00:00:00 Speaker 1: I'm Casey and you're listening to the Element podcast. 00:00:14 Speaker 2: What's going on all you people? Tyler's popping cats? 00:00:19 Speaker 1: We ain't popping no bucks, if you know what I'm saying, Papa Coon, ain't popping no bucks. 00:00:25 Speaker 3: We have been out just popping around, as they say, we've been hunting, which is cool. 00:00:33 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:00:34 Speaker 3: And you know, the more you hunt, the more you get to hunt. So I really am trying to not kill something when we go places. I don't know if y'all figured that out this week or not, but I was real successful in my goal. 00:00:49 Speaker 2: That's good. I didn't know that. 00:00:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess, Uh, cats out of the bag. We had a successful hunt. Actually we'll get into that more later. But we've been down in South Texas, I guess you'd say South South where we're from. Sure, and have been hunting some Axis deer and uh, if you remember, back in February, we did a podcast that was centered around Access deer and we talked a lot about you know, how they came to be in Texas and all that. 00:01:15 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:01:15 Speaker 3: If you missed that, go tune in to that. I don't remember what episode number. Tiler, you're the guy who does that pretty well. 00:01:21 Speaker 1: I was when I edited the podcast. But now we've got some face. 00:01:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, and donkeys and there's some black bug behind them to be some zonks. 00:01:32 Speaker 2: It's that gum just exotics paradise off down here. They call them donkeys right whenever they make one. 00:01:39 Speaker 3: Yeah, we call them ze donks whenever I was in the business. But I think zonkeys might. 00:01:45 Speaker 1: Be trace Akins songs that donkeys donkey do. Yeah, that was popular at the time. Yeah, there's some moof on man, there's stuff everywhere today. 00:01:56 Speaker 3: You know, I don't know if y' all know this, but if you got a goat or at goltshost Gos's best animal, uh if you uh, if you got one it is brown, then you can call it a moof lawn. Yeap. 00:02:11 Speaker 2: So it's a pretty good way. It's worth charging more monthfully, that's a good business plan, it is, man, Yes, I'm into it. 00:02:17 Speaker 3: So anyways, we've been hunting Axis and we've been invigorated by acxis since February and whenever we came down hunting the first time. The short story of that is Axis came here to be in Texas around nineteen fifty or forties or something like that. 00:02:35 Speaker 2: At the wild Ranch. It was earlier than that have been. 00:02:38 Speaker 3: Well, I thought they came to Hawaii way earlier that the first axis in the United States was in Hawaii. 00:02:45 Speaker 2: Uh of fact check fact check for all that stuff is in the other podcast, right, So, yeah, we'll make everybody do some work, you know what I mean? 00:02:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. What's the is it devigorated? What's the opposite of invigorated? Probably that's what I am right now on interest. 00:03:00 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't know. Uninvigorated. Maybe I don't know if I invigorated. 00:03:10 Speaker 3: Maybe it's one of those words where you can eat in and I in and it sounded the same but mean different things. 00:03:16 Speaker 2: It's like immigrated and immigrated. Do you know the difference in those? When you immigrate you come in, When you immigrate, immigrate you leave. That is correct, That is correct. 00:03:27 Speaker 3: I'm calling Greg Lathan for some reason. Don't call me Greg. I ain't gonna call you. Whoa people passing going fast on the hill, not to day scary. Okay, So we need to kind of get this thing roll because we got a little distracted. 00:03:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, anytime we're driving, I think you are. You know, well, we've got stuff to look at it right now. 00:03:47 Speaker 3: And that's kind of we can work this thing backwards because on our drive we're leaving right now, and on our drive we have seen rut raging access Bucks twice. 00:04:00 Speaker 1: We saw a big buck right next to the road and uh, he was with the dough and there was a satellite bull that old Greg has seen. 00:04:11 Speaker 2: Uh huh, and. 00:04:13 Speaker 1: Uh it was like just a freak out session. I mean, we just couldn't believe it. In other words, we hadn't really seen many axes on this trip. It's been tough. There's there's some ways let's let's talk about let's talk about why white. I don't know, maybe maybe I'm getting ahead of ourselves here, but let's talk about ways that you can do this thing right. Uh you can access, yeah, so you can you can do what we're doing is the low man on the totem pole way of doing this right. Like we talked to a friend who talked to a friend who has some in laws that got a place that has some access on it, right, and then we end up hunting this place and it's it's it's got axis, but it's awesome property. 00:05:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh it's a it's awesome these people, they're super nice. 00:05:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're real nice folks, and they're really interested in restoring the property to what Native Texas hill country habitat looks like, which I appreciate. 00:05:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh it's cool though there's like wild Uh how the uh Texas Mountain, Laurel. I saw that on the side of the road. I got some video of that. 00:05:24 Speaker 2: Good. I was hoping somebody did. That's the Texas State Bush. Yeah, dude, there's some of that there. 00:05:30 Speaker 1: And so what we're doing is hunting this property and this time of year, last time we had I feel like I feel like if if we had the same situation as we did in February, I probably would have killed uh. But I don't think there was hardly any deer on the property. Greg killed one of the one of the ones that we saw on a trail camera or on the property in daylight. Do we even see one in daylight with our naked eye inside of Greg's or dough. 00:05:56 Speaker 3: I would have not seen access to here on the property in person. Now, I some and we'll get into, like me how that came to be. But the first evening we showed. 