I need to

I don't know. I had all these thoughts he's gone, he's dead, or maybe he's injured and just like laying low and not moving very much. He's just like kind of hunkered down somewhere recuperating. Those are the three possibilities. And spent a lot of days thinking about which one of those it might be. But throughout November I just stayed out of there the rest of the time, kept checking cameras, wasn't seeing him, got out a couple times

a glass, didn't see him. Hunted a bunch more on some other properties I had permission on, had some encounters with the other deer I'd be willing to shoot on that property, went up north to my family deer camp, did all that kind of stuff, and nothing. Three weeks go by, no sightings of the wide, no pictures of

the Wide nine, and my hopes have seriously dwindled. Then we get to Thanksgiving week, and just before Thanksgiving, I wake up one morning and I get my pictures sent to me overnight, so I wake up, look at the camera, and then evening prior it's him. He's back. He's in he's on one of those cameras that I put like in the belly of the Beast, and he's I got six pictures of him, so it's two two three shot

bursts of him going across this little grassy area. And uh, just that was the best feeling, like just the idea that he's not dead, he's still around, there's a chance for redemption. It felt like closure, Like at that point,

like a huge monkey came off my back. Like the worst thing would have been that if I had never figured out what happened, like if he just disappeared and I never found him again, And like we were talking about last week, who knows, he could have got hit by a car, or he might have died somewhere and buried himself, you know, in a brush and you'll never find him. You'll never know, or you know, maybe someone else shot him later and you'll never know. And so

just the not knowing was driving me crazy. So finally like just knowing that, Okay, he survived the shot, he's alive and doing his thing. Maybe you get another chance to him, maybe someone else kills him, maybe he gets hits by car. You know, I can't control what happens next but at least I know that he's not laying dead somewhere because of me, and I wasn't able to recover him. So that was like a big sense of

relief to just have that. The next day, I was actually at actually called my camera and was planning on hunting that day regardless because we'd gotten past the first week of gunn season in Michigan, and last year, that whole time period when I took Everett out hunting him was that last week of November, right around Thanksgiving week

was when he had gotten daylight active last year. So my plan was like, I'm going to stay out of that property all the way till the end of November, and then if I don't have pictures of him yet, I haven't seen him yet, I'm still going to try a few hunts at the end of November to hope that maybe he shows back up like he did last year. So it just happened to be that the day I was gonna start hunting was also a day I got his picture. So we go out hunt two nights in

a row, do not see him. Thanksgiving, do the whole Thanksgiving thing, and we're getting to the good stuff here, Tony, So thank you for bearing with me as I recount all of this, come back from Thanksgiving, head out for an evening hunt, and I'm thinking to myself, man, I'm getting this wrong. At the end of my time with my family, we were there at my family's house for Thanksgiving, and the day we were there, I was going to leave and head home late in the afternoon, but I

keep looking at my phone. I'm looking at the weather for I'm looking at the barometric pressure, and I'm looking at all this kind of stuff and like, man, it's like super high barmetric pressure, and man, the temperature's cold and than I thought it was gonna be in Oh gosh, this is the only north wind we have and it's the only time I can hunt one of these spots. And I convinced myself, like over the course of forty five minutes that all of a sudden, like I have

to go hunting tonight. So like in a thirty minute whirlwind, I'm like, guys, we gotta go. Everyone pack, we gotta go, we gotta go. Yeah. So I have like a chaos fire drill. At the end of our Thanksgiving visit, I go back and sell film hunt actually, and then the next time Charlie my camera I comes down. We hunt up in this front area where he'd been visible the

night before. And the most important thing here is, now that we're in late November, I have gone back to my original plan for him, so I'm not punching into the belly of the beast anymore. I'm just hunting edges of the food on the edge of his core again, hoping that he's going to move back towards that late season type behavior. He's maybe still checking some but he's mostly gonna be focusing on food, especially if he's wounded how he was wounded. But I'm guessing, like, hey, he's

gonna be trying to pack on some energy here. The temperatures are falling. They had just picked the cornfield, so the food was gonna be the game again for late November into December. So I'm hunting on the edge. This is the west edge of his core, on the edge of the corn and we end up seeing a deer out in this grassy swale again, the same area that I saw him once in October and the night before the opener, and I think one other time maybe, and I see a deer and then I see a frame

and I'm thinking, holy crap, I think that's him. And he disappears, but I'm pretty certain I saw him in this grassy swale. I keep on like trying to glass over there the rest of the night. This is a couple hundred yards away, in the opposite direction from his core, So this is like way up by the road and can't see anything else. It gets dark. I start packing up and then I'm like looking down the creek and I can see a dough step out into the grass again, and I see a big body deer behind her, and

