00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire 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 in this episode number two two and to dan this show, I'm joined by Mark drew to get an absolute masterclass on everything he's learned about handling the moments leading up to a shot on an animal and everything to do afterwards to ensure a successful recovery. All right, welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X, And like I just said, we've got the mad scientist himself, Mark Drewy on the show again. And as has been the case, gosh every other time he's been in the podcast, this one is just fascinating. We already had the conversation. I know what you're about to listen to, and I know you're gonna enjoy it. Our focus in this one, though, it's pretty different than our past episodes with him, If you remember the last two we did, we're really um, really in the weeds conversations around all the different factors that influenced deer movement. Today, we're taking a huge pivot from that moving in a very different direction, but equally interesting, and our focus is all about closing the deal in this very last part of a hunt, that being everything that happens in those seconds and minutes leading up to a shot, how you actually execute that shot, and then finally everything and I mean everything you need to be thinking about when it comes to determining what kind of hits you got, how long the way before tracking, how to start the track job, how to learn more things from from the arrow, from the side of impact, from how the deer behaved, all sorts of stuff. I mean it is. It's a level of detail on this topic that I don't think we've ever We've definitely never gone into this degree on this podcast, and I don't know if I've ever run across any other resource any other podcast that's done this to this degree either. So man, I am I'm just pumped for you guys to hear this one, especially with hunting seasons so close to arriving. I think it's just the perfect topic to get just like into the nitty gritty on to make sure that we're all going to be capitalizing on that you know, one special moment when it finally does arrive, when it hopefully does arrive. I want to make sure that we all, you know, squeak out every little bit of a good karma, of good luck, of having the odds in your favorite make sure we're doing everything we possibly can be doing to make sure that our hunt ends the right way. All right? With me on the line again, Uh, for the first time, probably since it was almost exactly one year ago, we got Mark Drewy back with us on the show. Thanks for coming back, Mark, Thank you for having me. Mark. How you doing great? I'm great. Uh. You know, we're just talking before recorded how this is that time of year that we're just running around like crazy people. And that's definitely the case for me. And I've got I've got camouflage lined up sitting out by my trucks. As soon as we get done recording, I'm gonna have a quick bite with my wife and son and then jump in the truck, drive to a truck property and try to get out in time to see some bucks on the bean fields. So there you go. Beautiful weather for it right now. Yeah, it's actually not too bad, a little bit of a little bit of cool streak. So what about you doing well over there in Iowa and Missouri. Absolutely, man, things are good. I mean, I've got some new property we've been playing with this summer, setting it up for the fall, which is always exciting. Cameras are running. Haven't really checked any as of yet, probably a few weeks before I check them. But things are good. You know, We've had some decent weather here in terms of rain this summer on the crops, Uh, started out really wet, then really dry. Now we've had a few decent timing rains, so that's always a plus. And at the studio it's been all things dear cast Man. I've just been uh over time trying to get it ready and ready for launch here. Yeah, a lot of new stuff coming down the pipeline at here, and Uh, one of these days, I'd love to just get an excuse to talk to you for an hour or two just about what's going on in your life and what you're doing your farm. But I know people probably want us to just get into the the nitty gritty um. So I had an idea for our chat that is related to what's coming down the line of deer cast Um Here's I was thinking over the years, you know, both getting to chat with you on Wild podcast a lot, and then being on a number of Wired on podcasts, and then of course you know, I've I've consumed your shows and DVDs for years and years years. There's been a handful of things that stood up to me about you, um first, and you can correct me if you think these are wrong, um. But of course, it's like always been a standout that you are super analytical when it comes to your approach of deer hunting, which has always been something I've loved because I've kind of tried to I feel like that resonates with me a lot, and I'm mirrored a lot of what I do from things I've learned um from you over the years. But the other thing that always has just been at least apparent to me is that you seem to be just ice cold in the moment of truth. Like you are locked down, you are unfazed, You're on point every single time you've got a deer walking into range, and then you you you are on it as soon as you pull the trigger too. You seem to know just what to do afterwards. You have a plan in place, Everything seems to be well thought out when it comes to what happens before the shop and after the shop. And it also seems like you've had a ton of experience with those moments, probably as much er more than almost anyone else out there. So this all brings me to what I thought we could drill into today, which is this whole topic of what happens before and after the moment of the shot, So everything leading up to the deer coming into range and how you are handling that moment and things when it comes to your archery practice or our arm practice, whatever, and then everything that brings us to how you actually recover it deer um. And I think that's correctly if I'm wrong here, but that ties in really perfectly to one of the new features coming out with Deercast that I do want to hear more about at this point. So a is that right? And my way off base of those things, and be if I'm not off base, should we dive into that? I would love to dive into it. And you know, we've been doing it for a long time and through time, if you, uh, you you learned disciplines out there in the field that uh, you know, life's all about eliminating problems going forward. So if you make some bad hits in your early days, and you're like, that track job was miserable, man, I couldn't find my dear. I'm mad at myself for injuring an animal. You get to the point where you're like, I'm not gonna let that happen anymore. And it's sometimes it takes some bad experiences to get you that point. So you know, I try to make sure that every shot I take is as ethical as I possibly in me more than anything, you just want to eliminate that tough track job and that, you know, not being able to find that animal. It's a miserable feeling, you know, and you you feel bad for the animal, you feel bad for yourself, your cameraman, whoever's with you. It's like, don't let it happen. So therefore you you get into a mental state where you you just you know, you disallow that to even happen, and you just don't take bad shots basically, And if you can discipline yourself to that, to that level, you'll end up being a lot happier on more blood trails. But that's one of the reasons we did Dear Cash track though too. It it's going to happen, right if you bow hunt long enough, because you can't control what the deer is gonna do. You can control what you're doing. But there's two two sides to every kill. When it comes to whitetailed deer ones you the others. The deer you can't anticipate if they're gonna jump. You can't anticipate what they're gonna do when that bow goes off, and what they do and how they react varies at different distances. So you know, there's a lot of variables there with weather, and you know, the mood of the animal, the time of the year, you know all that good stuff. So trying to run up through those in your mind at the moment will help you make better choices more often. One of those things that's easier said than done sometimes though, right in those uh, the craziness of those last couple of seconds, there's, like you said, so many variables. Um, before I start bugging you with ten thou questions, let's just get what this new tool is you guys are putting out there out there, because I'm really interested. I've heard a few high level things, but I don't really know the details yet. Um. You mentioned deer Cast Track what what's that? Deer Cash track is the newest feature within deer Cast that much like the algorithm last year that we put out there under deer Cast, which helped predict deer movement, which you and I had done some podcasts about that, and um we were trying to you know, um, trying to communicate what Terry and I kind of felt in terms of our theories on when deer move and why they move, and we had some really good podcast about that, you and I have and algorithm kind of interpreted interpreted that for people and showed them what the deer or how well they might be moving in their area. So we this year we came out with deer Cast Tracks. So we wanted to handle everything up to the moment of truth, like help them become better at anticipating the optimal days to be in the field and then with that all of our different tactics within thirteen or within the app and all that good stuff and then Okay, you're in the right place, You're at there at the right time because of deer Cast, you make the shot. Now what And to me, tracking, in the art of tracking and helping people find deer is probably. Um. I don't want to say it's a lost art farm, but it's one that doesn't get covered very often. Like you see some of the basic stuff at ten thousand feet. You know, you know you hit him in the double you know, you double along on them, go find them. And well through the years, I've double along a bunch of deer that we're still alive at the one R mark of the three R mark. And I still, you know, digging down on this, going why why did I hit right here? And the deer still alive hours later? Right? So you know, if you track enough deer, a variety of different things are gonna happen. And and I noticed through the season more and more and more I used to always get calls about what the de you're gonna do with? I got a weather front coming, do you think they're gonna move? What phase are we in? Blah blah blah, And all those calls went away throughout the season for me in terms of, you know, deer movement prediction when we came out with Deer Cast, because it was all in the app. Okay, so self preservation, you know, level B is now I go on about three or four track jobs a night, not in person, but over my phone. You know, guys from the team or guys across the