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 is episode number two and forty nine, and today in the show, we are breaking down to successful rout hunts to hear about the ups and downs, the good things, the bad things, the lessons learned, and what we can all take from them to help us on our own hunts coming up in these next couple of weeks. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. And today on the show, we have got myself, we have got Dan nine fingers Johnson, we got my buddy Ross Hoss, and um, we're supposed to have our friend Corey, but he's he's right now playing hard to get He's he's not responding to our phone call. So Corey may or may not be with us at a later point in this episode. But the basic reason why this crew is here today is because we want to talk about rut hunting success stories. Because Dan, you've got a success or don't you? Yeah, I'm I'm pretty happy in a way how everything turned out. Yes, yes, and Ross, You've got a success story, don't you. Yeah, I got done pretty pretty quick this year, which which was great, but I'm kind of wishing I could spend a little more time and staying with the book. Take. Yeah, that's kind of kind of ridiculous how quickly you started and ended your season. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I'll ever do that again. Man. And um and I've got I've got a very interesting set of RUTT stories too that I wanted to talk about. Um, I don't have the happy ending yet, but I still think it's possible. So I figured that could be our game plan. We can walk through our hunts that happened over this past week. We all have some pretty interesting things that happened, and I think we can learn some things from those things too. So pull some lessons learned out of each one of these success stories. Understanding what's the setup that worked for you guys, Understanding how you want about it, why you think you're successful. Um, I'm thinking that should be a good way to kind of help some other people get prepared for their upcoming RUT hunts as we move into that second week in November. Um So Dan I gotta, I gotta, I gotta go to you first, because you have been playing the suspense card so heavily over the last couple of days on your Instagram story, Like you just made people wait and wait and wait. Um, people just want to know the details. So can you just walk us through your rutcation and how the hell this all happened? And I tell you what, it's been an absolute emotional roller coaster without sounding dumb. I mean that's what That's what it's been, um, I I mean, here's here's the very short story shot. A buck took me two days to find him, had tons of blood. It started graining lost lost the blood, and and went back the next day after oh after ten hours of looking for him. Uh two of those hours were gritting in pouring rain. And then the next day I go back to where I lost last blood with another guy and he's laying right there. Wow, well my mind. The whole the last twenty four hours or forty hours has been a blur. Can we get the non short story though? I mean, if we're gonna get just a short story, the podcast is gonna be super short today, right, So I mean, what do you want me? What do you want to talk about the details of the strategy. Well, let's first hear like what your how your rotation went leading up to this, what you're thinking, how those first few hunts went, and then and then let's deep dive into that specific day, what the strategy was leading into it, why you set up, while you set up there, and then what actually happened. Let's do that Before that, they'll want to take a quick second to thank our friends at ONYX. And I'm actually right now as I'm recording this on a white tailed deer hunt with Steve and Yanni and the rest of the Meat Eater crew and ONYX. The hunt app is something that I've been using on this hunt, not only just to look at let's say my aerial views of the property or the topographic lines on the property, um, but also because you can save way points and then you can take those way points and then you can share them with other people. So a situation that I'll probably be doing maybe later today or tomorrow with Steve is rather than trying to say, hey, Steve, go drive down this road, park at the big oat tree, walk down the two track, turn left at the apple tree, climb up the hill and then go out in this whale. Rather than that, I can just text him away point from my Onyx Hunt app. I can just share that waypoint with him. He can click a link and it pulls up on his phone, and then he able to actually have that waypoint now right there in his hands. He can walk right to it. It's a whole lot easier than the original situation I described. So the Onyx Hunt app is great for you as a solo hunter, but it's also terrific if you're there with friends and you want to share spots where you're gonna hunt, or if you want to maybe say, hey, this is where I got last blood, or this is where the deer went down, or this is where I last saw the deer, this is where I think you should go try to hunt, or this is where the big scrape was, whatever it might be. Being able to share those waypoints is a really handy little tool to have. That's on top of all the other things with the Onyx, Like I mentioned, the great map views, the fact that you can measure distances, you can measure areas, you can um do a whole stlet of different things all right, from the convenience of your mobile device. So if you're interested in trying it, if you haven't yet tried, it would encourage you to do. So you can go search for on X on whatever mobile app store you'd like to use, or you can go do on x maps dot com and if you use more code wired, you can get off. That's w I R E D for off. Yeah. Okay, So day one of my vacation was this past Friday, and UM, I went into a pinch point, uh, not not really knowing what to expect because, like I mentioned on earlier podcasts, uh, you know, earlier this month or last late October, I had nothing on trail camera that even excited me. You know, um, there wasn't a ton of deer sign Uh. I checked my trail cameras and just let me break this down for you coon hunters, small deer coyotes, some random guy walking through woods and other hunters. That's what was on my trail cameras. So I didn't really I didn't. I really didn't know what to expect. So on Friday, I just go into a stand that was historically a uh it's a inch point where there's decent trail camera pictures in the past of deer kind of cruise in this area, and I walk in there, I set up uh in this pinch point. I see one dough cruise through pretty quickly. This is uh what November two, And then about twenty minutes later, here comes this three year old tin pointer that I have trail camera pictures throughout the whole summer, and uh he came, oh within fifty yards, i'd say, of me on a different trail. Nothing that I was really interested in at that time. UH got out, went to Saturday morning. I went to a this basically it's a travel corridor between food and bedding. They dropped down off this ridge, come to a creek bottom and then they kind of depending on the wind direction, they go uh to the south on a they go to the south on a south wind. They go to the north ridge on a north ridge on a north wind. And I was hoping to catch them in this It's it's almost like a pinch but it's more of a travel corridor. And there's a big giant scrape that's worked over uh and I have a trail camera over top of it. So I said, I'm gonna hunt that stand in the morning. And then I'm gonna check that trail camera. Right after that hunt and I get in there, it starts to be daylight. Um, I see I hear something kind of running in the distance. UM, like, oh man, it might be on tonight or this morning. And nothing shows up. Nothing shows up, nothing shows up. I go uh. I finally put the horns together. I was like, man, I want to see at least see something. So I rattle and uh. Then it's just it's just like one four corns. And then twenty minutes later it was like a fifty three pointer, you know what I mean, Just like nothing, nothing that really interested me, nothing to get me. I mean, I'm glad I saw dear, I'm glad that rattling work. But I drove around the section. I was seeing dough groups. Still nothing, you know, like there's something about a dog group when it starts, maybe you start to see a single dough or just we're fall only then you then you know Mom is off with somebody, you know what I mean. But I'm still seeing these big dog groups. So Saturday morning, Uh, Saturday morning was really the my And then went around and I checked more trail cameras that I had nothing, And then it started to rain, and so I didn't hunt. I didn't hunt. No, it rained all during the day and then finally it stopped raining long enough for me to this crazy wind. So I went and hunted in a in a standing cornfield. Uh saw a couple of bucks. And by the way, which is hurting the property that I'm on, because that cornfield that I still hunted in was loaded with deer. And come to find out that a grain bend collapsed, and like a grain bend collapsed, and another one in the area went out of business, I guess. And the farmers don't have any place to put these crops. So there is a ton a ton of standing corn in the area that I hunt, and standing crops period beans as well. So to the west of my property is standing beans, and to the east of the property is standing corn, and there's no place for the farmers to put it. They don't have room in their grain bends. So and and the co ops don't have room either. So this is not good for me, right, all of the bad things that you know, as far as hunt the rut is concerned. You don't want standing crops, You don't want guys tune hunting your property. You don't want guys four wheeling through it. You don't want other hunters there, you don't want high you know, kyote numbers. So I was getting a little stressed. Man. I was just like, you know, this sucks so and how many days did you have a lotted Um, I'm not honestly scheduled to go back until the nineteenth of November. Oh that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So so Saturday morning happens, it rains, I can't drive back to the main farm because it's just too muddy. So I still I still hunt Saturday night. And then the rain comes and it rained, and it's all day Sunday. It rained and it rained and it rained and it poured. So um, I had this feeling right because two years ago, after the rain came, the I there's like a break in the weather. The fronts pushed through. And I knew that after and I'm not talking about just like a couple of hours worth the showers. I'm talking about twelve, fourteen, fifteen hours of solid rain. It's gonna wash away these deer bedded down and all they're gonna want to do after that is eat and make fresh sign And I needed I couldn't get to the back of the farm to where I wanted to go. