Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by Dan Johnson to discuss the particularly challenging whitetail rut that we both just experienced and our ideas and strategies for the weeks to come. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Life and their Camel for Conservation initiative.
And today I am joined by my good buddy, mister Dan Johnson, and we are going to be discussing and breaking down kind of oh, I guess, like a Monday morning quarterback kind of session on the rut, what we just experienced here in November of twenty twenty four, the hunts that we had, the experiences that we had, some thoughts on why we and so many other people thought this was such a weird, slow, bizarre.
Challenging rut for so many of us.
So we're going to discuss that, kind of discuss some of the different thoughts that we had on what we personally saw as well as some higher level maybe impacts that are kind of hitting folks across the board. And then we're also going to talk through some of the things that worked, some of the things that led to Dan having success, so we get a success story for
Daniel Johnson here in November. And then finally we're going to walk through some of our thoughts on what all this means for the future, how we can take some of these lessons learned and apply them to the weeks to come. And this kind of second maybe it's more like the third, the last third of the season, maybe second half, maybe last third of the season, whatever it is, We're we're on the downward slope. We are past mid November.
We are entering a different phase of the year, and it's been a weird one for me, as Dan and I will talk about, it's been a doozy.
I've had some just.
Funky, strange things going on, both hunting and outside of hunting. So I'm personally ready to move on. I'm ready to move into a new part of the year. Trying to feel good, trying to have fun, trying to be healthy, and make the best of the rest of the twenty twenty four season. So that's what we've got in store.
I will just give you one very quick heads up, which is we do have this big old, crazy Black Friday sale going on for Meet Eatter and first Light and all of our brands up to fifty percent off stuff like logo areas. I know it's fifty percent off, great deals on things like the Furnace hoodie which I'm wearing here today. This hat's one of those pieces that's fifty percent off, so check it all over Themediator dot
com or first Light dot com. There's plenty of other sale adds, all that kind of stuff everywhere else you look. I don't want to belabor the point anymore. So thanks for being here. I hope you all have an incredible Thanksgiving. I hope today is a day if you are listening on the day this launches, where you are spending time with friends and family and appreciating the many blessings that we all have and the incredible opportunity that we have here as hunters.
So I'll also just note that I.
Appreciate you, appreciate you all tuning in being a part of this community and being good stewards of our traditions, our resources, and all those wild critters out there. So, without any further ado, let's get to my chat with Dan Johnson as we recap the twenty twenty four rut and our thoughts were moving forward. All right here with me on the line for a much needed therapy session, is my good buddy, mister Dan Johnson.
How the hell are you?
Man?
Oh?
Your therapy is and understatement, my friend, Uh, have you ever woke up? Or maybe it's when you wake up? Maybe it's when you Usually it's when I go to bed where I feel And this is a sick joke, but I feel like an Alzheimer's patient where I'm just like lost and confused and I don't know where I'm at.
Yeah, dude, you have no idea how much I can relate to that I have.
I'm going through a weird thing right now where I'm having insomnia. I have not been able to sleep like three out of the last four days. Really, I've been up till like three or four in the morning. Can't get my head to turn off.
Yeah.
So, is there a major decision you're about to make or dabbling in in life.
No, it's it.
There's actually I think there's a reason I'm taking some medicine for some weird health issues I've been going through the last month, and suppose me that can cause insomnia, okay, and so that and then stress, I think. So I'm getting stressed out about what's going on and not sleeping, and then I think those two things combined have led to me not being able to. Like I just lay there and the switch never happens, It never turns off, it just stays there.
It's like the wheels keep spinning and spinning and spinning, but about nothing.
It's not like I'm worrying about any specific thing other than just why can't I sleep?
Why can't I sleep? What's wrong with me?
Yep? I have two solutions that your doctor will probably argue against. But though, yeah, one is bourbon AH and the other one is THHC. So so I'm telling you, dude, you put a little bit of gummy in your mouth and you slide it down the hatch, and in about thirty minutes you will be going to sleep. I gain almost guarantee it.
You know, you're not the first person to recommend that to me.
I think I know who the other person is.
So I very well might consider that it's twenty twenty four. It's a brand new world that's totally in the wheelhouse exactly. Yeah, man, So I don't know, it's all sorts of the last month for me has been six weeks.
Five weeks.
Last five weeks have been one of the weirdest five weeks of my life, let alone hunting life. So yeah, we've got a lot to cover as far as hunting and what's been going on, because I think other than just my general weird stuff that's going on, there's also the hunting stuff, and this has been my.
It's hard to say.
Sometimes we're biased to always thinking like what's happening right now is the best of the worst or the most. You know, there's a freak like a recency bias, I think is what they call it. But still it seems like this has been the weirdest, most frustrating white tail rut I've personally ever experienced.
Yep. And this isn't just something that you and I have experienced. I am very active on my Instagram messages and I communicate with people all over the nation. Right, so when people when people reach out to me. I tend to like respond back to whatever, like whether it's a question or hey, dude, how's your rut been? Things
like that. If I have a little bit of time and I'm waiting at a practice or I'm waiting in between hunts or in my truck waiting for something, I'm responding, and the traditional Midwestern rut from about Nebraska to the East coast. I am getting hundreds of people responding to me that are having the exact same outcome in their rut, and so it's not just us.
It makes you feel a little better, yes, right, yeah, yeah, I have not seen I've not seen a single buck chasing a doe. No, I've not heard any grunting snort wheez, And I haven't seen a fight. I haven't seen. I've seen bucks cruising. That's the only running activity I've seen. It just like bucks kind of doing the march. Yep, that's all I've seen. And I have not seen a single mature buck in Michigan since October fourteenth, and I have one.
