Ep. 752: Better Scouting, Target Buck Shed Hunting, and a Lion Story with Tony Peterson

Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camera for Conservation initiative, in which a portion of every sale of First Light Spectr Camlo Pattern is given back to the National Deer Association to help them with things like their Public Lands initiative for their field, the Fork Initiative, all the great education work they do. I'm a big fan of it, glad to see the First Light is supporting it. And today I'm also hate to say this, but I am a

fan of my guest. Today. I'm a partner in crime. Yeah, you know, it's kind of hard for the ego to admit it, but I do enjoy catching up with you, buddy, well, I appreciate it, man. I want to do a couple of things today. It is February, kind of mid February as we're chatting today, and so it's that time of year that I think a lot of us are thinking two things. We're thinking scouting and we're thinking shed on it. So I want to kind of take a break here

during what was Habitat Month. I've been doing a series of Habitat related podcasts, but I wanted to make sure that we don't skip all the way through February without talking about these two things. So we're gonna hit pause on Habitat and we're going to talk about your latest scouting exploits. A couple of things on my end related to that. I want to talk shed hunting a little bit. I've heard you know, you've got a mixed set of

opinions on shadhuting. It seems like you're writing about it, you're talking about sometimes, but then other times like as shed hunting sucks. So I want to see where you're at on that lately. I've got some exciting shad hunting news that we should talk about. And then I actually also just got back from a mountain lion hunt that might be worth talking about just a little bit, because that's pretty exciting. So those are my main topics that I thought we could touch on. But Tony, what is

what is new in your world? Is there anything lighten me up right now? You know, any good sci fi books?

not a consideration right now. I mean, normally we're worried about too much snow covering up the antlers and being kind of a pain to hike through. And it is just weird right now. But I'll tell you, you know, I know not everybody who's listening to this is in this situation, but it's like the opportunity for shed hunting. Like it's perfect shed hunting conditions, It's perfect winter scouting conditions.

And I'm I'm getting my stuff ready. I'm heading out this weekend to go over to Wisconsin where they don't have any snow either, to cut some trails and just get some work done that normally I look at and I go, I'm just I'm just waiting until sometime in late March even or April sometimes to make that a possibility. So it's kind of like it's just wild. I'm sitting here going I'm getting stuff done, Like the opportunity is just crazy. To be able to do this, I should say.

When we have mild winters, the shed hunting is different than when we have hard winters, because it seems like when we have a hard winter with a lot of snow, it really hurts up the deer and you get a lot of the deer concentrated into smaller areas where they have that really good thermal cover, where they have that really good food source for the late season, and those are the times, those are the years where it seems like we find a bunch of sheds like what I

take my annual trip to Iowa and the big winter years, like you're finding them all in certain places, but these years they're just spread out all over the place. There's much less of a rhyme and reason to it. And we struggle on years like this. Have you ever seen anything like that?

The turkeys are all over them. But every time that happens, or when I get into that situation, I'm like, they're going to be so spread out because it's usually not something that happens when there's two feet of snow, you know, And so yeah, it's a different it's a different vibe out there, but I'll still take it.

a downside to this weather, specifically deer, right. I mean, the only thing I can think about is like mild winters equal more ticks making it through the winter, which leads to problems for moose. I know, But is there any other like trickle down effect that you can think of of this kind of more I was gonna say unique, it's becoming less unique, but.

if this means that it's going to be a lot drier in the spring and that will have some effects. But yeah, the other one for sure is ticks. I mean, I've got a buddy who is out shed hunting just recently and he has he has a couple of Golden retrievers and he's like, I'm finding deer ticks on my golden retrievers in February.

a rough one with tick borne diseases eventually. Man.

you from that. And when I saw him doing that, I was like, gross, dude, Like you don't need to What do you got left to prove? Like you don't need to do that?

some antlers. I'm kind of more in a stage now where I'm like, I just enjoy it and honestly, what's crazy about it? In fact, I wrote about it. I think it I think it dropped today for foundations. But we've been shed hunting some public land up here in the cities, and the way that you know, not having any snow this year, so the way that we're kind

a covering ground. It's like it's like sometimes you're out there and you have this epiphany, right like you're like, I've I've been through the woods a billion times and something will occur to me like this is so important and seeing the woods the way we're seeing it right now, I'm looking at edges, like soft edges in the woods, you know, the difference between a meadow and or you know, a patch of dogwood and hardwoods or something like that.