00:06:04 Speaker 2: Up broll, I'm kind of going through a point here. 00:06:07 Speaker 1: I mean, that's the one way to do it, and you can do anything in between that, and like, you know, I don't know, what's the smallest pin. 00:06:16 Speaker 2: You've ever seen an access in twenty acres twenty acre pin? Well, I've seen them in tinies, but they don't say there for a long time. Yeah. 00:06:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, like to shoot access in a twenty acre eight foot high fence pen that keeps pretty much keeps it in there, right, Yeah, So you can do anything in between that, So you could hunt I mean, what would be in between that is a place that's low fence, but it is the heart right, it's like probably near a river or some sort of you know, spring fed system hallo, yeah, and has accurate like those those are things that would be great free range properties. And then you could hunt stuff that's like mostly high fenced or stuff that's like high fence but big acreage. And so there's a lot of ways this can be done, and most of them are more ave, if not all, than what we encountered this week. 00:07:04 Speaker 2: For sure. 00:07:05 Speaker 3: That was part of the thing though, And I mean the landowners are allowed to be excited to hear that we had a hard time binding access because one of the reasons we have permission on this place is because they're trying to restore it to native ground, and axis are not native. Indeed, they are what you would call an exotic and one of the reasons they want us to hunt so that we can kill them and maybe in some way eradicate them or at least extirpate them from their property. 00:07:33 Speaker 2: We're gonna be taking a right just down here, so you know. 00:07:38 Speaker 1: So that's kind of the the idea behind how we're hunting these things. We've talked about potentially getting on a place that has a little more it's a little more in the heart of maybe access country or has more on it. But this this property has been awesome. We've gotten to hunt it by permission. I mean, that just doesn't happen, and we're super thankful for that. It's been a blessing to be able to chase them around, and probably we'll continue to do that as long as you know, we don't have a whole lot of better options, which this stuff is hard to come by. Right The hill country case is a like, historically speaking, a very very alluring area to the general population of people, right yep. 00:08:28 Speaker 3: So Austin is the capital of Texas, and the Hill Country resides just west of Austin pretty much. 00:08:38 Speaker 2: And it's debatable as to what the Hill Country actually is. 00:08:41 Speaker 3: It doesn't have true borders, you know, it's kind of just a general area of Texas. 00:08:45 Speaker 2: You could think of it as south central Texas. And it's really pretty. 00:08:51 Speaker 3: It's rolling hills, live oaks, a few mesquites and cedars around. It's also known for its clear water streams and springs that that flow creating those clear water streams, and I do believe that that is originally why people settled here. Now, I'd always heard the reason that a place like Fredericksburg is, you know, renowned for its German influences, and this looked a lot like those the homeland of the Germans that were coming. 00:09:23 Speaker 2: Over here and sorry, we're trying to navigate. Yeah, we're trying to navigate. 00:09:29 Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go where Google days if I'm going to Marble Falls, right. 00:09:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, So Fredericksburg looked like some of those areas in Germany. 00:09:39 Speaker 3: And then those people knew how to do like life when they came over here, right. And one of the big things is that you have to have flowing water to operate gristmills to be able to mill grains, and that's kind of how all that got started. 00:09:55 Speaker 2: And that's also one of the reasons why Stephen F. 00:09:58 Speaker 3: Austin started the colonies there around the Austin area in a little bit east of there because of the good water. Because water, when you know people are settling in an area, water is the limited resource. 00:10:15 Speaker 2: You have to have water. 00:10:17 Speaker 3: You have to have it for agriculture, you have to have it for animals. You can you know, you can find game also around water to feed your family. So there's like a lot of different reasons as to why you want to make sure you've got water. And that's one of the allering things about the Hill Country because almost every single ditch, valley, whatever you want to call it, has got clear running water, which also makes it very good habitat for a water loving species like an axis deer. Access deer come from India, which is it's kind of funny how many exotics, I mean, two of the three most or yeah, two of the three most popular exotic animals in Texas. 00:10:56 Speaker 2: Outside of hogs. They kind of fall in their own thing come from India. 00:11:01 Speaker 3: It'd be black buck axis and Audad would be the kind of the big three there and Audad. 00:11:08 Speaker 2: Come from North Africa. But outside of that, you're looking at, you know, Indian animals, and then not far behind behind that is going to be the nilghai, which Indian species, and Tyler happened to shoot one of those recently. That video will be out fairly soon, so years or so the next couple of years. But that's kind of what the Hill country is known for. 00:11:32 Speaker 3: And now, of course it's known for wine country as well, which I think that just kind of developed because of the poor soils. 00:11:40 Speaker 2: Grapes actually do good in poor soils. 00:11:42 Speaker 3: And I'm not a grape expert, so find one of those if you want to know more about that, a grape spurt. But the clear water is fun as well, and now it's become a huge source of recreation if you're from Texas. You know, like floating the rivers is kind of like a text this thing to do. People drink when they do that or not. You just go out there with the family and just float around. I in particular and Tyler as well, kind of lean towards the fishing side of that stuff. We really like to fish for these native Texas species that you'll find in these rivers. So on this trip, actually we caught some Guadaloupe bass, which we say Guadaloupe and that is the Texas state fish. And they're really pretty. They look like a small mouth that's kind of elongated. They got some really special colors. If they are in good clear water and it's cool, they'll have like some iridescent like purplely kind of look almost to them. 00:12:40 Speaker 2: Sometimes really unique fish. 00:12:42 Speaker 1: One that we caught yesterday had blue under its jaw, you know, kind of a blue tent to the like white under its jaw. And they'll also in that clear water they'll have like a it's almost like a you know, if you know what a large mouth kind of looks like. They have like a black spots along their lateral line in the middle. And these have like another almost like another bar or whatever. It's not really like a bar. It's a real broken you know pattern that's on top as well, that is, you know, kind of black spotted. If they come out of clear water yesterday, you know, I think they've had quite a bit of rain here and we were fishing uh somewhat kind of