No, that takes back. I have three mature buck pictures since November one.
I was trying to find it email someone sent me about this and it has to do with what's that guy's Charles.
El Sheimer and moon. You think the moon theory.
Not necessarily moon, but he it was something about a synchronized rut versus a traditional rut. Yeah, and so this year was definitely the trickle rut. I mean I had I had guys telling me that they saw breeding in mid October and then recent like then nothing. So it's it basically has told me that there dose were not
coming into heat in a group, right. I saw, dude, when I was leaving Iowa to come back home for a couple of days before I left to go to Kansas, I was watching doe groups and I was watching three year old bucks and four year old bucks come downwind of dough groups sent check them and not even bump them,
just leave. And that was going all the way up until I believe November fourteenth, when you would think that there would be Now, did I see a little bit of chasing, Yes, I saw the bare minimum of chasing. But when you have three year olds ignoring, does dude something like they did their due diligence, they came down wind of them. And when a three year old is telling you this dough isn't even close to coming in,
and they're they're basically just cruising. Now, that's one thing that I did see this year, and that was a ton of deer on their feet for longer periods of time, almost like it was, you know, the post rut cruise that we talk about. I saw a ton of that, but just not buy mature bucks.
Yeah, so let's do this.
Let's let's recap real quick, yep, kind of what our last month or so has been like, and then maybe try to break down a couple takeaways and then what that means for us going forward. We're going to try to put this into an abbreviated time slot since we've got stuff after this. But you have at least a happy ending to some of your story. Yeah, so I'll
lead because I don't have any happy endings. So, as I mentioned, I haven't seen a mature buck since October fourteenth, I think it was or fifteenth or whenever it was. I killed that buck in mid October in southern Michigan. Since then, I have hunted my normal southern Michigan properties that I've hunted for years, the ones that I talked about with you this summer where I had two bucks I was after, and then I've hunted Kentucky public land, and then I've hunted up north at our deer camp,
and then a really quick trip to Illinois. That was a quick kind of turnaround bust. But the big things for me, if I were to summarize everything done, I spent the most time hunting my southern Michigan local stuff where I've been after those two deer, and it turned into three deer. Actually, the headline of the story there is that the bucks are just gone, like I'm hunting a ghost.
Or a non existent deer.
It seems like I've never had something quite I've never had it happen quite to this degree. Those deer disappeared on October third and has not showed up ever since, So I feel like, probably a good chance that deer is dead. That was that really big, like one hundred and fifty maybe type class buck that I thought was a four year old probably this year that passed on a ton last year.
My kid called him bear deer. He's he's a wall.
Then the other deer that was the five year old I found his match set this spring.
We were super.
Excited about this big old bodied buck Bulldozer and he disappeared September third, and didn't see him for six weeks, and then late October he did show back up. But this is a deer that has been a homebody for the last two years. I mean I passed him a bunch. I have countless pictures.
I went and.
I should have have got these things on a piece of paper. I went and mapped out every single picture I have of him last year during the hunting season, and it was almost every single day he was so on these properties.
I've permission on.
Tons of daylight everywhere, same thing the year before, and then this year, like a light switch gone. So he showed back up like October twenty something, and then one more time at the end of October, and then twice in early November. So I think I have three or four appearances of him now from late October until November ninth, and that's it since September, So from September to almost the end of November. So in the three month period, he's been here three or four times that I can tell.
And that's from you know, fifty times last year, fifty times the year before. I don't know what else to do about him. I don't know where he is. I don't know what happened. I don't know why he would change his behavior as a five year old like that. I've never seen a five year old totally change. Usually they get more and more tight to a core area. I usually get to learn them more, and I know, Okay, this deer really likes this zone.
This dear really likes this zone.
The only thing I can think is maybe that his zone that he is gravitating towards now is just not on somewhere I permission. So that's one possible theory. But to make a long story short, with this area, I've hunted a pretty good amount. I've hunted all the best like rot places that I would usually find these deer and just seeing nothing but dozing young bucks, dozen young bucks, dozen young bucks. I've not had a single mature buck encounter.
I have searched into new places. I've moved cameras into areas I usually don't have cameras. I've been trying to hunt and observe some places that I usually don't, just trying to seek it out and figure out like where have these deer moved to?
Nothing?
So I'm running out of I'm running out of ideas with this. I'm kind of down to three thoughts with my local situation. One is to just keep searching, keep moving around, keep you know, glassing from afar, and the
idea to hope that something will show up eventually. Like I am hunting tonight and I'm gonna hunt a part of the farm I've not hunted since the very beginning of October that I don't I don't think they'd be there because it's not where the best food is right now, and there's there's kind of like a really really strong late season food source on a neighboring property that I think is pulling mostly activity, and so this is not there.
But it's a place that I've ignored because of that, And so I've got to think, well, maybe I just need to go to the place where I haven't been at all, And even though I have a couple of cameras there that have not picked them up or picked up anything, maybe maybe it's worth a shot. Just you know, can't trust the cameras entirely, So I'm going to explore a new area tonight and just see. So one, I just keep searching, keep moving cameras, keep scouting, YadA.
YadA. The second thought.
Is to just wait and basically hope that something's going to move into the area. Hope that the late season you know, move to food will make them return. Hope that once we finally get a really good cold front and snow, that'll get something moving.