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try to use the standing corn to my advantage because I want to see what's coming in and out of the timber on this. Uh, you know, a part of the property that I are very rarely hunt because, uh, it's just close to the road. Typically when the crops are out it you can see into this. It's it's pretty close to the road and all these all these things just make this area not good when the crops are out. But because they're standing corn, there's this huge buffer. Now but between the road and where um I eventually go in and uh, hang this tree stand. So do you want me to get into the actual the actual hut, Now, yeah, let's dive into it. Okay. So here's how this works. Right, Imagine a imagine a corn like a corn field, and it's just a big square. Now take the and then of that square. It's made up of four similar equal squares, and the top left corner of that square is drainage off this field and it's full of thorns and brush and just nastiness that the deer so thick the deer don't even go in there in bed because they can. It's just so many thorns and whatnot. And half that into September. It's like there's an old road that was there fifty sixty however, many years ago, um that the farmers would use maybe when this was all passed long long time ago. And this too, it's like maybe enough for a four wheel or now. And the the deer like to go through there. They cut the corner and they kind of crossed the drainage because there's that the road is there. It's like, I don't even want to call it a road. It's basically a terrain feature, if this makes sense. On the opposite side of this really nasty thicket that nothing lives in, that connects to the south to a fence line that runs on the west side of this cornfield. And as you know and everybody knows, sunlight on a fence row that's bordering a timber, it's really thick from maybe the field edge too, I don't know, twenty yards into the timber. And what that does is it creates an edge on the inside of the timber. So you have a field edge, and then you have this like it's it's not im assable. There's trails that run through it, but it's really thick. And then outside of that, where the timber starts to open up, there's trails that run along that, and there's there was a rub and an old scrape. Right the scrape was old because it was rain. I don't want to stay old. I want to say it wasn't used. Who knows how fresh the last time it was used, because um, it had rain so much and I'm and I had a southwest wind, so that wind was blowing into the thicket and that terrain feature was just on the outside of that thicket. So my my thought process here was, I'm gonna set up in a tree to where I can look down this ridge that leads up to the cornfield and the draw the lower part. So something comes up over the next draw or or comes up the draw or comes from the next ridge. They're gonna loop or round and they're gonna use this, uh, this terrain feature because it's not gonna they may not want to go into the cornfield yet, and sure enough, man like this is when it gets So I set up and from a strategy standpoint, a lot of people like to hunt scrapes on field edges. I would have never seen this deer if I was hunting a field edge. He didn't. He was not interested in coming out to eat. He wasn't interested in um. He was on a mission. And so I get set up, you know, I tuck. I text our buddy Ben Harshine, and I the sex message says, I have a good feeling about tonight. Sent that at three fourteen or something like that. Sitting down, you know, it's overcast. It's it's like one of those days where you don't know why it's not raining because the clouds above you make it look like it should be raining. So it's dark. I mean, it's just really dark, you know. And and it starts to rain again then, so I'm like, oh, man, I don't want to get wet. So I stand up, I turn around, I faced the tree, and I start to put on my rain jacket. I have one sleeve in my rain jacket, and I hear a twig break behind me, and I'm like, man, there's no squirrels out right now because everything's wet. It's raining, it's raining. I look behind me. He's at twenty yards looking right at my tree. And i instant I look at him, and I instantly know who it is. Let's go back to March. Remember, I had that really good day of shed hunting and I found like nine sheds and forty minutes all in this grass area of this field. The big the biggest one that I found was this buck. And he was last year he was he was an eight, main frame eight with he had really good masks, mainframe eight with a little crab claw out front. And and this year his his left slide with a crab claw blew up um. And the crazy part was I didn't have very many I didn't have hardly any pictures of him. I was always thinking about this buck because the shed sits right next to my computers. It's one that I pick up and hold all the time and you know, fiddle with and um. So I honestly thought that that day, Sunday night, if I'm gonna see this buck, it's gonna be. It's probably gonna be tonight. And I don't know what it was. Mark. Do you ever get a feeling like, man, something's gonna happen tonight, like you don't you know some and sometimes they happen and sometimes they don't. But this particular this particular buck was on my mind, and it's almost like I visualized him into existence. It was it was, it was crazy. It was crazy. So anyway back to the story, right, now we know who this buck is. I identify him easily because now that crab claw is a huge crab claw. He's like this massive, massive side and he's walking. I can hear him walking right towards my tree, and I'm like, oh my god, already, I'm gonna screw up, right, I'm You've got your rain jacket halfway on at this point, still too right right, one arm in my rain jacket, and so I gotta get yeah, right right. So I'm so he's walking right towards me. You know, now he's at fifteen yards slowly I'm taking slowly. I'm taking my rain jacket off, and I flipped the seed of my lone wolf up and it's one of those sticker seats, so I I actually have a shelf, like a very small surface area where I lay in my jacket down and now I'm facing the tree. My bow holders to to my right, and I don't know if this deer is going to go left or right, because when he does go pick in the direction to go, I have to make a move, and he starts to go right. And that's good for me because all I had to do was turned around and in one motion, I clip in and I pulled my bow off the hangar. And when I do that, I looked to my right and he's at four yards I would say four or five yards. I arranged it so it's it was four yards from my stand and and he's and I just see the big side walk right by me, and I'm just like, man, I can't like if I move now, I'm surely gonna get busted. I I probably looking back on it now, I probably could have made more. I could have done jumping jacks in the tree. And he probably went to noticed me. He was on a mission. And so so I see, I see him, he's coming at me. Took my rein jacket off, I clipped in and I draw back and as I draw back, he's behind a branch, and I'm just like, no, son of a gun, what am I gonna do? So I did a squat in the in the tree stand so right, pay it off right right. So I'm I'm squatting down and my peep sites not lining up, so I had to I had to pull my head back, realigned, get my kisser button in, get set up. And there he is. He's he's hard quartering away and and and I'm like, I gotta opening. I settled my pen and I'm not. I'm not carried away, right, I'm not like. I don't feel like I have buck fever at this point. Right, I identified the buck. Right, I had to make sure that everything was ready. I took a breath. I couldn't. I couldn't get set backed up, took another breath, went in, did my you know, I put my kisser button on my lip, I put my string on my nose, you know, check check anchored release, and you hear that. I don't know, like you're punching meat, right, It's just a hard, hard, good sounding connect. He mule kicks and then he takes a hard right turn and he runs two steps and he disappears behind the pine tree. And that was the last time I saw him. He went. I put my binoes up. I couldn't see where he went nothing, And I'm just like, oh no, oh my god, I just shot one of my hitless bucks. Right, And with that mule kick. I was very confident in that shot, right, I was just I was aiming for I was aiming for a oh somewhere right between the the I don't know, like the back rib in the front shoulder, which on a hard quartering shots a very small target, you know what I mean? Yeah? And do you did did you actually like where did you really aim at that? Because I know in the past you and we both have had situations where we you know, it just happened so fast. And did you were able to slow down the moment and be like actively choose exactly where you aim pick that little spot or was it still a little bit of a blurred blackout kind of like has been Ill tell you what. It was clearer than any other time. That's awesome, right, good? So I was I was clear. Now, for those of everybody who you know, follows me on Instagram, that's not how it ended, right. But so I called my buddy Ryan and I'm like, dude, I just hit this book. Blah blah blah blah blah. We start talking over scenarios. Right, he was hard quartering towards um. We started talking about, um, you know, okay, what if the arrow were right? Yeah, hard quartering away right. I'm like, I there's a part of me that there's this gut feeling, the initial feeling that you get when you released