milky water a little bit for. 00:13:25 Speaker 2: Which I think so too. 00:13:26 Speaker 1: It's it's usually butter fishing, but and we we finally figured out how to make it happen and gone on them pretty good. But it makes for the like a much more pale looking fish, you know, and there's not a whole lot of coloration. So but yeah, that was ah, you know, that's something that I've I love doing. And we actually have a video called going for guad Guad being the Guadaloupe bass. 00:13:52 Speaker 2: Uh. It was the first four K video we ever videoed. And uh we did. 00:13:58 Speaker 1: We went you know, to the to the Lano River and fished for guatelelufi bass and had a great time and caught a bunch of it was cold bass. 00:14:04 Speaker 2: It was cold, but we had a pretty good trip overall. It wasn't bad. You caught you caught a couple of rial some axis deer on the trip as well. Yeah, and then also this time it was hot when we were fishing on the river. And Tyler, what did you wear fishing that day? I wore a new piece from First Light called the Trace. I wore that top. It is a I got. 00:14:28 Speaker 1: I know they probably they may or may not want this to be the practical use for it, but I think it's a great fishing shirt. 00:14:34 Speaker 3: Man. 00:14:34 Speaker 2: Well, I wore that for hunting and fishing. 00:14:36 Speaker 3: I actually didn't wear fishing, but I wore hunting all week, and it's probably really is the best hot weather piece of hunting gear that I've worn. 00:14:46 Speaker 2: Uh huh. It's really lightweight. It's about like wearing a Magellan shirt hunting. 00:14:51 Speaker 3: Pretty nice, man. I liked it a whole lot. And that was you know, one of the things that I did this week was test out the tray stuff. 00:14:58 Speaker 2: Pretty hot. 00:14:58 Speaker 1: I don't think I ever zipped the zip up on the chest the whole time I was here. Dude, I wear all kinds of different traces. 00:15:04 Speaker 2: Saw you on that shell camera you were you were showing the chest off pretty good. 00:15:08 Speaker 1: I don't have no chest hair, but you know, I'm letting, I'm letting the vents open up. On this trip, it was it was hot, man. It was ninety you know, ninety ford to ninety six most as high in most days. 00:15:21 Speaker 3: You know, we had a trail camera showing one hundred and eighteen degrees, which is kind of a misnomer because that would be like just laying in the sun basket but that'll go to show you where the animals are going to be well and you know. 00:15:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And it's it's been humid too, man's I mean it's like, which is weird? Like upper seventies at night. 00:15:39 Speaker 2: You know, this country ain't known for humidity, but we're in a weird weather pattern right now where it's just uh, got that going on? Yeah? 00:15:48 Speaker 1: What is that? 00:15:48 Speaker 2: Is that some more exotics up here on the on the left, those neil guy are looking like those are orks? So what are they called a gimsbuck? Gims buck? That's what they are? Dad gum it. That's wild. Are they even real? If they aren't moving, they're not real. They're just sitting real. 00:16:07 Speaker 1: Look at one horn on that one. It's kind of bent droopy. Those are in a pretty small enclosure so those are pits for sure. But anyway, so this country is is awesome. I mean we're looking at like tons of wildflowers. 00:16:22 Speaker 2: It's known for that. 00:16:23 Speaker 1: It's a really productive landscape. Like case said, it's fed by the Edwards aquafer that is it the largest aquafa in the world. 00:16:32 Speaker 2: I don't know about that. I feel like it's I feel like I've seen that before. Maybe not. 00:16:36 Speaker 1: Somebody fact check me on that and send us message. But it's a huge aquafer that's like the whole central part of Texas and feeds all these streams, the San Marcos, the Guadaloupe and the Frio and the West's and all these I don't know that feeds all of them. But we got so many rivers in the hill country and these are spring fed, are very consistent temperature, and it's clean water. And uh, it's a great place to live because it's pretty quick access to Austin. So price, you know, land prices and least prices in this area are just outrageous. In a lot of cases, there's this thing where we'll talk about the least stuff. 00:17:17 Speaker 2: Well, let's start with land, I guess because that's more relative to everyone. Land in general is expensive. 00:17:22 Speaker 3: Because people want to get out of the cities and they want to go somewhere that's like convenient to the cities but still be you know, kind of have that country feel. And that's what you get in this area. And you'll find that in most urban areas out to like the two hour radius. You know, it's like there's gonna be some expensive, expensive land that doesn't make any sense for you know, lots are usually expensive because. 00:17:48 Speaker 2: They a lot of times have water. You know, you're paying for neighborhood hoa, whatever it might be. But like a lot of this stuff out here, you're paying lot prices for one hundred, two hundred, three hundred acres. You know, like you're in the millions real quick when it comes to acreage, and it just puts it out of reach for most people. Well, Austin's. 00:18:05 Speaker 1: Austin is one of the craziest hottest markets in the US right now, crazy fast growing place. 00:18:12 Speaker 2: It's fast growing. 00:18:13 Speaker 1: It's a happening place, right Rogan, Joe Rogan has moved down to Austin. It's kind of become like a comedy hub. And uh, you know, uh, one of the most prominent programs as far as like in revenue goes is in ut is there based there. Uh, there's live music's been you know, popular there for a long time. It's just it's a happening city. Got decent weather, kind of gets hot in the summers, but like in the winters it's nice, you know, and all of this property west of it is very much in demand. All the way out to Mexico. Pretty much, you know, but obviously the closer the the more uh, you know, more land is valued. But like what we're looking at here from like Austin, as you go west is live oaks, your evergreen oak species. You don't see it as quite as many mesquites until you get a little bit west. More west, there's a bunch of eastern red cedar, which some of these landowners that are trying to get back to native are getting rid of, which promotes wildflowers and things. 00:19:16 Speaker 3: And the ones that aren't even worried about the native thing, Eastern red seedar chokes out grass and you can't get Gray's cattle there. So there's war on the eastern red cedar in all of this hill country stuff. You know, it does good and poor souls and takes over and they it well, Eastern red cedar and mesquite both over not over, because it's what they do. But they are heavy drinkers, right, So there is less ground water and the rivers flow less now than they used to because of the ample amount of cedar and mesquite in the hill country. Whereas a live oak is very conservative when it comes to water, doesn't use near as much water and is you know, better for the habitat. 