Ep. 783: Summer Trail Cams, Morning vs Evening Hunts, Antler Scoring Hot Takes, and More

Conservation Initiative. You're hopefully familiar with this, but the Camo for Conservation Initiative is something that is in place with first Lights Whitetail Pattern. Any sale of a specter camel product that's our whitetail pattern, from every one of those sales, a portion of those proceeds go to support the National Dear Association, which I am a big fan of and a fan of that program so good stuff right there. Now. Today on the podcast, we're doing something a little bit different.

There is no guests. It is just me and you. We're gonna sit here have a little bit of a one on one chat of sorts, because I've got some stuff to talk about. I've got some stories, some hunting stories I want to share with you. I've got some updates I want to share with you. I've got some recommendations I want to share with you. And I want to tackle the specific questions that you guys want answers to. I asked for listeners submitted questions recently and got a

whole pile of them. So I want to take some time here to kick back with you, talk about the stuff that you're wondering about, and catch up. Plan Nothing too fancy, but I think it will be maybe beneficial for myself and for you to take a step back from hearing from a million different people dive into these different things. Instead just talk you and me back and forth about what's on your mind. I wish I could do this kind of thing one on one actually with you.

It would be if somehow I had infinite time. It would be awesome to set up a one on one meeting with every one of our listeners to find out, you know, what is it you're struggling with, What is it that you're interested in, What is it that you wish we could talk about more often? That kind of stuff is great for me to know about, to hear about. So just FYI, if ever you want to submit that kind of feedback, I'd love it. Probably the best places to do it is probably over on my Instagram account.

Send me a message there, very interested in that. I've been doing this podcast for more than a decade now, you know, we're approaching a thousand episodes. We've been doing this a long time, so it's great to hear from you on you know, what gaps we have where we've missed something, or where maybe we talked about something years ago but would be worth resurfacing and diving into again. It's easy sometimes in my role to forget about some of those things, or to think like, ah, that's so basic,

everybody already knows that. But actually it's only that weight in my mind because I talked about it so much five, six, seven years ago. But maybe there's someone new here who has never been introduced to this concept or these sets of ideas, So please let me know this podcast is for you. This podcast is to try to help folks grow as hunters grow, as conservationists grow as outdoorsmen and women,

and I am open to any and all feedback. So, like I mentioned in this show, we're going to do some Q and A talking about all sorts of hunting specific things, everything from you know, the gear I use on my archery setups, to how I decide when I'm going to hunt a spot, when I'm going to move, when I'm going to stick it out, when I'm going to shift, talking about the states I'm hunting this year, talking about some of my most recommended whitetail specific books.

We're going to talk about my favorite times to hunt mornings versus evenings. I think we'll get to that one. We're going to talk about the impact of hunting media, going to tackle a question on that one, how I make decisions on what deer I'm going to target or shoot in the moment, and a whole lot more, lots and lots of great questions. I hopefully will be able to get to all of these. We'll see how long all of this takes. But before the questions, want to

give you one update and two stories. All right, So first an update. Just this past weekend, we kicked off our first Working for Wildlife Tour event of twenty twenty four. This is a program I'm super proud of. I've really enjoyed and have been inspired by. If you're not familiar, last year, I kicked off this tour in which I was traveling around the country visiting six different volunteer habitat days on public lands across all sorts of different regions

of the country. We went to Massachusetts, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Michigan. I think where the six states we had more than five hundred volunteers participate. I should have pulled up these numbers. It was a pretty amazing slate of impacts that we made. And if you will be patient with me here for a moment, I'm actually going to pull up that information. Let's see here. Five hundred volunteers.

We collected more than two thousand pounds of trash, improved more than eighteen acres of early secessional habitat, created eighty small game brush piles, helped improve more than a dozen acres of aspen forest, planted thirty five acres of wildlife food plots, planted two hundred crab apple trees, and collected around eight hundred pounds of white oak acorns for future

reforestation efforts. So that's what we did last year. And this year we kicked off, like I mentioned that first, that first event this past weekend on Saturday, with a return trip to Kentucky and the Daniel Boone National Forest. And this time we were, you know, last time we collected white oak acorns, this time we were actually helping

do some restoration work on standing white oak stands. So we actually went in there and did what's called a crown release in which we were locating white oaks in a very dense, mature forest and removing encroaching competing trees that are less desirable for wildlife so there'd be more sunlight for those oaks to grow, more sunlight hitting the forest floor, creating new growth on the ground level where deer and other wildlife can benefit. So we did that.

We also did some work in some open areas where there was invasive autumolive honeysuckle other things like that that had taken over these openings, and a group of folks came in there and we did hack and squirret techniques where you hack a cut basically into the trunk of those autumolive trees and spray in herbicide that will then kill them. And this is then going to open up landscape for native species to grow and flourish and provide

all the benefits that native vegetation provides to wildlife. So that's what we got done. It was, you know, as all of these have been eye opening. I learned a lot, I met a lot of great people, had a good time, and you know, it feels good to do something tangible. It feels really good to do something on the landscape that helps improve our public lands, that gives back to wildlife, that will benefit future hunters, future people out there enjoying

our wildlife. Maybe my kids someday will be able to go out there to the National Forest in Kentucky and enjoy these landscapes, and I will feel and I will sleep real well at night knowing that I was able to contribute to that. Another really cool thing that happened at the end of that trip, I actually got to go to the nursery where they are growing the acorns

that we collected last fall. So that seven or eight hundred pounds of acorns we collected last fall where then brought to a nursery, a state nursery implanted, and those as have resulted now in fifteen thousand white oak seedlings growing. I got to go see them. I got to touch

the white oak seedilings. Fifteen thousand new trees growing because of us, because we collected these, and now they're being grown so they can get a good head start, and the next spring they will be lifted brought back out to the National Forest in areas that need to be reforested, and then we will be a part of a tree planting where we will hopefully get to plant a whole bunch of those trees back on the ground, back where these you know where these trees are from, and create

another wonderful ecosystem for deer, turkeys, squirrels, all sorts of stuff. And that's something I'm pretty pumped about as well. So good news on the Working for Wildlift Tour event. There's another one coming June first in Pennsylvania in the Alleghany National Forest, I believe it is. If you'd like to join me there, I'd love to meet you. I'd love

to do some good work for wildlife with you. It's the specific details I suppose we don't need to get into right at this moment, doing some more tangible forest work, habitat improvement work. And you can sign up and get more information over at the National Deer Association's website. They're the ones who have the registration page. It is at Deer Association dot com slash w f W. You know, working for wildlife. So go to Deer Association dot com slash WFW and that's going to be how you can

sign up. Can't wait. That one's gonna be fun. So that's the update. That's the news I wanted to share. Now a couple stories, So since we chatted last time, a couple very cool things happened. One and if you subscribe to our newsletter, which I hope you do, you will have maybe already gotten a taste of this story. You'll know what happened. But my son and I, my six year old son, Everett and I had our first successful turkey hunt together. And I've been taking about turkey

hunting since he was like four months old. Like I can still very clearly remember taking them out in a little chest pack and walking them out into the woods and calling turkeys and getting turkeys a gobble and actually bringing in some turkeys relatively close gobbling and him kind of just a wide eyed baby, not knowing what the heck's going on. And every year since he's gone out into the woods with me, usually for just fake turkey hunts, right, we just go out there and try to call birds in.