I'm thinking, ooh, that looks like a big buck. I'm thinking that's him with a dough maybe. Then it's just too dark. I can't see. They kind of turn back go back in this timber. So the next morning we can't hunt, but I can get out in glass. So it's snowing. Another thing I should point out is it started snowing that night and it snowed all through the rest of the night. So this is our first snow of the year, and that next am it is you know,

fresh blanket of snow everywhere. So I got out to glass from this hill and I can see like an hour half hour before daylight. I can see in my bio was like clearly pretty Darne, clearly across the field. And so I'm watching and I see a deer down at the edge of the grass and the cornfield all by itself. And then I see it limp, and I thought, oh, so I get my spotting scope set up, and with the spotting scope on my phone, I can actually see better.

I don't know if you've messed with a new these new iPhones, but the low light filming on the new, like I've got an iPhone fourteen Max or whatever it is, it's crazy, like I can film like it's like broad daylight almost. So I was able to film and see like him. I could see him on my phone better than I could even see him binoculars. And it's a half hour before daylight or something. And so I see him on the edge of this cornfield, in this grassy swale,

and I watch him. He's got a bad limp, like bad, like he's way worse than I thought it would be, Like he looks rough and he limps his way into the grass. And then I watch him for a half hour as he kind of mills around and then I eventually see him bed about five minutes after daylight, see him bed down in this grassy swale. I then like did everything I could to try to find landmarks like pinpoint like where he was, Like I try to mark

him on onyx like I thought it was. And then I just spend a lot time like trying to find like there's no good landmarks when it's just a cornfield and a grassy field. You know, it's not like there's a tree or something I can do. And then you know, I've got one perspective. I know that my perspective is gonna be different when I get to the other side of him. So I'm trying to find things in the grass, like a black looking bushy thing and like a snowy

spot in the cornfield or whatever. I tried to like zero in exactly. I just spent a bunch of time staring at the spot where he was and trying to remember everything I could about everything around him so that I could find him again, because I knew that my plan would be, like I need to try to kill him in that bed, like this is my best chance, Like I know where he is, this is maybe my last best chance. You know you'll never know. I mean, who knows where he is gonna be tomorrow or what's

gonna happen next, Like this is it? This is the chance?

shouldn't be able to hear me. And second things going for me is that it is gun seasons, so I've got three fifty so I can I don't need to be thirty yards for him to get a shot. I can be sixty yards or eighty yards or whatever. So I originally thought I could just do a big wide half circle, get downwind of him, and then just work my way up the edge of the corn and the grass and get as close as I can possibly get

and then just wait for him to stand up. But then I got to thinking, man, this grass is so tall, like you know, I could just see his head and shoulders when he went in there in some spots, and then some spots you can just see antlers, and then some spots you can see more. But I mean, the grass is anywhere from waist to shoulder high, probably am me. So I got to thinking, I'm gonna stand there, and even if he stands up, I won't be able to

get a clear shot. So my next idea was that the cornfield rises up into a hill to the north of where he was beded, a decently substantial hill, maybe like fifty feet of elevation or something like that. I don't know, maybe not that much, but something like that.

So I got to thinking, if I could somehow get to the backside of that hill without him seeing me, I could belly crawl over the crest and lay in the cut corn and get over top of him and then have a downward angle down into the grass and hopefully that would give me, you know, sight lines and a shooting lane into the grass to the vitals if he stands up. So eventually I decided, like that's the best option I've got here. So I get to the north propery line. I get my camera guy out there

as soon as he can. It's like noon by the time he can get there. And we go to the north propery line. And I thought that the way the hill was that I would be able to walk or you know, crouch and kind of cover a lot of distance to get to where this hill was. But turns out, as soon as I started walking across the field, I very quickly saw it's way more exposed to the spot he was in than I realized, like right by the road.