00:19:58 Speaker 2: And then produces more because they don't grow in such thickets. 00:20:02 Speaker 3: They'll have one are the oak clumps called pot There'll be mots of live oaks, but it doesn't just take over. 00:20:11 Speaker 2: You know. It's a slower growing plant. So you end up with this savannah look, which is what this stuff's supposed to look like. 00:20:17 Speaker 1: Which in those savannah look areas some of these more herd type species that you see that have been brought in. These exotic species thrive in this stuff, right, which is why the axis now free ranges all over a big part of Texas, And it's the reason we're down here hunting because there's an opportunity to hunt axis deer doing what in June. 00:20:39 Speaker 2: Supposedly rutting. They are rutting in June. Now. 00:20:44 Speaker 3: I don't know what that looks like exactly for axis because I have not had enough experience. 00:20:51 Speaker 1: With it, but it seems like they might be somewhat like elk. 00:20:57 Speaker 3: They The the weird thing with an axis is that it's not like a white tail where there is a specific rut window. It's more of a elevated level of the rut. Because they rut year round. The reason they can survive in this area is because it doesn't get too cold in the Texas hill country. 00:21:18 Speaker 2: In south. 00:21:19 Speaker 3: If you go too far south, there's not enough water form they can't survive either. So this is like the spot right, and so what that means where they are from in India is a tropical and subtropical climate which is consistent, which means that they don't have like a yearly cycle for their rut. So at any point in time, you will have dose that are in estris, which means that they are breedable, and you'll have bucks that go through a yearly antler cycle where they are in rut or musk I believe it's called whenever you are in Asia or Africa, and they'll go in and out of that. 00:21:57 Speaker 2: So at any point in time there's rut action going on. 00:22:00 Speaker 3: But supposedly because May and June are wet and hot, that's like when there's the most rut happening. 00:22:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, So we were running some multi cameras that had velvet bucks and hardhorn bucks on them both, and that's that's what you see most times of the year, is some you know, some ratio of that going on. When we were here in February, there's a lot of bucks that had just shed and started growing back. So we had these little bitty just knobbed, you know, velvet heads coming in and out. And then I also found a shed that was fresh off of what we think was a buck. You saw it was a half rag. 00:22:39 Speaker 2: I saw a half rack, and I don't know if it was his or not, but I mean he was occupying the same area, so it makes sense. So and that's big. Yeah, it's awesome. 00:22:48 Speaker 1: And so that's that's what we've you know, that's kind of what you're dealing with, is you you always could have a buck come in at any time of year that's just shed, you know what I mean, or half grown. 00:22:59 Speaker 2: Bucks do thing. It's called a roar where uh And it's kind of like what you said earlier, you compare them to elk. They kind of do that. 00:23:07 Speaker 3: They have these herds or harems and they'll be like, I'm ature buck with a bunch of doze, and they'll be like younger bucks that are kind of satellite style around them as well. And those bucks I haven't got to observe it like in person, but you hear it, and it's a three note thing. 00:23:24 Speaker 2: Is raw raw, And. 00:23:29 Speaker 3: That's like, I don't think they do that if they are not feeling ruddy so like, And I heard that in February and I heard of this trip too, And I'm not exactly sure what it's saying. 00:23:43 Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it's saying I'm looking for a fight. Hey, I'm over here, ladies, come here, or it's saying hey, makes them noise so I can come find you. 00:23:53 Speaker 1: Well, you called in some axis, yes, And I don't know, I don't want to see them. Does does an Elk bugle to call in ladies? 00:24:04 Speaker 2: Uh? 00:24:05 Speaker 1: I think it could work. So I kind of feel like maybe similar with the ass. 00:24:11 Speaker 2: Turkeys do that and not to go down to Elk, just like Turkey's trip, you know, but you don't think. I don't. But whenever you hear a turkey gobble, he's telling the hen to come to him. 00:24:24 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why they come in so slow. Whenever they you know, you're calling to them, because the hen's usually going to go to them. And you see that in person. And I think that's what was going on because I was calling at these things. We got these little axis calls that you can blow on and it sounds like one roaring, and I would hear one in the distance and I'd do it. And I think Tyler did some of it too, And I did call in what I was more than one axis they were now they went down wind of me and were chirping around in the thick cedars. It was actually off the property that I could hunt. I couldn't go pursue them. They were on a different property, but they answered me and were chirping like it sounds like this is how Michael described it. He said, it's like a cow elk, but just one note. So they don't ever drop, you know, goes axises. 00:25:17 Speaker 2: Like that, and they'll do it if you hear it once and it's real loud, that means that axis saw you or smelled you. If they do it a couple times and they have a little bit different pitch to it, that's them like calling and talking to one another. 