And I'm just like it's almost like you can stand in a deer bed now or like an area where they might bed and look around you and see the rubs because of like everything's just like a little brighter out there right now, and really read deer travel and deer movement and you know, like almost call your shots on scrape lines and rub lines and it's so cool and so in some ways, you know, people go shed hunting and they're like, Okay, my focus is to find antlers, right,

Like that's that's why you're there. But sometimes when you're doing this stuff and you just stop and think about it, like, Okay, there's a rub there, big deal, Right, Well, there's an rub there, and there's another rub there, and then I can look up in the hill and I can see that pine trees tore up. It's just it's even if you're not in some place that you can hunt, the lessons are like real important.

gonna miss stuff, and the same vice versa. If you're out there scouting but then you're also trying to look for sheds, you're not paying attention to everything that you should be paying attention to when scouting. So sometimes I try to tell myself, Okay, just focus on the one thing, Like today is a scouting day, and that's all you're doing, maybe you get lucky and vice versa. But at the same time, it's very hard to like turn off your eyes to everything, so you're gonna always do a lot

with it both. But I had a similar situation happened to me when I was out shed hunting yesterday and I was I was trying to shed hunt. My main focus was shed hunting, but I ended up, you know, seeing something that caught my eye that made it a very valuable scouting session. And what this was was, you know, I've been in this area a million times before, scouted it many times before, but I caught a little feature that, for some reason on this particularly day popped out differently

than it has in the past. And I think it was because it was very wet on this particular day or this time of year here. And so what used to be usually just a big grassy field that's got tall grass and it seems like relatively flat and you know it's just a big open grassy field, Well right now it's very wet, and so you can actually see two sides of this grassy field were filled with water

more than they usually are. And we're lower and so this little not very high, but there's like a high piece that connect that goes right across the middle of this grassy field that's maybe a foot taller than everything else, And so right now it stands out like a land bridge that almost all the other times you never really notice it. But right now I'm like, whoa, this is the place that they're always going to want to cross

this big grassy field. If they're going to go across this grassy field to connect from one side of the brush to another, to cross from one bedding air to the other, this is probably the place that they always do it. And I've always I've had some assumptions about how they move around, but I don't think I ever saw so clearly as if somebody drew a line across the map, like from A to B, here's the spot

within the spot. If you're gonna hunt somewhere on this edge, that is the place to be, because there's this little little bit of high ground that I bet you they run. And I follow that high ground to where it hits the timber, and bam, that just happens to be a place that I marked last year when I bumpd a

buck from a bed there. It's like, oh, interesting, this little point that he was betted on is also connected to this slightly higher ground that crosses the grassy breast you feel, and also has like six big old rubs scattered all around it that I'd seen in the past, But now like the dots are connecting better and like the picture is coming into better focus. And so I think that just reminded me of what I think is a pretty good thing to write down and try to

remind yourself of. You can never scout the same place too much, Like I think it's always worth even a place you've hunted for years, it's worth coming back and hitting it again, and like trying to look at with new eyes. Like whenever I'm walking this list, I'm always trying to zoom out or zoom in, look at it differently, focus on something differently, Take what you learn last year

and apply it now as you're looking again. It just seems like every time I do that, I keep on learning something new, as long as I'm not just like blindly walking just to walk. If I'm like looking with intense these repeat scouting trips every single year, keep on adding some real value, you know, I don't. I don't think you can ever do it too much, as long as you go into it like Okay, what can I learn different this time?

to year, and it's just doesn't work that way. And you know, I mean, there are there are ways to you know, cheat the system, right, Like if you have like just a banging you know, terrain trap, some kind of funnel or something, you might kill a buck on

there ten years in a row. Like I'm not saying you can't, but this kind of stuff that you're talking about sometimes some of that stuff either just pops out to you when you're scouting, or sometimes it's like a realization that you've been thinking, Okay, the deer always do this year to year to year on grandma's farm, So I don't need to go look at that, like, I don't need to walk through that acre. When I can, I can walk the easy path. And there's so much

out there that we miss, like you're talking about. It's just it's so easy to overlook and just just breeze past things like that, and it's when you find them, it's like, okay, like what else? What else are you missing?