industry. Hey, I hit the deer here at holland you wait, what would you do? Blah blah blah, And I'm like, man, wouldn't it be cool if our app took everyone through every single possible scenario who could have shooting a deer with a bow or a gun? And that's what we did with Deer Cash Track. And it's it's fairly simple. You have a deer, you can flip it left or right. You can do it with the hide on or hide off, so you can you can go into a two D model which exposes vitals, or you can just do it as you saw the deer standing there, and you can pick your point of impact. From the point of impact, the app opens up and does the rest for you. So say you hit uh mid body right in front of the backham terrible shot, Okay, but it happens. Sometimes you hit us sleeve, you hit a branch, arrow goes awry, or you hit them hit them back there with a gun. You pick that point of impact with our little cursor and then the app our program will will unfold anywhere from two to six or seven hits from our video library that shows shots in that area. Okay, then you can choose any shot you wish. Go you know what, that's the body angle or that's the one that most closely matches what I just did. You choose it. It then shows you a chart of you know, what broad head was used or what weapon was used on the video hit. It'll tell you how long we waited, what happened on the blood trail, what the blood trail look like, what the estimated time of death was for that animal, how far that animal traveled. And then you go into tracker John Anglican, Bobby culvertson myself and Terry breaking down that hit, telling you exactly what you may have hit, uh, how long you should wait, what type of blood sign you should look for. And then we will also address well, if you hit the same point of impact in the animal was quartering away, you might have also increased and picked up these organs within the deer, or if he was quartering two, you might have hit this. So we literally take you from broadside quartering two, quartering away, and we address every possible scenario. You can watch all of those videos. If that doesn't exactly you know, give you the information you think you need, you go to the next hit, the next hit, the next hit. So this series by October one will probably have a hundred different hits in it when it goes to as at release date right now, there's probably six to seventy and we will probably end up in the hundred, and we're going to continue adding to the series, so there will be real life, real world experiences at your fingertips. And we we then go into within the descriptions, whether it's John, Bobby, myself or Terry three D modeling, two D modeling, and tell you exactly what you probably hit with that path, whether it be your gun or your bow, and it absolutely takes you from having no clue on how to wait, or what to expect or how far that deer should should go to absolutely giving you every bit of information you could possibly ask for to help you recover your animal, and even even the hits mark. One of the ones that I see guys make most often where they end up tracking too soon and losing their deer is that space behind the heart. If you're say, if you're right behind the leg, your deer might run seventy yards because you clipped the a Arctic arch coming out of the heart and he's dead. Right. If you're back from that just a little bit, you're in the liver, and then another couple inches behind that, you're into the stomach, like totally within five ribs you're from go get him to a thirty hour weight okay, And somewhere in between there's liver, which is you know, ten twelve depending on broadhead size. All of this stuff is covered within Deer Cash Track. You just simply picked point of entry and the app opens up into a whole world that you've just never seen before. It's literally the coolest thing we've ever done at Drury Outdoors. Yeah you guys, uh you aren't. You continue to do yourselves. I'm I'm impressed and I'm excited because I do think you you're absolutely right. There's usually two kinds of conversations that I'm on when it comes like all my different hunting group text message and stuff like that. There's the what do you think they're gonna do tonight? And then it's the if you get a hit? Then all of a sudden, the text message comes through, the phone calls come through. Just like you said, Hey, here's the shot. What do you think? And then it sends you a screenshot of the video, or they talk you through it, or they'll send you a picture of a deer and they'll try to mark where the impact was, and like that's that's such a thing that happens every night during the hunting season. There are groups of buddies debating and questioning and wondering and worrying about this very topic. Um see, you definitely identified a big need. Um, you nailed it. It's one that's never addressed. Have you seen it addressed very thoroughly? I mean I've seen stories about it. Like I said, it's ten thousand feet. You kind of hit a few things, but never into the detail that we're about to take. People like Tracker John's you know, Tracker John Anglican has trained for tracking his entire life. He has the best bloodhounds I've ever seen, so he gets called in on the really crappy hits, so he sees the worst of the worst. He's been over two thousand hits in his life. Bobby Culbertson is the head guide at Tara Wildlife in Mississippi. He has been for twenty one years, so he's been on over two thousand track jobs and I collectively of probably approaching a thousand or more. So if you take the tracking experience of five thousand track jobs and rolling into one app, that's who's going with you along your track job. So I think this fall you're gonna be seeing people when they make their hit. They're gonna go into deercast, pick their pick their point of impact and then start passing you on and go, hey, watch this video. Listen to what tracker John said at this at this time. Do you agree with that or do you not? You know, like it's so in depth and it's gonna make people so much smarter. And then I think the long term effect will be it's gonna make people think better, think more, make better shots, you know, making sure they don't hit in this area and that hit hit in this area versus that area. It's, uh, it'll make you smarter if you take the time to really play with it and and go through it and watch some of the results. You know, put the cursor on some deer and go, holy cow it and no I needed a wait thirty hours in that area. And here's why. Know, um, we also go through like sixteen or seventeen, really advanced courses in tracking in general. You know what the blood on the arrow means, what what a bed means, what blood in the bed means, you know the trails between the beds. Uh that. You know weather's effect on tracking. Dear Everything you could possibly imagine is also in this series. It's it's right next to all of the different hits. You slide over and you pick advanced tracking tips, you watch all those pieces, You're like, oh my god, these guys are unbelievable. Bobby and Bobby and John are like no one else on this earth that I know of. And for years, when I've had a bad hit, you know, if John was available, we've used him. But I always send the video to Bobby culvertson and they are always on correct. That's the other thing I've noticed through the years, like their assessment of what I just did or whoever it is on the team, they are always spot on. And I was like, man, wouldn't this be cool to put this information at everybody's fingertips. So that's why we did Dear cast track. It's it's gonna find It's gonna help people find a lot of deer and it's gonna help people stop bumping deer, because that's a big deal, right. They coagulate and they caught up so quickly. If you bump them out of that initial bed, your odds just go way down of ever finding that dear, Whereas if you wait the appropriate amount of time, he's gonna be dead in his first bed or second or third, which is gonna be close to the first one. Yeah, and it sounds um, it sounds like something that a lot of people will benefit from. Um, And I'm going to benefit from it. But I am too anty to wait to look at the app to get some of this information, So I'm gonna have to have you tell me about some of this stuff right now. But the first thing I want to know is do you have a feature on the app that helps a guy with some red green color blindness? Because because I need that isn't at the truth, dude, I'm the same way. I don't, especially at night. And um, I am very blessed in the fact that Wade and Aller both see blood incredibly well. So I literally, you know, I let them out front and I'm like, I'll stand at last blood guys, you go ahead, because their eyes it just speeds up the process because they can see so much better than me. But I'm in the same shape. I don't see blood very well at all. Yeah, it's frustrating. I can see it, but it takes me so much longer to pick it up versus people that don't have that. It just stands out to them so much more in the dark conditions, especially like you said, so it sounds like, right enough light you cannot find one. I mean, it's righter. They are the better. So I think I need a good cameraman or a daughter who can help me. That's my next step. Then, or a dog if it's legal. And we've learned so much by following Tracker John and uh Jesse and Janey and Holly and Haley. I mean his dogs that he's had through the years have been just incredible. But you've gotta make sure it's legal in your area. Yeah, okay, so let's let's talk about all that. But I want to rewind a little bit because I do want to pick your brain about the before the shot stuff because, like I said out, I feel like, at least from the outside looking in, it seems like you've got it together better than a lot of people. Um, And and no knock on Terry, but it seems like you might have a better a little bit than he does. Sometimes I see him get a little shook up. Um. But here's the secret. I'm in the studio more than Terry, So I just cut out all my mistakes. There you go. But but tell me this, um, was the younger version of Marjorie like that, like thirty forty years ago when you were twenty or whatever. Did you always have it like this or did you have some struggles early on too? What? And you know, I've had struggles throughout the years. I mean, I always get shook up. And it's the same struggle whether it's a door or a buck, you know, and you just you know, you shoot and that arrow doesn't end up where you um thought it was going to, and you go, what in the heck just happened? And I think that when you had adrenaline to any situation, you're just asking for bad decision making, right. You know, It's like if you could sit there, if if the deer was foam, right, you can plug the twelve ring every single shot at at thirty yards or forty or fifty whatever you're shooting at you know, but when it's when it's real life and they're coming in and that body posture is changing and moving and you know, and God help you if it's the rut and