So again like he's bedded I don't know, one hundred and fifty yards from the road maybe something like that, and within sight of a of a pretty busy road. So I realized, like, okay, I'm not going to be able to just walk to this hill and then crawl to the hill. I have to crawl the entire way right off of a road. So so me and my camera guy start crawling and then eventually belly crawling like snake slithering right and broadside of of a road. Cars

driving by. I'm thinking, like, man, these people just think I'm an idiot. There's a guy crawling across a cut cornfield at noon?

sticking straight down. That's the path I had to take. So the two of us belly crawl two hundred yards across the snowy cut cornfield to get down the two hundred yards, and then we have to do the part where we go down. And this was the really hard part because this was perpendicular to the corn rows. So now if if you can imagine having to belly crawl over twelve inch tall cornstalks that are frozen hard because it's like twenty degrees, so it's like little metal rebar

rods every twelve inches. And that was a nightmare because We're trying to do it. And then I'm just feeling like we're more and more exposed as we're getting closer and closer, and I'm worried about getting seen. So then I'm like, Charlie, I'm sorry, but we got to take our packs off. Like our packs are sticking up too high. We got to take our packs off. So we now we take our packs off, and now we push our packs over a row, and then we crawl over the row.

And then we push our packs over the row, and then we crawl over the row. And I'm holding my rifle in one hand. I'm holding a shooting stick in the other hand because it keeps falling on my backpack, and so I'm doing that and then moving the pack and then crawling, and then we get a little further

and then I'm still like worried about getting seen. So then I bust out my secret weapon, which I had brought a old white bed sheet to cover us up when we were laying down there, because I thought like, we need some way to hide up there on this hilltop, so I brought an old sheet. But now I'm worried about being seen as we're crawling in there, so I take the bed sheet out of my backpack and tie it around my neck like like you know some people

tie like their sweater around their shoulders, you know. So I did that with an old bed sheet so that I could maybe stay a little more hidden. So now I'm berey crawling with a white sheet over me, trying to get down the hill. And then we're getting closer and I'm still like, I'm like, God, we're gonna get picked off of here. We're still not hidden enough. So now I go to Charlie and like, buddy, you're gonna hate me. But we can't crawl anywhere. We need to

just slide and roll. So what we would do is I would break I would roll. I literally I was laying down. I would push my pack so it'd break down the cornstalks, and then I would just roll. I'd roll over it, slide into that, push the bedding or push the backpack roll. So we did this for like an hour and a half, Like we just took two hours to get across this field covered in a bed sheet,

and it was just ridiculous. Like me and Charlie just kept looking at the show like this is absurd, Like nobody does anything this dumb to try to kill a deer. And if anyone was like sitting on the side of the road, they could have watched a lot of this and just watched a couple of knuckleheads, like I don't know, snuggle up in a sheet rolling around. But we eventually, we eventually get over the hill Tony, and I'm like, all right, we're actually here. Oh my gosh, we finally

made it. I'm sweating and covered in snow from head to toe, and Charlie wants to quit like never has before. He's never gonna work for me to again and get into position. I put the backpack in front of me and just try to like get everything cleared around and get my gun in positioned and just try to get situated.

And then I start losing like control of my body, Like I just had to keep peeing all the time, so I had to peel like two different times because I think I'm nervous now or something, so I can't stand up to peace, so I just have to like roll over to my side and pee from a laying down position. So all this is happening, Okay, finally we we're situated. We're good. We're glassing down in there. I'm trying to like make sure that this is the right spot.