00:25:31 Speaker 3: And I don't know what sound is what yet, you know, But I'd like to figure that stuff out. But yes, I did call some in using the roar call, and I think it could be done. The problem is, whenever you go elk hunting, you are covering sometimes thousands of acres, whereas if you're limited to the property size and it's not very big, that calling stuff's only going to work so good. You can't just stay in the same place all day and call and just trying to make one come to you. I guess you could, but I don't know how effective it is. I did it and didn't kill one this trip, so in the rut it could work. 00:26:08 Speaker 2: But we're deal with the man. What do you mean, what's the deal? Well, do you feel like it was? 00:26:16 Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know the height of it. Do you know how many access here I saw on this trip? 00:26:22 Speaker 2: Yeah? Zero, So I mean I can't tell you. I don't know. 00:26:26 Speaker 1: I mean, the what we just witnessed was what looked like a buck, a dough and a satellite buck huh in at eleven, you know, eleven o'clock am, just right next to the road. So, I mean, I would assume there's some sort of a rut going on right now, but it's it's kind of like hunting white tails in East Texas, where you know, there's definitely like that elevated rut period of like two weeks, but outside of that, like there's never just a full on well not never outside of that there's not really a full on rut rage, and but you'll get some inquisitive deer knowing that something could be. 00:27:04 Speaker 2: Going on, right like h. 00:27:05 Speaker 1: And so it feels like that, like I don't know when the rut is exactly I've been told like pretty much when we're. 00:27:13 Speaker 2: Here, I kind of think, here's what I think was going on. 00:27:17 Speaker 3: And this is just taking my observations and trying my best, right because we we don't know too much about this stuff yet, we're learning more. 00:27:27 Speaker 2: But I covered a lot of ground out here. 00:27:30 Speaker 3: I actually came out and put out of alf Aalpha bells about five days before we went out to try to like chum up some access and get some doze around. And I believe that there is just one herd of doze on this property, and if that group of does doesn't have anybody in Estris, then the rut is over on that property. 00:27:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's what was going on. 00:27:56 Speaker 3: Whenever I went out and put the alf alphabells out, I found some rud and I saw more rubs this time, and they all looked to be at least three weeks old. And I think that uh, at least within that herd group that we were hunting that everybody got bred or there's no doze in heat when we were there. 00:28:15 Speaker 2: It all happened back in May. At least that's what I saw from from the sign. You know. 00:28:20 Speaker 3: Greg saw a buck at distance a few times, and that buck was kind of cruising ruddy, and he always ended up going a different direction than our property because he was probably looking for some does that were in heat and they were just none of those on our place. 00:28:38 Speaker 1: I thought, I thought that this was going to be a great trip, because it was a great trip. 00:28:42 Speaker 3: It was. 00:28:43 Speaker 1: But I mean as far as like successful hunting goes, right, Greg, we we had but you were able to put out a few alf alphabels for us ahead of time, and we had some some I had access, Like the second I had a group of like five dos, and I'm shooting whatever. If it's you know, if it's got red spots and it's bigger than twenty pounds, you know, I'm probably gonna be shooting it. 00:29:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a scary little animal running around out there. 00:29:11 Speaker 3: In case I were wondering, they are very don't shoot any access less than fifteen pounds because you cannot discriminate between them and white tail. 00:29:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, they I think as like I would think in July and August things to get real tricky, buddy, But right now those things that those fawns are tiny. But so anyway, I was looking forward to this trip and thinking we're fixing a kill some axis. Man, I mean, we're gonna at least kill a dough. 00:29:36 Speaker 2: We both had. You had a big buck on camera the first day, like four hours after I was in there. Yeah, and so I was thinking, oh, it's going on. Well, I can't believe I left, you know, or whatever. 00:29:49 Speaker 3: I know. 00:29:49 Speaker 1: And then you had another buck like the day before we showed up or something, and you know, things were, things were promising. Then we show up, We go sit in our respect trees, we hang sweat our tails off because it was so hot, and we were, you know, doing a hanging hunt. 00:30:06 Speaker 2: And we hauled in another bale of alfalfa. They too, So we do that. We sit up in a tree, I don't know. 00:30:13 Speaker 1: Forty five minutes before dark, we get a text and Greg says, guys, and then there's a picture of some limestone with a bunch of blood on it. And we were like, what in the world, dude, And so I thought he shot a buck. Turns out Greg was sitting on the ground self filming as he likes to do, and just had an axis dough by itself walk across this drainage, not even with the flow of the drainage, but straight across and up the up this like limestone kind of not really a bluff, but it's a steep little hill just doesn't really seem like a place that it would naturally walk, and it does ends up thirty yards from him and Greg self films killing an axis dough and you know, it was just like it was. We were like, man, this is gonna be good, you know. And then you know, if you want to make a long story short. Over the next four days or whatever, we got about five or six hours of sleep every night, and. 00:31:14 Speaker 2: Didn't you and I did not see another axis. No, we didn't a axis period and not on the property. We saw him driving around and. 00:31:21 Speaker 1: I didn't even see that mean driving around, because I mean I didn't do a whole lot of driving. 00:31:25 Speaker 3: So I saw a rut rager yesterday at ten point thirty near where we saw them today, just cruising like looking for doze, and it's it's like it was frustrating and also like gave me some hope, like, you know what, we're gonna pull it off at the end the very last thing. 00:31:45 Speaker 2: And we actually Michael hunted with me and we had a pretty good like set up. We had this feel. So the. 00:31:55 Speaker 3: Property has got a couple of corn feeders on it, and I think that the landowner might keep the one that's near us running because they can see it from the house, so they like to see deer. 00:32:05 Speaker 2: It only goes off and they eat or in the mornings. 00:32:08 Speaker 3: And I've always heard and seen too that axis just don't eat a lot of corn. 00:32:13 Speaker 2: Well, we aren't seeing any axis, And finally. 00:32:16 Speaker 3: After a couple of days, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna put a camera on that feeder and just see when. Sure enough, the first morning there is a giant buck and two or three other bucks on that camera with some doze just eating, just hammering down on the corn. 00:32:33 Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh my gosh, that's the ticket. We're gonna go sit up near that feeder and we're gonna shoot some And then we proceeded to do that three more times and never saw an axis. 00:32:45 Speaker 3: So the problem with axis is that they are highly streaky I think that's a thing like elk, Like we were talking about, you can't really pattern elk too well. 00:32:55 Speaker 2: If you're gonna hunt, if you've hunted wallow elk, then you know this. But you could hunt a wall for five days and not see them, and then on the sixth day he'll be there. 