00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number two and forty seven, and today on the show, I'm joined by my buddy and d i y white tail expert Andy May to break down our recent Nebraska white tail hunt and the full story of how I arrowed my thirteen point buck. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx, and today we are telling you a story. We're telling you the story of the hunt that Andy May and I just got back on got back from out in Nebraska, and I'm hoping this is going to be a story that has some teaching moments, I think because it was a pretty awesome hunt. It was an interesting hunt, surprising hunt in a lot of ways. Um, And the fact that I got to share it with my buddy, Andy May, who I think is a great hunter, who I've been able to learn a lot from, excuse me, and who I also maybe give it cold over the past couple days. And I'm coffing right now, Um, because of all these reasons I think that I learned a lot in this trip, and Andy, I think maybe you did. Two Did you learn anything? Do you feel like we came away from this hunt with some new AHAs? Yeah? Absolutely it was. You know, it was a short hunt, so it was challenging, um, but definitely learned a lot new terrain. For me for sure, I've never been that far west for white tails, so I had to learn on the fly, and we were able to do that and get on dear. Yeah, it was. It's a really interesting scenario. So that's why do I want to walk everyone through this hunt, what we thought leading up to it, kind of what our plan was, and then what happened once we arrived and how we adjusted and figured things out or try to fare things out over the course of that four days or three and a half days or whatever it was. And oh, by the way, I did happen to kill a great buck, So that's exciting and I'm excited to share that story too. So that's kind of the game plan. We're gonna try to pull some lessons learned out of this for everybody, and I guess Andy, to kick things off, can you kind of lay the foundation as far as what you were thinking before this, Because you and me start talking, you had gotten permission on this piece of property out in kind of Centralish Nebraska. Um, what were you thinking leading into this as far as what we were getting into. Well, yeah, when I you know, first saw the property that we were going to be hunting, UM, I got real excited because, um it was rather large. Um you know, so I was expecting an abundance of game. UM, it was had water, which out west you know is uh like gold. So UM it looked like a very um game rich river bottom system. UM, very unique uh large hills, large sand hills UM to the north and south and then and then uh you know a river bottom running east and west that had lots of terrain features and turns and ox bows and just something really new to me. So UM, I was expecting, I think, kind of the same thing you were expecting, UM, something similar to what you had seen in Montana with um, you know a lot of deer kind of coming and going to you know, maybe some of the egg fields on private land. UM. You know that sort of thing. So we were expecting to kind of observe from a distance and you know, maybe pick out a couple of the nicer bucks and then and move in from there. But it turned out much different now leading up to it, right, so we need I want us have ever been to the property. It was just looking at maps. So both you and I spend time looking at aerial and topographic maps ahead of time and trying to pick out a few places, a couple of areas that we thought might be the best. Um. And then our plan was to look at the maps, plan some things out, and then when we arrived there on day one, to try to verify these things and lead you observe, um, what were the things in the map that you were king in on before we ever saw it? Well, um, you know, just kind of going back on some of my experience. UM, I've done a lot of hunts, like going in blind on areas that I've never hunted before. But typically they're during the rut um when you know that first two weeks in November, when the bucks are kind of on their feet and cruising and chasing, the dolls are moving and there's a lot of action, and you can kind of put yourself in some obvious positions, um, you know, and with some tree stand time you can have some good luck and you know, dude to us scheduling, we were actually going late October and more so kind of mid till late October, you know. Um. So anyway, looking at the map, um, you know, the river corridor looked awesome. There was lots of river bends you know, which you know, in my experience is typically good betting a lot of pinch points where ridge systems come down to the river and there will be like an outside bend, um, you know, that kind of pinches down travel. We expected white tails to be kind of lower in elevation along the river, and maybe some mule deer because there are mualies mixed in up in the higher elevation, which I was really excited about to to maybe get into some muli's um. But that's some of the features that you know jumped out there looked to be like there it was some some green you know, maybe irrigated fields or some egg uh you know, on on one end. Um. But you know, sometimes you can look at the map and it can be a lot different um when you get there. Then what you thought? So yeah, and I thought, even looking at the maps, on of those green fields extended into areas that you know, I thought we were gonna be a little hunt, and I thought maybe there's some hay fields and maybe a little bit of alfalfa or something like you were mentioned, kind of similar to other places I've hunted out west. So we figured we'd drive through the night all night and get there first thing in the morning and be able to glass crop fields and hopefully see bucks. Um. So we do that, We drive all night, We get there seven, we chat with a landowner and two things. Number one Um, he mentioned that he would like us to hunt just this one side of the farm that isn't near the few crop fields that they did have. So that was the first thing. So he kind of points us in the direction. We drive out in the direction that we are able to hunt. And when we get out there, we realize there's no there's no egg. It's just kind of brushy grass, dry straw grass. Um. And then kind of cedars everywhere, cedar choked kind of hillsides and things like that. And and the second thing we saw is that this area had cattle all over the place. UM. So I think right away, you and me when we saw those two things, we were already kind of looking at each other like, oh, um, this isn't quite what we're hoping for. But we we we drove down, we drove eight miles down this river, um to this area where we could hunt, and then we got up into these hills and just tried to glass some country. Um. We thought we're gonna be glassing agg fields. That wasn't the case. But we could see kind of some of this river bottom stuff and then some of the hills behind it. Um, so what we've maybe spent that first hour or something like that just glassing all those hillsides trying to see some deer, right, and then um, I think we saw three or four doughs and little buck and that was kind of it for that first morning. We drove around a little more trying to glass up some more stuff, but it was slim pickings, right. Yeah. Yeah. The hills, like you said, are are sand hills with just uh, you know, no real food to speak of for white tail, like the dry straw grass. We saw you know, a few moving we weren't really at a good vantage point. We were actually well I guess we were kind of high, and but we were glassing up instead of down like we kind of were hoping. Um, But we were just trying to get a feel for the area. And like you said, a lot of cattle, very few deer spotted. And I think we both had a sense right there, like, Okay, we got our work cut out for us on a short hunt. UM didn't appear to be a high abundance of deer initially. UM. And I think our strategy of you know, kind of what we went in with UM kind of quickly changed, maybe maybe not changed dramatically. We still wanted to find the bed and the feed pattern, UM, which we eventually did, but it was much different than what we were expecting. Yeah. And and another thing we were hoping to do is we thought we were gonna be across to both sides of the river, so we had glass this area. We weren't seeing many deer. We thought, okay, well, let's drive down a little further to the east check out this spot and UM, cross the river there and go up in the hills on the other side and glass down from that. So we get out there that we get to the river and we realized this river is much bigger and deeper than we thought. UM. We both brought hit boots thinking that that was gonna be okay, and what what Well Andy, Andy goes out that he pulls on his hip boots, like, well, I'm gonna try it, I guess. We walked up and down and found one spot that we thought maybe it might be okay, it looks pretty sketchy, but gosh, you started slowly going out there and you're a big stick in front of right. Yeah, thank god. I grabbed the stick, um because I almost didn't. Um, you know, you could tell you know water, you know, when it's deeper, it's kind of quicker moving. You don't see ripples. Um. But three quarters of this spot where I tried to cross definitely was shallow enough. Um So, but the the beginning part looked a little sketchy. So I grabbed a stick. I don't know, it's probably eight foot tall, and I was just kind of inching forward. You know. It's ankle deep, calf deep and pretty muddy, yeah, pretty muddy. And then all of a sudden, um, you know, I I'm hitting the stick on the bottom right front, and all of a sudden, it just the bottom just drops off, like the whole eight foot plus um just basically like a sheer drop off cliff that I totally would have fell in and then swept down river. Um, you were less than twelve inches probably from that edge with your foot. I mean you're right there, that was right there. Yeah, that's kind of kind of sketchy, like you said. Yeah, so so we can't cross the river. We've got cattle all over the