And again one of the one, the one.
Big thing there was I guess two possible big things that I think could be going on here. Three I guess one these deer could have gotten killed, and it just might be that there just isn't mature bucks now. One of them, I feel pretty confidence is probably the case. The other one I haven't seen since November ninth. It's now like November twenty sixth or twenty seventh or something now, so it's been three plus weeks, so maybe he's dead too. So they just there just might not be a mature
buck in this area anymore. So I might be chasing the complete ghost. But the other thing that could be is that there might be a hunting pressure change that has pushed these deer out of the areas that they usually feel comfortable. I do share some of these properties with other people. I was scouting earlier this month and found a pop up blind right on the edge of a betting area that has historically been a sanctuary that
I never go into. That I've always viewed as like that core place, and now there's you know, a blind there, So maybe these other people are walking right through that and hunting more than I realized.
That could be a thing.
And then the other thing is that, like I mentioned, on a neighboring farm, there is a sixty acre farm field that this year has been planted in the cover crop, so it is basically a sixty acre food plot of you know, brassicas and turnips and wheat and oats and clover and all sorts of stuff. So it's a huge food plot in a place where there usually isn't. That's probably pulling a lot of deer activity in an area
that's a little bit different than usual. Now I can intercept some of that, and I've hunted trying to intercept some of that and haven't seen what I'm looking for lately. But that maybe has changed some behavior, and maybe deer are betting in different places and accessing that food and just not hitting the areas that I hunt because there does not seem me much they're feeding on on my permission.
Pieces.
So one thought though, is that if I continue waiting, eventually the cold, snowy snap will happen and maybe bulldoze are still alive, or maybe some other bucks gonna move in. Maybe because I have left most of my property pretty untouched, maybe that gun season sanctuary that I've talked about in.
The past will work.
You know, we leave it kind of untouched and everybody else hunting all around me. Hopefully they would feel comfortable in my areas, and you know, one of these deer that's still alive starts moving. I've not hunted my pieces since gun season opened, which has been more than a week ago. So that's a hope. And so that's that's kind of where I'm at right now as far as trying to kill a buck in this zone.
That's what's happening.
I got a question, mark, I got questions, all right. Question is this is a long question. Iowa dry all August dry the first part of September. They did get lots of beans out in Iowa. But as they because usually beans get combined first in your area, is there a lot of standing corn because during harvest there was a lot of rain.
We do not have that problem Okay, everything came out early here. Okay, So yeah, standing corn isn't the problem, all the corns down. We have the opposite, and that a lot of fields are have been chisel plowed, so there's a lot.
Of dirt around if anything.
Yeah, Iowa, my farms, the counties that I hunt, I mean we're talking beans got out, okay, but right when they started transitioning to corn, we're talking lots of rain, and then it dried out. And then right when I didn't even hear a combine running this year, wow, okay, And so we had a scenario where right has it started to dry out? It rained again? Right has it started to dry out? And it was substantial rain to where on the farms that I hunt surrounding these farms.
Most of my main farm was in beans this year, and so something happened too in my farm where they combined the middle and then they left the edges of the beanfields. So I don't know if there was some kind of rot or mold or something on these beans and they just didn't pick them. But the deer are eating them. So this isn't this is a late season opportunity for me, per se. But we'll see what the
shotgun season does. Outside of that, we have I mean, we're talking hundreds of acres of standing corn, and throughout my travels in Iowa down through Missouri into Kansas, I've seen more standing corn this year than I've ever seen driving. And so I think that that played potentially has a huge role in some of the spread out numbers. Maybe I know northern Missouri, southeast southern Iowa has been impacted
by EHD. I typically don't see a lot of dead deer or find a lot of dead deer, but I know that on certain properties, especially all the way even up to where my dad lives in north central Iowa, massive amounts of deer found by pheasant hunters this year that were found dead. So that has and this is one of those scenarios that we talked about, like the death by a thousand cuts type thing. Where we have drought, we have standing crop, we have potential illness, and then
just a variety of hunting pressures as well. I'll mirror the sentiment that you shared with October thirty first one on one of my farms, I had three shooters all show up on camera that day. I was down there, Honey, I think I started my rut vacation on November first with high anticipation. There had not been another four or five year old or older on trail camera on that farm until I got back from Kansas on November twentieth.
Who yeah, so they all showed back up. So essentially I was hunting ghosts right Like, I didn't have trail camera, I didn't see him on the hoof. And this is a property where I can get a very good idea of travel of age class of what deer on the property. And and I don't know, man, it just it was
a wonky year. Like I'll say this again. I rattled in one buck and it was a seven year old that I have Last year, it was a one seventy six this year, or he was like a one to seventy class six year old, like a beautiful ten with some junk. This year he dropped down to like a mainframe seven, same time link on tie lengthened mass on his G two's. But I rattled him in the last morning before I left to go to hunt Kansas, and
he showed up. But guess what else? I rattled in a frickin horse on one of the horses that are on the property came to investigate all the noise, and so that buck was coming straight to me, but so was the horse, and so then that buck flanked me. I want to say sixty yards. I had no shot and I wasn't going to take that uphill through thickness.
And did you have a shot at the horse?
Yeah? Oh yeah, thought trust me, I thought about it. I thought about it. And so this horse has been a kind of a thorn in my side since I started hunting this property. Long story short, that was the only time I saw a deer, and I mean deer period respond to grunting, calling, snort, wheezing, anything, man, not even a dumb two year old came in to investigate rattling this year.