00:33:05 Speaker 1: Well, I kind of wonder if if they're streaky all the time or the rut is also just amplifying that, because there was there was definitely some streakiness when I was here and when we were here in February, but I had a pattern going where I was fixing it. I was fixing to kill one and just kind of ran out of time and didn't have the right winds and stuff. 00:33:26 Speaker 2: I mean, so, I don't know. These things are weird, y'all. 00:33:30 Speaker 1: They're they're somewhere between an elk and a white tail deer, you know, yea, And then also potentially I don't want to this is another thing. These things get stereotypes, and people love to just communicate stereotypes instead of come up with some creative ideas. But you know, I don't know that they're more like wary than a white tail, but they sometimes seem like it they may be, you know what I mean, that's just they just act different. 00:33:58 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:33:58 Speaker 3: I mean we got busted by a white to those a lot this week, so I would say that those are still very rare of animals. 00:34:06 Speaker 2: So it's it's pretty hard to say, but I think axes are jumpier than whitetail and I didn't get to experience a this go around, but the last go around, like they just are like kind of like all the time. Why do I think they're jumping? Well, white tail are made in America avoid coyotes. Axes are made to avoid tigers. 00:34:33 Speaker 3: That's a pretty scary animal, and leopards and lions too. All three of those big cats are native to the Indian subcontinent, so axes are very much on high alert. 00:34:46 Speaker 1: Well, there's not a whole lot more to talk about on the axis side of things unless you got something. But I mean, we just didn't have a great trip on the axis side, but we did get out and do the fishing thing a little bit. And this is something that you and I have both done over the years. I kind of got into fly fishing in high school a little bit, but in college I spent a lot of time tying flies and with the fly time just a cheap bass pro fly time kit. Lefty Krae was the the you know guy teaching the how to tie some basic flies. 00:35:22 Speaker 2: And man. 00:35:22 Speaker 1: Then I started reading some books about, you know, places you could go and do this stuff, and I'm like, man, these are places I always wanted to go and shoot elk or whatever, hunt mule deer, but except I can afford it because it cost thirty dollars to you know, fish there for three days and you know, some gas, and I can camp anywhere, right, and you just get to go to these amazing places. So I started doing that in college and getting into it. And of course some of the easiest places that you could go that were really cool and fly fishable that would be the Texas hill country, you know. I mean just hop on thirty five right there in Dallas where I was at and get down the road and so that's you know. I I would say some of my first hill country fly fishing that I can remember was actually like on the Piluxi near Stephenville and there, well, I guess, closer to Glen Rose, there's a Dinosaur Valley State Park here. 00:36:13 Speaker 2: I spent some time fishing there. Water super skinny, and yeah, that's tough. Man. I feel like that water gets real hot late and so it does for sure, man, it does. But I was there. 00:36:24 Speaker 1: I mean i'd be there all time because I had, you know, Kaylee went to school in Stephenville later in her college, and so I had a reason to go there all the time. And I was going to take a fly off with me. So kind of learned to fish clear skinny water, which is what some of these places are. And we fished the skinnier side of the Guadaloupa yesterday. 00:36:42 Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, we did. It was pretty tough for a bit, and then I kind of figured out a little thing and then kind of met up with you and we kind of put her heads together to actually figure out how to catch some fish. It's really fun. 00:36:58 Speaker 3: And it's the thing that I I get drawn into to chunk of top water and to try to get fish to eat at top water. 00:37:07 Speaker 2: And I thought we were fixing to catch some green some fish. Yeah. 00:37:09 Speaker 1: The first fish that cot was a green, So we didn't catch some We didn't catch any biggots. 00:37:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, they were all small, and I think that was a condition of how much water. It's just a small part of the river. Yeah, so we want to catch fish on top waters, and we were successful in. 00:37:48 Speaker 3: Doing that a little bit, but it was quickly becoming apparent that we were not going to catch anything that was worth eating on the top water. 00:37:57 Speaker 2: When I say top water, you know some of y'all might know is dry lies. 00:38:01 Speaker 3: But a lot of times in this Texas Hill Texas hill country, stuff you're using like a cheesy looking little fly made with some foam and some legs. It looks like a grasshopper or spider or just something that things want to come up and eat, and you can pop them and they'll make that chuck a sound that sometimes makes bass come up. 00:38:19 Speaker 2: But I wouldn't get much of that. Did you ever have a bass try to eat that thing? 00:38:22 Speaker 1: Uh? 00:38:22 Speaker 3: Not that know of. 00:38:23 Speaker 1: I feel like that if a bass would try to eat it, he would have ate it. Yes, so they got a big old mouth. 00:38:28 Speaker 2: That's a problem is there's like this little bit of a red herring, as they would say. When it comes to fishing one of those things, you'll have. 00:38:39 Speaker 3: Panfish come up and splash it and you're like, I'm getting hits, but I can't catch them on It's because their mouths is tiny and they. 00:38:44 Speaker 2: Can't get a hold of that thing. 00:38:46 Speaker 3: So I swapped to some sort of beadhead hair's ear, I think or something like that, and caught a little a little sunfish and he was tiny and just couldn't eat it. 00:38:58 Speaker 2: So at that point in time, I was like, you know what, I need to tie on a big fly. 00:39:02 Speaker 3: Try to catch a big fish, something that we can actually eat, because that was our goal. We wanted to kind of do the old surf and turf with Gregg's axis and a couple of you know, fish from Texas stream and it'd be kind of a fun little thing to do, except I didn't want to have to eat them like sardines, you know, just whole I wanted to be able to maybe fla something or scale it and have something substantial to eat. So I tied on a cone head leech, which is pretty much a wooly booger, but it's made with a Zonker strip which is rabbit, not for confused with a zonky, not a zonkie, a zonker so and it's got a gold rib on it, and I believe what it ends up looking like as a helgermite if you flip over the limestone rocks. 