country, we're not seeing any deer, and there's no food. Um that's how the trip started. And I remember you and me walking back, Yeah, and we're thinking, oh man, this is ah, this could be a complete flop. Um then we're okay, well, we just need to set up camp and then look at the maps again and reassess what's the next area we should go look at. Because we did do a little bit of walking down on that river. We thought there, here's the section a good cover and there was a strip of timber going along the river that we thought, man, there should be some scrapes or something along here if they were deer using it. And we were checking the river crossings trying to see tracks, and we just weren't seeing the number of tracks that we thought we should see. And there were no scrapes. There was no sign that we thought would be indicative of good deer activity or good buck being in there, So figure a right, let's go find a place out of camp. So we drive this kind of I mean, the I can't even know if you want to call it a a road. It's like a it's like a trail almost that went along into these hills. And so we're driving up and over these hills of this barely seable trail that we're following, and um, eventually kind of got to the spot where the where the trail petered out and we couldn't see it any see it any further. So I was like, all right, well, I don't want to drive this truck all over the place not knowing what we're gonna get into, especially because you come over some of these hills and there's like steep cliff faces or these steep coolies. Um. I had this perpetual paranoia that was gonna come over hill and the truck was gonna drop straight down. Um. So we're just following a spot on the hillside that was kind of sheltered, you know, from wind, set up our tents, um. And as we're setting out the tents, the winds like whipping, and I'm we kept on like waffling back and forth, like should we set it up here. Um, we're kind of in a bowl, so I was hoping we were kind of protected from the wind. But the wind was whipping and it was supposed to get way worse like a day and a half later. But we didn't want our tent way down the bottom because we thought that's where all the deer we're gonna be. Um. So then I'm just thinking, man, this is We're just doomed. Like we're probably gonna have the tent blow away on day two. We're not gonna see any deer. Um. We're just like kind of like we're already laughing at each other like, oh God, like this is going to be a disaster. Um. But I don't know, I mean what happened. Then I think we set up camp and then it was basically as soon as we have camp set, we're kind of thinking, all right, we probably gotta get moving right and start making a game plan. Yea, And uh, you know, I think we I think we had an idea, um, you know, just kind of I think we both had a bit of experience with um, you know, pastured ground with cattle and white tails, and you know, some white tails will still hang out. But when they're thick in there, and they're constantly moving through the thick color and thick cover, and it's pastured to death. You know, they tend to push the white tails out. Um, that's been my experience. You know, if there's a lot of cattle, not a lot of white tails, there might be some still in some pockets. But basically what we did is we just started. After we set up camp, we started trekking west and eventually we got to the end of the pasture where the cows couldn't go any further. Unfortunately, that was quite a ways from camp. You know, we didn't know that at first, but we got past the cows, which eliminated I don't know, at least what would you say, six of the ground we could hunt. Yeah, so, um, you know the strategy in my head and I think yours too, and we we we did a lot of good teamwork here, like bouncing ideas off each other, and due to the lack of sufficient food, um, you know, we kind of started focusing on bedding and what we know about deer bedding and buck betting in in river bottom systems. And uh so it's a bit of river bottom, but it also has ridges so you know, we were looking at points going down from the ridges. We were looking at the ox bows or the river bends. Every time there was a river bend or what we were calling them, it was kind of like a bowl because what the ridge came down into like a point or like a bench um with a point, and then there would be an oxbow or a river bottom. But it created like a big flat space out there in that river bottom um and we called it a bowl. And because that was on the south side of the river, um that the south side tends to get a little more shade on a on a um, you know, when when the sun's up in the sky and it's going down in the evening, it tends to get a little more shade. So that was the only area where we found any bit of green. And when I say a little bit, it was very little. It looked like little little mini food plots of grass down there in those bowls. Yeah. And then along the ridges were thick thick cedars um so great cover all those ridges. And then like you mentioned, there were little pockets of thick brushy stuff along the river too, and then that that grassy flat spot in the bowl. And so you and me. We we worked past the cattle and we're kind of looking at our maps the whole time, our phones, thinking about okay, what might be good, and we kind of settled on the idea of trying to get to a couple of these bowls, maybe split up each of us on a different bowl and kind of observe it, try to set up. We went in with our saddles and sticks on our backs, and the game plan being to get up into these spots, slowly work our way into them and try to find somewhere set up where hopefully we could see something but also maybe be in a position to to shoot. And we got to this first spot that you were gonna hunt. Um, what did you like about that? First thought? Well, Um, I was willing to sacrifice the first evening, which I often am on a you know, on a trip where I don't think they're going to be moving a ton, uh you know, like as far as like running behavior. We were hoping that they'd be cruising, but a high vantage point where I could see some of these bowls and these ox bows. Um, I thought would be a good first move, even on a short term hunt, because really we knew we were gonna. We were at a disadvantage on this hunt with time, unfamiliar ground, and then even more disadvantage when we found out how low the deer numbers were in this area, just there wasn't enough nutrition to support a lot of deer. The area had been hit with the h d um, you know, four or five years ago and all you know, everything we heard from the locals, they still haven't gotten back to the numbers. They were maybe like half um. So, you know, we had a couple of things stacked against us. But I liked that area. I did have a potential shot, a long one, but it was more less a good glassing point. Um. So I stopped at that one and and you decided to go to the next one. And that was kind of our strategy, to just keep hitting these these betting areas down the river to the west until we found deer. And unfortunately the first night ended up. You know, I found deer, and obviously you found some deer um, so you can get and dive into that a little bit. Yeah, So so I left you at that spot you were kind of observing on that point, watching that first bowl, and then I went way up again up into the hills to go around your ball, because I don't want to walk too close to the top of your ridge and blow my wind down into there. So I went way back up into the high hills and then walked on continuing on further west, and it ended up being about a two mile hike for me to get from where a camp was to where I eventually hunted um. But so I went way out into the hills and then I'm looking at this bowl I want to get to on my map, and I am easing my way now, coming back towards the river, and I get into the beginnings of some little cedar patch is up in the hills, and I bump a small eight pom he was betted at or standing up in this little cool He goes running off, so I'm thinking, okay, I'm getting into him a little bit, but I'm still high, I'm still above the river. So I continue to ease. But I see on the map now that I want to almost head straight down to the river bottom now to get to the the spot where i'd be on the down wind side of this betting year, because I don't want to blow into it. So I thought I'll approach from the down wind side and just slowly ease and glass and figure it, we'll see what's going on in there. So as I'm dropping down this hillside, I get to a gap there's some seaters. I get into the gap in the seaters where I can see down to the bottom completely into this bowl, and they're on the edge of the river. I spotted deer. I pulled my binoculars and it's a shooter like it's a nice, big, mature a pointer. Um, So I got really excited and I just remember like, oh my god, there's a nice buck. And the first thing my first instinct was to try to film him before I did anything else. And this is actually looking I hadn't thought about this, but that was probably a mistake. Um. If I hadn't done what I'm about to tell you I did, I bet you could have killed this deer because the first thing I did, rather than trying to make a move on that deer, and the first thing I want to do is get footage of him. So I've taken off my backpack and I'm trying to unzip my backpack to get my camera out, which is at the very bottom of the pack. And it took me like, I don't know, it felt like forever, probably just the minute, but I'm like trying to pull out different things, trying to find my camera. I finally get the camera out and get it on him. I get to film the deer and he's maybe two yards away on the edge of the river, just kind of feeding or I don't know. I can't even remember exactly what he was doing. It's kind of like sitting around looking at stuff, nibbling, um, just standing there. So I get some footage of him, and then he actually starts to walk. He gets puts set up and starts to walk, and I think at this point like, oh wow, he might come this direction. I bet you I can sneak down and