he's coming in fast and you gotta think fast, and it just accelerates everything. So adrillin just screws everything up. So I think more often than not, when someone makes a mistake, it's because they let adrenaline get get the most of them, and it Uh, it really comes down to the success in the heat of the moment, which is what you're talking about, comes down to I think your ability to handle emotion at the a when it's at its peak. You know, when you're adrenaline's topped out and you can't practice adrenaline. I say it all the time. You can't do it, you know. I've read articles and heard guys say, well, go run the hundred yard dash six times and then shoot shoot there out. It's still not the same, It's not the same feeling in your body. The only way you can do that is to put yourself in that situation more often and think your way through it. And I think the biggest mistake hunters probably make is not shooting enough does frankly or not shooting enough game in general. Um, I think the more times you put yourself in that situation, the better you become through time, because you have to learn by your mistakes, you know, And that's just sad to say, but it's the truth. The more you shoot, the more does you kill, the more bucks you kill, for that matter, the more rabbits you kill, the more squirrels you kill, the turkeys, whatever it is, then you just get better every time it comes around again. So it's it's all about slowing the game down. Jim Tony talks about it all the time. And you look at you look at baseball, and you look at a guy like Jim you want pressure, or any baseball player for that matter. Put him in a stadium of forty or fifty screaming fans in the playoffs and then throw up, know, a heater on the outside corner high at nine three? How in the hell do they connect and take it out of the park? Right? I mean, because you could you imagine the adrenaline in that moment time. So he always talks and has to us for years about slow that game down, ignore every other thing and focus. Your focus has to be so intense in that moment, and I don't want to say that that the emotion that I feel is is it's adrenaline. But I almost channel it into like a like a focus of I don't want to say anger, but a focus of determination to make this happen. Do not screw this up. So channel the adrenaline into a positive place in your body as opposed to letting it become a negative and making bad choices like use it, make it, make it, make it, or let it make you determine to the point that you're not going to screw this up, you know, and and for us the video cameras wrong, and so it's like you don't want to make a bad shot. It still happens, but you don't want to. So you you have to channel that adrenaline into your brain and go all right, slow down, dummy, Stop, think about something else. Think about the Bibles, think about where this arrow is going to exit, Think about anything you can to give yourself the assistance you need to make a good shot. If you can do that, you're gonna put yourself through the lungs and through the through the boiler room or often. If you can't do that, you're gonna go on a lot of backtrack jobs and you're gonna need dear cat track more often. So so what is going on in your brain in Like, let's say you see a buck coming into range. You you okay, this is a shooter buck, you grab your bow um those things you just mentioned. Is that the self talk? Like are you saying, don't be stupid, don't do this, or or what what are you talking to yourself? Like? What does those next ten seconds look like for you? Every single second of the moment of truth is me telling myself? Do not jack this up here or here she is, whatever the target is, do not make a bad shot, Do not draw it too soon, do not release too quickly, make sure of the body posture, Like I have a checklist in my mind where I'm I'm thinking about not only where they're at, but I'm thinking where they're going, because sooner or later or very quickly where they where they're going is where they went. And you're already behind the game. So I'm I'm in terms of thinking ahead a little bit, and I want to make sure I don't draw too soon. I want to make sure I don't make any noise to alert the deer to my presence, and I go through that mental checklist, and then when the moment of truth comes, I'm aiming I'm stopping the deer if need be, and I'm I'm thinking exit. I always think where this arrow is gonna exit. I never think of entry, and I think thinking of exit kind of helps me a little bit, you know. I'm thinking about I want to hit there so that it ends up right behind that leg or at the base of that tree. That's where I'm putting it. I'm gonna put it right at the base of that tree, or I'm gonna put it right at the edge of the food lot, you know, or I'm gonna nim a little bit low to make sure this deer drops into it, and then that arrow ends right there. So I always think in terms of exit and not enter. And I don't know if that helps me, but it, you know, it doesn't hurt certainly. Yeah, that's an interesting it's an interesting idea. I haven't heard anyone else mentioned that before, but it makes I mean, it's something I think about, but it's not something that I'm putting first and foremost. Um, that's a very good point. You mentioned this checklist in body posture is one when to draws one thinking about the exit. Is there anything else in your mental checklist? Um worth mentioning, don't spook him, don't let them know you're there. That's my number one, do not spook them. It's why Taylor says, I whisper yell. That's why Wade says, I whisper yell. I'm consulate, don't move, don't do this, don't do that, watch that, don't put your you know, put your rings finer down, you know, put in your pocket, get ready, whatever it is. You know, I'm constantly whispering through the through the process to make sure that I don't alert that animal to me because when they when they figure out you're there, your chances just went way down that you're about to kill that deer. I mean way down. It might cut them in half or cut them by because they will once they figure out you're there, it's almost over every time. Yes, So let's talk about that when you get or well, let's talk about body post or what you can tell by that deer and how that changes your shot at all, because right there's a situation where the deer is no idea you're there. I imagine you would aim in shooting a certain way, and then there's a situation where the deer is aware of something going on. How does your shot or your behavior differ between those two at all? If if they're calm and there within my effective range and my effective range, I like them within thirty. You know, when you get outside of thirty, bad things start to happen. And I've shot deer outside of that. But that depends on weather and conditions and all that. But let's take a calm evening, because so often when deer moving it's it's calm and not a ton of wind blowing. Okay, so calm evening or calm morning. So you first have to say, okay, they're gonna hear my bow go off if your bow hunting, So I side in low anyway, like my twenty yard pin hits about two and a half inches low, thirty on three inches low, forty on four inches low. So I will aim on because instinctively I always aim on. I aim to exit, and then I just let the arrow drop on its own. And it almost never fails that they don't go up. They're always going down, and oftentimes they still go down to damn far and I'm still too hot right because I've misjudged the ardage, or they've dropped me more than I anticipated there or whatever. So I always side in low. And then if if the if the animals calm in the and the and the evening is calm and there's no wind moving, then I'm judging distance all right. If they're within the teens, If they're seventeen eighteen and under, I'll aim on and feel like I'm going to get the job done. Once you get to twenty two and there's a real there's a real hole they're from, like twenty two to twenty eight or thirty, that distance where they hear that sound crispally and cleanly and they react immediately, like man can endear do a lot in that distance because they hear the bow immediately, and I mean they'll drop a damn foot on you, you know. So I anticipate distance versus how much air is moving. If it's calm and they're at I'm worried at that distance because they're gonna hear it and they're probably gonna drop and you know, and then bad things start to happen. So I aim even a little bit lower. I often cite my bow in low and then also aim at harder top of heart or exit through the heart, I should say, and uh, that has helped me a great deal through the years to put it in through the right place because they're gonna drop. If it's windy, you can throw out all that out the window because generally they won't hear you, and uh, it really helps you put the arrow where you need to. I love twelve fifty mile an hour with leaves rattling. The more noise you get, the better, uh, because they don't hear that bow go off. So always take into consideration what you're dealing with. From an environmental standpoint. Highway noise will help you. Um, wind noise will help you. Rain noise will help you. Other deer's commotion will help you. If if the deer, if your target deer is attentive to them, that will help. But the moment their eyes get wide and they start looking at you and you feel like you're found, then I get really really nervous about taking that shot, And then I'm I'm probably gonna do the same thing that I'm doing at that seven yard distance, and I'm I'm even really really low on that deer. I mean, you just have to anticipate that drop or you're going to hit him high shoulder or go over the back. So what about scenario where it's one of these longer range situations that I know you typically don't find yourself in, but I think I've seen some where your forty yards or maybe out there past you a little bit, especially the wind. Yeah. So if it is like a good set up, though, and you're gonna do that type of shot, how much lower do you have to shoot on a forty forty five yard shot if you're assuming that, I mean twelve inches max. Fifteen sixteen seven inches, they could drop. I never aim off the deer because it's just counterintuitive to do. So the lowest that I will aim is to take it through center of heart. That's about as low as i'll possibly aim, because just as soon as you aim off a deer, there's gonna be one stand there and take it right. Um. So I'm always on deer, but I will aim center of heart, which is quite low in a deer's anatomy, So you're just literally two or three inches off the bottom of their chest at that distance. Um, and it it generally works out pretty good. Yeah, you know what about stopping dear? So I know there's always this debate between would you want to stop a deer because you want a standing still shot, but you then risk alerting dear to your presence and then him possibly drop him more. Or do you, let's say it's a very slowly meandering buck, do you prefer the