But he's been doing it every spring since as long as he can remember, and before that, and we've had some cool encounters. We've had great memories. Some of you might remember the time that we called in three birds while he had his pretend shotgun which was an umbrella, and we actually got birds into range and then he you know, asking me, Dad, can I take a shot? And it says sure, so he goes cabo as soon

as he came into twenty yards. So great memories. But now we actually have a real turkey hunt with a successful ending. And it started, as many of our hunts do. We just decided to walk out into this property just before first light and wait until we could hear a bird's strike up on this particular farm. The turkeys are not terribly consistent with where they roost. It just seems like every time you go out there, they're either on the north side or the south side, or way back

to the east. And every time I ever try to get in super early and set up, I'm always in the wrong place. Even if you try to go in the roof something, you very rarely get one to talk in the evening for whatever reason in this area, so roosting has not been something that's worked. So what I do instead is I get out there just before daylight and we'll just kind of stand in a central location and wait till we hear one gobbling, and then we'll make a move and get as close as we can

set up there and let things play out. So that's what happened in this case. We heard one gobbling at the very far back corner of the property, probably on the neighbors, and start hiking out and hiked hight hiked. It's getting lighter, it's getting lighter. We get up to the edge of this power line clearing and I can tell that bird is somewhere in the deep timber just on the other side of the clearing. So I put the decoys in the power line and there's no tree

for us to set up on. So what we have to do is lay down the tall grass next to this opening. So I'm laying down on my belly, prone, and Everett gets next to me, and then either because it wasn't comfortable or because you know, he couldn't see, whatever reason, he crawled up on my back and I decided to just let that slide. So Evertt's laying on my back, I'm laying on my belly, and I'm yelp, yelp, yelping, and this gobbler just hammer him back. Every time I yelp,

he hammers back. So make sure he knows that I'm there, and then I stop, wait till he flies down. He eventually does and just starts like immediately coming our way. So I get Everett into position, get him ready, we run through. You know again, what we gotta do. Gotta be super still, gotta be super quiet. He should come out, work his way towards the decoys. Right, and he comes out. You can tell when that sound changes that he's in the opening, like all right, buddy, he's coming, like, get ready,

my gun's up into position. Evert's ready, and just you can see he's fired up, and that bird instead of coming out to the decoys in front of us, kind of parallels us and goes across the power line opening into the timber little strip of timber that we're laying in right now, and actually goes behind us into this cornfield. And it's Everett who actually kind of called it. He said, Dad, I think he's going behind us, and he gobbled again. I'm like, yep, I think you're right he is. So

now Everett had to roll off of me. We had to spin around one hundred and eighty degrees and start belly crawling back through the timber towards that other opening where he was heading towards in the cornfield. So we do this, and the whole time thinking, man, this is probably gonna blow up on our face. Is that birds? You know? Who knows what he can see? It's pretty brushy, there's a good amount of new growth already. But you know,

I had a six year old with me. It just seemed like this was there was many many different ways that could go wrong. But unbelievably, this bird gets out to the cornfield, We get spun around, we get moved into position, and that goal there's gobble gobble struck, gobblestrutt and I can just see his head starting to move through, and sure enough he comes all the way until he gets perpendicular with us straight in front of us. But he's moving quick, and I just see like, here's my

one opening. He gets into this one opening these trees. I kind of do a quickly cut just enough to stop him and reach out his head and gobble. He hammers one more time and then I set it off, pull the trigger. The bird drops. Everett is in shock. We both stand up and run over there, high fives, hugs, the whole nine yards. Just a really really cool experience to share that with my son, to see it finally come together after you know, a bunch of hunts last year that we were trying to get it done, and

this year and he was a trooper. He wanted to, you know, help carry the bird, and he wanted to do the whole nine yards. We you know, got the spurs and pulled off the beard and then actually cold my four year old helped me butcher the bird. He wanted to use his knife to try to cut the breast out and the whole the whole thing. So just a really really cool family experience there with a turkey.

This spring, very grateful that it came together, and you know, the first of what I imagine is going to be a lot of great turkey hunts with my boys, and Colt already wants to go out there himself and get one for him too. So un fortunately we only get one turkey tag in Michigan, so we're gonna have to wait till next year for a real turkey hunt. But we have gone on more fake turkey hunts since, just trying to call him in and having some fun, so

good stuff there with the Kenyan family. And that leads me to my second story, which is just gonna be a brief one. But I just recently got back from Florida and I was down there on a trip learning about the Everglades ecosystem and what's going on with water in southern Florida and how it's impacting the surrounding ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, Florida Bay, Biscayne Bay, the Florida Keys, this whole area, and they're incredible fishery there. There's just

this unbelievable world renowned fishery. A lot of you are likely familiar with that fact. You've probably heard about folks

fishing in that area. Tony was just down there fishing recently, and I too, And so this trip was a little bit of an investigated, investigative trip, I suppose, in which I was meeting with a whole bunch of different people, everything from folks from nonprofit organizations to anglers, commercial anglers, fly fishing guides, folks within the fishing industry, different people that are impacted by the environmental situation in that part

of the country. And I'll save you the long details here, but look for more details for me in the future on social media and in this big new writing project I'm working on, which is a book. And basically, the southern half of Florida is being starved of fresh water because of how over the last one hundred years we

replumbed the Everglades. There should be this massive flow of water from kind of around Orlandosh area north of Lake Ocachobe all all the way down through Florida, super wide, super shallow that drives water straight down to the southern tip of the state and out into Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay and down towards the Keys and into this incredible, incredibly productive estuary for fish like tarpain and redfish and snook and bonefish and permit and all sorts of incredible

species like that. But we've kind of messed it all up. We've built canals where this shouldn't be. We're pushing water where it shouldn't be, We're drying up and draining water where it should be, and it's leading to all sorts of crazy things going on with the environment down there,

and declining fish populations, destroyed wildlife, habitat, a lot of stuff. Again, maybe at a later day we'll get into this, but long story short, some serious issues there that we as hunters and anglers can be a part of the solution. If you want to learn more about it. You can learn a lot about this over at the website. They're

put together by Captains for Clean Water. They're doing a really good job of helping educate anglers on what's happening there, how it's impacting anglers and fish and habitat, and what we can do. So highly suggest that you can check out the Everglades Foundation website and resources. I read a great book called The Swamp that talks all about this. If you really want to dive deep, i'd suggest picking

that one up. But here's the deal. I went down there to learn about these things and to experience the place myself. So my friend and I got to hang out in the Everglades, got to take an airboat tour, got to do some fishing around the Everglades, got to fish one of the canal systems up there, called the Tamiami Trail. We got to try bone fishing for the

first time by ourselves on the flats. We caught some invasive species and non natives that have been planted in the waters of Florida, which has happened at a crazy rate, leading to many of the fresh waters of Florida being taken over by species from South America, actually sicklids and peacock bass and stuff like that. So we did some of that and saw some of that firsthand. But the big thing we did was fly fish for tarpin. And this was the craziest fishing experience I've probably had in

my life. It's the closest thing I've ever had to hunting while fishing. It's nuts. If you've never done it, I can't suggest you tried enough. But I also will preface this by saying it will be incredibly frustrating, incredibly difficult, very challenging, but also highly addictive. Basically, it's like it's like bow hunting with a recurve for an animal that is pretty rare, and that only shows it. You have

to sit fish for this thing. So you need to see this thing with your eyes while you're standing on the bow of a boat. And this thing will appear very quickly and you will have just a couple quick seconds to identify it, figure out its trajectory, and then lay a perfect cast right in front of it at the perfect time, use the perfect presentation, move it just perfectly.

And these like one to two seconds you have and you're all doing that while a fish that's the size of a small car is swimming towards you very quickly. These are like five foot long, six foot long, eight foot long fish, fish that can weigh one hundred pounds one hundred and fifty pounds two hundred pounds torpedoing at you, and you have to see it. You have to compose yourself. You need to present a perfect cast, do all this kind of stuff just like this. You have. Now that's it.

It's it's insane. It led to buck fever in the boat shaking feet, shaking legs, crumbling mental fortitude. I mean, it was nuts. It was something else. I will be talking about this some MOI later day in more detail two, but I can tell you that one of my best hunting buddies told me that he's never experienced anything else in his life that has made him crumble physically and mentally like this did. So just really really cool experience and another great reminder of how important these places are.