I'm pretty sure we're looking at the right zone, but you know, it's always different from this position. But we sit there for an hour and fifteen minutes watching glassing, watching glassing, and I was having like lower back pain because I'm on my belly up on my elbows though kind of, you know, so I can see. And so I remember one point I had to kind of roll over on my side to just relieve my back for

a second. And just as I do that, Charlie's like, oh, oh, he's up and right then, so I'm on my side and he's up, and I like, can I turn? I turned my head just a little bit, and he's like looking right at us. I'm like, oh no, like all of this, and somehow he stands up right as I have to like roll a little bit, and he's staring at us. So we're frozen, frozen, frozen, and I'm not like at first I wanted to start trying moving things in a position, but no, it's just just freaking wait. Mark,

just be patient, and so I just freeze. And then you see like he's he's normal, Like he wasn't actually on us, he was just happened to be looking in that direction that he kind of turns his head and kind of looks down, like starts licking himself. And so every time he kind of did a little movement, I've shifted my gun up. I got up on my elbows. I've got up high enough so I could see over

the corn stubble. And then he's in position, guns up scopes on him, but he's facing right at us, And I thought about the fact that we're gonna have tough sight lines into there, and I thought to myself, Man, do you need to like, do you need to think about next shot? Like I don't know if I'm gonna be able to see to the vitals. Is a next

shot something that I want to do. I remember thinking about that that morning, and I actually I just was thinking about all this that morning before Charlie got there. I remember pulling up the anatomy of a deer and just like looking again, like let me see, Like, I know people take next shots. I've never taken a next shot before and it's never been something I would do, but I'm like, people do it all the time, and

they drop deer. So I look at the anatomy again, I'm like, man, that's crazy, Like I'm not gonna take that shot. There's not a lot there that's actually gonna work for you. So I had had that thought leading into it, but but thankfully I didn't do it, because he stood up and gave me a next shot, and no, not taking that shot to our early earlier conversation like this has got to be just right. So I'm just

on him and waiting and waiting. He just stands like that forever, and then I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting and thinking. I just remember telling myself like just take your time, like this is it, this is this is your opportunity. Everything has worked out to a tea

like this is exactly how you drew it up. I mean I didn't necessarily draw up the whole rolling down a hill in a bed sheet thing, but everything else had lined up just like I thought, Like my hope had been like get out there early, get out there as soon as you possibly can, because my big question mark, like the big warrior, was like will he stand up before dark? Like I know where he is if I can get in there without him seeing me. The only

question mark is will he stand up in daylight? And will there be a shot through the grass or not? So I I you know, what I was telling Charlie Headstone was like, we got to get there early, like midday if we can, because a lot of times the deer will stand up a time or two during the middle of day and just reposition, so we might get a chance midday or early where he just stands up, turns around, and then beds back down and if we're

not there, there goes your chance. So we got to be there, so thank goodness we were out there early because it took us two hours of crawling just to get in a position. So it's still like late by the time we got there, but or later, but so we he's up. He got up at four ish, I think is when he stood up, so almost two hours were dark. So he stood up to do like his

little reposition and stands up. He's facing us forward and then finally starts turning and turns and gives me a broadside and it takes a couple of steps, and there's a hole in the grass and I can see to the top of his shoulder and just off to the side and uh, put it there behind the shoulder, pull a trigger. He bounded off and stopped. He took took two leaps and stopped. And then I immediately am trying

to reload. And this is a single shot rifle, so I'm trying to get a break action, so I'm trying to get the spence shell out. My fingers are so numb i can't pull it out. So I'm sitting there like trying to pull out the shell, trying to pull the shell, and I can kind of see out the corner of my eye, like I saw he bounced, bounced and stopped, and I'm like shall shell shell, trying to get reloaded. And then I look back and I can't see him anymore, and then trys like he dropped right

there and that was it. He was down and ended up being like an eighty yard shot or something, maybe some seventy yards eighty yards something like that and just an incredible sense of relief to close the close the circle on that whole thing, you know, getting a second

shot at him and getting to finish it. And man, I mean it's it's the wildest hunt I think I've ever had for a specific deer like this, Like all the encounters all, I mean, I had a lot over the years, but this one, you know, took it to a different level.

gun almost feels too easy in those situations sometimes. But like here, when I've hunted for a deer for years or for months on end, and they had all this stuff, Like by the time gun season comes around, I feel like, Hey, I put in my sweat and and I paid my dues. Now I'll take an eighty R shot and be very very thankful for it. So I don't feel bad at all for taking it with a gun.