slowly slow meander that doesn't know you're there at all? You know if you if you've watched my shots through the ears, they are always preceded by it. Man, I want that dear head still, Dick, I'm when I'm aiming at him, unless he's close. Okay, if he's close and meandering real slow, I'll go and shoot, all right. But if he's out there twenty five and by close I mean fifteen and in if he's out there at you know, thirty, whatever, I want that sucker dead still. I mean, they're they're wirey little creatures anyway, And and and the reason I want him did still is because I want body posture to stop in the position that I wanted in. Because their difference between quartering two and quartering away as a head turn sometimes you know, right, they can open that shoulder up or close it down really quickly. If they're browsing over here to their left, their right sides open. If they suddenly don't even take a step and browse over here to the right, it closes. It might take three rips from me with that front shoulder, if you know what I mean, Like it closes it back up. So I put him in a dead stop so I know the body posture. I read it quickly and go okay, there's my seam, and I take it, you know, so I always stop him. It's just me, Um, I don't I don't like shooting it moving dear. Bad things happen when you shoot a moving dear in my in my humble opinion. Yeah, let's rewind a little bit to another thing you mentioned. Um, you talked about this checklist, and you mentioned when to draw, and that's one of those things that almost never gets talked about. But it seems like most new hunters never think about that. It seems to be it takes some time and some experience to realize that's actually really key decision. Can you walk me through some of the things you're thinking about when you're deciding when to draw? And then I'll throw apart b on that. What about the scenario when the dear spots you and you haven't drawn yet, like you're on him, you're about to draw back, and then he spots you. Do you ever do the I know he's looking at me, I'm still gonna draw back and try to get the shot, or do you wait? So that's two parter. You're making my hard pound because that's just just the worst situation, right when your targets coming and then he looks up at you or looks at you. I hate that it happens. I always wait am out. I don't draw with him looking at me ever, you know, unless he's broadside and I feel like I can kill him, you know, and I feel like I've got decent cover, then I'll draw a real slow and shoot. But to your first question, when do you draw for me? I used to draw to them soon and I'd get hung out to dry right there there, browsers, they'll stop and they'll nibble on a limb, and they'll do this. You know, if you draw it the deer at fort yards coming, you're just asking for trouble to where you have to let down. The more I hunt, the longer I wait to draw. I'm I'm almost to the point where I don't draw until the deer is well within bow range and he's he's it's time to kill him. So I'm drawing later than I am sooner. But again you have to think about not where he's at, but where he's going. So is there a tree where his head's about to pass behind? Is he you know? Does he stop and turn around and look for you know, you know a noise you just heard? Is it windy out? Is it calm out? All of those things have to play into your decision. If it's calm, that's the tough one man, because they're gonna hear that. They're gonna hear your clothes, they're gonna hear movement in your tree or in the blind, and you just better be ready. If you're gonna draw on a calm night, he better already be within bow range and presumably at a decent body posture. That's what I'm drawing on him. Uh. If it's windy and you've got decent noise, whether that be from a highway or wind or whatever, you can draw a little sooner and get it full draw and let him come on in. So you have to use some common sense about Okay, is this they're gonna hear a seemi draw or is he not? If your answer to that is at all yes, he might, then I'm waiting until he's already within bow range, so that if he stops he and catches you, at least you're at full draw and you can get down on him and hopefully he's still in a good body posture to where you can shoot him. So I have a tendency to wait longer than draw sooner. Now, if it's windy, I'll try to get the drop bought him get drawn, and you know, if he's coming hard, I'm like, oh, that dear is gonna come on through. There's nothing gonna stop him. I'll draw a little sooner. In that way I'm ready for And boy, when you're at full drawing one walks within range, there's no better feeling because you're already It's like holding the cross bow at that time. Right. But if if he's coming slow, I wait and wait and wait and wait until it's time. Because a slow moving deer oftentimes stays slow moving, and a fast moving deer oftentimes stays, you know, quickly moving. So you got to anticipate all that in a moment of truth and make good judgment calls based on their demeanor, their speed, and the overall environmental conditions. Yeah, so let's talk archery a little bit. So you get to full draw, you're at that moment, what do you like? What's here? Do you have a like an archery shot process, mantra or things that you're looking at, like do you check your grip, check your level? Do you anything like that going through your mind at that moment? Or is it just draw pinshoot um. No. I I go through a little bit of a mental checklist there too, because when I've made bad shots in the in the past, it's because I gripped my bow too much. I think the adrenaline just you know, you just want to, you know, rip a hole through your handle. In reality, you've got to loosen that grip. So that's the that's the mental checklist that I have to go through. Everything else is muscle memory because I shoot a great deal, so everything else comes as second play. Bend at the hip is the other one. Like if you're gonna make a bad choice, it's or a bad shot. Oftentimes you didn't bend correctly. Those are the two things that I see are three I should say, it's shooting with clothing you're not used to, and your anchor point changes too, it's not bending at the hip. Are three inch grip in your bow too hard? Because adrenaline took over in the moment of truth. So I go through those three things. Make sure, Okay, my anchor points right, I am bent correctly, my back is in the correct position, and my grip is fantastic. Then it's it's pin and shoot. So I I do checklist a few things to make sure that they're all right, because otherwise you're gonna make a bad shot. Excuse bad shot. It's it's easy. One of the things I've struggled with over the years is just rushing the shots. I've kind of come to cull it target panic. It's more so like as soon as that pin hits sometimes like the arrows flying once the pins where I wanted before I get to like take a couple of the breaths and ease into it. So I've been working on a lot of things over the last couple of years to try to regain control that process. But like you said, there's it's easy for that to get away from you and to forget a few of those things. If um, if you're not in control, I guess I think you make yourself think though like it helps you be in control. If that makes sense. You know, it's it's the mindless. It's the without thought process shots that you regret. Right, do you want to have a lifetime and regret or a season of regret or do you want to go you know what, I did everything I could to kill that deer, and I just missed because I missed judge orders or whatever. So make yourself check those boxes, you know, grip back, hips, uh, anchor point. Make yourself think, think through those things, and then you'll make a better shot because you did slow the game down. That right there is slowing the game down, you know, and you never if you examine our videos and you watch when from Matt to shot going off is literally a half a second. The deer still planting its front foot, that's a shot that was taken too soon. The ones that are executed the best through time are the ones where the person stops the deer, or after the deer stops and you know, the guy's already at full draw and there is aim happening. You can tell the checklist is being checked. A great example of that is Greg Lessinger this year. Greg's one of the best shots that I know of in terms of just a guy that goes out hunting. He doesn't do tournaments any of that stuff. But you wouldn't want to shoot him for a Coca cola in your backyard. I mean, the dude can flat handle a bow, all right. Well watch him last year on that two thirty nine that he killed in Iowa. From the moment he stops until that shot goes off, it's like five or six seconds. Man, he's going through that checklist. He went through it two or three times, and he makes a perfect shot. So force yourself to do it because the deer is not going anywhere more often than not. I mean, you gotta judge that a little bit. But chances are it's not going anywhere because they're just they're they're oftentimes when they haven't win. Did you if you've ever noticed deer generally quite patient with their surroundings, Like they'll sit there and they'll examine stuff for I mean, they're like they have the patience of a cat. They'll stand there and stare at stuff for minutes on end and not move so unless they're already about to run. If you've got if you've got an at East deer on your hands, or one that still hasn't found you, chances are he's not going anywhere because they generally don't flee until they have to flee. Yeah, does any of this stuff for you differ when it comes to gun hunting? Does your mental checklist or any of these things. Obviously we're not gonna be talking about a few of the specifics, but what does your process look like? I guess when you're out there with the shotgun or the rightful or the muzzle, I think it's more important because you're dealing with distance right more often than not. If they're close, it's one thing, But if you're dealing with a shot at two hundred five man, small mistakes in the back end make big mistakes down range. I missed a deer last year. I should have never missed the last day, last last hour, last twenty minutes of rifles a giant at one five. Didn't even know who the deer was. Two five yard shot and I shot right over the sucker. And I still to this day don't know how I did that, Like I just I think I got a little rushed because we had already started packing things up, and Wade and I were like, well, end a rifle season, let's get out of here and go whatever, have a beer or whatever. And all of a sudden, up over the hill, here comes this giant and I'm like, what the heck is that. Wade's like, oh, definitely definite shooter. And he's coming across the hill pretty quick, not very long. He's gonna be out of my side side window. And I rushed through all that stuff, didn't do any of my checklist stuff, got the gun out the window, put it on him, and I missed the deer. Gun out of the window of the