And I swear to God, it's it's so funny you say that because I have I didn't have a chance to grunt to any deer in Michigan because I haven't seen a single deer I'm interested in shooting. But when I went to Kentucky, I was there and I was hunting public land, all brand new stuff. Had never set foot on any of this stuff. So it was basically like if any buck I would shoot, and I did see some deer, and I called to a bunch of
them in zero interest from anything. I mean, I couldn't grunt in a one and a half year old, couldn't grunt in the possible three or four year olds I saw. So again, I mean, this is all anecdotal, it's probably random, but it just has been such a strange year, and I don't know how to hand I don't know how to handle that other than just try to like press on and try not to get frustrated by Yeah.
So, so two things I'll add to this right. Number one, there is a recession proof type of conversation that I definitely think that needs to be had, and that is the people who hunt on managed properties with food plots have the ability to do habitat improvement, hingecutting things like that. They did not. And this is the people that I've talked to. They did not see the disparity that many
of us saw. Okay, so, if you have the ability to plant food plots, plant, and I mean substantial food plots, I'm not talking about like the quarter acre clover vidield stuff, Yeah, that's on ten acres. I'm talking about the ability to manage a property they didn't see that. They didn't see that, and so maybe that has something to do with it, right, And then just from I don't know, like there was something else I was going to mention about the I got a brain fart here, but it had it had
to do with like basically no three year olds. Right. There was people claiming that they saw the four year olds and older, and then the two year olds and younger. But there was a gap this year that and I saw one or maybe two three year olds this year. And usually I'm seeing a real, real good like next year's bucks pop up, and so this year I saw some you know, I saw good two year olds. I actually passed probably a low one fifties, high one forties. I was at full draw with him and I was like,
he's three, definitely a young body. And I down and let them walk, knowing or and that was like day three, knowing that I potentially had other deer in the area. And so I don't know, man, I am okay, and a lot of it. Usually I have a sliding scale definitely when I go on my out of state trips. But this year I set at bar really high in Iowa, and I held that this year, my goal was to shoot fill four tags, two tags in Iowa, my South Dakota tag and I did it, and my Kansas tag
and I did it. This year. I had high standards for Iowa. Could I have filled my tags, yes, but I want something that is baseline or higher than that, basically what's in my basement. And so I had high standards and I held to them.
So we've been doing this a long time.
Yep.
We've been doing the Rout Marathon and talking about it here together for I don't know, ten to fifteen years something like that.
We've been through a bunch of these How these days?
How are you dealing these days with that Rout grind when it turns sour the way it has for so many of us this year, when it's been slow, when it's tough. I mean again, you know, I've been wrestling with this this year. It's like, jeez, it's just been brutal. Yeah, But I feel like I'm older and wiser now I should be able to deal with that better and recover from that better and not take it so hard. Some
days I do, some days I don't. I'm curious where you're at with that now and now that we're approaching the.
End of November. Where your head's at right.
Now, That's a great question, because I was less frustrated and more curious and confused and wanting to know the answer of why the deer movement and deer behavior was so strange and less like, oh my god, because Mark, there were days that went by where I did not have a deer within shooting range yep, and I was, you know, and that's the thing, Like, you know, we talked, we talk about the strategy standpoint where I'm not hunting field edges anymore. So I'm not seeing like ten, fifteen,
twenty deer in a single set. But I'm not having button bucks, young fawns, spike antler deer. I'm not having them in front of me. And when I'm not, when I have consistency over the course of a decade and then all of a sudden we have a massive change that happens, I am my frustration turns to curiosity and I'm like, Okay, something has to something has changed. I
want to know what it is. And then you get in your car and you drive around the sections and you're like, okay, well they're standing corn here, and you start to look at precipitation levels, you start to look at drought. You start to hear rumors because hunters they bitch the most out of anybody that I know, right, and I'm one of them, where I just I'm like, Jesus, what is wrong here? What is wrong here? But most of the time it's just shitty hunters complaining. Some of
the best hunters. And what I mean shitty hunters, I mean the guys who the weekend warriors, right, and maybe they're not shitty, but the guys who have less time in the field than we do, right. And so you
start to hear guys like that who become frustrated. But then something happens when you have guys who are spending multiple weeks in the field and they are they're starting to be curious and confused, and they're starting to get frustrated because when you say to guys like us, it's just a matter of time, right, it's just a matter of time till something shows up, nothing shows up, and nothing shows up, and then you're not seeing you're not having the encounters with three year olds and two year
olds that you typically have. The only person who's not affected by this somehow is Andy May that son of a bitch, Like I love that guy, but I hate him at the same time because he gets it done no matter what, and so I wish I had a little bit of his mojo, that dude can find him
and kill him. But I also think that you know, when the honey holes dry up, and maybe it's maybe there is something to what we've already discussed, or maybe it's just you know, the timber, it starts to grow up and get thicker in certain areas and deer patterns shift, and I don't know, maybe it's one of those things as well, and then I need to shift as well.
But when you have ten to fifteen to twenty years of experience on a farm, it'll usually allows you to have a good indication of deer behavior and movement and to features and things like that. And as again, I'm just beating a dead horse, but it was off.
So how are you handling that? Mentally?
Though?
I guess it's like, what's your advice? Now you've shifted a little bit from being less frustrated more just curious, But how are you handling that in the moment when you've hunted Iowa day after day after day after day after day in incredible places and not seeing anything at all like you're supposed to. Yeah, what's the Dan Johnson mental game in twenty twenty four.