the arrow and it connects with the deer. My gut feeling initially was dead deer, he's done, he's done. And and I had a good feeling. I saw the mule kick. Uh. He took off running like you know, like deer do when they get shot by arrows. And I was very confident. Called my wife, called my buddy, Um Ryan. We went over scenarios, um and I waited forty five minutes in the tree. I said to myself, okay, man, go down, check in the side of impact, look for the arrow. And there's you know, and there's that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna you're gonna slow down, You're gonna take all the proper steps. I tear down all my stuff out of the tree. I set it down at the base of the tree. Walk over white hair and I'm like, oh boy, because white hair means belly, means inside leg means a whole bunch of things that are not a good shot, right, and and so there's no blood of impact. I do kind of a ten yard, I said, I'm gonna I'm gonna look for blood for ten more yards because in the past I've had deer double lungs, even where they don't start leaking until they get a bound or two out. So I'm like, Okay, well, I'm gonna look for ten more yards. If I don't find deer, I'm backing out the entire night. I don't care this This buck is big enough to where an old enough and a hitless buck. I'm going to give him as much time to die as he needs um and and I back out. And if you've ever waited twenty four hours for a for a deer, you know that that's when the doubt starts to creep in, Right, That's when all these crazy things start to you know, like all the craziness starts to happen, and your mind starts playing tricks on you, and and you're like, dude, you shot that deer in the neck, that's where there's white. Dude, you shot that deer on the inside leg, you know, or you know all these things. So like I feel like I'm doing a lot of talking here, but this is the story, right, I mean that from from from the I know. I know. So from the moment I saw him to the moment I released an arrow was I'm gonna say, somewhere about twenty to thirty seconds, he pops up. He's walking over a ridge at a good clip. I didn't have to stop him. He stopped. He looked like kind of behind him, but up the ridge a little more and I let him have it. Twenty four hours, right, I'm trying to I'm talking about like getting dogs. And it's funny. Ross actually contacted me because I made a post on Facebook or on Instagram and Ross is like, dude, you can't use a dog because dogs are illegal in Iowa to use to track deer. Ross houstin you here in the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah. So he's telling me because I made a post. I'm like, damn, man, I want to use a dog. And he comes back and he's like, dude, you can't use a dog. It's illegal, and I'm just like, ah, you kidding me. Law, that is a stupid law. But I guess in the past some people have taken advantage of it. And it's like, hey, I'm tracking a deer. Yeah, the deer is still alive. Right, You're tracking it with four other dogs through the woods. You know. Anyway, so in the doubt creeps in. I'm trying to get a rally of people to maybe come help me. And you know, it's the rut. All my buddies are hunting, so they at least want to do the morning hunt and then come out with me. And uh so I wait for a while, um, and then I'm just like, dude. My initial reaction was, was I slammed it? Right? That a dead deer? And so I go back. I go back to the side of the impact. I'm I'm looking up at the tree, looking at the angles. I'm actually at this point, I'm trying to find my arrows. See where my arrows at, See where my arrows that find arrow? No arrow? I'm like, okay, the arrow is still in this deer. At this point, I walk about forty yards from the stand. Oh my god, there's drop of blood. He's bleeding, right, And that right there is the start of it. Right that that for me was like this, a little bit of sigh. And every step exactly every step I took after that, oh blood, blood, blood, A little bit of blood, blood, blood, big blood, big blood. And at this you know when you you get that first big gusher pile, you're like, oh yes, dead dear, confidence, confidence, confidence, You're built. And I'm so this happened, Mark, This is no joke. This happened. This amount of blood for go down, go down down the ridge, down into the valley. You know, this is almost really close to where you found the Mark Kenyan shed. Actually okay, yeah, exactly, yea. So how it all drops down into the spot and and so so it's blood, blood, blood, blood, more blood, blood, lots of blood. And it's one of those blood trails where you're walking through the timber following it. You don't need to bend over, you don't need to get on your hands and knees that much blood. Right, So he goes down, he crosses a little bit of a dry creek. Bed comes back up, blood following it. Blood, and all of a sudden, the blood. I get to a spot where the blood is just it stops, it shut off, and I'm like, this is not good. So I start to do what everybody, you know, what you're supposed to do, Mark, last blood and you start doing your circles, right, you you go out five ft, look, go out six ft looks, you know, ten ft look nothing. Nothing. And then I'm like, okay, let's see how hurt this deer is. So I go up the up the ridge, the nearest ridge, and I find blood. So, now what he's done is he's walked. He's walked away from where he got shot. If he jay hooks back up an opposite ridge, and now he's walking in a hundred and eighty degrees in opposite direction from where where he's at. Right, blood, blood, blood, I find a bed. I'm like, he laid down, he's hurt. Walk up the trail. A little bit. More blood, blood, blood, there's another bed. He's hurt bad, right, he's hurt bad. I'm the next over this next ridge. I'm gonna find him. Blood. Blood. Now the blood starts to slow down a little bit. All right, blood is starting to slow down, And I'm you should see me right now. I'm I'm telling you this story, and I'm pacing in my mom's guest bedroom like reacting all all this. But uh, it starts to go to a drop right and then and then and then I get to a four wheeler trail and I'm like, oh boy, so and so, now this four wheeler trail leads to a road, and if he crosses this road, oh boy, we got a whole another problem. So at this time I'm up top. I call my buddy, another buddy. He's he's actually gonna help me. H. He gets out of the tree, he comes help me look for this deer um. And as she's driving to where I'm at, I find another drop of blood in a in a field. So what he's done is he's now he's got off the floor with her trail. He crossed through this very like seven eight ft thicket that goes to the fence line. He jumps the fence, he walks this field edge down ten yards, jumps back in the timber. So now he's double back. He's double backing again. So this is where my buddy comes in. And now that the blood is getting a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less. Uh, and we're having to slow down the track. Job we find another bed and I'm looking at this and it looks like he only only half of them laid down right, like this is not a full bed, but there's blood all over on in the inside. And now and at this time I'm like, man, this deer is going to bleed to death. Why haven't we found him yet? This is after twenty four hours. Oh no, i'd I'd say about twelve hours, because I shot him at about four and by the time my buddy joined me was ten the next morning. Eighteen hours. Eighteen hours, right, And so we dropped down off this ridge again and we're heading right back to the original blood trail, and sure enough, he crosses the blood trail. So now we don't know if we're following his original track or the second time he's come through the area. So so I had to mark with my arrow where this where this deer crosses crosses the path of the original blood trail, and then we so he goes one direction up this one drainage. I dropped down to this uh other little dry creek bed and I see a track and I'm like, oh, that's him. That's gotta be at a big footprint. I'm walking this strike creek bed. I'm following these big set of tracks. I look up on the side of the creek bed and there's more blood. He popped up out of this creek bed and he's now back on dry land or he's back on land and as he did that, he started to bleed again. Blood blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood stop. Blood starts going uphill. And I'm not talking a little bit a little bit of incline. I'm talking like one of those big inclines, Like, Okay, if this deer went up this, he's not hurt as bad as I thought he was. Right, this is an insane track job. Yes, this, it's this. The track job is the story of this book. It's not the it's not the thirty seconds I saw him, It's not the shed shed Taylor. The story of this book happens after I shoot him, and and this is how much I respect these animals. After this, his will to live was so strong that he was doing everything he possibly could to avoid being detected. And and kind of fast forwarding a little bit, he goes up, he comes straight back down, and as he's coming down, he goes to a creek bed. We lose blood. And this is like the biggest time frame from when we lost blood to when we found blood. It was about fifteen minutes. And I started griding ridge at this one ridge, going up to a betting area, and and now and now I'm just like, oh man, what did he do. He went all the way up this ridge and just to go right back down the steep side again, back to a drainage. It's almost like he knew he was being going to be tracked, and he knew that that someone was going to try to follow him, and he needed to make that track job the most difficult. It's almost like he knew what he was doing, you know what I mean. Then I find a big chunk of fat. So I'm like, okay, you don't get that. You don't get that from just a rear end shot. Let's say, if you you shot him in the hind quarter right, there's guts in play here. So this deer, I know he's gonna die. It's just a matter of finding game. So I'm looking for this blood. I'm looking for this blood, and all of a sudden, I hear my buddy, and I don't know if you guys have ever had this happen where you're looking for a deer and you don't find