blind and I missed the deer, And um, that one still haunts me, makes me mad. Actually, you know, taking a little more time, I would have killed that deer because it's a shot, you know, I mean, you ought to be shooting a popcan top right, you know. But um, I missed him, And that was just I rushed it, got excited, rushed it. Yeah, it happens. What so that's your question. It is just as important, if not more, you know, you add distance to it and you're gonna goof it up. Also, make sure your guns on. That's the biggest mistake people make, you know, it is assuming that scope still on from the previous year. It's a that's a bad assumption because they do float. Yeah, it's easy to get lazy with that. I have been guilty of that in past years. For sure, you should practice with a gun almost as much as you do with a bow. The good shooters do, the bad ones don't. If you practice, practice makes perfect and everything you do when it comes to taking the life of an animal, you owe it to that animal and get your butt on the range. You can't make an assumption. And I think bow hunters are kind of like guilty of this. It's like, oh, it's a gun, just go out and kill one. Well, it's not necessarily the case. Take the time, whether it's a muzzleloader, shotgun, rifle, take the time on the range, just like you do with your bow, and you'll be a lot happier in the end. Yeah, speaking of practicing situations like that, um and and and I'm guilty of what you just said. But another thing that I've done over the years that has helped me. I'm curious if you've ever done anything like this is I try to practice for potential specific situations once I get in the tree or in the blind. So let's say I climb up into the tree, I get settled, and I've still got like three or four hours before primetime. When I had that little bit of free time early on, I will actually grab my bow and I will look at a potential spot I think there's gonna be a buck, and then I will draw back and imagine a buck walking to that lane and actually go through almost the entire process. And I try to do that every spot I think there might be a shot, um, just like mentally walking myself through that exact scenario, like really physically think looking at like thinking, okay, there's a buck, he's an eight point or it's it's this buck I've been chaseding. Here he comes. And I try to somehow practice that scenario. And I think that helps me a little bit, that kind of visualization technique. Do you ever do anything like that or do you think there's merit to something along those lines? Absolutely, every single day I've ever set in a tree or blind exactly what you just described. And I have a tendency to do it throughout the sit, even if I'm not drawing, I'm still mentally going, what if he walks through here? What if he walks through there? What if he walks through there? And I think it's one of the reasons that you know, if if you've had a really good hunt and a hard hunt, you go home and you're pretty mentally fatigued, right you know, you go home and you're like kind of drained. Have you noticed that, especially during the rut when you have the sits are longer, and you're anticipating a deer coming from anywhere at any time, because I don't want to be caught, so I'm constantly looking. I'm trying to to scan the brush find that deer before he comes out, so you can get the drop on him. But I'm also anticipating prior to that where he's coming. Mentally go through your checklist and go, I'm gonna kill him right there, I'm gonna kill him right when he goes beyond that limb. And then how often have you done that? And when why did I not trim that limb when I was trimming the standout? You literally don't get through some of these scenarios hanging the set and trimming it more often than not. Uh, most spots I've been to, and even I'm guilty of this, they're not trimmed appropriately to go in and bow kill a deer. Like I think most people don't trim enough uh to make good ethical shots in my opinion. Um so that's a little bit off topic. But so you tend to air on like you would like big you know, big airplane landing strips and make sure everything's cut because I know some people are the other way and say, well, I don't want to get spotted in the tree, so they just make a little holes you would lean the other direction. I make holes that I make shooting lanes in every possible angle, every possible situation. But I leave the cover to my back. I'm really a big, big back cover guy, you know. So I have a lot of cover in the tree. A lot of times I'll drag it up there with me, you know, to give myself back cover. It's it's the lack of back cover when I've gotten caught the most. Uh. Front cover is not nearly as important. In fact, front cover will cost you do your just because you've got to shoot through it, over and around it. Whatever it is. I don't I don't like a lot of front cover. I like back cover. Yeah that makes sense. Uh okay, So let's take it to the next step. You've slow the game down, you've went through your checklist, you didn't rush the shot, you put the pen just they're a little bit low and in the heart region, you trigger the buckets shot. What is going through your mind in those immediate moments the first ten seconds after that shot. Walk me through everything that's happening in your mind immediately after the trigger goes off. The first thing is interpret point of impact. The second thing is interpret penetration. Those two things have to be first and foremost because you're gonna want to know those later. The third thing is am I seeing blood immediately? The fourth thing is if there's an exit, is their blood coming out of that exit? Where is that exit wound? If you get to see it? When when they when the deer runs off. So the moment I make a shot, I generally have my um glass on, so my bows down and I've got glasses up as quick as a cat to get them on that deer and get all of those bits of information, because you've got like milliseconds right to find out whether good of penetration, where's the exit hole? Is their blood coming out of? Either one? And then fourth, how far is he going? I'm listening and watching, listen, watch, listen, watch. I can't see him anymore. All right now I'm listening. Do I hear him fall? And then I sit there and listen for quite a while more often than not, because I want to hear, because oftentimes you'll have a hit where they'll go stand out there for three or four minutes and then they fall over and you hear that secondary crash, or you may hear that crash first times through, and then you have to interpret was that him falling over? Where was that him just you know, busting through brush? So you've got to interpret all that literally within seconds. And if if you don't, then you find yourself going, what just happened? You know? And then that's the worst feeling, right, I have no idea where I hit him. I don't know if I contraction. I didn't watch where he went to Landmark. You gotta watch as far as you can so you can landmark. They'll you know, the last little thing, and I'll often right away, I'll take my phone up and I'll point at the last place I saw that, dear, and I snap a picture, so I've got it right. While you're still in that same position, I grabbed my phone, point the last place I see, and I snap a picture. And then my finger says, you know, because you don't know, you might be coming back that night, you might be there the next day. But at least you can go to your last landmark because you've got a picture of it. And then when you get out there, you go, oh, here's where I'm pointing out. I'm right here, you know. So that's another thing that I do. Um you know, because all of those things are part of the overall evidence that you're gonna need to track that deer. And it's another reason we did uh Deer Cash track. We have a whole interview in there about the totality of evidence. It's John Inglecan talks about the totality of it all the time. The bucks are the deer's demeanor, what he did after the hit, What does the arrow look like, what does first blood look like, is there any hair? There are there beds along the trail. All of those things add into the clues that help you find your deer and not bump the deer, because ultimately, tracking comes down to not pushing that deer out of their initial bed or the bed they're gonna die in. If you can do that, you're gonna find a lot more of them. And if you if you start to pile up that totality of evidence the moments after the shot, like your checklist literally switches gears from all the things we talked about leading into the shot to those three or four things following the shot, and if you're mentally doing all those things, it actually helps you perform more in the moment of truth because you're not screwing it up because you're all excited, you know, fast forwarding through all that stuff going, I can't wait to get him on Instagram, right, you know. The worst thing you can do is is worry about the prize before you actually go through the effort to find in the deer. Yeah, it's almost like you see a lot of people like they know this, they know they should be watching and thinking about these things and trying to keep track of all this data that happens in those first couple of seconds. But then the rush of adrenaline excitement afterwards is just kind of overwhelming, and then a couple hours later they're back at camp and their buddies are okay, so where was the shot? And there's like, well, I thought it was right behind the shoulder, but I don't know, maybe I'm forgetting, you know, like there's all these things that seems like you almost black out in some cases, and stuff gets fuzzy. It almost seems like it would be helpful if immediately after the shot you were required to answer all those questions right now, ten seconds after while still freshen your mind before everything gets crazy right down on your maybe even in your app right. So, okay, point of the impact was here, penetration seem to be this much last known point was x y z Um. Just a way to document that before your mind gets even crazier in the in the next hour as you go through all that excitement, Um said, it goes along with the picture, right, Take the picture if you're there by yourself, send it to your buddy and write out all your thoughts that you just had in the moment of truth. Go here's what I thought I saw Da da da da da da da Right that list out, send it to him. Then you've got a copy of what you were thinking in the moment. It was. It was interesting in talking to John through this process because John's got tracking though, so he gets called in on the really bad hits, and it's if if he's called in, something went wrong already. Okay, So he's like, it is amazing to me how often, he said, I would bet of the time when I find a deer that the guy described where he hit it, where the hit actually was isn't isn't the same, he said, they will misinterpret it more often than not, and that's why they end up making a mistake when it