something like that? Wasn't that so fun? Like wasn't it so fun to crawl out there knowing like, if you do it right, you're gonna get a good shot.

the wilder things I've ever done for a deer. And to have that all come together, like man, really like a fitting ending to a wild set of experiences. And you know, like that day October for thirtieth when I have the you know, the debacle in the morning and then get another shot him later in the day, like that's a first. I've never had two opportunities at a

deer in the same day like that. And then you know, then the horrible situation hitting him bad, and then this whole thing coming back together after like three weeks of thinking it's all done. Just huge set of ups and downs and a wild roller coaster and you know, so

cool to have had my son involved in it. You know, last year he so he had like a personal attachment to the deer too, So he was always really excited because he kind of felt like he, you know, had helped hunt for the deer too, So yeah, it was it was something. And and so let me tell you this back to kind of our one of our main

themes of this whole conversation. I go and recover that deer, and my arrow shot if it had been like a half an inch different, it would have smoked him, Like I'm half an inch away from the edge of that bone and it would have been right through double lung. Half an inch difference made this last month what it was. So it just goes back to like, this is a game of inches. This is a game of the tiniest little things, and anything you can do to account for

those little little margins, you gotta do it. So yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy.

deer changes how you look at all deer going forward. Yeah, like not having the answer to when you hit him and he's gone and whether you're going to see him again or what happened and then all of a sudden he shows back up eventually and you know, puts himself in another position where you got a chance like there's you know that doesn't happen that, Like you don't get to live that very often.

or something like. This is like a very very difficult thing to try to pull off that we do, and and the deer always they always have a few hands up on us, you know, like we are operating from a sit and that shot. Interestingly, when we caped it out, my first shot did break his shoulder blade, so it shattered some of that bone so it actually did punch through a little bit and just didn't get through all the way. But massive infection like bad, like I mean

like like cups of stuff coming out. So so yeah, bad, bad situation. So it goes back to again like what I can learn from this is continuing to work harder at you know, continue to get better with the archery, but also be even more conservative and careful with my shots. As we talked about, not only am I can move to a thirty pin and only, but I'm also changing my bow set up to a quieter bow. I'm also

changing my site set up. I'm gonna go to a single pin set, and I think that's going to simplify my site picture and in what I'm doing, because if I, like, anytime I've made mistakes when I've rushed has been like I will that those pins hit the vitals, and I'm not always like in the past, I've had times when like the pins hit the vitals and then I'm going through and pulling if i only have one pin, Like I'm trying to find ways to dumb it down, knowing

that I am, like I'm an imperfect human and trying to find ways to account for that.

like you don't have a lot of experience. When you dumb that part down, you are giving yourself a real advantage. And it's it's hard to realize until you put it to like put it to use for a few years, but for a lot of people.

evolution of that. And and so I think, yeah, just that's the thing about hunting is it is a constant process, is a constant evolution. It's constant, like none of us, not even the very best keyboard warrior out there who likes to comment on everything about how everybody else is done, Like, not even that guy gets it right all the time. So I think the trick to all this, Tony, and I think your good example of this too is like

just never stop learning, Like, never stop that process. Like we don't ever have it all figured out, So just keep on growing, keep on fine tuning. I think it's long even on like a year where everything goes right, You should not look at that as everything went right. I think we should be looking, Okay, what could have been better? What could I do a little better? What did I kind of get away with this year? What mistake did I actually make that I got away with?

But deep down in my heart, I know, like that wasn't quite right. There's always something we can do better, and this deer was a great illustration of that for me, and I am very thankful for that.

done a lot. And I think I think the remedy to getting better is to go do stuff outside of your comfort zone a little bit and try stuff like that, like when you see that buck betted there like that, and granted it's gun season, but there there's a move that's going to kill that deer, and a lot of

people are going to not try it. And I think that that's you know, I think we've been conditioned so much from people who have really really good hunting, who can play it safe and they can stay out and they don't have to go in, and they have to worry about anybody bumping their deer or change in anything. And it's like very sort of a contrived situation, and we get that message just beat into us over and over. It's like, play it safe, play it smart, play it safe.