Well, the mental game is to accept that there is a change and to accept the fact that I'll be honest man, unless it's close to home. I've spent a week at in South Dakota. I spent basically fourteen days hunting Iowa off and on right. I had a couple where I had to come home for some meetings and some conferences or something like that, and then come back and then I went back to I hunted like three extra days at four extra days in Iowa. Then I
left for Kansas for a week. So for me, I've used my time right, So I don't necessarily think that I am going to be able to get out and hit it again just from a time like I'm back into dad mode. Now I'm back into work mode. Now here's what I will say. I got home and two of my bucks showed up November twentieth on my farm and now they are basically parading in front of my cell cams on a daily basis. That farm is four hours away from where I live, so I just I'm
not going to be able to go do it. Like if I told my wife today, hey listen, she would probably go, oh, okay, she'd accept it. She wouldn't divorce me because we're too far into the marriage, but she would be extremely unhappy with that decision to go do it. And so well, it's just something. The rut was in Gravy this year, right, it just felt like it was slow, and it happened the trust me deer getting bred somewhere.
The bucks have started to show back up on some of my farms, and I really do think if I did have more time to get out there and hunt, I would start going into staging areas. I would go into terrain features because I do think they're still cruising right now, and I would not be afraid to hit a rattle. Probably maybe not right away in the morning. I would wait for the doze to come through and get settled, and then I would crack the horns sometime late morning or even early in an afternoon set, and
that's what I would do. I would be monitoring trail cameras more often now to try to get something pegged down before the shotgun seasons. Or any time a firearm season, and then I would basically let the firearm season happen. I would go like, if for everybody here, they're probably going to participate in some kind of firearm season, go do that. But if not, like me, I'm not going
to participate in the shotgun seasons. I would wait and not put any pressure on any of the properties that I have access to hunt, and then I would wait for the late season at that point to see if there is a shift in you know, the shotgun set. The shotgun and firearm seasons usually leave a heavy footprint on the landscape. There's going to be some shifting that goes on, some patterns that go on and over that
period of time, you have the the crops. Like now, I always say this, I want the crops to come out, come out, come out, come out. But right now I don't want any more crops to come out until the season's over because what that does is that's just the giant beacon for deer at that point.
So, yeah, I hope I answered your question. It did to to a degree.
I'll tag onto that and just you know, when it comes to where my head has been at as this month has progressed, you know, went from you know, super high hopes, and you know, I was there was a really nice buck running around down here that I thought might be a three year old, might be a four year old, so I was on the fence about him, but I kept thinking, man, my big guys are going to show back up.
My big guys are gonna show back up.
So I didn't even get after that bucket all didn't even try to hunt that deer. In retrospect, I wish I had, because I ended up being the best deer that's been around here all year. But but I went from high hopes early to that slowly disappearing and towards the end, and where I'm at now, I've started kind of falling back onto something you said, which is acceptance to a degree and just accepting like, hey, this might just be one of those years that it isn't everything you hoped it would be.
And you can do one of two things.
You can either be miserable about it and bitch about it and complain about it and feel bad about it, or you can accept, hey, this wasn't what you wanted.
How do you make the most of it? Moving forward?
And so and so I'm trying to lean in that direction. So I'm accepting, Yeah, this wasn't what I wanted.
What would it? What would this look like though? To have a really fun rest of the season.
Oh yeah.
So so part of that is doing the things I mentioned, Like, I'm still searching for these bucks. I'm still waiting and hoping that, you know, come late season, there's gonna be these changes and that they show back up. So I'm not going to explode my spots and ruin them now, you know. So I'm gonna keep observing, scouting, watching, doing a you know, a couple little hunts like I'm doing
here today. But then also I'm getting pretty close to switching gears and getting to taking the kids hunting and shooting does and just doing like the simple fun stuff like inviting a bunch of friends out to go have a dough night and have a good time and do that kind of stuff that's less pressure filled that I
can do no matter what. It doesn't matter that there's not a mature buck around, because hey, we can go out there and do something really important, which is manage the dos, have a ton of fun doing it, spend time with your buddies or your kids. Like, I'm very close to flipping the switch and shifting that way all the way, or at least starting doing that on like my outside exterior areas and leave a couple core places
alone with hopes that something shows. But but yeah, I'm leaning more and more towards you know, I've been asking myself this question throughout recent years, especially this year, whenever I find myself stressed or frustrated with how the hunt's going and stuff, I'll ask myself, you know, what would this look like if it were fun? So, like, what's the fun version of this? Yeah, and so the fun version might be, you know what, I'm not gonna hunt
all day to day. I'm miserable, I'm frustrated, this sucks. I'm gonna take the I'm taking an hour and I'm gonna go get lunch and I'm gonna feel good again and then I'll be happy and we'll the rest of the day. Or maybe it's Hey, you know what, I'm not going to do a running gun set at three in the morning into a brand new place. I'm actually gonna I'm actually gonna slip in at gray light and glass and scout my way in and that'll be kind of fun and different and it'll be a change of pace.
And you know, I'm just allowing myself a little bit more flexibility in what I'm doing and how I'm doing.
It to try to.
You know.
You know, we've talked about this endlessly over the years, like keep this from being like a military mission and instead of being like, hey, this is supposed to be fun, do the thing that makes it fun. Yeah, work hard, yeah, do the right stuff. But you can take it too far. And so that's constantly walking that line. And so this year my question that I've been like, the little phrase has been like what would this look like if it
were fun? And then I'll be, oh, yeah, it would be chilling the f out and you know, doing this or doing this, or you know what, taking this afternoon off and picking up the kids from school because you've missed the kids and that would make you feel better or whatever it is.