get a shot. So at this point I dropped my camera. I grabbed my bow in an arrow, and where I'm at is I'm on the side of this ridge and then the ridge going down to the bottom is covered in really thick cedar trees and it's maybe a fifty ft dropped down this ridge to get to the bottom, maybe maybe more of that maybe, um. So I scurry over to the edge. I see that he's kind of not walking straight towards me, but kind of up the ridge away from me now, So I think I can maneuver, and I go sliding down this ridge as quietly as I can, but as quickly as possible. And I'm like shimming under branches and crawling on all fours and laying down and sliding underneath these things. And as I'm picking my way down through the seat or take it to get to the bottom, I see antlers come in my direction. I'm like, holy crap, he covered a lot of ground, like he's close and coming right at me now. And then my thought was, I wonder if he heard like snapping branches or something, and thought like, oh, there's some deer over there, and he's to come and check them out. So I'm trying to get now quickly up to the front, but also not move so much that he sees me, because now he's heading right in my direction. Basically, what ends up happening is he gets closer and closer and then he starts trotting like right at me. He's at like sixty fifty fifty forty, and I'm just at the edge of the trees, but one set of limbs that are in front of me, and I can't get around him in time. So I remember, I remember trying to maneuver my left arm around one branch and then like, I need to push past one more and then I could draw back and get a shot. But he's at like he runs by it, like less than twenty yards, but I can't get a shot through the branches, and he goes trotten by and keeps on working down that river bottom and goes around the point. I tried a couple of calls at that point in Hail Mary, but nothing. He disappeared, So I'm for I'm like, oh man, that was awesome to see him, but I didn't think the shot was so close. It was exciting. But as I sat there and I thought through, Okay, what do I do next, I realized, well, wow, that was at three in the afternoon. He was up on his feet and it kind of seemed like he was almost cruising. I mean, it wasn't like he wasn't bumped, it wasn't like he was chasing a deer. It wasn't like he was kind of feeding, like he was on the move. So I thought, wow, look at this location as you described it, um Andy, this spot was just like that example you brought which where there's this bowl of flat ground middle there's ridge that circled around it, and then the point came down towards the river and pinched everything down to a very narrow area. And I thought, if I get to that pinch point where the ridge comes closest to the river, it's like a forty yard space there that any deer that comes through would have to pass by. So I sneak over to that spottle all my gear and I find this little pinch and I look at the hillside and I find there's some cedars there and a couple of dead trees, and I see a little shelf that's maybe I don't know, ten ft up up the hillside, maybe just a little little bit elevat on the hillside. I kind of crawl up into there, and I start breaking some limbs and kind of opening up a little kind of cubby hole for me basically where I can be tucked into the cedar and then like a little down tree in front of me. And I've got several nice shot lanes into this little bowl and towards this gap where they have to pinch down into. And I got settled there, and um, I'll admit I took a little tiny nap there in the sun because we hadn't we hadn't, I hadn't slept a wink to drove stream. We drove straight through the night, and I couldn't sleep for whatever reason, so I hadn't slept yet that night, so I fell asleep for like half hour or something. I wake up and it's hot and no deer yet, and I think it was like two hours past since I've been set up, and I finally see movement to my left, down kind of in the same same general region where I saw the original buck, and I pull up my binos and it's another big buck. And the first thing I thought was, it's that same deer again, but he's heading away from me now, and I thought, man, he came back, but now he's going the other way. But he turns his head and I see a whole bunch more times, So right away I'm like, Okay, Wow, this is a big deer. He saw a big body on him, but he's walking kind of quickly away. So I needed to get his attention and need to get his attention fast, and I thought the best way to do it would be a loud, aggressive call, So I thought snort we's, so right away I grabbed my grunt tube and I give a big snort we's, and that stops and right in his tracks, and he turns and looks back and he's probably maybe two yards away, looks back at me for maybe thirty seconds to a minute, and then turns and takes a few more steps and then starts making a scrape. And then I watched him for the minute and then he takes another suit stakes, takes a few more steps walking away, so I snort whis again. He stops, turns, looks at me, and this is kind of that moment of truth where you're you're looking at him and like, what's he gonna do? How is he going to react? And then you've I'm sure you've seen this where they take that initial like they make like the eighty two return, where they repositioned themselves right towards you, and that's just this like, oh yes, this feeling of relief like he's gonna come. And he starts taking those steps and starts walking right towards me, and then I was like, holy smokes, this might actually work. And he comes walking down his hillside he's on, drops down into the bottom I'm in starts walking on a line, and so as he was doing that, I got my camera out, and I remember I brought my saddle and my sticks in because I thought I was gonna hanging from a tree, so I had my tree arm to film fro him. Um, but because I'm on the ground, I couldn't use that, so I just had my handheld. I had the camera handheld. So I'm holding the camera in my hand videoing him as he's walking in. And then eventually I'm like, okay, wow, he's really gonna come in. I can't I can't fiddle with a camera anymore. So I just set the camera to keep it on record, and I set it kind of pointing in front of me into the grass, and then I had my go pro. I turned on the go pro and pointed that at me, and this buck's walking down. Now he's maybe a hundred yards away, ninety yards away, eighty yards away, but now he starts to turn like he's going to go into the cedars before he gets to me. So I grabbed my grunt tube again and I point the tube in the opposite direction of me, so he's to my left. I point the tube to my far right so that it sounds like a deer is down that way, because I want to pull him to the right in front of me, so I grunt twice. He turns, looks again, and then turns on a nine degree angle and comes now straight down the line towards me. And he just comes stamping in. And he did exactly what I wanted. I couldn't have drawn it up any better. And um, he goes behind that one little dead tree. I draw back, and he's moving and quickly though, like not trotting, but like a very fast walk. He's not like pausing. He's just like on a mission though. And I just remember thinking, oh crap, he's gonna he's gonna be in my lap here if I don't get a shot quickly. And so I just stopped him with up matt and shop. The shot was slightly quartering too, and the shot hit to the left a little bit of where I wanted to be. So because of that quartering to angle, and because I pulled it, you know a little bit to the left, the shot was back and angling into his you know, back quarter of him. So I see him go running off instantly when I saw that shot where hit. I was just like, ah, I was really upset with the shot. Um, and he goes running off your runs off maybe add twenty yards and stops and just stands there. I'mthing, Okay, I you know, either liver shot him or I definitely definitely because of the angle. It definitely angled into the into the gut section. So I'm not happy at all with the shot. Watch him stand there and he turns and start slowly walking away, and I can see, I can now see the arrow of the arrow had not passed through. It had lodged in his back and his opposite back leg um, but you can see blood. You can see he was hurting, and I could watch him. So basically what happened then is I watched as he slowly walked over into this kind of thick brushy area which is where that original eight pointer had been, and he beds down there for the rest of the evening. Then I watched him better there. He was bettered. He got up once and then rebetted, And the whole time I'm sitting there and I'm kicking myself because of the shot, and I'm thinking, should I try to go get another shot at him? Or should I just wait, because I know that if I don't push him, he should be there. Um. So I'm going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. But I just the way he was bettered down and the way the river was, he was better tight to the river. So the only way I could get to within shot range of him, I'd have to go around the river bend and come up to him, and it would force me to approach from his left side, where he would be able to see me. Like, there's no way to sneak up behind him because of the river. So I just did not think there was any way could get close up to shoot him without him seeing me or hearing me. And the wind had died down. It was completely still. Everything was crunchy and um and that was That was basically how that night ended. I just I'd decided to wait and watch him. So I just want to keep eyes on him as long as I possibly could. Stuff if he did, you know, if he wasn't dead and he jumped up off of his bed, I'd see where he went before dark and um, and that was that was the evening. I had a dark had a two mile hike back out and um, and that was kind of like a frustrating hike for me because I've been so excited about how the hunt went and then I found this buck and being able to pull it off on the ground. Um. But then it was really frustrated because the shot wasn't perfect um, and