00:39:50 Speaker 2: In these streams, they'll be hellgromites, which are. 00:39:54 Speaker 3: The larvae stage of a dobs and fly, which is a big, scary looking insect, but they aren't mean, but they have big mouth parts. You see them sometimes around the lights outside at night. But Dobson flies are a creature that lays its eggs in the water. And then a helgrimite is a big, long worm looking thing that's oftentimes black or like a dark gray cream colored thing. 00:40:24 Speaker 2: And I could take that leech pattern and cast it and strip it fast and. 00:40:30 Speaker 3: Get hits from Guadalupe bass, or I could hang it in the current and they just I don't know if it actually even looks natural, but they can't take it. 00:40:40 Speaker 2: They just they gotta hit it. And then also you can dead drift it. 00:40:43 Speaker 3: I caught one on a dead drift as well, so and I think that's when it looks like at helgermite. But we've talked about this, you and I have kind of maybe even off air, because there's some strategy to bass dish, and like the way that people go about it. You know, it's always been said on Lake Fork where we grew up that black and blue is the way to go, you know, and you can't really beat black and blue. If you're you might con beat it. But it's never a bad choice. I guess i'd say for bass and so, but I think it's a little bit. Bass are strictly instinctive. They have a tiny little brain, right so that they're not saying I'm gonna all I'm eating today is worms with blue tails, you know, like it's just not a thing that they think. So there's just some indicator to whatever the bait that you're throwing has on it that they say that is prey and I'm going to eat it. And so I think that because that flies black and they eat those helgrimites even though they've never seen a black leech or or fish don't or Helgrimites don't like hang in the current and they always dead drift. I think that those bass are just being like that looks like something I've eaten and I'm gonna eat it. And I don't think it says like you know how to match the hatch. 00:42:11 Speaker 2: Thing. 00:42:11 Speaker 3: It goes with trout, and it really is a thing. I mean, I've been in plenty of instances trout fishing whenever all the bew's or size sixteen or eighteen's and I got it size twelve and they will not hit it, you know, because it's too big. 00:42:27 Speaker 2: I don't think bass are really that way. Now. 00:42:29 Speaker 3: You can always do something to maybe make it a little bit better, you know, maybe they aren't hitting eight inch worms you need a six inch worm or something like that. But I think that that was the pattern that I got on at least, and they were tucked up in tight up underneath the undercut banks and up under the stumps. You know, in Texas there's really beautiful big old cypress trees, bald cypress that grows along the edge of these rivers and creeks, and that's where those bass where they were tucked up real tight to those cypress stumps. And then once you figure that pattern out, you and I are able to hammer out a couple of these things. 00:43:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. Uh. 00:43:04 Speaker 1: You know, I think that I kind of wonder about you know what you're saying there. I think that if I think the way that a bass might be particular about the bait or profile would be when it is actively feeding, and maybe that's the case with most fish. Yeah, so it makes a trout that's feet actively feeding is going to continue to rise every few seconds or you know, minute or whatever and just eat the stuff that is being offered. Right, So if you offer something that is different than what it's continually eating, that's one thing. Same thing with a trout that or with a bass. Most of the time, what you're kind of referring to is like tapping into the ambush reactivity of a bass that may be sitting on a piece of structure and you're trying to get him to just all of a sudden like back, well what is that? 00:43:59 Speaker 2: You know what I mean? 00:44:00 Speaker 1: Wake up and then just snap at it real quick because it looks like something that I would eat. 00:44:04 Speaker 2: And that's what those glada loopy bass do. Those things are fast, oh they are. 00:44:08 Speaker 3: They are made to live in the current and they operate in fast water like In fact, you probably aren't going to catch a squad in slack water. 00:44:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not where they live. 00:44:17 Speaker 3: They will be all up in like the running water like in the Cascades. They'll be all in that stuff like a trout. Yeah, yeah for sure. And so that you are, man, you're kind of tapping in that Those things are you know, man, the first one I caught out of that pool that we caught three or four out of, Like that thing had been eating everything in there. Fatty just dominating the whole run right there, you know, and just so fat so. But I kind of think, like, I don't know, it's the same thing with trout. Like if you put on a wooly bugger of any sort and you make that thing get reactive all of a sudden and chase, then all of a sudden it can't handle something that looks somewhat like it. But that same fish if it was sitting in you know and eddy just sipping, you know, things that look like a sixteen pa or whatever, and then it's probably gonna be a little bit selective in that manner. So I kind of wonder if fish aren't that way a lot of the time, you know. So maybe that's something that people can think about when they go fishing. But I know that like for us, we you you ended up kind of we met back up and we're fishing some pretty pressured water right on a Monday. There was people around fishing. When you only got like two or three hours, you can't go to like the most remote stuff. You just got to go make it, make it happen wherever you're at, you know, And that's what we were doing. And the idea was to go have some fun too and kind of cool off in the river. We've been hunting really hard. So yeah, we were fishing the stuff that everybody fishes. 