And those things have helped.
And I think this, you know, looking forward into the next month of hunting, that's really going to be where I spend a lot of my mental time and my energy.
So one thing that we didn't talk about was and I just want to briefly mention it because I do think it's important. And that was over the state of Iowa, we had this stagnant low pressure where throughout the course of the first two weeks in November, usually what happens is I pray for an east wind, and I'm like, give me one east wind every or a front comes through, and that's going to give me an east wind. I had six days in a row of east winds.
Wasn't that weird?
We did too, and so we had this crazy thing happen where my farm is a vertical rectangle and on the west side of it is where all the cover is. So in order for me to hunt that farm on an east wind, I have to go through cover morning and afternoon to get to the stand locations so that that wind blows out into a pasture. And that's pretty intrusive when you're walking through, you know, timber, two times
a day in order to hunt that property. Could I done it a little different, probably, but that would have meant I was also extremely aggressive on my wind, and I just wasn't. I didn't want to do it right. And so the other thing I want to mention real quick is a lot of this has to do with
like filling a tag. And so I have my Iowa buck Archery buck tag, and I think that having it is making me want to fill it, Okay, And so something cool has happened over the course of the last couple months, and I got connected with a group of people who own a vineyard near where I live, and they have suffered a ton of a vine damage because of deer and the deer eat the grapes throughout the summer. They chew on the vines and they're they're basically it's
a what it's that called a depredation tag. It's depredatd you know, it's depredation to their crop. And so they have started allowing people, basically employees to hunt that area. Well, they invited me to come out and hunt, because basically they're like, well, you're not some Joe Schmo, you actually have accuracy. We don't want you know, dead deer or some Well. This year, this year, I did. This year, I did. Uh, But it's gonna be cool because I have no problem putting my tag on some spike buck.
It's five miles from my house, uh it is. It would just that and then I could fill my tag. I could get the meat, and then my tag's fill and then the only thing I have to worry about is a potential late season tag. And so it would be it would be cool to just get rid of that tag and then I don't even have to worry about my archery buck anymore, you know what I mean?
Man, There's something to be said about how refreshing it is to change your standards for a hunt sometimes, Like some people are very militant about that and like you should never do that, but again, like who cares about how big a dear you shoot, how old a deer you shoot, whatever. If you're not enjoying yourself, if this is not bringing you joy, then you got to change
it up. And the like for me, like when I switch to dough season and you go out there hunting and you know, like, man, any dough that comes in range, it's game on.
Yeah, so fun.
Or even when I was in Kentucky it was really hard and frustrating and all those things, but it was still exciting in moments because I was like, hey, you know what, I'm gonna shoot.
Any buck that's like half decent.
And so I was almost doing a full draw on a couple of deer that I would never even blink at, you know, here at home. But there, it made it a whole heck of a lot more fun than it could have been because I realized, Hey, this is a new situation, tough terrain, tough stuff. Let's go have some fun with it. And that definitely helped. So if you're in a funk, you should not at all feel like you are beholden to some standard that is set by the Internet, or set by a TV, or set by
your hunting buddies. Just do the thing that's exciting and fun in the moment that can cure a whole lot of ills.
Oh yeah, and I think, to be honest, Mark, what you're gonna start seeing more out of me is a dude who's filling tags because I like the grind to a certain extent, but I also like, you know, I hope this doesn't sound bad, but I like killing deer, dude, and I like putting that meat in my freezer. And I got what's fun about my non resident trips Kansas
and South Dakota. They were so much fun because I wasn't I didn't care one bit about Okay, this buck's a three year old, I think, actually, the buck that I shot this year, would I have passed him in Iowa? Probably, But he was a three. He's a big three year old. If he's a three year old, he's a four year old. Whatever the case is. My uncle thinks he's four. The other guy he hunts with thinks he's three. I don't give a shit. I turned around, I saw his G
two and I said, he's toast. And he came in in ten yards and I smoked him and it was fun. Like that whole thing was fun. There was no standards, like I passed small deer because I felt I needed to because my uncle hunts in a place where they have good quality deer, and so I felt like it was my responsibility to hold to that standard somewhat. But I told him like, hey, man, I'm probably gonna shoot a three rolled off your farm if if I have
the opportunities, Like, dude, go for it, right. And so this year was a ton of fun because I did have the non resident trips and then I was able to hold to a certain standard in Iowa. But that's because but what I think, what you're going to start seeing out of me is there's certain deer that can get big. And then there's deer that probably you know, if you got a if you got one hundred and twenty inch three year old, there's gonna be years where
I'm gonna be shooting. I don't want to say management bucks because I think that's goofy. I will say lower genetic bucks to fill the tag, to get the meat, and to put that euro on my wall because knowing you know, like it's going to take that buck off the landscape, there's gonna be less pressure for the genetically superior deer. Uh. And so on top of that, dude shooting deer's fun.
Man shooting ear's fun.
Yeah, tell me about that Kansas hunt real quick before we get to go, because we haven't covered that.
You had the rough Iowa, but Kansas, you turn it around.