I felt like I had kind of reverted a little bit to my bad habits of rushing the shots. And you and me have been working on this together. Um, You've been you know, someone who's been trying to help me deal with a little bit of this like target panic rush and the shot kind of thing that I've done in the past. So I switched to this new kind of the whole process that I've been working on and trying to use a back tension style UM follow through, and that all just kind of you know, in the heat of the moment it flew out the window. It was like I had to get the shot now. He was passing by my one lane, and I think that caused me to pull that shot just a little bit. Um. And I think between that and the angle that resulted in that that hit being farther back that I wanted. UM. So I mean you saw my when I always I arrived back at camp late that night, and I mean I was kind of down, wasn't I? Yeah? Yeah, I mean you you said, do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first? So I knew something pretty crazy it happened. Um, and then you told me what happened, and you know, we were able to watch the footage and you know, going back to the shot execution thing. Um, you know you've you've been you know, fairly diligent trying to work on you know, changing your shot pro tess and changing the way you um, the way you shoot completely, um, going from kind of a command or trigger puncher to more of a back tension style unanticipated release. But what that tells me is that it wasn't ingrained fully you you worked on it. I think you worked on it kind of a lot early on, and then kind of intermittently here and there, and then you'd have some little flare ups, uh, you know when you're practicing with buddies and stuff like that of kind of your old issues, and you know, I think it just you you worked on the process, but it wasn't totally ingrained. Uh, you know it was. It didn't become habit, it didn't become automatic. Um, because I used to have the same issues, and I worked on it and worked on it, worked until my brain knew no other way there was there was That's all I did for you know, five six months, and there was no way that it was going to go back my my brain didn't even understand the old way anymore. So I think it just you know, this offseason will work on a little more. Um. You know, that's an intensive situation. You know, you had a big buck coming in, um, ground level. Um, you know he's good. You you have we're on the ground, tucked up in you know, these little pockets of cedars. It's not like you have giant shooting lanes everywhere. You gotta pick these little holes. So you know, it's easy on those real intense, high pressure situations to kind of fall back into that. UM. So I you are kind of harder on yourself than I thought you needed to be. Um. It wasn't a perfect shot. A perfect shot, but bow hunting isn't perfect. Um. You know, Uh, things happen, um, and ultimately you you put a killing shot on this deer. It just wasn't perfect. And you know there's might be guys out there that are gonna dog. You for this, but everybody's makes mistakes. Everybody puts bad shot shots on deer. I put bad shots on deer. It happens, um, you know, and when that happens, you can't beat yourself up. You got to think about what you need to do from there forward recovering the deer. And you know, then a good thing to do is is really analyze what you did wrong, what was my mistake, and then from there on forward try to try to work on that, try to minimize that mistake, eliminate it completely so that that stuff doesn't keep happening. Yeah, I think that's the really important part you and we were talking through that night afterwards. Was like, like you said, I was pretty upset with myself about it, and really, um just upset because I worked so hard to try to fix this and then to have it happened again. It was really frustrating, and I hated the idea of possibly wounding a deer because of it. Um, So I was. I was upset, But then at some point I was like, Okay, there's nothing you can do about what has happened, so you have to stop beating yourself up about the past like that. That that's water under the bridge. Now, all you can change is what you do in the future. So I just was, you know, I have to re read um, dedicate myself to working even harder to get better at this, to figuring out what else I need to do to make the second habit, to make this so so that I'm minimizing any kind of mistake like this more and more and more, and UM, just I'm not I'm not ever going to settle. I'm not gonna settle for good enough. I'm not gonna settle for well. Most of the time the shot is good. But ever once in a while you pull one. Um, Like you said, things do go wrong with bow hunt and you can't be perfect. But I think it is important to try to always strive to be more perfect. So so, like we talked about, I know, going into this year, I'm gonna try some new things. We're gonna try an actual back tension release attention style release um and just get the whole finger thing out of it. So I just can't so that my brain can't just like flip into this different mode because it just all the things I worked on so hard, like this whole mantra that I say in my head and all those things like it all just disappeared in that second because it was just it was just I wasn't nervous, I wasn't shaking. It wasn't like buck fever at all. It was just like, you have to get the shot. And it was just like I knew I drew Everything was like great, calm, cool, I drew back. But it was like as soon as I drew back and he was there, I just had to shoot. It just happened. Um, And that is not the way I want to be shooting. So I know I've got some work to continue to do on that, and UM that's going to be the plan moving forward to continue working on it. And right now I'm even though in the midst of the season, I'm going to continue with shooting and trying to work and try to prepare myself as best as it possibly can for the rest of the season. Um, and then come off season, I think we're in tear it back down and start a new again, and UM, see if I can't improve this thing even more so. UM. That said, it was kind of a tough night, but we did feel like based on the shot, UM, assuming he didn't get pushed by coyotes overnight. Um, he should be he should be right there. So we got up bright and early next morning and kind of thought, all right, well, Andy still has got tag. Why don't we just sneak back in and at first light just sit the same spot that I sat and see if a deer came in for you. It was real cold overnight, so we knew everything was gonna be fine on that standpoint um. And then after we sat for a little bit, then we could go and hopefully find my dear uh walk us through what happened that morning. Yeah, so we're kind of hoping that uh, that nice or eight that you saw might come back to bed because it appeared as though he was betting on that river bend um and if not right there, maybe just up on the ridge a little bit. Um. Some of the deer were betting just on that first bench or that first uh. It was almost like the ridgehead um, different levels, different benches, so it seemed like a lot of them are on that first bench that had cedars on it, and then they would kind of dip down into this bowl where it was green. So we're we're in a position where you shot your deer where if he comes back to bed um, you know, we might get a shot at him. And hopefully he hadn't been back already and seen the commotion and all that kind of stuff. So we sat. We were both glassing diligently to see your deer, and initially we didn't um, and then all of a sudden you spotted him and you say, I think I saw my dear, And we looked and he had made it, you know, maybe an other twenty thirty yards down the river, but there he was playing his day, big reck, uh, you know, sticking up, and we started celebrating and not being very stealthy. Yeah, such a feeling of relief. Yeah, I was so I was so just. I was so nervous that, you know that if if he did get up and move again, or if coyotes pushed him or something, we were gonna be a find him. And I was worried because there wasn't an exit wound, there wouldn't be a great blood trail, and I've been stressing about all these things. And oh, it felt so good that he was there. Yeah, it might be good to mention this place was loaded with coyotes. Um, we were we were camping in the middle of nowhere, like an hour from the nearest road, and all night long, just surrounded by coyotes, different packs howling. I mean, it was just a beautiful sound, but there there was a lot so that was a concern. But when we did watch the replay of your buck, we could see, um, you know that that arrow had went through and hit that back leg and he wasn't using it and he wasn't gonna far. Um, So we knew that he would be in his first or second bed and and we'd find him. And uh, you know, the shot could have been better, but it did the job and we were able to find him. But before we went and found him, something fairly exciting happened. Um. You spotted a buck coming down out of the sandhills from across the river, and without putting your glass up, it looked like a dough. But you put your glass and be like, hey, it's a nice buck. Nice buck. So it came and it dipped down into the river. And this is something that I thought was pretty interesting, um, because you know, you and I think we worked real good together. We had a lot of the same thoughts. We were kind of bouncing ideas off each other. I had an idea, you had an idea, and a lot of times we came to like a compromise or you know, or something that we we were just kind of figuring things out together. And there was that that one instant where you your instinct was to call to him, and for whatever reason, my instinct was to try to sneak up on him and get a shot. And it was just two different styles. There's no right or wrong. You know, five times out of ten, I might have tried to call him. That might have been my first instinct, but because when I saw him dip down in the river, I thought, wow, I can cover fifty yards and get