blood. You can't find blood, but you hear a buddy go blood, and I oh, dude. It's like when Mario eats a mushroom and he's like whoooooooo and he goes he's faster now, you know, like he can go, He's ready to go, and I was just like I needed that energy. Followed blood sixty more yards and it started to rain, and my heart just was like we didn't find any more blood. So I'm like, all right, buddy, I don't even know what to do. Look like I wanted to help my buddy out. He gave up his afternoon hunt for me. I took him to a local diner. We ate lunch, and uh, we parted our ways. I came back out to the farm and I started gritting ridges in the pouring rain. It's just pouring, and I'm I'm going through the thickest, nastiest stuff I could find, and I'm just like I have to, Like I was on a mission, like I had blinders on. All I wanted to do was find this deer. And then and then it started getting dark, and every second more doubt creeped in, and more doubt creeped in, and more doubt creeped in, and I was getting frustrated. I was angry at myself. I was I don't know, there's all these emotions that were going through I just shot the one of the biggest bucks I've ever drew back on. Right, this is probably the third biggest deer I've ever drew back on. And he's a five year old. I have history with him, all these things, and now the doubts creeping in, Like, dud, you just wounded him. He's gonna get eaten alive by coyotes. It's like you have this little voice in your head calling you a dipshit, you know what I mean. So I go home and have a couple of glasses of whiskey, you know what I mean, like just just to calm down. And I didn't sleep that, you know, very good that night again. And and so my stepdad gets a text message from one of his buddies who's a follower of the Nine Fingers, and he's like, hey, man, if Dan needs help, I'll help him out. And uh, I'm like, dude, I'll take anybody I can get. I'll take a blind guy right now. I don't care. So he shows up at seven thirty in the morning. I'm like, hey man, I really appreciate this. Let's go. I'll kind of I'm this. I got three more ridges that I need to grid. And if he makes it past this, this fourth ridge he's gonna live. Like that was my goal, Like I had this. I think it was two acres that I wanted us to grid and if I didn't, like, I wanted to search this area after blood and I was shed hunting. I was basically shed hunting at this point, right, And I said, I got these two more ridges or three more ridges, I want to go check and then after that if we don't find him nothing. So we start on Ridge one and I'm working down looking through all this these tree tops from when the loggers came through. Um, he's up top looking in some thick betting area. I go down. I pop over top of the ridge and I'm working my way back up towards him and I say and he signed, He's like no, I said, yeah, I mean either. I look at him, and I said, all right, how about I key down to where we lost last blood and I will um, and what I'm gonna do is that way you'll be able to see the lay of the land better. Uh, you'll get an idea of what this deer already did. And I'll walk you through. And he's like, yeah, it's a good idea. We started walking down this ridge, I thought my eyes were screwing with me, Dude, This deer is laying where I was standing the previous day where we lost blood and it started to rain. He was laying dead, literally where I was standing. Literally, Mark. This deer didn't die on that next day. He died after I left the timber the the that day. So he he he was still alive at some point for thirty hours or so after I shot him, and and he and he was do I know what this deer was doing? Man, He was in a position to where he was wounded bad. He knew he needed to find a good wind, good betting. And he watched me come off that ridge on that blood sherald the next morning. I bet he was. He was. He was watching us from some position. He was watching us track his track him. And as we left that final day that on of all days, my birthday, I didn't find him. He came back into the area. He didn't want to cross the road. He probably didn't know that area. He didn't want to go to the south. He probably he felt comfortable in this area, so he was. He was okay with making loops because he was able to see see us here, us smell us coming through the timber and he was always one ridge ahead of us, and I I lost my mind, dude, I just got emotional, right, I was like, are you kidding me? This is crazy. I can't believe like I was. I was like acting like a little kid, like I don't know I was. It's the greatest feeling in the world, dude. I've lost two deer in my in my day that we're giants, right, shipwreck and then another booner that didn't pan out, And luckily those two deer were alive. And the whole time I'm thinking about this, this is one of those moments where you're happy you found him, but at the same time, you know, dude, you know this dear suffered. This wasn't a clean kill. This wasn't the kind of kill that we hope for. This is one of those This is one of those kills that's that nobody talks about. This is the this is a kind of kill that the deer probably could barely lay down because the arrow was still in him. You know, the the violence of hunting come it kind of came out, you know what I mean. Yeah, the unfortunate, the very unfortunate occasional. Yeah, the reality was that this dear did not go out easy, and that made me enjoy this moment in a different way because although I am glad that I found this dear and I was able to recover him, and he's gonna go on my wall and I'm gonna be able to share this story with my children and all the people who asked me, at the same time, I didn't accomplish a goal, and that's to make a quick, clean kill on an animal. And in the moment, you know, you go back and I have this moment where I'm like, should I pull the trigger? And the killer and me as we kill animals, right, the predator in me said do it? And I did it, and I killed the animal. I got him. But it's not the way I wanted it to be. So as equally as happy, I don't even know how to say this. I am, I am. I'm equally happy on two sides. One I'm equal I'm happy that I found the deer. I'm equally unhappy that how he died, and I'm unhappy that I'm not going to be able to use the meat, and I'm unhappy that he suffered and that it took so long. But this is a reality. This is the reality of hunting that sometimes they're not all double lung shots. Man, they don't all die within range. And it sucked to know that. Um, and it's bittersweet. Yeah, don't the there is a certain contingency of the hunting world who to this would say. And then they've said that. I had someone send me a message saying this to me because I had a somewhat similar situation to you with my Nebraska buck. I had to wait till the next day to find him because the shot was at quarter and shot was a little bit back. UM said that you shouldn't bow hunt if this, If if you hit a buck like that, you should you should quit. Bow Hunting is not efficient. It's not um as effective as as a as a rifle or something like that. And so for that reason, you should not bow hunt. How do you or I how how do we respond to something like that? How do you respond to something like that? I mean, what's the if you told me Dan you couldn't bow hunt anymore, you might as well take my arms. Yeah, Oh, I just I don't know, man, that's ah, someone told me. I don't know why I'm getting emotional, man, it's part of me. Uh, it's it's my definition. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Man this, I I understand what you're feeling. And I think and I think, if I imagine similar to kind of the thoughts and feelings I had after Nebraska Hunt. It's one of those things that what you went through, what happened, right, there's nothing you can do now to change what happened, right, what happened happened. But what you can do is is while we do understand, and I said this just last week, that is a bow hunter, You're never going to be perfect no matter what you do. There's there's so many things that happen that are outside of your control. But you can always strive to be more perfect. Right, So I imagine that you, just like I, trying to find ways how can I keep it getting better? How can I try to minimize the potential for errors again in the future. What I mean, right, that's all we can do as a bow owner is constantly striving to to to improve, to get better, to become more effective. Um. But and here's what I'll here's what I'll say. I've never loved nature more, I've never this is this is the debate internally that, dude. I love nature, I love animals, that's it's it goes hand in hand. But as a bow hunter, I honor this animal by killing it. And that's hard for some people to digest. That ultimate paradox exactly, and knowing that this dear suffered it broke my heart. Man. But at the same time, I'm okay, I'm I'm tough enough and okay with that because I accepted the reality of bow hunting that it is not sometimes like you said, perfect yeah, man, that's um, it's yeah, it's it's you know, when I got that comment, that message to me, it really pissed me off. Um, But at the same time, you know, it's it is a huge responsibility that we're taking upon ourselves when we say that we're gonna go out there and we're gonna chase an animal using this tool that inherently is difficult, inherently is a challenge, and that's part of why we love it, right. That's why bow hunting is so That's why it's so kind of all encompassing because it requires so much of you. It requires such a level of competency and tension to detail and um, it's not something you just pick up and take off and go do like you have to put your heart and soul into it. Um yea. But what And that's why I'm so tore up about it is because I did put my heart and soul into it. I did do all the work to make it as clean and as possible. But the outcome just happens. Dude, Tom Brady loses football games sometimes, right the no matter how much practice stuff, ship goes wrong. And this is where the and and this happened to me, And dude, I hope no one ever feels the way that you know. I hope every shots you know, a double long heart shot. I wish, but it doesn't happen. And