These fish populations are. Just like we care about our public lands and wildlife habitat for deer and other terrestrial creatures. Man, if you love to fish, the same care is needed for these water ecosystems too, And the more I learn about it, the more I'm seeing that there are just as many threats, if not more so, on the water side of things. And I'm glad I got to see this firsthand. And I've got a new thing to fight for there too. So that's my little fishing store for

the day. Now, that's my update. Those are my two stories. I said they are two hunt stories. One was technically a fishing story, but it's like fish hunting, so I'm gonna say that that counts another thing. Since there's nobody else here. We've got all the time in the world. I thought I would give you another book recommendation because I love books. You know what you've heard it. We did this about a month ago in which Tony and

I talked about our favorite hunting books. I guess it was hunting in angling books now that I think about it. But I listened to a book recently that I thought was worth mentioning. And it's not gonna be for everone and it goes into a little more detail than some folks might need. But the basic premise of the book, the high level takeaway from the book, I think is something that's super important for all of us to think about.

The books called Die with Zero by Bill Perkins, and the basic gist of this book is something that I think is relevant for all of us listening, whether you are a deer hunter or a generalist hunter or angler, whatever it is you do, just a mom or dad. The idea of this book is, like so many of us have been trained, we've been preached to about the importance of you know, saving all of our money and

waiting for the future to do stuff right. I think most of the advice we get when we're young folks in high school or college is get a good job, work really hard, put away your money, and someday you'll reach the top of the corporate ladder or the top of the factory, or you'll do the thing, you'll achieve the status, and then at that point you'll have saved all of your money, and then you can retire and

then do the things you want to do in your life. Right, that's pretty kind of basic life advice that many of us have heard. And I thought about this a lot myself, and thought about my own pursuit of the many different goals I have, and my pursuits to build a business and achieve whatever kinds of things I've tried to achieve both prior to meet Eator and Wired to Hunt and during my journey with Wired to Hunt and all those kinds of things. And something I'm beginning to learn more

and more is that nothing's guaranteed. Time is not guaranteed, the future is not guaranteed. And if we just stow away all of our energy and our plans and our money for some future date when we retire, or when things are just right or we have enough money, or

when we have enough time. If that's what you do, you might not get to that point, or you might get to that point and you might not have your health, or you might not have your family around with you to do these things, or you might not have the

opportunities to do them like you do right now. And so the gist of this book Die with Zero is that rather than saving up all of your time and money for some future retirement forty years from now or twenty years from now, our sixty years from now, instead, we might be better served to start using our time now to take advantage of what we have. We have health, hopefully we have time, possibly, we have our family maybe

around us now. These things we have, you need to take advantage of the present because it might not be around in the future. So the gist of this is to soak up as much as you can in a smart way in the here and now by finding smart ways to use your money to do the things at the right times in life. So an interesting concept you talked about is the fact that you know there's certain windows of your life where you will be best able

to do certain things right. So let's just say like going tarpin fishing or going mountain climbing or going on that Alaskan caribou hunt. A lot of folks might say, well, I'll do that when I retire and I've got all my money stowed away, and i can do it then. But when you're sixty five or seventy, will you really be able to climb that mountain? Will you really be able to stand on a bow of a boat for twelve hours in the ninety degree heat, casting perfect cast

to a two hundred pound fish charging your way? Will you really be able to, you know, do that mountain caribou hunt? There are some things like that that really you need to do at a certain phase of life, when you have or at least when you have a certain level of health or certain level of physical fitness, whatever it might be. Or what about stuff with your family? You know, I think I said this on the podcast several times before I'll say it again because it has

been so impactful for me. I heard somewhere, I think it was last year that the average American eighty percent of the time they get with their children happens before their child is eighteen. So think of another way. Eighty percent of the time I'm going to get with my two sons, eighty percent of all of our experiences together is likely going to happen over the next ten to

twelve years. Like I need to pack in a lifetime of experiences with my kids before they turn eighteen, if that's the case, because after that point, for a lot of people across America, right, and maybe for you and

me this is the case too. Right. We grow up, we go off and have our own lives, we move away, we get a wife or a husband or a family, whatever it is, and we go do our own thing, and our parents are there wishing they could spend time with us, probably and maybe regretting decisions they made back when they were a younger parents, when they could have done things with us when we were around, when we

were interested. But we you know, they had work to do, they had other things to do, they had other obligations. They said, well, someday when I've got more money, or someday when the job is not so pressing, but some day doesn't always come. And that I think is the big takeaway from this book. The book's a little bit more money specific, and you know, certainly not you know,

everyone has a different financial situation. Not everyone is going to be in the same financial situation that Bill is as he discusses this, but I think he makes some really good high level points that regardless of how much money you make, regardless of what you've got saved away, it's worth taking a look at these basic concepts of you know, looking at your time as the most important asset you have, and then thinking about how you best use that time to you know, have the experiences you

want to have, to share time with the people you want to spend time with, to make sure you are achieving the things you want to achieve in the life, having the experiences you want to have in life, pushing them away for someday down the line, but making sure they're happening now when you actually can do them, and not just someday. So Dive a zero by Bill Perkins, Take a look. I think it might be worth your time. Now. That is it for my random stories, updates and recommendations.

I'm gonna have a drink of water here and then I'm gonna start answering some of your listener questions. So thank you to everyone who's sent in a question. I appreciate those like I mentioned at the top. Love your feedback, Love your suggestions, keep them coming. I'll also say it's hot in Michigan now. I don't have ac at my house and because of the sound, I don't have a fan on. It can't open a window. It's getting hot

in here. My face is getting read. I feel like I'm getting a little sw So if you're watching this and you're thinking, why does Mark look like he's turning into tomato, That's what's going on. So questions, we got a lot here. How about this. What month do you start to put out your trial cameras. That's something that's pretty relevant for a lot of folks right now. If you're listening when this just came out, which is in

end of May. I usually put out my cameras in late July or August, depending on where I'm at the time, because I've got a kind of a unique living, unique living circumstance where I spend part of the year in Idaho, part of the year in Michigan. In past years, I've waited to put up my cameras until I get back, So usually August is when they go up, because that's when you've got you know, you can really see what

you have to work with. You can see what you know, a deer is going to look like it's mostly fully grown antler wise, you're going to start to be able to clearly see mature bucks. You're clearly going to be able to able to identify deer that maybe you've seen in past years. But if I was not traveling, I'd probably do that in July. Probably around the fourth of July is when I would historically put out my cameras for the year. You're gonna start to really be able

to tell what these deer are going to be. I then run those cameras all the way through the summer, the fall, the winter, and keep them up until shed season. And then once I see that most of the antlers have dropped. Once I see, you know, deer dropping those antlers, I usually pull my cameras, clean them, store them away for the worst of the winter in the early spring, and then put them back out in that midsummer time period.

Now this year, I'm probably gonna put my cameras out here in the next week or so, at least some of those cameras, because I'd like to just just for fun, keep track of some of this growth as we go through this June July period, and then when I come home in August, you know, I'll probably put out a few more and move them into locations that will be

more hunting seasons. Specific I've talked about in the past, you know, in those summer trail camera locations, I want to be by foods or water sources, something that's going to congregate deer in those summer months. I don't use bait. I do not use minerals. None of that stuff's legal here in Michigan. I have used it in the past in states where that is legal, but you know here in my home state, I can't, so I won't. So instead, like I said, you know, bean fields, right, soybean fields,

incredibly attractive, clover, elflf anything like that. If you have agriculture in your area, those can be great locations for a summer camera setup. If you're in big woods, if there's any kind of clear cut, any kind of openings in the woods where you have sunlight reaching the ground, that creates lush, high quality food. Lush, high quality, high protein food is something that's very attractive in the summer to deer. So those are great spots to put those cameras.