within, you know, fifty sixty yards of this deer. And then when I thought it through more, um, you know, there would have been probably a thirty yard area where I might have been pretty exposed. But I think after hunting out West the last few years, I'm really I'm really liking the sneaking in on game, so kind of addicted to that. But we tried the calling. Yeah, yeah, I tried the grunt call um. And the river it was kind of it was a little windy, um, you know, the river had a decent amount of noise, and he was just a little too far away to hear it. So then I brought out the rattling antlers, and uh, you would have thought I slapped that deer on the ass as hard as I could, because the second I touched those, he like took off like he got shot, you know. He yeah, he took off. He took off up the hill and ran, I don't know, another hundred fifty yards and just stopped, looked back at us, and then he did something really interesting, which indicates how low the pressure was out there. He just started feeding. He started, he relaxed completely and he started feeding under this tree that was very different than a lot of the cedars and and other things that so it's very easy to spot. Um. And I don't know if you remember saying that. I said, I said, I think I can kill that buck right there, because he he kind of went back and he kind of went back up, you know, into bed. So we had an idea, you know, he would probably be close to there. You did say that, You're like, I bet you we'd kill that deer right there again. Um, And he was like he was like a nice eight point like to the years eight pointer. Yeah, nice dear um on a short trip um. You know, I was probably looking for something a little bigger, but on a short trip um, especially you know the hand we were dealt with the cattle and lack of deer and food and stuff, I would have been I would have been happy to take that deer um. But anyway, after he kind of cleared off, I said, you know what, let's just go get your deer. I wanted to see him as bad as you did. So we got out of there, and uh, we started the recovery. Yeah, and that was that was awesome, getting the getting a walk up on him. And I had been worried about coyotes to given the fact, just like you said, there were so many of them. Even though we saw him there, you couldn't fully see him. So then I started worrying, do you think the yokes got on him? And did they tear him up? And did we lose a bunch of meat? And we walked up there and they did get on him, but they didn't eat nearly as much as I was worried they might have. They kind of ate a little bit of the back um rump of him. But that was it. So it could have been certainly could have been worse. Um, And it was just a huge, huge relief to walk up on there. And he was a beautiful mature buck, definitely, you know, four or five years old and uh seven points on one side, six on the other, a typical seven by six thirteen pointer. Never have I shot a thirteen point typical block before, So how often do you see that? I mean it was like it was just a picket fence of perfect times. I mean, he was incredible. He was one of the coolest dear you know I've seen like on a trip like this. I mean he was just he was awesome, I mean so unique. You would you know, you wouldn't be able to duplicate a buck like that, you know, in a hundred years. No, you don't see hi any dear, um that have seven points on the side like that, just straight typical, nice tiense, just a beautiful, beautiful animal, big old chunky head on him, dark forehead. UM. I mean, I just could not have been happier the way it turned out. And you know, when we when we came back afterwards, UM, I was kind of talking about, you know how there was a lot of decisions that I made on that hunt. Like it was a it was a quick you know, it was the first day. But there's a lot of things that happened that first day that I was really proud of, Like decisions I made UM that led to this that you know that I can see that ten years ago, I wouldn't have made these decisions, so it's kind of indicative of progress that I've made. UM that I was really proud of, you know, the decision to try to sneak in and scout this area and pick this area, this the area wanted hunt and that was a good decision. The fact that when I saw that first buck, that I made a move on him and then didn't get it done, but learned something from it that led me to say, Okay, I need to hunt this spot now because of that. UM, that was a good decision that I was proud of. UM. You know, the decisions on when to call and how to call, and how I was able to do that that was Those are decisions that in the past maybe I wouldn't have made the right way that worked out. I was proud of that. UM being able to get a shot even without a blind blind while on the ground. UM, even though that shot didn't end up being perfect. I was I was proud to have been able to, you know, have that opportunity. So all those things are things that made me feel pretty good that I made progress as a hunter, that I'm doing things the right way, learning things, getting better. Um. But at the end of the day, there's I said this to you, I was like, there's a whole hell of a lot of lot in this one too, you know, to be able to for that dear to be there on the first in the first spot that I was checking out. Um, So I was really proud of how things went. And then I was also just very very thankful for that luck though that it all kind of went my way. Um, because there's some years where you make a lot of good decisions and you don't have that luck and it doesn't go the way you want to. So yeah, hey, I want to tell you too, like, um, you know, you were you felt kind of proud that you made these decisions and um, you know, calling that deer in and after you know, after my attempt at calling my book and he took off like a bad out of hell, I felt pretty uh pathetic. Yeah, these bucks are easy to call in and you know, my attempt had the exact opposite effects. So thanks for that about that, Andy, But but yeah, you know, I got lucky. I'm not gonna complain about that though. And um, it was just so cool how it all came together, how unique it was. And then another cool thing about it is that because we were so far away from the truck, um, we decided, you know what, let's just quarter him out. Um that bucket killed in Montana earlier this year. I was so ingrained in like Midwestern white tail mode that I thought I gotta just gut him and drag him out. And it was a bear to do that. So this time around was like, you know what, No, I'm gonna pack this sucker out. And you fortunately had game bags, Um, but they're back in the truck. So you decide you were in a high alla back to the truck and get the game bags while I worked on quartering him out and skinning him out, and then hopefully by the time that you got back, I'd be almost done. Um. And so that's basically what happened. But you actually were able to maneuver the truck closer, so we didn't have nearly as bad as a hikes. That was nice. Um, And we got him all quartered out, skinned out, and packed up on our backpacks and hiked out of there with him and had a had a not too long a hike, a little bit of a step hike, but definitely nicer doing it in the backpack then dragging him up there. Probably. Yeah, And I, you know, I should probably add I, um, quickly into this hunt, I started having some I suffered from some pretty significant back issues, but normally with exercise and and some medication that you know, I kind of keep it controlled somewhat. But I was having some pretty significant nerve pain that started on day two and started increasing rapidly. Was kind of shooting down my leg into my foot and it was rather painful. So I I never said this to you, but I was actually terrified to drag that deer. I would much rather put it on my back and try to Yeah, um, I've had this issue before a few years ago, and um, it's a it's a nightmare. So I was. I was kind of in panic mode. Um, And I was able to, you know, obviously get home and take some medicine and it's kind of starting to feel a lot better now. But I thought it was cool just you know, our whole hunt was like a back country whitetail hunt. I mean there was no showers. We you know, brought our own food in um, and we know we were hiking, you know, two plus smiles to to get to our spots, and it was just fitting to pack him out like that. It was. It just made the whole story that much cooler. I think, Yeah, the first I've ever done that with the white tail, and uh, like you said, just just a cool way to wrap up my portion of that experience. UM. So yeah, So we we got him out and I headed I decided to drive back to town to try to get more ice for my cooler because I had NiFe ice to to get him. So what it is, We got him back to camp and then we did like a really rough butcher like just basically chunked out as much as immediately we could get in the cooler and put the ice that I had on it. Um, but I wanted to get more ice, and then I also wanted to make sure that the cape and the head um could be preserved and not riding out in the sun for the next three days. So I thought I drived the nearest town which was Um. From we were camped to that town was like two and a half hours UM. But I was able to find a tax the dermist that who could keep it and freeze it out or keep it out and freeze it. So that's what I did for us the evening. You stuck it out and hunted Um. Walk us through what you did from there. Before we get to that, they'll want to take a quick second to thank our friends over at White Tailed Properties and plug one of their recent videos. As we've been talking over the past few months, they've got this land Beat video series over on the White Tailed Properties YouTube channel. It's definitely worth checking out, full of quick tips related to deer hunting, deer management, habitat management, buying and selling properties, and if you're interested in the land management side of things. They have a recent video out talking about planting tree food plots. So actually trees that produce mass, soft mass, hard mass