you take it, you move on, you learn from it, you try to take away something from it. And I'll tell you what I learned. I learned so much from this, Like may be what I should have done different, maybe what I could do better next time, but also what deer do when they're hit bad? Right where I need to look, what what they're what they're thinking when they're when they're wounded like this, So we're we're what was the shot? Describe where where it came out? And this is this is probably gonna be like dude, but let me tell i'll. First off, I want to tell you this. I was shooting my elk arrow, right heavy arrow, and uh. Not only did it have a heavy arrow, but it was a fixed blade. I do not feel that I would have found this deer if I had a mechanical broadhead. Okay, However, fixed blade, you know, not a lot of momentum loss on impact. I went through the hind quarter, I went into his into his guts, up through like his stomach, and I hit his liver and the arrow exited out of his brisket. So the entire wound channel was the length of the arrow when I when I found him, I found the Uh. I found the back half of the arrow in the side of him. So on this hard quartering shot right, it was on this hard on the hard quartering shot, even a little miss to the right was a was a big miss, you know what I mean. However, my equipment saved me. Right. My equipment went from him going off and dying in me never recovering to him, to causing the right amount of damage too. Luckily I was able to find him. Okay, So in retrospect, now looking back on it. Do you think where do you think the error was? Was the error in the fact that you chose to take that shot? Did you just maybe you shouldn't have or was the error in the execution of the shot? Or was there no error and just bad luck? That's something happened. Have you, like, have you tried it in any way put a finger on what maybe was what happened? Or is it just it's it's it's a combination of all those things. Right. I probably should have turned her. I should have taken more time to look at his body language. Maybe he wasn't going to bust me. Maybe I had time to turn around and shoot him out four yards broadside. Maybe I should have let him walk by, and you know, hey, he's he's he'd maybe respond really good to a grunt. He was up winged to me when I shot him, So let him walk hit him with a grunt. He comes back right. Maybe I could have done that. But if Sinan's man, you, I can't do that. I mean, this is what happened. Next time, I might be a little more patient. Maybe I'll I don't know, And I guess that's that's that's the more importantly what I what I'm trying to get I guess is what's what's the takeaway from this for you? I suppose Yeah, I mean I don't know because I feel this is gonna sound bad, but I feel like I would take that shot again. Um. I was calm, I was collective. I I missed the target, right. Um. What is the goal when you go out into the timber to hunt a deer? Right to kill it? I killed it, not the way I wanted, but I killed it. Um. And if you kind of you go all the way down to the common denominator of what I mean, it's not what hunting is, but hunting is taking the life of an animal. I recovered him. I just didn't do it in time to save the meat. And that's that. That to me is the biggest disappointment. Yeah. Yeah, man, Well, I mean you you know, I mean you certainly have felt the fields you've you uh you. I'm sure I have learned something from this, and it's gonna change you and it's gonna make you a better hunter in the future. And um, at the same time, while like you've you've you've identified some things that went wrong, some things that lad to less than perfect outcomes. Um, what I think is really really admirable. And I think that anyone listening to this or who followed along with a story from afar Um, I think you set a tremendous example of just the that the commitment you had to finding this animal, a lot of people would have given up a lot sooner. And I think is it's it's so commendable. It's so important that people do this, because this is the kind of deer that a lot of folks would be like. Mah. You know, even after a couple of times when you mentioned you lost blood for fifteen minutes, some people bowl after that, let alone after it starts to rain, you lose blood. I know people that would quit after that after walking around all day. But you kept going at it, and two days later you found that buck that would have gone completely to waste. Um would never have known what would happened in that case, but at least you were able to recover them because you kept after it. And you can you can take something and learn from from this experience. And I think that's um, that's a that's a great thing. And I think a great example. You sat there, damn so and something thing about it is yeah, and The thing about it is I would have done the same thing for a dough. Right. You have to the animal that you're taking a life and they deserve everything, So I don't know, they're the one who's there. The animal is the one who pays the ultimate sacrifice. Yeah, um, this is this is a good This is a this is a really great even though even though there's a lot of unfortunate elements to what happened, which you've already you know, you've talked about. Um, it is a powerful learning experience. I think that everyone listening can kind of take from this that I think is a helpful thing to people because I know many times in the past when you or I have had some stories that didn't go quite as perfect. Sometimes those are the most helpful for other people because they need to know that, yeah, you know, sometimes these things do happen, and it's it's it's it's it's not it's not okay, and that you we don't want to happen. You don't want to happen again. But sometimes bad things happen despite all the work and effort and time, and you need to there's something to be said about understanding that, yes, these things happen. We can move on from it, we can get better from it. And I think, um, you honestly sharing this story is is is a great thing for people. So I appreciate that Dan um Ross's been really quiet over there. What do you have any questions or thoughts on all this with Dan, because I know you've kind of had some kind of similar experiences over your years too, Right. Oh yeah, I've had a lot of, I mean situations that kind of played out the same way. But I think the only way, really, the only way you get better at it is just by I mean, you can practice all you want and trying to make it like automatic, but you just you gotta shoot deer to get better at it, you know what I mean. And and so like one of the things I was thinking about when Dan was talking is is like if anybody hasn't shot a lot of deer, and then they're kind of like they're kind of like our buddy Peters, kind of having that trouble where they're a little nervous to shoot deer. Um, shooting deer is just you're gonna get better if you shoot more deer. So I'd like I'd focused on shooting a lot of doughs, um, eating a lot of doughs and getting better at that so that you know, when a big buckets in front of you, you can you can make a count. I know I've had a a couple of mix ups and a couple of bad shots, and um, I've lost a couple of deer um, sometimes just because I got probably just got a little buck fever um. Another time maybe miss judge yard. But it's really hard to mimic those situations like on a range and and just shooting that targets. So just getting yourself in those situations and and shooting deer will make you a better hunter. So don't don't beat yourself up too bad over you know bad shots are losing deer because it's gonna happen to everybody, and it's gonna make it better over the long run. But um, I know it's made me a better hunter. I've become more conscious of all my weaknesses and and when I have to work on. But I know I did struggle with that in the past. I know what I what's that go ahead of us? I was just gonna say, like, I do a good job getting myself in front of deer, but the moment of truth has always been a little bit of a struggle for me. But just yeah, all those mess ups just they make it better over over, over the long run. You can't beat yourself up over it. You're going to be a better hunter because of all the situations. Yeah, and you know, you can keep in perspective and you can. You know, you want to feel bad for the deer and you want to respect the deer and everything, but it is and it's part of it, and ultimately we're out there until deer or so there's some bad things that can happen. But but um, you don't beat yourself off too bad, you know, Yeah, yeah, you do. You do everything you can to minimize the chances of those things. You work as harder as it possibly can, and then sometimes you accept the realities that aren't always perfect and you grow from it. Um, but you make it really good. It's a it's a horrible thing. I've lost a lot of sleep over some some of those years. It's terrible feeling, and you feel horrible before the deer and you feel just terrible about the situation and about the YouTube from it. Yeah, right, yeah, pretty much. But what you're to find on the map. Um, I'm sorry, Ross, that too soon to start throwing the under the bus of that one. Yeah, right, man, Um, he would see he was he was thirty two yards and I saw he was twenty five. That was the whole problem with that, And that could beat myself up for so long. But you know, like just sway when it way goes, and yeah, next time, I'm going to make sure that I don't I don't make that mistake. And that's the thing I'm sure that you know. Next time you're in a a situation like that, Ross, you you're better had better stud to handle. And Dan, next time you're in a situation like this where it's a fast moment, you gotta like heavily quartering away, Dear, you'll have you'll better know how to handle that situation. Um. Same thing like for me when I've got a buck coming in right towards me and then he opens up a little bit. I think my issue with that, Nebraska, Dear, is very similar to your situation, except for yours was it was quickly you thought you're gonna lose your shot opportunity because he's quartering away and mine was quartering too sharply, and