You know, then the next thing I'm trying to do is is how do you narrow down movement within a food source. Along the edge of a food source, you might be able to see trails where trails enter those food sources. You might be able to see like a corner of a food source is typical for an entry point. Many times in a summertime food source like this. Also, if there's any kind of funneling mechanism, like a fence that has a gate that's open, or a downed wire

or something that just makes it easier. Right, Deer are creatures that prefer the path at least resistance. So if there's a spot that's a little bit easier to enter the food source, that's the kind of place I'm going to look for into place a camera. Maybe you've got a creek or something that that it runs along the side of the food source. That's another place where you can find those pinches of movement. You can find where those most popular crossing points are on the creek, and

that's a great spot. So put your camera where that creek crossing meets the food source. So think about that. Another thing I almost always do know is this is true for summer and for hunting season. But if I am putting out a camera along a summer food source, I'm almost always going to make sure I have got that camera pointed at a licking branch, so a mock scrape that I created or a historical scrape that's been

used in the past. Even though deer aren't kicking up the dirt in a scrape during the summer, they are still checking those licking branches. They are smelling them, licking them, rubbing their faces in them. Deer are going to be visiting those locations, and so that's another place that's going to focus a little bit more deer activity in front of your camera. So put me on a summer food source or buy a water hole, and then find something that will focus dear activity along that food source, like

these three four different things I just mentioned. That's my summer trail cam plan. Like I mentioned, I'll be doing that soon and can't wait to see what it starts showing up. Let's see here, here's another one. All right, So for boweting white tails, do I prefer mornings or evenings? That is dependent on a lot of different things. I would tell you that time of year makes a big difference here how much time I have to hunt in a given location makes a big difference here, situation, you know,

like circumstantial things can make a difference. But I'll just say, like, purely, what do I prefer. Honestly, I prefer evening hunts just for pure enjoyment and on average, you know, that's that's what. If I could just pick a perfect hunt, it would be an evening hunt. And I say that for a couple of reasons. Number one, I just don't love waking up at three thirty in the morning and having to, you know, just be super groggy and tired and drag myself out of the house to go in for a

morning hunt. I'm always happy once I get out there, but that get yourself up super super early, go through all that stuff in the dark, is less preferential to me than the evening hunt. I love an evening hunt when you've got that slow build. So I'm talking about, you know, one o'clock, one thirty, two o'clock, you're starting

to say, okay, I'm gonna set aside whatever. Like let's say you didn't have to work that day, or it's a Saturday, and you know, okay, at one o'clock I'm gonna go I'm gonna take my shower, get all cleaned up, I'm gonna get my gear around, going to you know, kind of I listen like some hype up music, right, you're able to kind of build into it, and you've got energy and you're excited and this anticipation is building, and then you go out there and you feel like,

you know, a ninja slipping into hunt. You know where the deer are right as you're heading in for an afternoon hunt, you can pretty clearly you have a pretty good idea of where those deer are probably bedded, and so you can avoid those locations as you slip into hunt. You can make sure your wind's not blowing to them, so it's like a low stress entry point. I just always feel like when I go in for an evening hunt, hopes are really high. When you're going in for a

morning hunt. You can do a lot of things to try to make sure you're not spooking deer on the way in, but you never know for sure. Right deer in the dark sometimes can be anywhere. So I hate that feeling of spooking deer. When I head in for a morning hunt. You don't have that most of the time, when you go in for an evening hunt, you can

be very tactical. You can see exactly what's happening, you can adjust if there's something different, and again, like I just enjoy getting out there, getting the tree, and then the hunt gets better every second. Right, it's full blown hope and anticipation all the way to the very end, because you know, the chances of seeing a deer, typically especially mature buck, get better as you get closer to dark.

So it's just the slowly crescendoing hunt all the way until shooting light ends, and then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen, the hunt's done. The reverse is true for a morning hunt, right. Sometimes this depends on the time of year, but oftentimes the most deer movement is going to be right there at the break of daylight. And then if it doesn't happen that first hour or two, then you're starting to think, eh, you know, I'll stick it out for another couple hours, but there's probably not

going to be as much movement. Right, it's going down. Your chances, your odds of success are going down as the morning progresses. Now, that might not be true during the rut, right, there's usually that window in the late morning, midday when you might get some of these bucks cruising again. But still, you know, it just seems to be that you are decelerating on morning hunts while you are accelerating and crescendoing up during an evening hunt towards like that

peak of excitement. So for those reasons, I just kind of, if I had to pick, would say I prefer the evening hunt. Not to say I don't like seeing the woods wake up in the morning. That is really nice, but that's my first take. Now. I will also add, though, there's certain times of year when certain hunts just might be more effective on average, So again these are not rules.

There are times that this isn't true, But on average, I would say evening hunts tend to be a little bit higher odds during that early season time period, mid season time period, right, there's just gonna be more movement during those last hour of daylight than you might get in the morning. Sometimes. It's also, as I just described,

it's harder to get in for morning hunt without spooking stuff. Now, when you fast forward into the rut time periods, that's when those morning hunts become very, very effective, very worth waking up early for You're gonna get more movement for several hours, if not only three, four five hours in those morning hunts because deer are cruising all over the place. It's colder for longer in the morning, so you're gonna have a better chance of comfortable weather for deer to

be traveling a lot. You know, that's when I tend to see a lot of that chasing cruising. Real ruddy stuff just often happens on those cold morning hunts. So love mornings during the rut. But if I had to pick, give me an evening for most of the year, and if I don't have to pick, I'll take it all. All right, there's one more dumb uh, what are your highest recommended books about white tails? All right? You know I like books, so you're tossing me questions related to that.

I'll pitch that podcast we did about a month ago. I think that was titled the twelve Best Books for Hunters and Anglers or something like that. Go and listen to that for some of our high level hunting and fishing recommendations, but whitetail specific A couple come to mind, Whitetail Access by Chris Eberhart. That's one to talk about

in that one. That's a book that details the story of one person's season, Chris Eberhart's season living out of his minivan, traveling across the country, doing DIY hunts on public land or private land. He got permission on. You get to hear his fun story of all these hunts, and then he teaches you along the way how he hunts, how he makes his decisions. There's diagrams breaking down his hunt setups. It's great. Another one I would suggest is

called Mapping Trophy Bucks by Brad Herndon. This is one of the best books about understanding how to read maps, read aerial and top on maps and make predictions on how deer will use terrain based on that. So based on topography like the slopes, ups and downs of the land, and based on cover, there are certain things you can predict about how deer will use the land. And that is an incredible starting point when you're trying to think about where to set up, how to set up, how

to move through a landscape. Being able to read a map and get you know, fifty sixty percent of the information you need right out the gate is huge, and mapping trophy Bucks is one of the best books for that. Another one that does take maps into accounts that's good is a book by Bill Winky. I don't have this one written down. Let me see if I can figure it out. It's something about creeks, Bill Winky, Ditches and creaks. I'm gonna google this. Be patient with me, okay. It

is Peterson's Bow Hunting Creaks. Peterson's Bow Hunting Creaks and Ditches book and DVD combo in the Trophy Terrain series Volume one. I don't think they ever came out with a volume two, three, or four or anything. I wish they had because this was a really good This is a really good book. But that one's by Bill Winky suggest that as well. Let's see here. Another one would

be Precision bow Hunting. That's by John Eberheart. Again talked about this in the past, but this is a book that was instrumental in me taking that big step up from being just like a deer hunter to being a deer hunter who could target three and a half or older bucks three and a half year old or older bucks.