that can produce kind of like a food plot, but by by planting these trees. So check it out. Is called Whitish plant tree food plots for better deer hunting. Of course, this isn't something you're gonna do right now in the fall but it's something to be thinking about as we move into the next year. Um, I'm already thinking about some of my idea as in plants or two thusand nineteen. This is a great video to get you on that same path if you're thinking about some land management ideas, So check it out over at the White Tailed Properties YouTube channel and visit white Tail properties dot com for more information. Yeah. So, um, I basically went um down to the other side of the bowl where you had killed your deer, so further west. We that was kind of the trend after you killed We just kept pushing further and further west. But I went and set up where I thought I could get a shot at that dark corn to eight. Um. So I had marked on the on X maps when we were recovering your deer where I thought he kind of went up to bed and then I hiked back in, uh slowly snuck down um through a little draw and again. Um. You know, our our intention were to use the saddles, um because it's we both love them and they're kind of ultimate and mobility. But in reality, here are very few trees we could even get in, and the ones that you could get in a lot of times were right in the middle of those bowls, so I feel like deer would have seen you. And they required immense amount of trimming. So all of our hunts, every single one, ended up from the ground. Um. And so what we did. What I did was I snuck down this straw and then I tucked back up into these this little cedar like a little cubby like you had before, within within shooting distance of where that buck had been feeding earlier that morning. And when I got all set up, you know, I'm kind of getting all squared away, and I looked down on my chest no binoculars and no range finder, and I live and die by those. I'm a glass ar. I love glassing. They've you know, they have been uh. They've helped me kill lots of animals, identify you know, bucks to see if they're big enough to go after a long ways away. And my range finder, you know, I thirty yards an in sure I can to mate and be pretty deadly beyond that. I don't practice that as much as I should. I will now after I tell you the rest of the story. But I don't feel comfortable shooting past thirty without a range finder. I just don't I'm not good enough at it. You know, if you're five six seven yards off, you know, once you get out to like forty yards, that's that's a wounded or missed animal. So, um, I felt kind of naked. But I estimated where twenty was. I estimated where thirty thirty was, and I was like, you know what, a million deer killed within thirty yards every year. So no, biggie. And uh So I'm sitting there and you know, uh, the evenings progressing, and I hear down by the river, I hear something scraping, and I'm like, oh man, there's a buck right down there. I couldn't see him yet, and then here he comes pops up right in front of me, and it's that eight and he comes right to that same exact spot right or we thought we could kill him. And he's right there broadside, feeding without a care in the world. And he's at forty forty nine. Wasn't sure within my shooting range. I was very comfortable with that shot, but I didn't know, and um, I was like, you gotta be kidding me, you know. So I'm just hoping he's going to come closer. Um, and he doesn't. So he ends up kind of feeding off to my left. He's getting a little farther now, so that I'm like, okay, you know, I'm okay letting this deer go, but I'm gonna try to call him in, but I want I didn't want to call him when he was in view of me, so I was gonna let him get out of sight so that he would have to come investigate. He I didn't want to be able to see where the call is coming from. But keep in mind, this is the deer that you know, it's probably the most callish idea in the United States. He goes, he goes down and into these theaters and I can just kind of see the top of his back when he's out of you, and I just give a real soft grunt to my right, trying to sound like I was far away, and boom, he just takes off. He's gone. So I think your buck, the buck you killed and kicked his butt a few times or something. But he was Yeah, he was a one scared animal. But h so, you know, been hunting a long time, I forget the things, never have forgotten my range finder, and it cost me. It ended up costing me. You know that deer and ultimately the success on this trip. Um, So it's okay. Um I I didn't beat myself up about it too bad. Um, I was okay with that. That deer was very nice. I would have been super proud, but I had had a good season already. I didn't feel overwhelming pressure to get a deer on this trip. And to be honest with you, when you shot your deer, I felt really successful. Um. I was hoping to get one out of this trip on such a short time frame, and uh, I felt really good about it. Yeah. But you you, you you were kind of kicking yourself a little bit. You're like, gosh that you know, as as an experienced season hunter to do that, and then you rookie MISTAKEE rookie mistake. And then you did say that one big thing that this made you think about that you want to do more is is work on really nailing down accurately estimating ranges with your eyeball without a range finder, right, yeah, yeah, I mean there's there's three D shooters that that can do it. Um. And I am always been more of like a known yardage guy. You know, if I know the yardage, you know I can hit the center. Um, but you get me out past thirty yards. You know I'm not reliable, Um, but you know, I feel like I should be able to do that. I still want to range everything I'm gonna shoot at, but there might be a scenario when you have to make that quick decision and still within your effective range. I certainly can improve on the yardage estimation and definitely gonna work on it. Yeah, And something related to this that you brought up actually on our car drive home. I thought it was pretty Italian and kind of while we were on this hunt, unbeknownst to you, I was kind of analyzing like how you do things and and why you did things, and trying to understand your thought process, just you know, because you're obviously are you very successful. I've I've kind of looked up to you for a long time and learned a lot from you, but I wanted to see it in person and and kind of see, you know, what I could take away from that. And one of the things I really noticed is just your level of of thoughtfulness about everything and um, and the degree of analysis that you go through from Eric when it comes to any decision or when something happens, thinking back on why did that happen? How did it happen? What do I take from that situation? And you told me when we're driving home that you document all of your hunts. You've done it since like I don't know how long you've done it, twenty years or fifteen years or something like that. The first year, so you document all the deer sightings and hunts and everything you've learned. But then something I thought was really interesting was every shot opportunity you have a buck, So if you kill the buck, or you missed the buck, or you had a shot and distant quite happened, you document each single one of those instances and you write out the Well, rather me, tell tell me how you do that, UM, tell us how you do that? Because I thought was really interesting what you do and how you use this as a way to learn from each one of those opportunities. Yeah, so it's basically just a little short story of what happened. So let's say I kill a buck and i'll i'll, you know, jot down you know what the deer did, Um, the way he was moving, what what did I think he was doing, the way he was traveling, time of year, All this kind of stuff. Basically lay a big layout of the story when I'm successful, you know, at the end of that, I will kind of highlight three or four things that I did right that helped me be successful, and just things to really kind of focus on this. This is what you did right. This was a learning experience you you did these rights, So these these things are good. Um. When I missed an animal, which I have missed, um, I do the same thing. I write out the story. That was an opportunity, That was a buck that should have been mine. Um, you know, and I made a mistake. Now what was my mistake? Did I draw too early? That was I over aggressive and calling? Was he too alert at the distance he was? Um? You know it was it was the way my tree stand was positioned. Was I sticking out like a blob and he picked me out? It could be a number of things. Um, But I will write down what I thought cost me that hunt, the thing that cost me that dear um. And the same thing. When a shot isn't presented or isn't presented, but it should have been. Um, you know something that I did that if I wouldn't have done this, or if I would have done this differently, I would have had the shot opportunity. So basically, you know, my whole thing is, um, I want to constantly improve and to do that, uh, you know, I have a drive inside of me to constantly improve. But to do that, you have to make mistakes and then you have to learn from him and eliminate them. So that's kind of my my thought process when I do this. I tried to I'm okay with making mistakes, but I don't want to make him twice. Um, you know, I want to eliminate those. And when you eliminate them, you know, you start eliminating all the mistakes you've made over the years. You start to make very few, um, you know, and then things just come together, you know. And kind of going back to what you said earlier, Mark, like you you said there was some luck involved in I don't. I don't think so. I think some people might say, oh, man, you're so lucky he was betted there. We had those spots picked out, that's where that's where a mature buck would bet if he was betted in this river bottom. We we made the right call. We figure that out in a matter of hours, and you were on a five year old deer