It's the what's the fifteen yard move that I can make that would take my shots from a forty yard shot to a twenty five yard shot, Or it's the you know, man, I've hunted this area a thousand times. It's always been pretty good, but I tend to get winded more often than I want. Or what's like the little shift I can make or what's the tendency that man?

They they actually when they come through here they pass on this side of the downtree six times out of ten, So really I should tweak my setup five yards this way or whatever. I think, like that's the stuff that can really really help you when you're at that point. But it only it only happens when you keep on trying to polish that gemstone. I guess you just keep on keeping all with it.

just like a travel hub. They can come in from a bunch of different directions and you know, throughout the pre rud, the rut, the travel was just chaotic, like you know, a buck go this way, a buck you know, way off, and frame buck comes through this way, like no real rhyme or reason to the travel and I remember just looking at it going like that was like a it was like a circus in there, you know.

I mean, obviously it's condensed because you're looking at the trail camera photos from lots of time, but I kind of had forgotten about it. And then I went squirrel hunting with my buddy and it was there's snow on the ground whatever, and there's this ravine right below that knob, and I've hunted on the bottom of it where they go around where it flattens out, and I've hunted the top of it where it pinches up on the edge of the of a field and it forces them around.

I mean, for sure, dozens of times in my life, maybe you know, maybe more right. And because I was squirrel hunting and not really paying attention to the deer thing, we cut down right in the middle of that ravine and there was just a nice trail going through one little spot like you're talking about, where there was like

a like somebody made a land bridge there. And I have walked around that over and under so many times in my life hunting everything, not just deer, not just scouting, and even with that trail camera up there and looking at the evidence that there were deer coming up, Like it clicked as soon as I saw it. I was like, oh my god, Like I totally missed this huge crossing right here. And so I came back there and hunted, walked in there during the rut November first second whatever,

and hung a stand there. There was only one really decent tree to set up, so it wasn't a great set up there, but it was okay. And I mean I got up into that stand or saddle or whatever I was doing, I don't remember, and the first thing I did is I looked up on the hill and there was a little buck coming down and he crossed right through there, you know. I mean, just like just I didn't kill one on there, but I had a

couple deer come through there. And it's one of those things you're talking about where it's like it's so easy to convince yourself that you've got it figured out, and you probably don't.

It's just fun to hunt rabbits, and it's gonna take me into that area that I want to just learn more. And it's hard. It's hard for me to justify a three and a half four hour drive, you know, maybe for a day or a day and a half of scouting, I could do it. But it's so much easier for me to think I'm gonna meet up with a buddy of mine, We're gonna go push a few rabbits around, which will get us into the stuff the deer bed in.

that with white tail scouting. But I don't think a lot of people have it in them to just go and go, you know, like a lot of people aren't worried like Ani may they're not gonna do it. But if you can find a reason to be there, or find a reason to go someplace new and just just spend time out there, I think that's what we're missing with a lot of white tel hunters because and I

know this happens to you all the time. It's like once the season starts, you get all these messages of like here's my farm, I saw him one time, or I can't like I never see mature bucks or whatever, and it's like, this is not the time to remedy that. Like the time to do it was eight months ago, so you didn't come into the season and going, well, Now I gotta rattle or buy this decoy or something, try to make something happen instead of putting myself right

where I should have been. So it's it's it's a hard thing to get across, but it's important.

or add a new one. And if we want to look at scouting as a good habit to ensure the things you need to do, I'm probably gonna forget some of this, but one of the big ones is you should. You got to make it convenient, you need to make it fun. And I think in this case, like scouting is a thing that should be a good habit, right, it should be a habit for us, But there's always

excuses not to do it right. We don't have enough time, Maybe people don't know it's not as enjoyable as watching the Super Bowl, and it's maybe not as fun as you know, I don't know whatever going to a game or drinking beer at the house or whatever your thing is. So I think you gotta find ways to your point. Like, yeah, a scouting trip slash rabbit trip slash hand with your buddy may not be quite as effective as a one just me focused on scouting walking for two days straight, right,