I was worried I was gonna lose my shot opportunity, so I probably should have waited one more beat and I didn't. And um, you know, these are these are learning experiences. So all the things I've some things that I've learned to um over time, as you know, like you said to, you evolved as a hunter. Like initially start off, you just feel like you gotta shoot deer. You gotta shoot gear and deers there, you gotta shoot it. And then eventually it's evolved if you start shooting dear and you don't really have to shoot gear anymore, you know. And so when you get in those situations where you gotta make quick shot or you gotta make tough shot, you can just you can just wait for something better, you know. But when you're younger, you seem to like go through that phase where you want to just shoot, shoot, shoot and take the first shot, take quick shot. You don't really think it through. Um, But I think that's just part of all part of growing. We all get there at different different points and their hunting careers. But but I think eventually you get to a point where you know, you just you don't even have to take those shots. If they're not They're not going to be right. And that takes that takes a lot of a lot of self control too, to know when when you can't take those shots, because to your point, there's a lot of pressure to when you when you're when it's in the window, when it's in range, there's a lot of pressure on you with all the time and energy that's gone into trying to get to this one moment. I certainly have found myself in that situation where I look back on something, I'm like, man, did I Maybe I shouldn't have even taken the shot, But in that moment, it's I gotta get the shot. Um. That takes a lot of probably maturity and experience and some hard lessons learned along the way probably to to you know, for each of us at different points in our lives, to get to that point where there is a deer in range and you just know that it's not it's not the right opportunity. That that's not easy. It's easier said than done. Um, Dan, I know you probably have to leave here pretty soon, right, um, real fast? Do you have a second to to share it? One last thing I wanted to know is just we focus a lot on what happened after the shot, But is there anything about your setup or anything that you think led to you actually getting that opportunity. Why do you think you got the shot at this buck? Um I got I got the shot at this book. I'm this is gonna sound crazy. I'm almost sure he walked through my windstream, my my downwind cent stream to get to me. Um. So that terrain feature that I've mentioned earlier, my wind was just cutting that right and he came from that direction. I think that he I think the wind shifted. I think he walked through it um at some point, which it shouldn't have It probably shouldn't have played out like that. You know, there's a chance he could have busted me. But what I'm getting at is that's how aggressive I was with the wind that night. Was Hey man, there's a chance if this isn't gonna work, this deer comes in a little too far to one direction, he could he could bust me. And that's how aggressive I played the wind. That's how aggressive I play my stand location set up right, I mean, my goal is your goal is to always make the deer feel like they are confident in their their path and you're there to not you're you're there to just you know, you're you're there to surprise him. And that was the only deer I saw. He was the only deer I saw that night here. And what was he doing? Was he just cruising this this kind of ridge system deal, do you think? Yeah, yep, I think he came out of his bed on the next ridge over um at the end of it, I think he walked down that first ridge, dropped down into that terrain feature and it was just gonna send check that the ridge that um I was on, and then dropped down into another one and crossed the road and go into a cornfield. So he wasn't he wasn't there to eat, he wasn't there to make signed. He was there to straight up you know, he was looking for those interesting Well that's um the heck of a buck man. That's one of your biggest bucks or your biggest buck ever. Right, Yeah, you know, if I was gonna, if I was to ever score him, I'm sure the bigger than anything I've ever ever had. So as a beautiful deer, it's a well deserved deer. And um man, I'm happy for you, glad that you ended up find him. Yeah, I appreciate it. Man. Now you got some work to do. I do. I do have some work to do, um, And I want to I want to tell you the story of of how close I've been getting to it, but you you probably don't have time to hear it. Um. Do you need to bounced now? I do, man, Unfortunately, I apologize. That's all right, me and Russ will continue the conversation. All right, Well, Congraturross and Mark. Good luck Man. I no, no one's rooting harder for you. Man. I appreciate it, buddy. We'll talk soon, all right. Before we move on to stories from Ross, let's take a quick second to thank our partners at White Tailed Properties and Spencer will take it from here. This week with White Tail Properties, we were drawed by Ben harshein adland specialist out of Iowa, and Ben is going to be talking to us about using aerial maps for hunting the rut. Yeah. So the maps play a vital tool for rut strategy. I really want to find a map that's gonna show me elevation and topography and uh, that's important because I want to be able to hunt rolling topography during the rut. I also want to be able to use it to access in and out during you know, whether it's morning, uh, late morning, early after or noon going in to cover. I'm hunting cover during the route. I'm not hunting food sources, so I want to find some topography. I also want to try to find the most secluded parts of the farm. What are the toughest places to get to just from walking? What seemed like they're the safest from human intrusion. I'm trying to find little ditches and draws that don't stick out blatantly, aren't is easy to get to, like maybe that big hardwood ridge that runs through. Try to find those small nooks and crannies, deeper holes, and then uh one thing that the map won't necessarily tell you what you can do. How Once you confirm some of those places, try to find the thickest stuff and then just uh uh do a speed scout. Try to find those where those trails are coming together in that thick cover, Get in the tree and just hold on tight. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Ben currently has listed for sale, visit white tail properties dot com. Backslash Hardshine that's h A R s h y n E. So so ross um, let's continue this and let's hear your story because you, um, you kill a hell of buck too. I'm interested to hear. I haven't really gotten the details of how all came together yet, So walk us through, kind of similar to how what Dan did you know? Walk us through your rut hunting plans and then how this hunt came together. And I know that when I say rutting plans and hunts, it's all very limited, very small amount of time here. Maybe explain why that is too. Your whole season has been unique? What what do you What do you want me to say? First? I just said, you know, describe the whole your whole plan, because you've been very very conservative. Yeah, I just um, the beginning of the year, I didn't have like too many books. Like early in the season, I need to know. I need to know there's a buck there. I need to be confident, like when I get in the tree, I need to know. I need to be confident that I'm gonna kill something, you know, Like I'm just not I'm not excited about sitting in a tree and not knowing and I could get a shot off anymore. I guess I'm just I'm just okay, waiting for the right time now. I don't know, it's just kind of gotten to that point. So this early in the season, I just didn't have any big bucks located. I didn't have anything else too excited about, So I just kind of put hunting on for a while until I knew a couple of the areas that it was hunting, we're going to get a little bit better. So I didn't really get out until the first time I got out was um, I think like the middle of October and all you know around that fifteen sixteen seventeen somewhere in there. Um. But that hunt lasted maybe like ten minutes, I think. So it was in I'll tell you so it was in the There's this area farm that like a there's this big, huge community scrape every year in middle of October. I think I've told you this before. There's mature bucks that will hit that during daylight starting middle of October, and you might get you should will generally get like every single mature buck on that scrape at least once. So middle of October they start hitting it. Um, and that's scrape. That's down in it's down this valley, and then there's there's a bunch of like ridges and points that come down to that scrape. So you couldn't probably call it like a it's probably like a thermal hub kind of area. I feel so um especially in the evening, like all those thermals everything is dropping down and everything's just dumping right into that area where that scrape is so um so like so that the first day it was a kind of like I know exactly what my problem is. And I've always tried to hunt that scrape specifically and have screwed myself so many times because you just you just can't hunt it. And I thought, I tried to think of so many different ways to be able to hunt the wind and and to be able to get in there and not have gears and all you or not have your wind swirl and all this, and I've got busted so many times. And uh, and this year was the last time I was gonna even I'm not gonna mess around going down that scrape. I think what I need to do, and they need to focus on just obviously dear coming to and coming to a scrape and and leaving the scrape versus hunting that script specifically, because that first time I went down there in the morning and the wind was kind of sketchy. It was kind of that light, variable wind, and then I think I have a stand up down there. I decided not to sitting that stand because I thought I would get busted. Instead, I just said to put a gilly suit on and go suck up in some rocks. And I don't know, it was probably it was probably the first