I think you level up as a hunter by putting yourself in a little bit uncomfortable situations and trying things just sort of out of out of your routine. I think that's where you get you really get better.

I've traveled a lot more. I've hunted so many more locations, so many more states, so many different styles, you know, that year when I filmed deer country and I had to, you know, learn from all these different guys who have very very specific skill sets and they hunt all these different ways. Like after that year, coming back and hunting my own places I used to hunt forever, all of a sudden, I've got all these new tools in my toolbox, all these new ideas, all these different things that all

of a sudden I feel more comfortable trying. I would have never tried the you know, hunting without a tree on the ground that led to me killing that buck in Nebraska this year, or this situation where I killed this one sneaking in and belly crawling in on one, or last year when I saw that other buck in Michigan and had to climb on out of my tree stand after I saw him bedded and sneak up on

him to get a shot at him. Or I mean, I could point back to so many different things where the only reason why I thought of these ideas or had the confidence to try them was because I'd gone to new places and been forced to do new things, forced to learn new ideas, forced to get outside of that comfort zone. And then all of that comes back

and helps me even in the local spots too. So it's it's a very it's it's a process that comes back to what I think you've preached a lot, which is, you know, getting out of your getting outside of your comfort zone. And there's many different ways you can do that. The better, that's all.

discomfort and try new things and the aggressive styles. I think, you know, the thing with this deer didn't necessarily help me kill him in the end, but it did help me have these opportunities over the years is just you know, scouting. Take that back, It did help me kill this deer because I have put a huge emphasis on scouting and glassing and keeping tabs of information, like you know, if you have the luxury and I know, it's a luxury

that not everybody has. Not everybody lives close enough to their properties that they can get out and scout, or not everybody has a property where they can see deer year after year. So I recognize that I'm very fortunate to have permission on some pieces like that where I can. But the fact that I have put a premium on getting out to glass as many times as they can, the fact that I have kept track of every siding I have of these deer, all those little things have

helped me be in the right zones. And finally, in this case, it helped me spot the deer that morning. I couldn't hunt, but I was gonna be, you know, watching, and I saw him and that huge difference, and so scout sut scout, scout learn, learn, learn. I mean that goes back to our very first episode we did this season, Tony, after you killed that buck in Minnesota and I killed

mine in Wisconsin. Both of those we had stories about how taking the extra time to scout, prioritizing scouting more versus hunting more, you know, in a certain way, that's what actually helped me kill this year too, because I had a couple of nights a couple of different times of glassing. I saw him in this grassy swale. Gave me the confidence to watch it again and then sure enough, there he is. So that informed nature of things is critical. So I think that's I think that's probably it on

my story. Glad to be able to tie a bow on the wide nine story and excited to share that in technicolor in a film. We filmed this whole thing too, so it should be a wild ride to put on the On the YouTube.

my skin. I hunted there last year one week in November. I got my ass kicked. I can't handle it, you know, I needed to go back and try it. I just had the chance for muzzleloader opener to go, and dude, I got up at three o'clock. It's a three and a half hour drive down there. Almost I was like, this is so dumb. I'm going into public land that

I know. I know there's going to be people in there, and I'm kind of like, where can I go to have the best chance to see something go bed down kind of like you were talking about, and then maybe get in there cause it's pretty wide open stuff. You know, it's CRP and cattails and not much real cover. Drive all the way down there and I call an audible like and two hours into my drive, I'm like, I got to go to this property that I know a

lot of deer winter on. And so I went in a totally different direction from my plan when I left my house. I get there, you know, maybe twenty minutes before first light, and there's a truck parked in the parking area that I was thinking about parking at. So I'm like, well, I'll go to where I know I probably should go, which is a lot harder to get into this property. It's a lot longer walk. But I'm like, these guys are probably going to push deer my way.