But you probably won't do that. So the better version is find a way to make it fun, find a way to make it fit your schedule, and getting out there doing the thing to a degree is better than not entirely. So I think that's a really it's a really good idea, Like, find ways to make this part of your life, find ways to make it fun and and then yet you're going to get value out of it. You don't have to do this is so much that we talk about. There's like the perfect way to do

something in the deer hunting world. There's like the way that the super most hardcore person does it, and that's, you know, something we can aspire to. But most of us will look at that and be like, well, I don't have time for that or I that doesn't really sound that much fun. If you can find the thing that is fun, that is that can work into your schedule, that you can consistently do, you'll make progress. And making progress that happens year after year after year, that you

can keep with, that you can stick to. That adds up. I'm betting a lot of people see a thing and like, oh, that's that's that's more than I could ever pull off, and then they never do anything because of that. It becomes intimidating just getting the ball rolling? Can you can make a pretty big smoll ball if you start with something tiny and keep it going down the hill.

be a part of it. And so you know how it is like you're training for a marathon and you're running or whatever, like you know, you like running with people great or you like getting together with that running group grade or whatever, but really it's on you. And so you see, you know, like just as an example, it's it's the new year, right, so you go to the gym, a lot of new faces, and a lot

of them are people who go with somebody. So some some gym regular will talk one of their buddies and like, dude, you got to come. And so they're there together lifting every time you see them. But what happens when that one person can't go? Do you have your built an excuse? You know? And I think I think we don't. I think this happens more than we think where people are like, Okay, he's my hunting buddy. If he can go this weekend,

we'll go. If not, no big deal, And it's like you have to just kind of figure out how to do both, right, Like it's great if you have somebody who will go winter scout with you, that you hunt with or whatever, but this is this stuff is sort of on you. And you can see this, you know, like that example that I said earlier about people reaching out like I don't know what to do. It's like it's not on me to help you, like i'd love to,

but it's on you to figure this stuff out. And I think you know, you see this especially on like traveling trips where people are like, we're going to hunt white tails in North Dakota or wherever together, and it's like, I get why you do that with buddies, one hundred percent do but you have to be willing to do this stuff on your own. Like you have to be willing to just go. If I have three hours today and it's a Sunday in February and there's nothing going on,

I'm gonna go to the woods. I'm just gonna I'm going to do it, and you will change. You will change the dynamic of how you learn out there same thing, you know, Like just think if you go on a you know, a hunting trip somewhere with somebody and you're you're trying to figure out public land together, You're you're going to have some benefit from their their recon and there,

but it's going to change how you approach everything. If you go by yourself and you're like, I'm camping by myself, I'm feeding myself, I'm scouting, I'm glassing, I'm hunting by myself, everything changes. And I honestly think those are like those are the scenarios that really help you level up because a lot of the background noise is gone.

of ways to make excuse. It's for for why you just want to hang out tonight and just watch TV or or whatever. The thing is, right, But we do this thing every day at dinner time, where my wife and I and the kids all around the dinner tables, you know, beginning at dinner talk about our favorite thing of the day, like one thing you're thankful for from

that day that was your favorite thing. And almost always, if I go and do something outside, if I go do one of these things like go for a shed hunt, go for a walk, go for the run, do some scouting, that always makes the list that is always is my favorite thing of the day. So even if beforehand, I'm like I don't feel like doing it, I don't want to go out, it's too cold, or I'm too busy or whatever, I'm always, always, always thankful I did it afterwards.

worth it once you do it. So you just got to find a way that remind yourself of that in the moment when you're feeling busy or stressed or tired or whatever it is ahead of it.

happens with the deer work. We talk ourselves out of a lot of the stuff that not only should we just do because it'll help us out, but because it will actually make us feel better, like getting something accomplished, going and find that little crossing like you found, it's a huge win. Yeah, you know, and it's it's easy to not go do that stuff.

rubs there. There's gonna be rubs there. There's probably gonna be a trail going from that point to that point. And so the more that I go out and I start looking around, I'm like, I'm always thinking about things too big, you know, like the cornfield's over there, they're going to end up there, right, Like the bluff is up there, they're going to start there because they're going

to bed or whatever. But you know how this is when you get out there and you watch deer do their thing, they are relating to stuff that we just walk right on by. And so often, you know, I really saw this when I was muzzler hunting this year, where there'd be patches of willows or patches of red osier dogwood where you would you would, like kind of intuitive intuitively look at those and go, Okay, they're gonna walk around that, maybe rub on the outside. If they

want to bed, they'll wait in there. But what I would see the deer do, and you see this out west when you watch them a lot too, is they would get in there and they would be browsing and looking around and paying attention, like they knew where the other deer were, but they were essentially invisible to everything else.