fifteen minutes of light. And the doe came walking down and I could like that light breeze in my face, you know, and I thought everything was fine. But she's sitting there like a hundred yards away from me what I thought was up wind, and she's just snorting and starting and starting. So I just pretty much I just pretty much got out of there as fast I could. It wasn't even like sun didn't even come up yet. I just like packed up and I just pretty much ran out of there. But so that's that's what that's where I screwed up. And I think I'm never gonna do that. I'm not gonna hunt that anymore. I'm just I'm done with that. I've tried so much and uh, so many times. So then the next time I hunted was that next week, and um, I went to a different farm and they just picked a corn. There's a bunch of waste and it's next to a pretty good piece of property where there's some really nice bucks in there. So I thought, I'll go in there and I'll check the finger where they like to come out, and I'll look for some big tracks and she will kind of sign I can find. Um, I'll just do like a hanging hunt. So we're getting a lot of those really light winds, which is weird fall, just lots of light rayable winds, and I just wasn't feeling good about the wind there. I thought it would just kind of I didn't think it would be my favorite. It was the right direction, but the way the current probably would have been thermals and all that stuff I think would have just dumped right down into where you were going or coming from. So built on that and then I was wanted to hunt that scrape again, um, given the time of here, because this is the twenty seven now, and I knew, okay, I'm not going down by the scrape. So instead I got up on one of the ridges. I don't know. It's probably about other than fifty yards from the scrape, but it overlooks that valley. So in this position at least I can have a wind a little bit more consistent, but I can actually see what's going on down there. I can observe and and then it's also on the inside corner where I can catch some some movements. So there's still bedding down the point down all those little ridge points on the bluffs overlooking the creek, all kind of within a few hundred yards of this strap. Um. So I'm sitting there off this one corner, and right away I had like a dink come through, and and then maybe a couple of dolls, and then all of a sudden, a nice, nice eight pointer comes comes up that valley and he's just like bird dog and he's got his nose to the ground and pretty nice buck, but not one I wanted to shoot, probably like a three year old, um nice buck. And then he kind of went off, and I thought, oh, maybe it'll be a pretty decent nights. He kind of came from the stripes. I'm assuming he hit it, and then um, then later on he kind of came back through and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. He's really working. And then as light faded, um has lfe started fade, you could hear that like unmistakable, like walking over mature buck, you know when you see you here, like can you hear like a doll walk through the woods and you can hear just like that crunch, crunch, crunch. But when I Buck walks and he's walking with purpose, it's just like, I mistake cool, you know what that you know what I'm buck where? Yeah, I mean it's almost it's almost like it's almost like it's making the ground shake, you know, like he takes the ground shaking, and it feels like that, and it's the way a way, you know, you just know he's just walking with purpose. And he's coming he's coming down, and he's coming down to the valley and and I'm like, I just said to myself, man, that's a good one. I just knew that that's gotta be a big one. And all of a sudden pops out and and I see him and I'm looking at him and trying to of course, I forgot my binoculars, which kind of hate that with a heaven, so I couldn't tell what the heck he was, because it's kind of like that sunsetting kind of getting a little less light. The tree is hard to tell, you know, it's so hard to judge raxis when you get to that point. So I'm looking a him and I can see it right away. I can see his boys. It's like, oh, man, this bucket is this buck is huge. But then as I got a glimpse of his rack, I'm like, I don't know, he kind of looked similar to that other book, and I'm like, man, he's big. So I'm just staring at him and he's down there and just I don't know what he's doing down there, and I'm just like, maybe I should just grunt him and see what see if I can get a better look at him. So I grunted him two times, and that thing just he just turned and walked right up the ridge right to the tree. I mean, like, how often does that happen with the mature book? And it was ridiculous, And he just walks straight up and he's coming up towards me, and I'm looking at it. I'm looking at I'm trying to like go through all these bucks that they have gotten pictures of and trying to figure out who it is and all this stuff, and he's coming up and I'm like, no, it's not that one. No, it's not this one. And I'm like, nah, I'm not going to shoot him. So I'm sitting there and just sitting the stand and even I wasn't even like ready to shoot a gear right and uh, because they already rode him off. I'm like, I'm not gonna shoot And the next thing you know, that buck is standing like six yards in front of me broadside and I'm looking and I'm like, oh my god, that thing is huge and his body not his rack as much, you know, I'm like, oh my god, that he's huge. I wish I wish I could like to hear your inner voice through this whole thing as you were sitting there thinking to this, because I can just imagine like the the neurotic Ross hawsman in the back of here mind going crazy at this moment. Dude. It was, it was. It was crazy. Just caught me up hard and I was like, no, im I can shoot him. And he's there and like I'm gonna shoot him. And there's so many things that went through my like my brain processed it so fast. It was like it was like next thing, you know, I just let an aeroflies and I shot, you know, like, but what happened is he he uh, he's staying there. I could just see that big like square. No, it was a big Roman nose and I mean just huge head on him, a big body. And then at that point, like I didn't even think about rack or anything like that, because my goal for the year was just like I want to shoot a once some short year, or I want to shoot like a like I want to shoot like one fifty year bigger or like a big mature buck. You know, I really want Actually this year, I really wanted to hold out for something big and just try to eat my take for once this because he's so colossal. What's that I said, You're not good at that? I know him that this thing was huge. I feel like I feel like every single year you always say, all right, I want to hold out for a really big one, and then it gets to be like November one or second or somewhere there, and you start stressing out because you haven't killed something yet, and then like the first decent buffts body shoot that is That is how that is how I've progressed, but now I'm actually getting their market. I'm getting there. I'm getting to the point where I can eat take this this time. You don't even wait till November though. No, I know, I'm really kicking myself now that that I'm done. But but he he just stood he stood there, and I didn't know my I was sitting. He's sitting right in front of me, like you seeing the R in front of me, broadside him, I think, just facing him, you know. So it's like the most awkward position to try to draw and shoot right there. So I waited for him. He took a couple of steps and then I just kind of tried to do that little bit of slight turn when I was sitting to get in position to draw, and he just got a little spooky because so calm, like you could um, you could hear anything, and it was just so calm, and he just did that like where he gets alarmed and they spin and they take off the run. So next thing, you know, I'm drawing as he's doing that, and I just mouthed grunted at him. And the second craziest thing this buck did was he not only did he come straight to the tree from a grunt call, but he stopped when I tried to put my mouth grunted at him when he was taking off running, he stopped, and then that's when I shot him. So so then I hit him right away. The shadow was like, it was like good, good hit, And you're watching him and he's taken off and you just wait for him tip over. He got down to the bottom and he just stopped and then he walked, and then then I couldn't see him anymore, and I didn't hear crash or anything, So I was like, what the heck with Once the deal, I thought I hit him good. And then then like Dan was talking and he started thinking about all doubting yourself and think about all the other things that could have happened, and I was like, well, maybe I hit him in the liver and I hit him back a little too far. Um, So I'm just like, you know what, I'm just gonna let him go and I'm just gonna come in the morning and find them. And so I long story short, I had a sleepless night. I think I slept like forty five minutes. And then you're off checking your phone. It's like eleven o'clock being it, and then you're you know, you're sleeping on the thirty minutes to check your phone at one o'clock and uh, the next thing you know, I'm up at like three in the morning drinking coffee waiting for white and uh. And so I buzz out there in the morning and I get there right at first light, and I went to climb up the stand to get kind of like an idea, okay, where I hit him and then where he ran two against. I could get picked out some spots a where last saw And as I was climbing, it's climbing the tree, I could see him laying down there. So he just he uh, he tipped over right away down there. I just kind of got a little apprehensive when I saw him stop and walk a little bit. But it turns out I did double along on. There was no big deal. Um, and he's laying down there, and he's just my biggest, saddest buckets I've ever shot by a by a long by a long shot. How old do you think. I don't know for sure. He's one of those bucks where I had pictures of him over the years, you know, but I just never really paid too much attention