in territory you've never been on. That's not luck. That's picking it out on a map, having the instinct to slow down, having your wits about you to see that other deer. You know, some guys might not even have been paying attention, um, and walked right by that opening, went down there and bumped him. But you were attentive enough to see that, and then you almost caught You almost got that deer. But you had enough uh you know, instinct to kind of slow down and say, you know what, hey, if that dear did this, there might be more here. You know, this looks like a good spot where I can you know, tuck in here without making any noise. I haven't bumped anything, and maybe something else will will come by. I can see a long ways. I'll be able to at the very least observe. And that was one of the biggest betting features to the west that we saw. That one, the next one and the next one to the west. We're probably the top three. And I mean it just you picked the right one. So that's not luck. You know that, that's skill, my friend, that you did everything right there. I appreciate saying that. Um, it was you know, like We talked about it coming into it with a challenge that we realized we had. You know, we knew it would be a challenge, and then once day one star, they're like, oh man, this is gonna be even more of a challenge. Um. Having it all work out the way it did was very gratifying, and it's you. And we talked about this a lot in the trip to about we love hunting. We love all aspects of hunting, but something that we in particular really enjoy is that chess match, the figuring it out. And we both talked about different examples where we've had some spots where we figured it out and it's a great spot, but we figured it out, and then once we had it kind of figured out, we weren't quite as drawn to hunt there anymore. You know. Um, like I've had like this this spot in Montana that I hunted the last couple of years. I kind of like, you know, it's it's awesome, I've got it like PEG. Now I don't know if I'm so interested in hunting there again next year, um, because there's not that challenge of like what do I do? I love having to go into this new area and and start from the bottom and build your way up and learn and understand and and uh that puzzle is is so fascinating to me. And and being able to put those pieces together in this trip UM was particularly interesting giving all the other unique circumstances. So it was, Man, it was one of the very most rewarding hunts that I've been on UM. But I guess we we still haven't finished everything that happened for you. So you had this missed opportunity with with all mossy Horns as I like to call him, and so you didn't have the range finder, and now we have like a day and a half left. What was your what was your mindset, thought process and plan for how to move on and kind of wrap up the trip? How were you approaching it? What do you do? Yeah, well, if you remember, that was probably my lowest point in the trip because I was having some really significant pain then and luckily you had some pain meds and that kind of took the edge off. So UM, you know, I'm tough it out. In day three, we tried something a little different in the cattle area. UM, I was my leg was a little questionable. There was a very nice uh ox bow that had an abnormal amount of cover and our goal. Our our plan was to sneak in there right to that back into that ox bow in the dark, well before daylight and then just let deer filter in. Now we were a little worried that the cattle might uh you know, keep the deer out, but it was I think it was worth a try because we weren't feeling real strong going in blind, you know, two and a half miles to the next bowl in the dark and picking the right spot, so I think that was going to be more of the evening plan. But anyway, we snuck in there and a little did we know we were going to have all the turkeys in the world roosted above us. But it was it was pretty cool. There's a bunch of Miriams, uh you know, roosted above us, and uh, they're making all kinds of rackets, so that in itself made it a really cool morning. Saw a couple of dolls, had a couple of dolls coming into bed, bumped one another. One came in within fifty yards of us and bedded down and then she disappeared. I'm not sure, but we sat there for a while, tried some calling unsuccessfully, and then we kinda we snuck through the edge of cover, kind of working west, um, just trying to you know, at a snail's pace, always on the glass, sneaking through on the ground, just trying to get visual of a shooter buck on his feet. It was great deer habitat, but it was full of cows. Um. It was pastor to death. Cow tracks everywhere. No deer tracks, um. No scrapes under you know, over overheating branches, which you would expect to be, you know, really heavy this time of year. So we kind of got the impression that there weren't a lot of deer in there. And then it was funny because the minute we started seeing a few deer tracks, we bumped two dolls, two or three dolls, um. And then that was the end of the morning. We kind of called it a morning, went back and kind of regrouped for the evening hunt. Yeah. And like you said, that evening hunt, the plan was to continue the progression down those bowls, go into the next one to the west. Um. And that one looked pretty good, didn't it. Yeah, that was cool. In fact, it looked a lot like the bowl or you killed yours. It had the sat we get we snuck in there, had the same little bit of cover down by the actual river bend tip in the ox bow. It had the bench, the first bench and then the secondary bench that had real thick seedars, and then again down in that shaded area that gets the most shade, holds the most moisture, there's some green, there's very little. It looks like a little, you know, corter acre food plot of just grass. And sure enough, just like all the other bowls that we saw, the first deer dip down out of those seedars, vetted very close. Probably can see where they're eating. A group of dolls. Ducks down into that green and starts feeding. And you know, there's two things that deer can do. They can go away from us on the outside bend and it pinches down over there. But because we had a western wind, we were on the east side, and if they come our way, it pinches down close to the river, so they'd come within range of us. We had just a really neat spot on the back side of a down tree, and um it an incredible wind front blew in um real high winds probably plus yeah and swirl and started making everything swirl and then you spotted what we thought was a nice bucket. It was a nice buck It was just probably a two year old. But he's coming down the ridge, coming down towards that green stuff, sneaking down real slow, and we didn't get a great look at him. We were kind of hoping he was gonna be a little bigger than he ended up being. But we had a really need encounter. Um he came down, came down into the bowl, and the wind was swirling so bad. I think that he picked us up. But the way the wind was going, it was whipping all directions. He was confused. He didn't know where where he wanted to go. He didn't know where we were, but he knew something was not right. And it was probably because we we're at day three of day four of no showers. You know, we weren't smelling too great. But anyway, we had a really cool encounter. He started working our way at a pretty fast pace, and I believe he got this all on film. But he gets within bow range and I kind of mimic draw draw the bow back on him, and he has no clue and he ends up five five yards in front of us and has no idea, we're there. It was a really neat encounter, um on a pretty nice little at eight point. Yeah, that was cool, and it's super close just right there. And then if we're looking at you like, oh, that's exactly what we wanted about to do, exactly what we thought it would do in this scenario. We just needed one a little older, a little bigger. Yep, yep, yep. So the rest of the night, uh, it was pretty uneventful. That was probably you know, thirty minutes after that made the long hike back right. Yeah, we saw that badger. That was cool. Oh yeah, badger. Badger came right up. We got a little video of that. I had never seen one, so I was pretty pumped about that. Um. And then day four, um, we we decided that we were gonna pull out half a day early. I was gonna hunt the morning. Um. You know, I was kind of pushing it with a day from work. My leg was giving me trouble. You're you had a sick kid at home. You know. I felt very fulfilled on this trip. You felt very fulfilled. I was okay with hunting the morning. The morning looked like it was gonna be really nice, and then it was gonna kind of get windy, and so I was good with one more morning set I thought I had a good chance to kill that dark horn to aid again. And uh so I decided to go, and you hung back and cleaned up camp. So made the track back, you know, about two miles again and got into the original spot where I had a chance at him without my range finders. Snuck in at first daylight or bright before daylight, and got all set up and it was the coldest morning. There was frost. I mean, it was just just gorgeous and then calm and it starts getting light. You know, it's light for I don't know, twenty thirty minutes. And to my right, kind of back by where your deer died, I hear two bucks sparring, not like a full blown out fight, but they're they're going at it a little bit. It sounds like two big antlers, and I'm like, oh my gosh, here we go. You know, you know, in reality, I think I my my mind made him, you know, both bigger than what they were. I was thinking, like that big eight that you saw and some other giants that we didn't know was there. But all of a sudden, here he comes the same dark corn eight comes running right at me, and I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, I know, like you got the truck packed up and we're ready to go. And I'm thinking if this deer is running, like, what's who just kicked his butt? You know, So I'm thinking, you know, there's