Yeah. So it's a six hour drive or excuse me, seven hour drive from where I live to get to where I hunted in Kansas. And so my stepdad was talking to me about it. My uncle in the past, he's been talking to me about it, and he's like, you're not going to see the number of deer that you saw that you typically see in Iowa. Iowa. And I'm like Okay, week before I go, my uncle sends me a picture. He dropped one hundred and eighty inch nine pointer with two flyers off his g Two's an
absolute slammer, five or six year old. And so it's a buck that they passed the previous year and the other hunter missed it. And so long story short, like they hunt in an area. I'm telling you Mark that it's not a ton of deer, and it surprises me because they hunt on like thousands and thousands of acres that are that have maybe seventy total acres of huntable space unless you have a rifle. There are zero deer on this farm until they take the cattle out in
late October. Once they get the cattle out, the rancher locks the gates, and then the deer come into it from the surrounding areas. Okay, they're somewhere, but they're not on this farm. And so you have seventy to one hundred acres of huntable space and it's just little fingers of cedars, black locusts, and osage orne trees, scrub trees. I was in a tree stand at one point that was eight feet off the ground right and I was probably ten feet off the ground when I shot my buck,
So you're not getting high at all. Saddle Like, saddle hunting is great, but I went back to like this pure basic fun like I was climbing up ladder stands. Dude, you know how long it's been. It's been twelve too, I bet you. The last time I hunted a ladder stand would have been the late two thousand's, early twenty tens.
Like, oh easy.
Oh. There was one point where I they had that little thing that you could fold out, and I was real, I was straight, I was leaning all the way back. I could take naps in that thing. Oh dude, it was awesome.
Huh.
And the baiting thing, right, So I did hunt over bait a couple hunts, and so that was something different and unique to experience. And that's a whole nother conversation, uh,
as far as that type of strategy. But it was so I that's a long way of saying, I got down there fully expecting to not see any deer, fully expecting to and really what it was is just a continuation of what had I had seen the last handful of weeks, very slow like, so it wasn't like this huge drop off of movement or a huge drop off of deer movement. I was seeing young bucks, I was
seeing doze. I was seeing you know, some even some two, maybe some three year old deer past some you know, one hundred and thirty inch eight pointer or excuse me, one hundred and thirty inch would have been a nine pointer. I think he was. You can tell he's young. Plenty of deer. And my uncle is just telling me, like, dude, out here, deer just show up, So you put time
in the stand and you're gonna see deer. And we bounced around to a river bottom ground that had egg in it, flat as a pancake, and then most of the time we had to wait again. We had to wait for a wind shift. We were getting tons of east and southern type hunts. We had a big front come through wind and rain and things like that. And then all of a sudden, here comes a day with a bright sunshine any northwest winds, and that's the day that I killed my butt.
So in the setup was like one of these little fingers.
Yep, it was. It was a crick bottom that was probably fifty yards wide, and there was cedars and thickets and the cattle had been in there all year, so it was stomped flat and you could see forever this under this canopy where it was like, I want to say, six to six to ten feet tall, and then nothing below it because that cattle had stomped stomped it down and rubbed against all the trees, and there wasn't a ton of vegetation under there, but it's still cover and
that's where they were hanging out. And so I was along this creek bed and it was just the perfect funnel where all of these hills kind of came all these this pasture came down to this crick bottom, and then the crick curved on like a half circle to the north and came back to the south. And all it did was just create this perfect pinch point. So I got into the stand, I got to the bottom of the So two days previous we set it up
no bait. We basically were just hunting a pinch point, and so we had to wait for that front to come through. And then the front came through an afternoon hunt. We finally got our northwest wind. I climbed up in it and I dropped my ozonics out of the tree at two o'clock. I climbed up, dropped my ozonics down out of the tree, climbed down, climbed back up, and I slipped off of my PSA where your safety harness or your lineman's belt, because it saved I don't know
what would have happened to me. I wasn't very high off the ground, but still I have a huge scratch on my knee, and I had a puncture wound on my inside of my leg from the other stand. If it wasn't for a pair of pants getting snagged on it, I don't know what would have happened. I had my lineman's belt on, but I would have went straight down anyway. I climbed back up, sit, you know, like I got my saddle on. I'm sitting back, put my hat on, and I'm getting ready to record something on my phone
and I hear a single snap. I look back. He's at twenty five thirty yards, stood up, drew back, and I had put an arrow in him at two fifteen. So I was in the stand fifteen minutes when he showed up and was cruising that bottom and shot him right in the heart and watched him disappear into some around a cedar tree that I couldn't after that, called my uncle, found him, drug him out, had Coors lights and bourbon.
A great reminder that it can all just change in a minute. Yeah, after everything's going wrong too.
Yep. Man, Now that's the abbreviated version of all what would happen? But I will say this mark Iowa was a struggle. Iowa was fun. But I enjoyed this season so much, not only because I got to hunt with a new guy in South Dakota who's a great dude. I also got to do my thing in Iowa, which is always a blast, regardless of how shitty I've said
things are. And then I got to hunt with my uncle, who I shot my first turkey with him, I shot my first pheasant with him when I was like thirteen, twelve, thirteen years old, and it was just awesome to hang out with him again. And an absolute blast, man, absolute blast of a season thus far. And it's not over yet, so who knows what's going to happen.
Well, that's another really important thing to remember when it comes to what makes this stuff so good oftentimes is the people that you spend time with.
And it's easy these days there, at least it has been for me.
When you're so obsessed with trying to kill mature buck, it can become like a solo endeavor. They can become a lone wolf thing, which just like you against the world, and you're out there on your own, traveling around or doing whatever in the tree all the time, and you end up sacrificing in the fun hunts with family or going to the family deer camp, or getting breakfast or lunch with the buddies, And man, that's always been a mistake.