And so they have these little places where it's like, you know, I can walk through this grass, the crp grass to get to the next point or get into the cattails, but they're just stopping off in there, into this little patch of dogwood, and they're killing time and they're doing their thing, and you watch it and go this is like, this is like such a key component to their life. It's not just cover they walk past and leave rubs and like they know that little island

to cover, there is something they can hide in. They're not gonna like nothing's gonna sneak up on him quickly, and they're they're really paying attention to the world around them. And so it always makes me think, like we used to have this neighbor. He died in a motorcycle accident.

But when my little girls were little, they they loved him and he loved them, and so we would walk around the block and he would He was one of those guys who would drink a lot of beer in his garage, you know, so in the summer you'd walk by and you never knew if he was in there because the sun's shine and bright and he's sitting in the back of his garage. But you'd always be like, is Fred gonna like talk to us, like is he

is he in there? But from him, from inside, he's looking out and he sees you playing a day when you're on the street looking at just because of the sun. Same concept as a hunting blind, right, like a pop up blind. And I always think about that with these soft edges where I go, Yeah, that nice deciduous forest over there that everybody wants to hunt in because it

looks pretty. But those deer can stand in this brush edge here where the meadow meets that you know, old growth forest, and they're not invisible, but man, they're a lot closer than they would be in other types of habitats. And I think that that's like, the more I'm around it, and the more I winter scout and find these little tiny islands a cover or these little soft edges, I go, this is so much more important to them than I

give it credit for. Am I kind of looking past this for something bigger and more obvious?

the cover right, It's not like the deepest, darkest swamp. It's not the thickest, nastiest, farlest away from the road kind of place. It's kind of out there a little bit, but it gives a buck a lot of advantages and that he's got cover, and then he's got thick security cover behind him, he can see in another direction. It's in a zone that actually a couple different routes of human travel passed within that with not right there, but

within sight or smell. Like one of my main access routes into this property that I hunt goes relatively, it goes within sight of that. Probably one of the neighbor's main access roads goes within sight of that. So a buck can sit in this place, bedded and get a very good idea of what's happening around him, despite the fact that not being like the hell whole, it's it's

a it's a small soft edge and point that positions him. Well, I think that they use that stuff sometimes more than we give them credit for.

you it's it's a kind of a different scenario. But if you're and this this kind of equates to like just public land hunting or pressured hunting. If you're not somewhere where you're getting like poked a lot by prickly ash or you know, raspberry vines or something, you're kind of out of the game for where they really want

to be. And like you said, like that point, you see this this amplified if you hunt a state like Iowa that has just like dreamy woods, you know, like dreamy cover and ice fields and everything where there aren't as many patches of gnarly you know, thick type of cover. So when you find that, you know who owns it, like it's not going to be a scrapper, and some does, like they're going to be bedded on that bench on

the open bluff side or whatever. When you walk in there, you know there's going to be somebody big who has taken that over because the advance, the survival advantage is so real there.

mentioned it. But there's a lot of travel that happens along these soft edges that aren't as stark as here's a cornfield, here's a piece of timber. Right, we're talking more like this is a mostly hardwood region and this is the beginning of hardwood mixed with conifer something like that. Can you talk through you know, the kind of thing you're looking for and how you're seeing music otherwise.

it like it does. I can look around and go, this doesn't feel like it does mean very much good. But so often if I'm walking along and I see a rub and I stop, and then I'm like, okay, there's another one, and there's another one. Then I go, it's almost always tied to some kind of soft edge, you know what I mean, because they bedded wherever, you know, or fed wherever, and ended up there, and it's just a place that they felt more confident standing around in daylight.

And so if you're walking around you're like, I don't know. I mean, it's so easy to think of like an edge as if you take you know, like where I hunt Wisconsin, there's a lot of either forestry industry, you know, there's a lot of timber harvests, So you might have that clear cut old growth new growth type of edge, right hard edge almost or you'll have all those pine trees, and then you'll have deciduous and it's like just you know you're going to travel that there's gonna be rubs there.

They might bed there, but when you start getting into you know, you just walk through a woods that in your head you're like, this is all just like old growth deciduous forest. But there's a creek bottom or something, and then you look at it and you're like, it's just thicker. It's not like you're not looking at it like on aero photos and being like there's a hard edge there that's easy to follow and easy to understand.