00:45:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, and so it was, you know, you had to put good casts in there, broke a bunch of flies off because I was using a super light tippet because last time I had that rod out it was catching big fish and a very high pressure creek for trout, and so had to use a little, tiny, little two and a half pound test, you know or whatever. So anyway, you kind of give me this whole, like, man, I caught a guad back there on this leech pattern or whatever, or you know, this blacksoncre and maybe we should try throwing some bigger baits. And I was like, when do you think about this? This thing's heavy, sinks quick, but and it's kind of big. 00:46:36 Speaker 2: Is it too big? 00:46:37 Speaker 1: And You're like, no, man, And so I put that thing on and we went down river. As soon as we got to a run, it was like I literally was right next to I mean, I was one hundred yards from my truck, my truck was, you know, sixty yards up the hill, so I was right next to the to the you know where people would access the river. Caught up guad right off the bat on that bay, and I was like, man, this was gonna be good. 00:47:03 Speaker 2: You know. The fly fishing, especially in warm water, is not always the best thing to do. 00:47:10 Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it's kind of a I don't know. I will never go to Lake four and be like, oh, the way to catch a fish is on fly, you know. But the reason flyfishing works in the mountains out west is because you those fish are eating stuff up on top and the little lightweight things, and you can't cast that on a regular line. You have to use a fly line, and it's practical well in the Texas rivers, especially these clear water streams out. 00:47:35 Speaker 2: Here, it kind of gets into that a little bit. 00:47:38 Speaker 3: Now, you could maybe figure out a way to cast this stuff on some ultra lightweight tackle or whatever. 00:47:43 Speaker 2: But flies act different than other lures out there. 00:47:48 Speaker 3: Like Greg was using a worm and he used a jerk bait that you had a little tiny jerk bait, and he caught a couple of fish on that too, But with that really heavy streamer fly that you were using. You were here in a different water column that I don't know if anybody that is pressuring that thing is doing that. You know, if you have to fish pressured water, doing something different than what everybody else does is oftentimes a really good tactic because those fish just don't. 00:48:15 Speaker 2: See that very often. You know, there's you go to Fork Lake Fork where we where we're from and throw a spinner bait. You're gonna catch a few fish, But those fish see a bazillion spinner baits. 00:48:27 Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if they do anymore. When we were when we were growing up, they did. But I don't know if people use spinner baits anymore. 00:48:34 Speaker 3: I've seen quite a bit of it, but probably you're right that there's less than there's chatter baits, and people are doing all kinds of different stuff nowadays. 00:48:40 Speaker 2: You know, they're throwing a rigs and. 00:48:42 Speaker 1: It's kind of like the crawl was big in the nineties, you know, and and you know nobody uses it now. They got they had to brush hogs of the two thousands and those kind of things. 00:48:52 Speaker 3: That's my thing on FOURK is, if I have to go out there, I'm gonna use a fluke or I'm gonna Texas rig a worm because it's not something people really do a ton of. They do more flukes, you know, like, but a weightless fluke is a good way to catch fishing in Texas rig. Nobody has the patience to do it a lot of times, you know, people are trying to power fish and when you slow it down on the Texas rig, that's a different yeah, for sure, for sure, and so and you can take this and roll it into hunting if it's and if we want to kind of put a bowl on this thing, like if. 00:49:22 Speaker 2: You're hunting pressured stuff like the public ground. 00:49:25 Speaker 3: That where all have to deal with in Texas, or or maybe you're on a lease with a bunch of dudes, thinking outside the box can help a whole lot, you know, Like everybody and their dog wants to hunt a tree. Well, get on the ground. You're probably gonna fail a few times, but you might learn something, you know. And that's just the one example. I don't know if you can think of some other stuff like that. I mean, out of the box. 00:49:49 Speaker 1: We used to we used to try to hunt the place that had to You had to open the most gates to hunt because nobody wants to open a gate and drive the and then close the weight, so. 00:49:58 Speaker 2: Uh the uh. Another one that we actually have implemented recently that does work sometimes is hey, instead of hunting deer right over the feeder, hunt fifty sixty seventy yards down wind of the feeder and shoot the deer when they come to scent check it. Because there I watched those do this all week long. 00:50:19 Speaker 3: It didn't go that far out, but they would loop thirty yards down windo the alf alpha bill and smell it every time, even though they could see it plain as day. 00:50:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, still loop down and smell it before they came in. Well, I think it was two days ago when we set up on We had put a camera on a feeder that we found that was going, you know, and I was like, man, well, Casey had all those access so we'll go check this. We checked it it was going, put the camera up and went in there the afternoon and Eric and I are like walking in and this thing goes off. And if you know anything about hill country deer, they don't waste any time going to that feeder sometimes. Well, we so I was like, we got to set up. We set up real quick, real hastily, and we had a ghostline with us. We had a dough come in in like minutes right and didn't had no regard to the wind. And I was like, hmm, okay, then I'm standing. I'm sitting there like five maybe ten minutes later and look back behind us down wind kept checking back down this little lane and there's a dough head and she walks right in that lane and smells us up, you know, and ends up, you know, freaking out. So I was like, a dude, we're gonna have to just we're just gonna have to scare this deer at the feeder cause we can't sit here all night. They're going to keep doing that. And so we moved that, like you know, in the middle of the whole thing. 00:51:44 Speaker 2: We move, and we. 00:51:48 Speaker 1: We're probably not I think we're I think it range you like ninety ninety five yards off the feeder. And every year we saw, not every year, almost every year we saw came down that same lane, and we had we would if an access would ever showed up, dude, we would have just made it. It would have been awesome, dude, like been it had been fifteen to thirty five and all just moving broadside to us. You know, it's a pretty good shots just off wind, dude, it was. It was a good setup. 00:52:17 Speaker 2: We just didn't have any access so work. We had a good access. We had access, not a lot of access, or as you call him Ascus Ascus. 00:52:28 Speaker 3: Well, guys, there's a lot of fun to be had, even though it's summertime. I know that that was a lot of stuff to just kind of randomly talk about. But we just talk about our experiences and hopefully you can learn some stuff about what we do and we can all become better hunters together. So remember to get out with your family, have some fun this summer, and. 00:52:46 Speaker 2: Remember this is your element. Live in it time such as ye