The biggest thing I took away from this book, and that I think John does a great job of drilling in this read is the importance of thinking about how you hunt and how that should change throughout the calendar year. There are different things that you should be doing at different parts of the year, both with off season prep

and actual in season strategy. That's something I did not understand back in two thousand and five or two thousand and eight, But once I read this book, I very quickly realized that my tactics on my approach has to shift throughout the year as deer behavior changes. And John drills at home in this one. So precision bow hunting is a good one. Another one I really like is

called Big Bucks Secrets by Steve Bartilla. He does a great job of breaking down deer behavior, deer movement hunting strategies and showcases this with really detailed stories and maps. The diagram allot of this out so really suggests Big Buck Secrets by Bartilla. So there's some white tail specific recommendations. Next up, will we ever see another season of One Week in November? So if you're not familiar, this is a show we produce for Meat Eater. It's over there

on the mediater YouTube channel. This had myself, Spencer Newharth, Tony Peterson, Klay Newcomb, and for the second year, Giannis bettel Us and you got to foul along with seven days of rut hunting. You get to see each of our days, so one episode equals to one day, and then you're bouncing back and forth between the four or five of us seeing how we are experiencing the rut in different locations across the country. And man, it was a fun show to do. I still love the concept

I think it was. I think it turned out pretty darn well. It was like a digital deer camp in a way because we were spread out across the country, but the four or five of us stayed in touch the whole time with group texts and phone calls and facetimes, so we got to kind of share those seven days despite us being in different locations. So all that's a long winded way of saying though that I do not think that show is coming back. I think you never know,

never say never. But I think that was a two season run, and it seems like now we're kind of getting away from these series and we're moving more towards kind of random one off films and hunts that kind of can be very diverse rather than a specific themed run for six seven eight episodes. So as of now at least no plans for more one week in November. But if you make a lot of noise about it and you let folks that needed to know that you

enjoyed that, maybe maybe it'll happen again. Okay, next question, speaking of plans, what states are you planning to hunt this coming year? I am going to be doing a hunt in Alaska for blacktail deer. I am going to be hunting Kentucky public land. I am going to be hunting locally in Michigan, and if I draw in Iowa, I'll be hunting Iowa again this year. That'll be a

redemption tour hopefully. I had two bummer experiences in the state of Iowa the last two times I went back in like two thousand and fifteen and then again in twenty twenty one. I think it was so I need to I need to make it right. So hoping I get another chance this year, but TBD on that one. Okay, how about my best recommendation to optimize your approach to scoring deer antlers? All? Right? Scoring deer antlers how do you do it the best? How do you optimize your approach?

I'm going to give you an answer that maybe is not what you were asking for. But here's my take. Don't take it too serious. Don't get too in the weeds on perfectly handling your tape and getting every little one eighth inch here and there and making sure everything is just perfect on your score sheet. YadA YadA, YadA YadA. That kind of stuff, in my opinion, is overblown, It

is over emphasized. It is talked about too much today in our hunting culture because if we value our deer just because of how much they score, we are we are you selling them short. We're selling the deer short, We're selling the experience short, We're selling what hunting is short. Tony and I have you know, we've covered this extensively in the past. We talked about this a lot during our Hunting Culture series earlier this year. But I'll just reemphasize the fact that if if you are getting all

worked up about score, you're missing the point. There are bigger things at play here than whether your buck made it over the Boon and Crockett minimum or not, or whether your one point fifty was bigger than your buddies one forty nine? Who cares? These are incredible animals, These

are incredible experiences we've got out there. We've got this unbelievable opportunity to have creators like this out there to hunt and to let a number attached to that deer arbitrarily impact how you feel about that hunt, or how you feel about that deer, or how you value that deer, or whether you think that such and such hunter is better than such and such hunter. Who the hell cares,

Let's stop with that stuff. I personally look at score is a is a way to just kind of better understand a deer, right, you know, when me and my buddies are talking and you know it's it's it's okay to score your dear. Don't get me wrong, don't feel bad.

If you want to do this, that's great. I'm just I just don't want you to get too far down the wormhole because I've done it myself, I guess, is what I'm getting at, Right, I have had a deer that I thought was gonna be one hundred and seventy inch plus, Dear, I thought I killed a boone and krock a buck. Finally I killed a quote unquote booner and then I missed it by a few inches, and I was disappointed. And then I realized the next day or whenever, it was like, that's so stupid. I just

killed the biggest buck of my life. I killed this deer that was just had obsessed I was obsessed. It

consumed me. It seems so beyond possibility. I never thought a deer like this could possibly be something I would hunt here in Michigan, and then I got to, and I got to have these incredible encounters, and somehow, by the grace of God or a miracle or whatever, the stars aligned and I got a shot, and I killed this deer, and I let a stupid thing like inches in symmetry, YadA, YadA, YadA impact how I felt about it. And I told myself after that to never let that

happen again. And so that's just my word of warning and my story to share with you now. As I was just about to get into I will still rough score a deer, and I'll still toss around scores that I'm talking with my friends, because it just helps you get an idea, like a mental picture of a deer like when I'm telling a story and I'm like, oh man, this incredible eight point buck came through and it was

just mind blowing. And then my buddy might be like, oh well, I mean, is this like one hundred and twenty class eight or is this like one hundred and seventy class eight? And that kind of thing helps you illustrate, It helps you paint a mental picture, and I personally have no problem with that, and I will rough tape my deer just out of curiosity and to help, you know, illustrate that picture when I'm chatting with folks about it. But no longer am I going to value my deer.

No longer am I going to let that in some way influence how I value that deer. Is what I'm trying to get that because of an antlers score. Now, we did have a really interesting chat, and I would suggest you listen to this. During that Hunting Culture series, we chatted with some folks from Boone and Crockett and Pope and Young Club about scoring deer and about how it all started as a way to you know, collect

scientific data that can help us make management decisions. And I think there's something very cool about scoring your deer and submitting it to the record books for that reason. So if you want to help build a database of deer information for future management, by all means, go ahead, do that kind of thing, submit it. I think that's great. My hope, though, is just that we don't get so worked up in it, in valuing ourselves as hunters or valuing the deer by that number. So that's that's my take.

That's how I would optimize scoring deer would be to devalue it from that perspective. All right, let's move on to the next question. Best advice for balancing family and home life during hunting season? All right, man, that's something that I've struggled with and talked about for all time. As far as long as I've had this podcast, this has been something we've discussed. Me and Dan Johnson have talked about it, Me and Tony have talked about it, Me and Clay have talked about it. A lot of folks.

And this is a huge challenge and a very important thing to think about because we love hunting and we want to take it seriously, and we want to be as successful as we possibly can, and we want to take advantage of these windows of time when there is that extra special chance of being successful. And I have long championed the value of hard work and putting in the time and pushing through adversity and really committing to whatever your goals are. So all of those things are

well and good and important. But and I've learned this through my own experience too, none of that stuff matters if the family stuff isn't right first right, Nothing is more important than that, in my opinion. And you don't want to someday look back on your life and regret

how you allocated your time. If you put a whole bunch of time towards hunting and you killed a whole bunch of big bucks, but you lost your marriage, or your relationship with your children suffered, or your relationship with your mom or dad, or siblings or your friends, if any of that suffers because of the time you put into hunting. As far as I'm concerned, none of that stuff matters. You could have all the bucks in the wall, you could be the quote unquote best deer hunter in

the world. But if you don't have your family stuff right, if you don't have your home life right, it's all a waste of time and I'll also tell you that, at least from my experience, your enjoyment of your hunting goes down significantly if you are stressing about that stuff because you know it's not quite right. So I can tell you I've had times where I knew I'm on a hunting trip and I know my wife is irritated with me because I've gone too hard, or I've gone

too far, or I've taken too many days away. Whenever, you know when that's happening, even if she doesn't say it, or even if your significant other or whatever it is. Oftentimes we know, even if they're not explicitly saying, you can feel it right, there's something underneath the surface going on. You can feel it when your balance is out a whack. And when you feel that way, at least I will

feel differently when I'm in the field. I will have that tightness, that something that just doesn't feel right in me, and that makes me stress out, and that makes me, you know, not enjoy the hunt, not focus as much on the hunt, feel bad, feel guilty, all of those things when you're hunting, and that is taken away from your enjoyment, and it's making you less effective as a hunter too, so it's a lose lose across the board.