So often it's something that's this smaller little thing that whatever more sunlight gets down there, there's more water, there's something that encourages a different type of plant growth. Sometimes it's just like an abandoned fence line and some vines

or something. But when you get out there, a lot of times for me, I'll kind of find myself being like, man, there's a lot of rubs here, and I'll look around and like, well, obviously there's like a little island of cover here, or this just sort of soft edge that mostly just looks like a patch of brush, you know, But it's there's a lot going on in some of those,

especially if you start connecting them. You know, if you're like, Okay, well maybe he bedded here and it looks like they're walking out there because I can see a bunch of rubs going that way. Well what's over the hill, another swamp? Another? What is it? And just the more you're out there and you see that stuff the morning you start going, okay, this could be important somehow, you.

on it. If I make that drive down to Iowa to scout or you know, western Minnesota or whatever, that's a different thing, because I know I'll forget it, you know, and I know I'm packing a lot of scouting into

one one day, two day type of thing. And so the easiest way to do it is just like pull up on X and be like waypoint here, and then give myself some notes like staging area, hunt, hunt during west wind or whatever, and at least there's a prompt there, you know, and just to get you like kind of going okay, like I have this sort of like this

isn't going to go away from my brain. And when you do that on some of those spots that I like, you know, a lot of the public land I try to figure out out a state, it just I can pull that up and look at it in a big picture thing and go, okay, well I left that waypoint there,

that waypoint there. There's a pond there I looked at and then you can start to just piece it together because you can't, I mean, I guess I guess my point here is if you have a place in your backyard a scout, you can go there a lot, you can figure stuff out, and it's just going to sort of become something you understand when you're trying to figure out something that's not easy to access, or you don't get a lot of time out there, you don't have

as much in field time to do this. You're behind on that, so you have to make up for it digital scouting, and so it just depends on what the scenario is. But that that just even just dropping waypoints and looking at how they connect, and you know, thinking about it in the off season, it's pretty valuable.

shoot this buck? Would I not shoot this buck? And it's this deer that I probably mentioned at some point in our conversations. My son named him two years ago. Son named him bulldozer, and so two years ago, as a three year old, he was all over the place, passed him a bunch, really wanted to find his sheds last year but couldn't. He grew as a four year

old into like a really nice nine pointer. I was thinking, like, I don't know, one P thirty somewhere in that ballpark, but like a big body, like a huge body.

it to five. But you know, eventually I decided, like, man, I'm gonna stick to try and get the wide nine. He's the one. But you know, it was interested in seeing this deer, hoping to see him, and I never saw him like he was just like he was on camera, he was around. I guess it's not entirely tru I saw him when I was scouting the night before the opener, when I was glassing for the wide nine, I saw

him way down a power line, far away. And then on a late season hunt, late like late November I think again, when I was still trying to get the wide night, I saw him again far off in the distance. And then at the very end of the year, I was hunting with my son Everett, and we were trying to kill a doe together. I can't remember if we talked about this. We probably did briefly talk about this when we talked about our favorite moments of the year, right because this was that hunt when we killed our

first year together. And then Bulldozer came into like sixty five yards or something, So that was our closest call last year. Very cool, so I knew he made it through the hunting season. He was going to be the one that I wanted to see the most this coming year, and so my plan was to stay out. I wasn't going to go out here at all until I knew he dropped his antlers. I wanted to resist the temptation and get out there muck things up until I knew

he dropped. And unfortunately, the area around here doesn't have as much food as usually does. The farmer like Chisel plowed the cornfields and stuff, so it's like a big dirt field for most of the properties I can hunt. But I did have two food plots that I play in this area that were okay, and in late January

we had that really was it late January? Yeah, I think late January we had like a really good cold spell around here was kind of wintery still, and I had pictures of him hitting that one of these food plots like every day for six days in a row, So that gave me some hope that was still in the area.