comes to the tracking. So that's why podcasts like this, apps like Deer Cash Track will help guys get through that adrenaline learning curve, if you will, or that adrenaline roadblock that causes us to make bad, bad decisions or just black out. Like you said, you know, you just start missing things and it's like, why am I doing that? Well, you're excited, that's why we're why we're all out there hunting. But at some point it gets back to the advice Tomy has given us for so long. Slow the game down. Damn it, you're about to screw this up, you know, don't screw it up, don't do it, don't let yourself talk yourself through it, and and don't make that mistake. All right. So then with that in mind, the first piece of data you can probably start adding to this totality of it ins is other than Okay, you saw the point of impact. You noted to yourself what penetration was and where he went, and those handful of things you mentioned the deer's behavior. Could you walk me through a couple of different common deer um. What am I trying to say? When you when you watch a deer runoff or go off, there's a few different types of behavior I've noted that typically would indicate something like if a deer does this, that probably means this kind of hip. I know you've seen the same things, and you've you've called these out before. Could you walk us through a couple of those common types of behaviors that you've noted in the past and what they mean. There's a bunch absolutely. Did a mule kick? Uh, mule kicks one of the first ones. Meal kicks oftentimes are positive more often than not. You know, a mule kick deer, I end up finding that, dear, although I've hit a few deer low that we didn't find that ended up alive, you know, days later or weeks later, that mule kicked and we didn't get him just because the hit was very low. And you will kick because of that, but we're often than not mule kick is a good thing. Um, when you shoot them, are they getting were they calm? Okay? And then did they leave as a scalded dog? Okay? That I have noticed through time as being a generally good sign, not all the time. And one thing about deer that are hit with a bow or a gun or whatever. Tracking there are some probabilities, but you know, nothing is totally probable, and anything is possible when it comes to white tail deer. But there are some things that generally lead you to believe, you know what, I smoked him and he's on his death run. So calm deer suddenly becomes scalded dog. That's generally not a bad thing either, So wouldn't started to interrupt. But before we go on, when you say scalded dog, do you mean like he's running off with his tail between his legs or like just out of their scared, out of their fast. I mean it's hard and as fast as he can go. That that's what I mean by scalded dog, like he went from zero to fifty as fast as he can do it. Um other things that I look for, their ears, Do their ears droop back? Uh? Did they hunch up? Are you are you dealing with liver, stomach or an intestinal hit? Are they hunched? Did they run fifty sixty yards? Stop, hunch up and then walk? All of those things are part of that totality of evidence. You know, if you if you get a deer that does that, chances are he is not immediately fatal. And you bet or go to deer cash track or call somebody's and find out how long you need to wait, because more often than not, a deer that runs fifty even a hundred yards stops, hunches up, and walk slowly. You didn't hit where you thought you did, or you didn't hit where you hoped you would. Um. Also another big one. Did the deer stop, open his mouth and then start to labor for breath? You would go, okay, well that's a long hit. More often than not, a laboring breathing deer is oftentimes stomach or liver. So watch that type stuff. Is he licking his nose very rapidly. Another another thing that I look for. A deer that's looking his nose probably got blood coming up into that nose and he's looking at trying to figure out what's going on, right, you know, So that would tell you there's there's something arterial that was hit or perhaps long hit, and he's getting blood up into his his nasal cavity and he's feeling it in his nose and he starts licking it. Um. What about the tail flick? So the deer runs off fifty or hundred yards, stops and then starts walking away, maybe not noticeably hunched up, but you see this like tail flick, this flick flick flick flick flick flick and slowly walking away. Is that indicative of the same thing? You know, I've seen tail flicks very Um. I've seen them do that where they start flickering and and in general I think that's a better uh sign than a poor one. And oftentimes they'll walk and then die and be and be dead within three to five minutes. Uh So, what I've noticed through the years that scalded dog means that perhaps you cut something that was immediately fatal. You've hit the order, the jugular, the karate, the polaric, one of those main arteries, and they run until they die. Right, The run a little ways scalded for a while, and then stop and start to walk with that tilt tail flitch, and they'll just walk to their death. That sometimes is double lung but you didn't catch the artery going through the lungs, but yet still immediately fatal, but a little bit longer, not seconds, but minutes, right, um. But I've also seen dear hit high on the shoulder and walk away tail twitching, looking around sometimes by their dear the deer's alertness after the hit. Look at their eyes, Look at what they're looking at. Do they look like they're sick, or do they look like they're still attentive and they're not hit very well at all. That will sometimes tell you, okay, that's a little bit bit of evidence right there, he's not fatal yet. Um. Intestinal deer will do that. Sometimes they don't look very they look very attentive because there's not much hit back there. You know, you go through the deers and testines, you know he's gonna die through sepsis one way or the other. If you didn't hit any arteries. You went straight in testines. You know you're looking at a thirty thirty two, thirty six hour process and that all that stuff has to go throughout the deer's blood system and kill him by going septic. So you know that you know that deer is gonna be very attentive in the immediacy after the shot. Whereas liver liver hit deer, well, it takes a man and they lose blood pressure, they start to wobble, they'll run into trees and they feel real wobbly, and then they may go bed immediately because they don't feel good well through time, they start to clot up, and that liver clots up in there. And if you haven't hit the the artery that goes into the liver or runs past it, then he's gonna regain his strength. He's gonna bed seven eight times. It may take nine hours, twelve hours, fifteen hours liver hit deer, depending on broadhead size, or they very drastically in mortality. Uh, the smaller the broadhead, the longer you're gonna have to wait, perhaps sixteen eighteen hours. If you're shooting a one inch I call him p Shooters not to criticize anybody, But I used to shoot those small broadheads, right and you go to the liver and all of a sudden, you're gonna wait sixteen eighteen hours. Switched to the bigger cut on uh, you know, the mechanical type two point three from rage. It dropped our liver hit weight time down to seven eight hours. They're dead a lot of times they're dead and two or three. You know, when you're when you're killing by hemorrhage, you gotta cut them. And if you're not cutting them, you're gonna wait a lot longer. It's one of the reasons I switched away from smaller, smaller dermator broadheads. And and I know a lot of guys are passionate about this point, but it all comes down to that point right there. And and deer cash track. You look at a liver hit deer with a two inch to two point three inch cut, you're looking at, you know, maybe three hours, maybe six eight, nine hours, something like that, depending on which part of the liver same hit. Smaller broadhead like an inch or say it's even seven eight seven inch or something smaller. Even if it's three blades, you might be eighteen hours twenty hours because you just didn't cut enough, he's not bleeding enough. It didn't didn't kill him, So they very great and immortality. So speaking of of broadheads and arrows, let's jump to that next stage then, which is you you observe the deer. You're figuring out a little bit about his behavior. Now you've got to decide, all right, it's time to go down and get the arrow. How long do you usually wait before getting down to checking arrow? And do you always go to the arrow or are there's some situations where you don't even want to walk the twenty yards that direction. You have to just back right out. Yeah, if my gut tells me that this deer is not immediately fatal, then I'm waiting till dark, or I'm waiting until mid morning when the wind gets up, and then I'm slipping down and out. And I generally don't go to the arrow if I feel there's any chance that he's he's right there, you know, or it could see me or hear me, and and you run into that A lot with gut shots, there's stomach or intestines or liver. Right, they'll they'll run sixty yards walk twenty in bed down, you know, and they're just out of your side, or or they may be within your sight. I've had that happened before, where they bed down and they bed they're facing you and they're like, oh my goodness, gracious. So you just got to make sure you don't bump that deer because if you move that deer out of that first bed, and that's what every decision you make after you shoot that deer should be based around not moving that deer out of his initial bed. If you can do that, you you were money ahead down the line. If you do do that and you all of a sudden take a trail that would have been a hundred hundred fifty yards and turn it into four or five hundred yards, well I can assure you that additional two to four hundred yards is going to be a nightmare for you because they coagulate and clod up almost immediately and you just can't find the blood. I mean, it's very tough. So I do everything I can to not move that deer out of out of his initial bed. So my thought process on going to look at an arrow more often than not, unless it's a situation where you know he can't see you or hear you, I'll go out there and grab it and get out of there. But if it's one that at all, by chance he might here see or smell you, I'm getting down and getting out, you know, and trying to make sure he doesn't know that that I was there. I always are on the side of caution, right Like even on double long hits something. Taylor is always like, you're so pessimistic, Dad, a little pitsimistic, and I'm like, I just try to be realistic because through the years it goes back to my conversation about you know, nothing's probable and anything's possible. Like I've had dear smoked. I mean, we got it on video double lung, and seven eight hours later, I'm still jumping this bugger and it's like, how is this possible? Man? Blood trail is wide as a pickup truck, and he's still not dead, you know, I mean, things vary from mortality. Inside of a deer, they just do you know, if if you don't clip an artery somewhere in their body, chances are they're not going to die within seconds, which in our mind we're all optimistic. Oh, let's go get the deer. Let's go get him. I noise dead. I no, he's dead. What if he's not? You know, so weather comes into play. You know, you gotta look at that as well. Or you're dealing with or you're dealing with you know, rain coming, or is it cold enough to keep the deer good? You know, Um, if you've hit him back. Here's another another little known fact, and Bobby Culvertson taught me this one. A warm temperature deer that's hit through the intestines will die much quicker than a deer in cold temperatures because the sepsis takes over in a much shorter period of time. So if it's smoking hot in the first part of the season, probably gonna lose the meat because it's the only way to kill him. But the deer is gonna spoil as the deer actually sits there and dies. Um. If it's colder, it's gonna take much longer. You might end up retrieving the meat, but it's gonna take much longer. Those deer that are hit back, I mean, it's you just gotta you gotta do everything in your power to not hit them back there. It's still gonna happen, but you want to make sure that you give the deer every chance you can to make a good, clean, ethical kill. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about, um, how weather conditions impact your decisions, but I guess I'm gonna try to stick in our little scenario here before I jumped to that, um, because the next piece of evidence is what you see at the sign of the hit. Can you walk me through a few things you look for and what they might indicate. Um, you know, I'm oftentimes at the sign of the hit, you don't get a lot You ever noticed that it's like, well, there's no blood here, right? It might be because of a red green color blind marker. Yeah, everybody a lot more than we know. But oftentimes some hair. You know, white hair is a bad thing in general. Brown darker brown hair is good. Gray hair in between somewhere, But sometimes there's hair. Sometimes there's immediate blood, which I like. That means you went through something quickly that's spurred it out. If that immediate blood turns into immediate and constant blood, that's probably a real good thing. You probably hit an artery that's under pressure, and you're gonna find that deer very quickly. If, however, there's no blood may or may not mean anything. How high was the hit? Was there an exit? Is there blood coming out both sides? It's one thing I always want to know because I don't shoot a lot of poundage because I'm always dealing with that that sore left shoulders. So I'm still shooting in the in the low fifties. So often if you watch my shots on TV, they'll go through the on side, lodge on the off side and not poke out the other side. But I'm shooting a two point three right, so I'm just driving it through and uh, I often don't get an exit. I'm oftentimes stuck in the off shoulder frankly, and it just it's not going to exit through there. But the deer runs seventy eight yards is dead down for the count because I went through the good stuff. Uh So just because you don't have immediate blood doesn't mean that the deer isn't dead. Uh you know, did you shoot through the shoulder and then the shoulder, Actually the meat in that front shoulder can seal off the hole that then entered into the front body cavity. And I think that's something important that we haven't talked about. You can learn a lot about tracking deer and where to shoot deer if you'll just do an almost autopsy on everyone that you shoot, and just even when you butcher, I'm like, look at the bone structure, look at the meat structure, and go, holy calf, I hit a deer right here. Look what I've got to go through to get in the cavity. Whereas if I'm two inches behind that on a quartering away, I got nothing to get through to get into that cavity. You know, there's a big difference in that that shoulder and the meat within that shoulder. So look at all those different things when you're getting a deer or are butchering a deer, and it helps make better decisions going forward the next time you're out there a field. But back to your question, you know, I'm I'm looking at everything I can get, But often that first fifty sixty yards there's not a ton of evidence there for you, because you know that blood has to start filling up inside the cavity before it starts spilling out that hole. So if you've got a mid chest to above mid chest, a lot of times those blood trails are kind of tough because you know all the bloods inside. Yeah, all right, So you're forty yards down the trail then and you finally get some really good blood. Uh color. I know there's a lot of you know, basic stuff out there, but is there any nuance to coloring that you're looking for to help indicate anything about the shop? Oh? Absolutely, yeah, man, I like pink. I like that bright red, pinkish air. You find air in blood. You're talking about something that's arterial, which is great. Uh, I was That's my first thing I look for. Is there bubbles present or is there not? And then I look at color. Uh, pink, bright red, very good artery. Okay, so that's that's coming out of the heart feed the rest of the body. If, however, it's dark and with no air, chances are that maybe vein or meat. Then you look at how dark is it. If it's quite quite dark, almost maroon to brown, chances are that maybe just a meat hit. Then you look at the presence. Is there grit? Is there any any substance within it? All right? Did you hit that um that stomach when you were actually oh I smoked him. I'm along, Wait are you liver stomach? Are you just clean liver? Those types of things. Are those Those hits will become evident as you learn to interpret blood and what the different blood signs mean. So I'm constantly looking at at color and and most importantly content of the blood. Is it air? Is it not air? Is it grit? Yeah? Are there any other pieces of evidence that we haven't touched on then that get you to the decision time? As far as when did go? I feel like we've covered like walking versus running? Blood is another one that I look at is that is it a distance between blood spots? And are the blood spots spatters to where they hit and then fan out or are they droplets? Is the deer standing there? Is it puddling? The moment a deer on a blood trail stops and puddles and is standing there thinking, Then I start to go back in time and go, Okay, did I interpret this correctly? Did I hit where I thought I hit? Maybe I didn't hit what I thought I did. And I'm always the moment they stop and start walking or standing, I'm like, oh, not dead. He's thinking, he's thinking what's going on here? One thing I've noticed about fatally hit dear they will often run to their death or they will run and then walk to their death. Dear that stop and start to think and start to look for a bed. That's the other thing is meandering looking for a bed. That's a deer that's not quite ready to die yet. And I'm like, oh, did I already bump him? You know that's that's a bad sign when you get to that. So if you've tracked immediately and you start to see that, and you're on wet blood and you start to see a dear meander, you're like, oh, did I already run him out of here? And did you know? And I didn't know that I did it, So you know, you gotta you gotta always be ready to give up, you know, always be ready to go. Oh, things aren't exactly what I thought here. Yeah, that's an interesting point because I feel like a lot of times when I've been out with friends and I probably have jumped to this assumption too. When you see the puddle of blood, sometimes jumped to the opposite conclusion, like a bunch of blood. He's gonna be here any minute, like he's he's he's right around here. There's a huge pool right here. That's so often what you hear um. But you make an interesting point, it might be the exact opposite situation, and then because you get so excited and you think he's close, you actually do the worst possible thing, push him out of where he would have been. Yeah, in reality it just went from running to walking too stopped and therefore the blood increased, when in reality his speed his speed decreased. These chances are he's not dead yet. Yeah, Okay, so we've looked at all this evidence. We have analyzed the totality of evidence, as you guys are calling it now. I know in the tracking app there's gonna be a whole lot of different types of scenarios covered in a lot of detail. But can you give us just like a couple of the most likely, most common scenarios and then how that impacts your decision as far as when to start tracking? So double long? How long do you wait? Gut shot? How long do you wait a few things like that. Absolutely, If if in any hit I see blood under pressure coming out or forming under the skin, whether it be on video with my own eyes, once you see blood and lots of blood, then that's always a great sign you've hit an artery that's under pressure coming out of the heart, and chances are that deer is dead before you before you get out of your stand. You know, that's always a good thing. If you don't see the presence of blood, then that's a different scenario and you have to start backing up. And even if you double lungum, sometimes you get a lot of blood on double lung shots. Sometimes you don't. There are arteries. It's the aortic that goes right through the middle of the lungs up to the top of the back and then backwards towards the back formoral artery that the arctic turns into the formoral back in the top of the ham right and it's really big up through there. It's quite big through the lungs. If you clip it going through that deer is dead in seconds, and if you don't, might be a little bit longer. You know, I have a tendency to give double long hit deer that don't bleed heavily at the impact an hour to two at least um. If I do have a lot of blood right away, I go, I go very quickly. Uh. The tricky one to me, and the one that I see people probably make the most mistakes on, is that heart, liver, stomach area along the bottom right there. I mean literally through six inches. You go from immediacy to nine to twelve hours to twenty four to thirty hours within six inches. And and I always say an inch a cost you a mile, right, A second might cost you a mile if you don't if you don't think an extra second before you shoot, it might cost you a mile if you're if you're back an inch from the heart and you didn't hit it, you go, well, I'm in the ribs. I got I got it, man. I smoked him. Um Taylor had a hit like that, oh three years ago, fork the pig Missouri buck ray ss straight through I mean just behind the heart. Um, miss the heart and missed the lungs, square through the liver. He was alive at the fourteen hour mark the next day, and we found him at fifteen. He was