So I go park, get in. There see a guy in a box blind on this private fence line looking into the public. So I'm like, okay, I got guys hunting below me. I got that guy there, and I go just get into this property a little ways and it's just getting light, and I'm like, I better glass this grass before I go because I can see a lot. Look down there's a nice buck walking through this public creek bottom. Like first year, I see, you know, like

one twenty type deer, great buck for there. So I'm like, okay, there's That's what I'm focused on. And then I start picking out deer. It was like a Western hunt because I just had some elevation and I'm like, okay, there's dont two fonds that looks like another buck, But I didn't.

I only had my binos. I didn't have a spot er with me, so anyway, I have to wait for all these deer to go through to get beyond this little hillside so I can move up to where I really wanted to be to see them go into the bedding stuff. And they filter through and I finally get a chance to go up there, and I pick them all up again. You know, I'm four hundred yards closer this time, and they're all milling through this willows and

dogwood to go to this big cat tail slough. So just randomly, I hear a shot and I look over and there's a kid and his dad and a couple other people in this parking area. They shot a buck in the ditch from their truck. You know, he was standing outside. So anyway, I'm kind of like watching my deer and watching this unfold, like come on, guys, whatever,

so they you know this is happening. And I watch these deer get into this cover where I lose them, and I'm like, they're gonna go in there and bed down. It's cattails. You're not going to get in on them, right, So I'm like, okay, but I know where they went through. I know where they're going to go back, probably tonight. So as I'm sitting there, the guy who's in the

box blind shoots. I'm like Jesus, like everybody's on deer but me, And anyway, I get out watch them bed down or watch them get into that cover and sneak down there to look for a spot to set up to catch them coming out, and it's like, you know, it's brush and grass, there's like nothing. You know, you're

not getting into a tree. But I find a spot with the wind, and I'm like, if they pass through here, they're going to be within one hundred and fifty yards of me somewhere and probably close set up that night. Six dos come through at different times, all easy in range, no bucks. Like okay, well, I got a plan for tomorrow morning because I know the cut cornfield they're probably going to and coming back from. So I get up

so early because I have to walk across this. Like I thought about you, I'm like this is like a Mark Kenyon approved thing because it's like two hours before

first light because I have to cross that opening. And then I pull a spencer New Hearts because I have nowhere to sit, so I'm like hiding behind a fence post that has some like public land signs on it, and like forty five minutes before first light, the first dose starts blowing in the dark and then it's just like on and off they're blowing and it gets light. I'm like, well, maybe because it was super windy. I'm like,

maybe something else will come through. Nothing comes through. I don't see a deer, so I'm like, okay, I get up. I'm like, I don't want to hunt here tonight. I'm gonna go somewhere else. So I'm gonna go look at this betting area because I've got a little bit of fresh snow, like an inch of it, maybe maybe not even an inch. And I go get into that betting area because I'm like where did these deer go? Like

why didn't any of them come back in here? And I get to the edge of the cattails and I see a dough track going in there fresh and I'm like, I wonder if I could just follow it kick one up, And so I just followed it a little ways and this dough gets out of her bed like ten yards away from me and just bounds off and I was like, well, now I know what I'm gonna do for the next

couple hours. And I'm telling you, dude, I walked a little ways and I cut a buck track and I'm just looking at it, like a loan buck track, and I'm like, this is a decent deer. And he I follow him, and he's through every patch of better cover. You can imagine like he took this windy route and never went out anywhere he would expose himself. And I got to this part of the cattails, where as soon as I got in there, I'm like, oh man, there's like not really very much wind here, like it was

like this little micro climate. And this like one hundred and twenty hundred and twenty five inch buck gets up right next to me. I mean just and you know, I got the hammer back, but there's like no shot right like he's just running full board through the cattails.

of what I had seen in the morning before. But I'm telling you, dude, I had so much fun because I knew that that snow had only been.

this is where they're at. How they traveled. It was, dude, it was like a the whole time. I was like, I feel like I'm learning so much about hunting this environment that I'm just not that familiar with.

Everybody who hunted in there stayed close to the parking areas in the roads, and those deer were smack dab in the middle. And not not to mention the billion roosters I kicked up while I was, you know, tracking deer in there. I mean, it was just like such a lesson on, like getting to see, okay, the people stay there, the animals go here.