his eye stopped reflecting. You know how you see like a black eye in the pictures, and you can see kind of like a scar down underneath his eye. So he must have been, you know, tussling with one of the other big guys in the area. And long story short shed. So I got back from Montana a couple of days ago. Yesterday was my first chance to get out there and walk, and so my plan I had

like probably a couple hour window. I thought, I'm just gonna hit the very best stuff tomorrow and then you know, the next time I've got a window, I'll do the B level stuff. And so my plan was to just walk two of the best betting areas that are close to that late season food plot they seem to be hitting the most. Just scoured it. I hit it as

hard as I could, I hit the best stuff. I focused on these areas that I thought he should be betted, probably where he spent a lot of time in the past, and covered it all and nothing, And I'm done with all the betting, and I'm kind of working my way back up towards the road and sitting there walking thinking to myself, like, why don't I ever find antlers here? Like I know there's bucks in the area, I know

there's some good deer around. It's so frustrating it just so I find so few sheds around here, Like what the heck is going on? Where are these things go? Like who's getting out here and finding them before I am? Or what squirrel is dragging these things into a hole? Where is the where are these stupid antlers? And then right as I'm saying that, like I almost step on an antler right there in front of me, and uh,

I'm sure shit it was it was bulldozers. I guess it's his right side, and uh yeah, I couldn't.

in there. So I scoured it. I had it hard, did not find it, but I'm gonna keep looking, but encouraging, super encouraging to find that exciting.

to go. Yeah, And I always wonder about that, Like, you know, if you're a fighter in the deer woods and that happens, like are you are you aware that that was the result of fighting, you would think so, And then can they put that together and be like, man, I'm gonna I'm not gonna push anybody around.

He's not all there. He never looks at me when I'm standing on this side of him, right, So I.

did that change his behavior? He was still around a lot on camera, but you know, like I said, he was around a lot up until like early fall, which is right around when that injury happened, and then like he just was not as active, not quite as active as the least. So I wonder if that had any kind of bearing on on that behavioral chain.

all sorts of stuff related to that. So as part of that, I want to go on a predator hunt and learn about what hunters think about big carnivores and predators and living alongside of them and managing them or all the different things related to that. So the night performs to fly out, Giannis calls me and he's like, hey, man, bad news. Mingus had a fall. He's badly injured. I don't think we're gonna be able to do this, and

I'll let Giannis go into all the details. I'm sure he'll tell folks about it on a media podcast or something at some point, so I won't steal his thunder. But the the cliff notes of that thing is that Mingus fell hurt his leg and is out for the rest of the lion season. The good news is that the injury is not so bad that he won't be able to recover, So good news that Mingus is gonna be okay. And Giannas was able to still take me out with him, but we were gonna have to use

his buddy's hounds. So we had three full days to get out there after. And the first two days were just like hiking. We drove roads in the morning looking for tracks, crossing a crossing the roads, never found any, and so as soon as it was daylight we would then just start hiking up mountains, up drainages and just walk and walk and walk, and uh, you know, it

was just like a death march. We did like twelve miles a day, twelve and a half miles a day, hiking in the snow off trail, just all over the place, so beautiful country. Fun. I'm glad I like to hike, because we just did a lot of hiking but did not find any line tracks, didn't really see any wildlife.

I went out the second night with our mutual friend Garrett and did a wolf hunt with him, went wolf hunting with him and got to pick his brand about wolves and his thoughts on that and his experiences trying to catch up with one ever since they got delisted out there, you know, talked about you know, finding balance with with critters like that, and how you know a lot of hunters are worried about that competition, and we talked about, you know, how we might be able to

live alongside of him. And then uh went to this beautiful hyped into another drainage. He turned on like a coyote howler and tried to try to call one in with that, and again no luck. So those first two days, two and a half days, it was just like a lot of beautiful country, a lot of walking, no no critters.

a track. And then his buddy went and drove a snowmobile up a four service road to try to cut a track up to the north of it, and sure enough he cut a track, came back and got us first line track of the trip. And you know, the interesting thing that happened from this point was that we had to take snowmobiles to get there. And I've never

wrote on a snowmobile before my life. What, Yeah, we don't have snow down where I'm at in Michigan growing up, and we just that wasn't the thing our family did was go up north to snowmobill, so never use them before my life. So I get like the tutorial. The tutorial is like, all right, here's the throttle, and don't sit down. You have to stand up the whole time because we're gonna go around lots of We're riding on the side of a mountain on like hiking trails. Essentially,

these are not like roads or forest service roads. We're gonna be going on trails on the sides of mountain, up and over into and out of drainages, over mountains, all that kind of stuff. So they describe me you need to stand up the whole time, and you need to switch your legs over to whichever side of the snowmobile is uphill so you don't roll down the side of the mountain. And I'm like, what, like, while we're driving.