a bigger buck behind. So I got my release on him. I'm like kind of starting to draw back, and I'm like he stops and he looks behind and I'm like, oh my gosh. The other ones following him. So he ends up kind of trotting past me and right in range. Yeah, in range. I knew the ring he was. He was within thirty seven yard. He had to hit the trail at thirty seven um, and and I was completely okay with letting that deer go um, even even if this other deer wasn't following him. But I was pretty pumped because I thought the deer following him was going to be that big, that bigger eight. And all of a sudden, here here comes a deer. I see him coming around the corner of the sun's kind of over there, so it's like kind of blinding me. And I looked through the glass and it's actually a smaller eight like what like seriously, So so he comes it's still probably a two year old, you know, maybe nine inches or something like that, and uh, he comes by and kind of dips down into the river, and uh that it ended up being it. I thought maybe there was another buck over there, so I tried a little rattling sequence and sat for another couple hours, and uh, you know, nothing happened. So I decided to pack it up and made the hike back and that was it. And that was it. And uh, men, I know that I know that you've got to bounce her quick, so I don't want to keep you any longer. But this was such a even though it's a short hunt, even though it was challenging hunt, it was it was it was a really fulfilling and fun hunt for me. And um, I appreciate you, uh let me tag along with you and get to hunt this property that that you got permission on, So I know that's a big, a big part of all this was the fact that you got permission, So thank you for that and for sharing that permission with me. And um, any like final takeaways or anything else that you think are worth sharing before we shut this one down. Well, yeah, why don't you tell why don't you why don't you give uh one or two things that you learned from you know, maybe someone else going on a hunt like this, but somewhere they've never been um and they run into some issues like what are some things that you took away? And then and then I'll give a couple. Yeah, well I think I think on a trip like this, where you're going to a new place and you're on a short kind of time frame, I definitely realized more and more that you need to you need to take calculative risks and be able to adjust based off of those. Um So that said, you know, coming into this and we had all these assumptions, we had all these things we thought were going to be present, and I thought, oh, I know exactly how we're gonna hunt this. But when we got there, totally different. So right away, like on that day, when we realized it was totally different, you and me, multiple times we talked about, well maybe we should try this. Yeah, we usually wouldn't do this is aggressive, this is crazy, but we kind of need to do that. And there are several different things we talked about that we had to be more aggressive take calculative risks because you need to quickly learn things and quickly adjust to those lessons um on a short time frame hunt like this. So examples of us doing that were, for example, after we glassed all of the place and didn't see the deer we wanted to see, we thought, all right, we need to push into this a little bit and actually visibly see some of Let's cover ourselves. So we walked into the edges of some got close to some betting stuff, got on our feet, check the river crossing, walked along that edge where we thought there should be scrapes, got up tight to the river where we thought there'd be some betting on the other side, and checked it all out. Um, that was a little risky, like we could have bumped stuff, but I thought we needed to get feet on the ground in that spot to to verify are is this really as poor as we think it is based off the glassing, or do we need to spend some more time there? So we made a calculated risk. We learned that no, it does not look like there's a kind of activity we need that we thought we'd have here, And then we said, okay, we're gonna cross off the map fast. We don't have time to daily daily in places where we just don't think it's gonna happen. So we crossed off the whole section. And then we said, all right, what's next, how do we adjust? We looked at those maps and we had those spots that we talked about, the bowls that we marked, they were they looked great, but they were so far away. We were hoping we'd be able to hunt some of this stuff that was closer. Um, but we when we we made this risk, we learned something. We said, Okay, we we're gonna have to push to these bulls because that's probably where the cattle won't be. And so then our next calculated risk was the fact that we were willing to you know, push all the way up in there and um, you know, get into that bed and get tight to bedding. So I think that my big takeaway in this type of deal is is when you need to get a little bit aggressive to learn something and then be able to quickly act according to what you learned. Mm hmm, yeah. I mean if we would have now, if we would have pre scouted this place and had stands, you know, pre trimmed and hung um. That would probably be ideal, right, especially if it was a little bit a bit later in the rut, but on a short term and we were having trouble just we needed to find deer um. So you know, sometimes, like especially in a situation like this, we had five miles of river ground essentially to hunt, but we found deer in the very small portions of that very small you know, I don't know if twenty acres are more, um, a little little pockets or less. I mean twenty acre a little pocket here, go down a little you know, little pockets. So we really we needed to observe, we needed to spind deer sign and and in this situation in particular, deer sign was everything. When we started seeing tracks, that was everything. We started finding some some scrapes and once you killed your deer, once we got down there along that river, there was quite a few scrapes getting opened up. You saw your buck making scrapes. So just sneaking in and being aggressive and getting where the deer were. Um, because there was a lot of great looking spots between where we camped and where we eventually found a deer. That would probably be amazing, uh, other times of the year. Yeah, you know, you know when they're when they're really rutting in the deer or moving. But it was low deer numbers, so we just needed to find them and we needed, like you said, need to be aggressive. Short. You know, we don't have a lot of time, so just sit back and observe. We did do that somewhat the first day, but after that we kind of needed to start diving in close and so close that you know, it was almost essential to hunt from the ground because we couldn't make racket. We were a lot of times we were within a hundred yards of deer and uh, you know, just the way these trees were. If there even was a tree to get in um most of them required probably a hundred branches trimmed. I mean it would have been it would have been a couple hour job, I think, you know. Yeah, So yeah, those are my big takeaways. To be aggressive and if you're you're in an area with low deer density, got to find the deer sign, you know. And in a low deer density, there's still gonna be a few bucks that are that are older and and you know they're going to be in there. And then know what you implement what you know about buck bedding, you know, and those river bends and where bucks like to bend in that bed and that type of terrain or habitat depending on where you're at, you know, and that can really shorten you know, short in a cycle of figuring something out, you know, on a short term hunt. Yeah. I always think of those betting areas as the hub of the wheel, like it's the very most important piece of the puzzle because if you know the hub of the wheel, all the other things that those deer do they radiate off of that hub, like spokes coming off of that wheel. Um. So that's always a really important place to start the lowering process. All the other pieces can fall into place after that. Um So, I think that was, like you said, that was key to our success. So identifying the missing link in this area, What was the missing link? Anything anything green? Everything was so dried out and bearing. Um when you found green, deer were smashing it. Yeah. You know, there wasn't a lot of deer because they're just aren't very high deer numbers, but that's where they were going. They were going to those spots the two or three deer you'd see would be on that. So yeah, well, my friend, it was a lot of fun. It was a cool hunt, and um, I'm glad we got to do it. Yeah, me too, Thanks for coming and uh, it's a hunt I'll always remember. Um. I think you're doing some great things for hunting. Um. So I was really honored and proud to be able to share hunt with you and hope hopefully we can do it again someday. Thanks man, I appreciate that. And yes, let's definitely plan on. Let's planning a part two either there or somewhere in the future. So with that, let's wrap it up and hopefully you and we can have some continued success in Michigan. Right, that's right, Yeah, we both Hopefully I have a next one to go after and maybe we'll get one in the next week or two fingers crossed. And that's a wrap, folks, So thank you for joining us for this one. Hopefully you've got a lot of tree stand in the near future coming up here. November it's about it's about upon us. Probably when you're listening to this, it is November, actually, So November is upon us and that is a beautiful thing. So good luck out there. Remember to stay mentally tough, pushed through the adversity. There's gonna be challenges, just like me and Andy faced. But if you keep pushing, if you'll learn, if you adjust, good things can still happen out That is the game plan for myself. I'm sure that's gonna be the game plan for all of you. Should straight have a great rut and we will see you next time, and until then, stay wired to hunt.