So my suggestion is to be a really good listener, to try to be more selfless and less selfish, and all these things are easier said than done for people like you and me because we are addicted to this stuff. We are diehards about this stuff, and I have been guilty of getting it wrong. So I'm telling you this from my own mistakes and as someone who fully recognizes that this is easier than done, but we got to

try to. At least in my experience, I found that number one talking about plans well ahead of time so that expectations are set properly and making this like a two way conversation. So this isn't like, Hey, I'm going to be gone for three weeks at this time period and two weeks at this time period, and I don't care what you think. That does not go well in

my experience. What does go well is, Hey, I'm hoping to do this hunt and this hunt, can we talk about our schedules and talk about when it might work out? And here's the windows I'm hoping to do it. What

do you have going on with your time? How are you feeling about things, how can we make sure that this is something that's going to work okay for our family and work for my hunting goals, and you know, and being open to maybe your hunting goals having to be you know, not top priority and having to take a backseat to some other family obligations or other things

going on. And then going back to then listening, like listening to your significant other, or listening to your kids if they are talking about how much they miss you or how they don't understand why you're gone all the time, or listening to your wife or husband and picking up on the fact that man, they're reaching a stress level or they're reaching a point where this has gone too far. You have to be present enough to read that situation

and then set your huntings aside. At least for me, I've learned like none of the stuff matters in the long run, whether or not I kill a big deer, whether or not I fill my tags. In the moment, I can make myself think that this matters a whole heck of a lot, And and and it does matter in a certain way. It's it's not only my past time,

it's also my career. So There's an argument to be made that it should matter a lot, but in the end, when it comes right down to it, it doesn't matter at all compared to my wife and my children and my other family members that matter a whole hell of a lot. If I can't get that right, who cares what I have on the wall. And so I've been trying really hard in recent years to make sure to get that balance right because everything else comes from that.

Having those core relationships, having that family stuff right leads to all the other good things in life. When it comes right down to it, money, status, fame, big deer, it is all ancillary compared to that. So get that right, then all the rest will be a whole lot more fun. Right. Running question, when is your first or next Ultra marathon?

So I've been talking about running a bit this year, and I do think coming out of my chat a couple weeks ago with Weston about how running can make you a better hunter, he encouraged me, and my buddy Yannis has been encouraging me, and I've been thinking a lot, and I do think I'm going to try my first Ultra next year, which would probably be a fifty K. That would be like the first step of an ultra marathon that I think I could try to tackle, so

tentatively strongly considering trying to do a fifty k in twenty twenty five. We'll see. Uh, what is a book? Back to books? What's a book that you reread again and again? All right, here's two books that are not hunting specific, but they are very, very applicable to hunting and hunting goals and dealing with the challenges of hunting. So even if you at first glance are going to think this doesn't have anything to do with you, I'm telling you these will help make you a better hunter.

Number one is The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. This is a book that I gift to probably more people than any other, and it's a book I'd come back to more than any other, and it's all about breaking through. Resistance is the concept that Stephen discusses in this book. It's this inner voice in your head. It's this thing that can keeps you from doing the stuff you know you should. It's the reluctance to follow through on the to do list. It's the procrastination that leers

up and keeps you from shooting your bow. When you should, or getting out there and doing the work on the farm when you should. It's that whisper in your voice that makes you want to sleep in when you're super tired on November third, or whatever it is. It's all of our worst habits, our worst inclinations that are natural

in the human state. It's part of being human. But it's also that thing you've got to break through if you want to achieve your goals, whether that be in business, in an artistic pursuit, in a creative pursuit, or in hunting or fishing. So this is a terrific book. Now it's meant mostly originally for creatives people writing a book or doing a painting, or starting a business, or trying to create new habits, healthy habits, or running a marathon

or something like that. This book can address all that more highly suggested The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. Another one is called The Obstacles the Way by Ryan Holliday,

The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. This book uses ancient lessons, Stoic philosophy, and other traditional knowledge and wisdom and applies them to things happening in the present day with a whole bunch of stories about how different people across time and history have overcome adversity, overcome obstacles, and found ways to harness those challenges to achieve their goals. Can you imagine anything more applicable to chasing white tailed

deer or hunting anything? Definitely, two books that I reread often and would suggest to anybody out there. All right, let's get to something a little bit different. Here's one that's kind of a doozy, and I'm gonna pull it up on Instagram because it's a long question. But here's the thing. This is a question that is a fair question, and I don't have a great answer to it, but

I'm just going to think out loud. I'm going to talk to you about some of the different things I think about this, and I want to preface by saying I don't have the answer. I don't know the right answer to this question, but it is something I'm personally wrestling with a lot and thinking about a lot and trying to be really thoughtful about how I approaches. So

here's the question. Do you believe that you know they're they're putting a name on this, but it's not just this person, but this is this person has brought this up as well as many other people. But do you believe that matt Ronella has some valuable arguments in regards to modern day market hunting, that being content around killing animals.

So the idea here is like social media and creating media around hunting is in some kind of way analogous to market hunting back from one hundred and fifty years ago when people killed deer to make money from it. The argument is that something similar is happening by people

creating media around hunting. So he continues content around killing animals generates far more money than the sale of meat and hide could ever have lots of nuance and dialogue between the viewpoints, but I see a lot of platforms shying away from this topic. By what metric do we gauge if we're having a positive or negative effect on wildlife with loss of opportunity and hunting rights running rampant around America right now? It leaves me really wondering what

we're doing. And I'll say, the person who posed this question is a hunting media creator himself. Okay, So, first and foremost, I do not think that our current situation is in any way comparable to the impact the negative impact of market hunting, because market hunting in the you know, several hundred years ago was making money from animals, right where you could say that hunting media folks like myself make money from hunting animals and killing animals, as they

did during the market hunting era. But the rate of destruction, the rate of unregulated, untempered mass death of wildlife was unprecedented. So first and foremost, let's let's make a clear delineation there. Like market hunting led to the near extirpation of white tailed deer, elk, buffalo antelope. I'm talking like almost gone, like hundreds of individuals, where all that was left of

the buffalo population from a high of thirty to sixty million. Okay, So decimated wildlife populations were the result of market hunting. Today we are talking about the golden days for white tailed deer populations, the golden days for elk populations in the Rocky West, in many cases, the golden days for a lot of big game animals. So we're not negatively

impacting wildlife populations with hunting media. The argument, though, could be made that hunting media, you know it does we do profit from that, and you can't deny that, and you can't help but admit that. Because of that, it comes with a huge obligation. And the way I look at it is that if I'm going to profit from wildlife and the hunting of wildlife, that I then am obligated to give back ten x. This is something that

folks in the eighteen Hunters did not do. But this is something that I think that myself and a lot of people who care a lot about the resource do not. Everybody in the hunting media does this. I can point to a lot of examples of folks in the hunting media that I personally am not a huge fan of how they go about things. I'm not the kind of person who's going to throw people under the bus and name names, because we all are imperfect in our own ways.