Like that's one of the biggest changes I'm trying to make is, Yeah, prioritize the trips with friends, do the things with family. Take a little time to be part of the social element of it, even if that means less time in the tree, or maybe you do a trip that has slightly less chances of killing a big giant buck. But if you're there with people you enjoy and care about, that's the stuff that makes this so special.
Yeah, this deer camp thing, dude, it was so much fun. Iowa. This year, my dad pulled a trailer down to a local state park that was ten miles away from where I hunt, and I stayed in a camper with my dad. He didn't hunt, he doesn't hunt, but he cooked some great meals. I celebrated my Usually my birthday is November fifth, and usually I'm celebrating that by myself most years. This year I was able to celebrate it with my dad. He cooked me a steak on the cool out on
the camp site. I stayed in his camper, electricity TV.
Like it was.
It was not this grind, grind. The time in the tree stand was the grind. But outside of that, man, it was absolutely and it's just one hundred percent success this year period. Yeah, I don't care how it turns out.
That's the good stuff right there, and a great thing to leave us with here today. As we go into the rest of the season, I think thinking about that kind of stuff, prioritizing those types of memories and moments for the rest of the season. We'll do us all really good. So thanks buddy for making time to do this.
Yeah, absolutely, good luck the rest of the season.
Mark, thanks man, you too.
All right, and that is a wrap for us today. Appreciate you joining us, thanks for being here. As I mentioned at the top, Happy Thanksgiving. Hopefully you are having a wonderful holiday, eating lots of good food, getting out there in the woods for some hunts. Please be safe, please have fun out there, and enjoy these most wonderful final days of November. And until next time, stay wired ton.
It's that time of the year again. I'm back, Marcus Kenyon. How are you your son of a gadwall? You look terrible. I'm just kidding her, Rema, I'm sorry, I'm late. I crashed my recumbent bicycle into the side of a quiz nose, and I know what you're thinking. I am as sober as a newborn blue crab. I swear to you this is just kombucha. I'm watching the gut health. You gotta do it as you get older. And also, I'm wearing this ankle bracelet that makes a beep beep sound if
I have a drop of the stuff. Also alerts the authorities, who in turn alert my parole officer. So there'll be none of that in the studio today, I promise you.
Let's get go.
Oh, you're queuing it up already. Okay. I thought we'd learned a lesson this year, but I guess not.
Here we go.
Of those beagy, big white tails those eaky run beagy big big white tails. I love those beagy big yet eight chats eat tails. I love those beachy, big wide tails, big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great?
Hold?
What fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day? Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great?
Hold?
What fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day? Dashing through the woods for the morning light, turns grave across the fields and draws, creep in all the way, climb into the tree. Big bucks are on the way. What fun he is to sit and wait for my gosh don deer all day? Oh big, I'm sorry?
What is this?
Piscato strings? Who do you think I am? And you get this out here? I don't want to hear it?
Thank you?
Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great. Hold fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day? I hope sund dreams are high the rut. He's finally here, Mark said, it's the most wonderful time to kill o whitetail deer bingch points and pettings where you'll find me?
Hang, it's want to feet.
In a tree, grunt tubes my bowl inspector Camos really campy be he or two ago. I thought that this was fun, but now I'm frozen to my seat and the good times they are God. I've ate up all my snacks, my hands and toes unnumb and we're gonna climb down from my stand. That son of a bud decided to come.
On those bagy b Wat tapes, those sky bagy big big Wait tapes. I love those be agy big dupe y'all eight shot gie eat tails. I love those big white tails all Dad.
I don't know why this is happening, I swear to God, Oh officer, what seems to be the problem here? Oh this? I don't know why this is happening. It must be a malfunction, you know. Sometimes it happens when the batteries run low.
You don't know.
You don't need to smell that. That's just kambuocha. I okay, yes, you've got me. It's ever clear and pacific cooler, Caprice Son. I am so so sorry. I don't know why my life has brought me here. Mark Marcus, I'm so sorry. Enjoy the rut or whatever. Good luck boys, Good to see you, Hayden it's been a while. Hey, sorry, I'm late. I crashed my pontiac cast I could do a light pole and had to walk the rest of the way. But I'm here now.
That's what matters.
Give you a glass of scotch, please, Hayden, just two rocks in there. I don't my guys, we're starting already. This is happening. Okay, just give me the give me the glass, thank you. Okay, here we go. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. With the run now just starting and dashing and dotting and veins cutting clean, It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. There's far too much ice in this glass. It's the half happy
season of all. There's gotta be at least twelve cues with grunting and bleeding and call fronts and sleeting the last weeks of fun. It's the happiest seedsson of home. There'll be pictures for posting and bragging and boasting and truck beds with big bucks in toe. There'll be narrow miss stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks missed with our bulls. It's the most wonderful time to
kill deer, not just one baby two. There'll be no dose of blowing and looming knocks glowing and blood trails so clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill dea. Excuse me? Can I have a napkin? Please? I just spilled some scotch on my loafers. I can't have dirty loafers in the studio. Thank you Tailgate beers for drinking, and big Bucks is sleeping and chasing and san jacking does They will be fighting and scraping and no more
escaping and arrowshot true hitting, Oh key change. But no one told me that it's the most wonderful time to kill deer. I was very unprepared for this. There will be much morning sitting in cold fronts, are hitting the dawn crispin clean. It's the most wonderful time.
Oh, the most wonderful time.
Yes, the most wonderful time.
To kill.
There's too much ice in the glass
Rocks.