to him, and he never really had a gigantic rack and it stayed about the same size. So then, um, I had pictures of him. I just got rid of the pictures. I never saved him. And then he just showed up within that last week. And then it wasn't until after I walked up, I got up to him that I recognized him. And he probably stayed about the same like probably stayed about like that same like hundred thirty frame size the last several years. So if I had to guess, I would say he's I would guess him at like six or more. But I'm not sure that's pretty. I was saying about getting the teeth, Yeah, I know it was. That's why I shot him. So but man, it's a bummer. I h I really want to be out sit in the stands. I'm gonna have to still some Doe TEGs and enjoy watching some of the books from from the stand. Yeah, so what, um, what did you end up? What did you Wayne? I don't know him. I don't know Mark because I never so stupid, I never weighed him. You know, you're getting getting in that where you just like got him and you clean them off and then you're cutting them up and then next thing you know, he didn't weigh him, but I have no idea. I just shut bocks it like that two palm mark quite a bit. But then but this one like was significantly larger than one of my buddies. He he cuts up at the deer or has got a tremendous amount of deer, and he thought he would probably trust maybe like too forty just by a picture. So I don't know if that if that is what he was or whatnot, or if he was more or less or whatnot. But he he was huge, So yeah, that's cool, just a cool mature buck. Yeah, I would I would definitely agree with that. And what do you think when you're looking back on that, you know, why why did that work out the way it worked out? Was there something about like why was the location you were in or any other decision you made the right one? You know it? Historically I just knew what the bucks did in that area just from what I've learned observed in the past. Um, but I think the biggest takeaway from me is just to not just to avoid hunting that bottom, like just because that's strange there, and just because that's where the bucks hit it. That's not the best spot, you know, and the wind and stuff like that down there. I gotta just get better at picking the spot based on um, you know, hunting the wind, a little bit better with that with those kinds of areas, because one of those things where you just like, you see the bucks there all the time, get pictures of the bucks there all the time. You know they're there, So that's where you want to hunt. But it's not the smartest thing in the right If you can't knowing that you're there, there's no point. Yeah, And I could end. For the last several years, I've been trying and trying and trying to figure out and like testing wind and throw a milk lead and you know, trying different spots and I can't. I can't make it happen. But that's the reason why they love it down there, you know. So so I think, um kind of reassessing, like hunting those areas where they come and go to that straight is what I'm gonna have to do more so get away from it a little bit. But it's a great spot. Now you're white. You don't have an archery tag now because it's fail but your wife can still hunt. Do you have does she have a game plan for how she's gonna try to kill a running buck? Anything that you guys have have up your sleeves for the next few days or week. Yeah, but she's playing on going out in the morning as long as my son's sleeps through the night. I think she'll be. I think she'll be going out in the morning. And not really too much of a game plan. Um, just your typical like rut hunts, you know, like do betting areas and and just those pinch points to and from them pretty much. Um, not nothing too crazy that way, not no rocket science with it, pretty much just sitting sitting spots where those frequent and where her bucks come to and from them. So, now, are you gonna be upset if she kills Tran one of the bucks that you No, No, not at all. Tran. Tran was kind of Jason tran Is. He's pretty much similar to uh to uh the buck I shot. You know, he's just got that goofy rack and he's ancient too, man that he's he's kind of like one of those bucks where he's just going downhill, you know, that's what he looks like and handlers are all funky this year and stuff. But I'd be super excited if she if she got a shot at him. He's just a huge mature book and and uh probably a good one too. I mean, if you want to talk about like getting rid of like some of those I don't know what guys talk about those bucks that are kind of like bullies and stuff like that, and he's kind of like that because I mean, his muzzles just all scarred up and he gets busted up and not one of the wanted on if you want want some of those bigger act ones. I guess right that the young oncomers get all scared off. I am probably, yeah, exactly, probably like what the Holy Field does on your on your place or what he used to do. Yeah, true, I don't I don't think that's happened anymore. But that's all right, it's all right. We're ready for closure. By yeah, I think I think there needs to be closure. But um, but I'm actually thinking now that you know, we um talk through your stuff, talk through dan stuff. I've re um I've rethought through my thoughts for this podcast. I think I'm gonna hold off on my Michigan story until next time, because I feel like to tell the story today would be too much of beginning in the middle of the story, and there's not a satisfactory ending. I think that if we wait till the next podcast, though, I might have a good ending for my story. I still think I can have a good end. Do you think I might be able to still a good ending? Because you know, you know what's happening Ross, Yeah, I think so. Well, what's the deal? Now you're you're in Western Michigan, So how long a few more days? I'm gonna brief hiatus because of some stuff with the Mediator crew, but I will have time to get back after this buck um. But then, but then, when when does shotgun start or a gun season start from Michigan? Hasn't met the Sohong weekend to that? Yeah? No, um so yeah, that will throw a curveball in the things. But I'll have a handful day still with the bow, and then I am going to go out and hunt during guns season two this year, which I usually don't do, but I think I will. Yeah, what's up? What's your tought presss of that? Ah? Well, I just think that well, Number one, my I usually go up to our Northern Michigan deer camp, you know, and this year, just because of my dad's schedule, we can't go up for the first three days, so I'm not going to be hunting up there. I'm just gonna be sitting around at home twidling my thumbs or hunt. And I've done the gun season sanctuary, you know, for many years now. But I don't know, maybe it's time to just try hunting it. Hunting a smart but maybe you know, I'm not so much of a purist that I'm one percent opposed to shooting a deer with the firearm. I'm okay with that. Um So why not why not try it once? See what happens? Who knows? Maybe my farm, maybe this farm that I usually don't hunt during guns season, if i'd hunted the last three years, maybe I would have killed Holy Field or whatever. Um So with this new deer, maybe I'll I'd like to kill with the ball. Hopefully that just happens before you but if not, I might give this a shot. So but I think that do you think he's not only a lot of people. I think I saw a lot of people talking about it too. But do you think he showed up now because because Holyfield is dead, I still don't know, and now you're getting me to possibly get into the story. But I will answer your question. I think that maybe that could have something to do with it, because because yeah, I do think the holy Field is gone. That's my gun, because I still haven't gotten any settings or pictures or anything of them. And now this new mature buck has shown up that in the past, he's not shown up during the road at all. He's been a deer that I've known of. This the third year that I've known of this buck. But I've always thought he lives somewhere else. He'd show up like once a year on the property I can on. But now he's shown up a bunch. And my best guess is that, yeah, it's probably because holy Fields not around, you know. I mean, it seems like too much of a coincidence that all of a sudden his behavior would change so much. Um. And it also happens to be the first year that holy Fields not here in the last three years, you know. So I don't know, but it's been an interesting cat and mouse game, you know about it? Ross um and uh And I will share the full story. I guess next time around, hopefully with a better ending, and um, if nothing else, to at least be a lesson learned. Um, that's what I always try to at least make myself feel better with it by saying I learned something. So we'll see. Um, but anything, make sure to make sure you when you when you talk about the story, make sure you go over all the details to all the hunts. It will be it'll be great to add all that in there. Yeah, you're talking about the bail blind story, aren't you. Yes, I am. Yeah, don't leave that out because that's great. You're right. I gotta make sure that Dan's on the podcast, though, because that's a story that Dan really needs here. So that's how we'renna end this one. We will end this one by promising that I will tell you the bail blind story, and I will tell you no more until the next time Dan joins us on the show to discuss this buck I've been hunting and some crazy things that have happened, and hopefully a happy ending to that story. So Ross, thanks for joining, thanks for sharing, Thanks for sharing your your pre rut slash early rut action story, and um, we'll have more soon, and I am running late to get to the stand here for my November eight I think it is today my November no sorry, November nine hunt. So I'm running late on getting this podcast out. I'm running late to get to the tree stand, and there are bucks movements. We just need to get this thing out there. So with that said, I just want to thank you for tuning in. I want to wish you all the luck in the world. Shoots straight, have a great time hunting during the rut, and stay wired to hunt