I made mistakes too, so I get that. But I'm going to try to do things in such a way that I'm making a net positive difference and not a net negative difference. And the way I try to do that is several ways. Number One, I think the hunting media has an opportunity to do good or bad when it comes to the future of hunting based on how

we portray hunting. Right, So if the like, okay, fact number one hunters in America are a minority, right, there's something like three or four percent of the American public hunts, that means there's something like ninety six percent of the American public does not hunt. We live in a democracy, change legislation, all that stuff happens by way of voting in a government such as that we have. So if we lose the public support, we have the opportunity the

risk of losing our privilege of hunting. That's something that you know, has happened more and more. We're seeing, you know, in the last year or two more and more times where states are putting these ballot initiatives up there, where people are voting on whether or not there should be a black bear season or mountain lion hunting or whatever it is. So we're seeing in real time the risk

of hunting opportunities being taken away. And I would say a big part of that is because of the public perception of hunting, of people thinking, well, you know, why does someone need to kill a black bear? Or hey, I saw that cease little lion thing where this guy killed this lion and it seems like he's a bloodthirsty killer and he's in a jerk and they're not going to eat the meat. And why are these psychopaths killing

this stuff for no good reason? That seems sick and twisted, and I don't want to be a part of that. I don't support that. I'm voting against them. That's the kind of thing that happens when bad apples get the spotlight. So bad apples can show up on social media. It's just as random people, right, non media creators, just people. But here's the thing. We are all media creators now, So that's a key thing to remember. Not just professional media, but anyone who has a social media account is a

media creator. Whether you have ten followers or ten million followers, you are putting your life story narrative out there to people who can take that and run with it and interpret it. How are they like? So, I think there's a responsibility on every one of us, whether it's someone like me who makes a living in this world, or someone like you maybe who has one hundred people that follow you on Instagram or whatever it is, and you like to share your pictures and tell your stories and

share your experiences. That's a very human thing to want to do. Humans have been telling hunting stories since day one, since we started hunting. That is a very natural thing to do, and it's silly to think that we shouldn't do that because it's very natural. No matter what your pursuit passion is, Like, we humans are going to talk about it and we want to hear stories too. That's

why there is media around every different pursuit. There's media around surfing, there's media around pickleball, there's media around climbing, there's media around hula hooping, whatever it is. If there's something that people love, they're going to demand media to be created about it, teaching folks how to do it, inspiring them to do it in different ways, entertaining them.

So that's gonna happen in hunting too. It is happening in hunting too, because there's demand because I want to see it, because I want to watch it, because I want to hear about it, because you want to watch it, see it, hear about it, because we love this stuff. So it's it's kind of silly to think that that's not going to be the case. So let's just face the facts. Like we are humans, we want to see this stuff here, this stuff, experience this stuff that is

a truth, that's a reality. Now there's this opportunity for good and bad. Like I said, so, if we do this in the wrong way, whether we're professional media creators or just amateur social media users, if we portray hunting, if we share our hunting stories and experiences in such a way that is portrayed exceptionally negatively, if we are thoughtless about how we talk about these things, if we are crude in how we portray this, if we don't think about the outside world when we share a picture

or a story or whatever. There are real negative consequences that are possible because you just need one bad apple to poison a very large area. Right, If we have one c civil line incident where a bad story gets out there and it blows up in the mainstream media and across the Internet, all of a sudden, you get a lot of people that feel really negatively about hunters, and that can lead to bad things happening. So there's an obligation for me, as a professional media creator in

the space and everybody else who does that professionally. I think there is a responsibility, in an obligation to do it in a very careful, thoughtful, respectful way. If we are going to hunt for animals, if we are going to take lives, and we're going to share those stories,

you better take it seriously. You better do it respectfully, thoughtfully, and provide context for why we do this, why we hunt, why hunting is so important, Why and how it provides for our families and our communities, Why these traditions have enriched human beings for thousands and thousands of years. We need to make sure we tell the full story about how it's not just pulling a trigger, but it's stewarding

these landscapes and these animals. It's giving back to these resources, it's teaching other people, it's sharing the meat with our friends and family and those in need. It is all of these experiences in the wild, connecting with the natural world, connecting with nature. There's so many things. There's so much more than a dead animal on the ground. Right. You know this, if you listen to this podcast, you know this deep in your bones. Ninety six percent of America

does not. So we have a risk and we have an opportunity for those of us that have any kind of media platform. So if you have an Instagram account or a TikTok or a YouTube channel, whether you make money from or not, whether you are fourteen or forty seven. We can do this thoughtlessly and carelessly and put stuff out there that makes hunting look really bad and that can lead to these losses of opportunity down the road.

Or you can do it carefully, thoughtfully and with positive intent and help educate people and inspire people and bring the broader public into this community and understand that maybe they don't want to do it, but they can at least see the value and why and how we can do this in a regulated, careful, respectful, sustainable way. So I view my role in this as someone who does have a platform who does reach a lot of people,

as as an opportunity. I can create this media in such a way, and I try really hard to create my media in such a way that it is a ray of light, that it is a shining beacon of positivity for hunting, that somebody can take my content and show it to anyone across America, and if they give it a couple minutes of time, and if they give it an open mind, they might come away from it and say, hey, all right, it's not for me maybe, but I can understand why Mark might want to do this,

or I appreciate his perspective, or I learned something new, or I think that's pretty cool that he feeds his family that way. That's how I look at it, right, Nothing positive like that could come from the market hunting situation two hundred years ago. So first and foremost, we have the opportunity and a risk. We have to take that seriously. Secondly, I do think that, you know, we have to be really careful about how we do things

on a different way. Right, If you create media of any kind, you have the opportunity to spot burn places and put too much pressure in certain locations. That's increasingly a huge downside to media around hunting because we are putting too much human pressure on certain landscapes as impacting wildlife populations. We got to not do that. We need to stop sharing specific locations. We need to be very careful because we all deserve access to wildlife and public

lands in different places. But at the same time, we need to be careful about how we apply that, and we also need to be I think, very aware of making sure that the number one priority is making sure we have healthy wildlife population and healthy wild public landscapes or private landscapes, whatever it is. And so that brings me to the second thing. I think there is an obligation that I feel, and that I would suggest anyone

who hunts and fishes should feel as well. But especially if you do any kind of media, not only do we have an obligation to talk about these things and show these things carefully and positively, but you also really need to make a lot of deposits into the bank.

So by that, I mean we need to give back tremendously with our time, with our voice, with our energy, with our resources, with our platform, and making sure that we are putting in more positive, more good, to make sure that we have deer hunting opportunities or fishing opportunities, to make sure that we have public lands, to make sure that there are access opportunities, to make sure that we have healthy wildlife populations, and to prioritize those things

over our own enjoyment, over our own personal success killing a big deer or whatever it is. So, if ever I found out that something I was doing was going to negatively impact the long term future for white tailed deer or turkeys or whatever it is, I would have to change my ways. I'd have to seriously look at what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, and make sure that I can sleep well at night, because I am dead set on a mission of making sure that I can, in some way positively contribute to a better

future for hunting, fishing, wildlife and wild places. And I think just about anybody out there who hunts and fish has probably's got some part of you, some whispering voice in the back of your mind that knows and feels the same way. Because we have gotten so much from these things. We've benefited so greatly, and so it's on us to make sure that we think carefully about what we're doing and how we're doing, and making sure that

we're doing more good, significantly more good than bad. So, yeah, do I think about the impact of media and the commoditization of wildlife in the impacts of what we're doing and creating. Yes. Do I think about it carefully and have real debates about this inside my own mind. Yes?

Do I take it seriously? Yes? But in the end, do I think that the net positive of what I can do outweighs any negative outcome than the answer is yes as well, because I believe I have an opper to as I said, portray hunting in a positive way

hopefully inspire and educate folks to do so themselves. I have an opportunity to hopefully do real tangible good for the resource by volunteering my time like I'm doing with the Working for Wildlife tour, by hopefully helping other people find ways to do that, or how to use your voice in a positive way to influence positive political change for wildlife and wild places. So we have all those

types of opportunities. I think. You know, there's there's a million different ways you can dissect this and go into this, but in the end, I think that we have opportunities for good that keep me waking up in the morning, fired up and charged up and excited to do this work, while at the same time very real downside that we need to mitigate. So my take on all this is

that we need to all do some soul searching. Whether you create, media, consume media, hunt fish, what if you are involved in this honey and fishing thing, which is in many cases taking a life for our own enjoyment or use consumption, whatever it is, you better take it very seriously. You better think about it real hard. You better be very clear inside your own mind about why you do it and how you do it. And I think that is the litmus test that I apply when

I think about this question. And I can sleep at night because I know I'm working very very hard to be a force for good and using the media I create for those means. At the same time, I promise you I will continue to assess this moving forward, think really hard and carefully as things change in this landscape, and if ever I feel like that's not the case anymore with the stuff I'm doing, I'll change my ways too. So I hope that answered your question. Like I said,