fall off the side of the mountain. And so I'm like, holy shit, I've never even touched one of these things, and now I'm doing like acrobats acrobat moves on the side of it, on the side of a mountain, Like is this Yeah, I was just I don't know. I had no idea. It wasn't getting myself into and but at the same time, I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna do it, Like, yeah, do it. And so we drive this trail to where his friend cut the track. We stop, all right, I'm excited. We're gonna cut the

dogs loose and go do the thing. We cut the dogs loose, they go tearing off and then they like go like we were hoping the line might be close, but no, it's like those dogs went over the mountain, down a drainage, over another mountain, down another dranche and they were gone and we lost track of them of their GPS collars. And so now we had to like go up to the top of the mountain or to the next one to try to get the service again

and find them. And to make a very long story short, over the next hour or two we drove up and down around like this is like there's no roads, there's nothing plowed. This is like fresh snow on the side of a mountain on a hiking trail that we're driving our snowmobills around with like hundreds of foot dropped down to the side, and I am like so puckered, I can't even tell you. I mean, like my hands are gripped like white knuckling. I just know I'm gonna roll

this thing off. Like at one point, I stop on the edge of one thing, look back at me on and I'm like, I'm gonna roll this mfror off the side of this mountain. So tell my wife goodbye. Like this, there's no way this is gonna work out. And it was bad, man. I rolled it. I rolled it twice, but both times I rolled it was not so steep on the side that I couldn't catch myself in the sled before it went down. But it was an adventure. To make a long story short, it was an adventure.

We made it to where the dogs were, We found the dogs. They lost the track, but we were able to after like an hour of walking around trying to cipher what was going on. There was all these deer tracks and boot tracks and YadA YadA YadA, we're able to find a fresh track coming out of this mess, put the dogs back on it, and maybe another hour later, more hiking up and down the mountain, another drive of the snow and bible down this mountain to another drainage.

They treat a cat, They jumped it, treat it. And we bailed on down there, and I saw my first mountain line ever in the wild at least. And she was beautiful, big female, just perched in this wide open, perfect branch that we could like very clearly sit in the side of the mountain and sit next to her and watch her. And she just hung out there looking at us, and then like kind of took a nap. She did not seem to care one bit that we

were there. And it was just wild seeing a creature like that up close, something that's so wild and elusive most of the time. To be able to just be right there with it.

she she wants to just hang out there. So I walked, you know, to the base of the tree and you can't help but like when there's one hundred and thirty pound one hundred and forty pound lion directly above you twenty yards, there's just like like the hair is on your neck stand up, like even though I know, like I should be safe, Like that was like a feeling. That was something that was something.

with his dog. He's been training so but you know, kind of going into it, we thought we thought it would be but just unforeseen circumstances led it to being a tree and free. So it is.

it by the road. But what I saw and what I got to be a part of was a serious hunt and like getting to the end like I think some I had looked and seeing like oh geez, these lions get treated and then you to shoot them. That seems so easy. And what I realized is like, that's not what the lion hunt is really about. The lion hunt is about finding it, following it, catching up to it. Like that's a ton of work, that's a ton of

training that goes in these dogs. It's amazing how much these guys knew about lions, like how they're going to move through the landscape, and what they've learned over the years of following them and studying them, and the passion they have for it. So just like a lot of appreciation for it. And also seeing at least the folks I was around, like, have a real appreciation for the animal and respect for the animal, you know, just like we have for deer and the other critters that we hunt.

And so I came out of it, I think with a stronger belief that, like, you know, when you can hunt an animal and manage an animal, it usually builds

an advocate of the animal. So it's not like I don't In most cases, it seems like managed predator hunting can lead to more part predator and carnivore advocates sometimes because you're you're getting folks invested in the animal, and so I think that it leads to good things for the animal just as much as it leads to good things for the hunter and so and so this is a great illustration of that idea at least, And I

would definitely, I would definitely like to be online hunts. Again, I'm still unsure if I want to shoot one, though I do not know if I want to shoot one myself. I don't. I wouldn't, you know, criticize anyone for wanting to do that themselves. I don't know if I want to shoot one. I've eaten line it's very good, so I could see myself doing it because I wouldn't eat it.

But a little bit of me was like, man, that is just like an amazing I don't know quite how to put words to it, but like, I don't know if i'd want to shoot it. That's all wolf. Same question. I don't know, Yeah, same question.

It's not it's not that interesting.