I was thinking out loud there. I don't have it all figured out, but that's that's where my head's at the moment. Okay, we got another Instagram question and then maybe we'll wrap this up. All right, this one, all right, here we go. Whitetail hunting action can come up quick. So how do you quickly determine a deer you want to shoot without prior knowledge? Sometimes you only get fifteen seconds to decide whether you're going to take a shot

or not. Also, do you set different goals or standards on different hunts based on location or public land versus private land or out of state, et cetera. All right, great tactical kind of question. Good way to wrap this up, and excuse me. I would say, yeah, you're right, it's hard to make those in the moment decisions. And I've

got a couple thoughts on this. Number One, if I am in a location that I hunt consistently and I have like a full season hunt, this is where my trial camera is and all that kind of stuff come into play because it allows me to get a pretty good idea of what's in the area well ahead of time, and then I can think carefully about what my hunting

goals are and what deer would meet that goal. Sometimes, like when I'm hunting locally in southern Michigan, I'm going to have a pretty steep on a pretty high bar as far as the deer I want to hunt, because I don't want to just on this in the season really quick, unless it's something that is a really really

special situation, I suppose you could say. So usually I'll be after one particular deer, one or two particular deer, or if it's a new property where I don't have history, I might be after you know a certain age class deer. I like to challenge myself as a deer hunter. I like to force myself into experiencing everything that a deer

hunt has to offer. And so in those cases where you have the time, I like to get to know a specific deer, or I like to pass on a lot of deer and see that full expression of a mature buck. So I will put cameras out in the summer. I will take quote unquote inventory of what's out there, and that will allow me to say, Okay, here's the ten different bucks I've got a picture of on this property. Let's look at them, and let's see how old do I think these deer are based on you know, on

the hoof estimates. They're not one hundred percent accurate, but you can get a pretty decent idea. Like I'm very confident in saying, like, man, that's a four year old buck or older. You can usually tell, and that kind of deer is the kind of deer that for me personally, I get really jacked up about because that's that's a big, old, mature animal that's been around the block. That's a very smart,

that's a very savvy critter. That deer will require me to be the best possible hunter I can be to get within thirty yards, to get an archery shot that animal, or to even get a shot with a shotgun or whatever the thing might be. That kind of deer requires me to hunt at my best, and I really enjoy hunting deer that required me to be at my best, to utilize all of my resources and lessons learned and experience, to use all my mental faculties. That's that's what I

really enjoy about targeting mature bucks. So cameras pictures allow me to think about that, to make those decisions well ahead of time, because, like you said, it's hard in the moment. It's really hard if you've got ten seconds and you see a deer coming and it's got a huge set of antlers, or I don't know, it's got in between your antlers, or maybe you have no antler

or age class you know that you're considering. You're just trying to say, well, is this uh, I don't know a state where there's antler point restrictions or anything like that, is this a legal deer? It's really nice to have those things figured out ahead of time, so that when you see that deer in the woods coming down fast,

you recognize it right away. You're like, oh, that's that's the big eight, or oh that's that young looking ten pointer, or oh that's the one I would rather know right away based on those pictures then have to figure out in the moment. So in situations where you can, that's

what I'm doing. And you know, when I'm hunting locally, usually I've got a clear idea like all right, there's this one deer, or these two deer, or you know, these are the three deer that I think are four or older or three year older or five, whatever the thing is. And that's how I make my decisions in

those situations. Now, when I'm hunting at new property, or I'm hunting out of state on a short hunt, hunting public land something like that, where you just don't have the luxury of what I just described, then I'm usually going by like a feel. Honestly, I'm going by gut feel. I'm going by what kind of reaction does this animal elicit to me at the moment. And that's circumstantial too, Like there might be a trip where I'm hunting private land that I have permission on, or a piece maybe

that at a lease or something. Now, maybe even if I only have seven days, I know the possibility that's out there. In that case, I might be a little bit more picky. I might be like, man, you know, usually before any trip, I'll kind of set some kind of goal, and I'll say, based on realistic circumstances, based on the time I have, based on what I know about this area, I think this would be a tough challenge but possibly achievable. And that's usually the kind of

thing I set. So I'll go into like a hunt like I just describe, let's say a permission piece, but it's a seven day hunt and I have a hunt there, I'll probably go into that and say, man, like a three year old buck would probably pretty darn good, So that might be the thing. Or I might go into a hunt where I'm hunting public land in a brand new place that's a tough kind of habitat, and it might be any deer, like any buck or any dell

would be a great accomplishment. And so in that case, again I'm going into the hunt knowing that I'm going to say, man, if I get a shot at any legal buck that would be amazing, And then I make that decision ahead of time, and then it's easier in the moment to decide. It's easier in the moment to act accordingly. Now, of course, these things change through a trip. There's some people who say that you shouldn't, you know,

shoot something on the last day of the trip. You wouldn't shoot it the first day, or don't pass something on the first day that you would shoot at the end. That doesn't work for me. My standards, my goals, they do change throughout these short hunts or these traveling hunts. And I think that's okay because I don't need to hunt for anybody else but myself. I am hunting for my own experience, my own fulfillment, my own food, my

own enjoyment. And if I would be pumped up on the last day of the hunt to shoot a smaller deer that I passed on the first day, fine, because on day one I wanted to enjoy that full experience. I wanted some more days hunting, and now on day seven I got all those great da as a hunting and if I haven't killed something yet, but I would like to bring some meat home or now that three year old buck man would be a heck of an accomplishment given what I know, what I've learned over these

last seven days, then yeah, go for it. That's how I approach things. I go by feel. So I set a goal ahead of time so that I've got a starting point, and then I let myself have the flexibility throughout the hunt to adjust as needed, knowing that when it comes down to it, I'm gonna hunt my own hunt. And if in the moment this deer coming down the line gives me that feeling and it's got me fired up and my spidy senses are tangling and my juices

are flowing, I'm going for it. And I'm not gonna feel bad, and I'm not going to care what anybody else thinks about it, and I'm not going to let somebody else's judgment of my decision making process or on what I put my tag on in any way influence my decisions, because I've been there, I've done that, and it's made me feel shitty and it's stupid. And hunting is something that is again going back to what we

talked about earlier, it is so serious. It is so deeply fulfilling, it is so innately human that it is an absolute tragedy to let outside opinion or some knucklehead online in some way take away your satisfaction or your experience. The animal deserves more than that. Going back to how serious this says, in going back to how you know respectful we have We should be of the animal and the whole hunt itself. Let's do it for our own reasons in a way that we can sleep with at

night and silence in the outside noise. And if we can do that, and if we can try to be positive representatives of hunting, and if we can be good ambassadors, and if we can do things the right way, follow our moral code, make sure we're doing things to maintain sustainable numbers of wildlife in the future. If we can give back, then who the heck cares whether I kill one hundred and forty inch four year old or one

hundred and ten inch two year old. Whatever, hunt your own, hunt, have fun, be a good ambassador, give back, and get out there. That's my question to answer session for the day. I hope you guys found this useful, interesting, educational. I appreciate the questions. I appreciate the tough questions. You know, I'm going to continue wrestling with many of these things.

Like I mentioned, I don't have all the answers. I am a work in progress, and I think that's what I've tried to bring to the table over this last gosh like fifteen years or more that I have been

creating content here with Wired to Hunt. What I have always promised is that I will be honest with you about where I'm at in this journey and share the ups and downs of that journey, share my lessons learned in this journey of pursuing something that I love so much, this passion for hunting and the love of the outdoors. And I've not always had the answers. I've not always had it figure it out. I've not always been the person who you can look to is like, oh, I

want to do it just like he does. Right. I am a human being who loves this stuff a lot and who wants to contribute to a positive future for this lifestyle, for these wild places and wild lives, and that's what I aim to continue trying to do. So thanks for being a part of it, Thank you for listening, and until next time, Stay wired to hunt,