he was on his last last leg, all right. We put that hit out on social media and said, what would you do in this situation? Everybody was smoked him, go get him, smoked him, Go get him, smoked him, go get him. And that wasn't the case. And we interpreted it correctly that night. And we did that because of the blood sign. She made the hit. They waited till dark backed out. I wasn't with her in this case, Scott Rupert was. We looked at the hit and I said, man, you're right on that verge. You're you're right behind the heart. You might be just liver. And then we looked at the blood sign. It was dark, it had grid in it, and we were like, we're out of here, you know. We backed out, waited till fourteen hours. We didn't jump the deer. We found him in his first bed. He did get up and moved us a little bit, but he was dead at the fifteen hour mark. So those that hit right there, right behind the heart, you get through the liver and everybody, everybody, I mean, the people that participated in that, and I'm talking we had two or three hundred opinions were like, smoked him, go get him. So that's one of the reasons we did. Dear Cash track that right there so that you can interpret the difference between that shot and that shot. There's also a difference in gut shot. Dear did you hit stomach, did you hit large intestines, front, did you hit mid or did you hit back? We examine all of those different hits, and the fact that arteries within a deer taper out and deplete as they run backwards within the deer, with the exception of the aortic, which goes into the femoral But if you get into those guts, you run out of those things and you're you're you are much better off if you're going to hit one in the guts to be a little bit forward, closer to the blood system, to the heart which is pumping in than you are to be at the back, you know, front of guts might be able to go in twenty hours, backup guts probably looking at thirty you know, thirty two something like that, big difference because there's not as much blood. Wow, what about what we're talking lungs there? A second ago? What about the dreaded single lung shot? All right, Well, for a while it wasn't dreaded, but I feel like recently it's been something that's talked about quite a bit. Is that something you've had trouble with? We actually examine it in depth in the in the app and it was interesting. Myself, Terry, Bobby John all gave our opinions independently of the other and we all had the exact same opinion on one lungs and that is, more often than not they don't die. Um, we all said the same thing. One long hits are the trickiest we've ever tracked. More often than not you don't get them. Um. The deer can go on one long, plain and simple. So it it, it, more than anything else, should keep you from shooting straight down onto a deer, or should make you discipline in terms of the angle in which you shoot the deer. If they are out there, you know you want to make sure that you at least take long liver or both lungs out, because if you get one lung, because these two far quartering away, then you're asking for trouble and you're probably not gonna find the deer. One long deer probably the worst you can have as a bow hunter, in my opinion, one of the worst. And how long would you wait in that kind of scenario. I'll wait eight to ten hours probably then go look either that or if I've got a lot of room to go, one long hit deer, probably the appropriate thing is get on him, and get on them quick and try and keep them bleeding, to try and bleed them out because once they coagulate, they're gonna start to heal up and they're gonna go on that off along. So kind of along those lines, then what about this scenario where it's raining or snowing really heavily and you're worried that you know you're gonna you'renna lose blood, do you? I've always said, I've always struggled this internally. I've always imagined there's two situations you could go for. You could say, Okay, it's raining and snowing, I'm gonna lose my blood soon. That means I need to start tracking sooner than later, because I want to take advantage of what blood I do still have. That's option A. Option B is the opposite, which is, Okay, I'm probably not gonna have a good blood trail no matter what, So I want to make sure that I don't push him and make it impossible to find him. If I don't push him too soon, he'll that down relatively quickly, and I can hopefully with where I saw him last, and then some smart grid searching from there, I'll find him close. Those have always been the two scenarrows I've contemplated in my head, what which do you think is the better option or is there something between? Are different entirely. I agree with both of those, and I think it probably goes some some more thinking on top of that is what shot am I willing to take today? Given the forecast that I just looked at for I climbed in the tree or climbing in the blind, versus if there is no rain in the forecast for the next seven days, right, you know, like if it's those days, like there's certain days because tailor shoots an inch and a half, we just look at each other and go, you know what, probably not a good idea to hunt tonight. You know, if the blood trails wiped out, just we're not gonna find the animal. It's not fair. Let's let's just hold off, you know. And I'm the same way. There's nights where I are wait and I go and we're not hunting tonight. You know, you you go through enough tough blood trails on great hits, and you go, we don't need anything working in aginst us with snow or with rain. So if there's a fresh snowfall coming, probably not gonna hunt. If I do, my shot is going to be within fifteen yards and I know it's a freaking slam dunk double long watch him fall down in the field. That type of thinking. Same with rain rains a I I oftentimes just don't go or if I do, um it's a slam dunk shot, or I'm not gonna take it. I know I'm gonna double along the deer. So I think you you add into your decision making or your thought process with you know I'm gonna I'm gonna hold off on certain shots or not go at all. Yeah, that's an interesting point and a and a and a good thing to be thinking about. Like you said, um, the ultimate most important thing of all this is is making sure that you do everything you can to to recover a deer. And if you are shooting a deer that you don't even think it's possible to recover because of those uh factors, then what the heck are you doing out there? So exactly now, now you know, storms pop up that weren't predicted. You know what if you're shooting and you hit a deer and say in the liver, and all of a sudden, unexpected snow squall blows through and dumps two inches. Oh my, goodness, Now what do we do? I have to wait. I know he's alive right right now. I know he's not dead yet. So I'm in your option be there where I'm I'm waiting longer than then I you make sure you don't bump him out of that bed, absolutely make sure and and go out there and find him in that first bed. Yeah, that that's always what I've aired towards. I would rather just make sure it's not a mile and a half two mile track shop. Um, that hundred yards away hopeful bed is is a much better best case scenario worst Um. Okay, So now we've made a decision as far as how long we're gonna wait, we get back out there to do our tracking after the appropriate amount of time without we're kind of running that time here. But I guess as much as you can share here about what you're tracking process, looks like I would be interested. Um Like, how many people do you like to have? How many? Too many? Um? What things are you thinking about as you go? Um? I know there's sometimes people like to do this. Someone always waits at last blood and then one other person goes ahead and you do like a leap frog approach. Anything you want to share. As far as the actual tracking process, absolutely, I think it's vitally important. I like to track with three people, and I like someone at last blood and to other people that can see quite well out in front looking if you're at night, I think the guy at last blood also needs to be looking forward in front of them to see if a deer gets up, you know, with his light. Make sure you're not seeing eyes that type of stuff, because they're focused on the ground look over blood. You need somebody focused on on inside the woods or are inside the field or whatever you're looking for. Make sure you're not seeing eyes get up to make sure you didn't didn't jump them. And I also think that when you have people tracking, it's not a bad thing at night if you at all think that the animal could still be aliable. First of all, you shouldn't be tracking. But if by chance you're like, oh, this thing could be alive, be very quiet, and that's day or night. I always track like they're alive regardless. I mean, I just always make that assumption they're alive until you find them, because if by chance they're alive and you've tracked as if they're dead, you bump that sucker two hundred yards ago, right, and you you've just literally almost eliminated your chance as a fighting the deer. So I'm kind of I'm not the most pleasant guy to track with because I'm really strict about shut up, don't make a nobody says a word when we track nothing. We don't even utter a word unless it's whispering or hand signs that type of stuff, because you know, what if they are alive. You know what if we cause that deer to get up when we're four hundred yards from him, I mean, you're ruining your chance as a finding name, right, Like, what if the blood trails four hundred yards long and you struggle through the first two hundred, and you've talked through that two hundred and you get to the two hundred yard mark and you go, you know what, I didn't hit where I thought we need to back out. Well, what if in that two hundred the deer that was four hundred yards away just put an additional five between you and him and you didn't even know it. You caused that, and you didn't realize until you got there two hundred yard mark. I need to back out anyway, Well, take the precaution in that first two hundred yards to not spook that deer. I'm also very cognizant of like, if I'm on the edge of I need to wait ten hours versus twelve hours. Well, if there's a wind switch that puts me in a disadvantage coming at the ten hour mark, I'm gonna go a little sooner than I am later, if that makes sense. In other words, if the deer ran away in an up wind position and I'm getting ready to go tracking, I'm looking at the wind direction for the hour that I'm gonna go tracking to go, you know what, We're gonna have the wind in their favor and go old. No winds that are back, I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna go before it turns if I can, or if it switches right away, I'm waiting longer before I go. If that makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and something that that I haven't thought about enough. Yeah, don't put your wind across the animal, you know. So it's like, well, you know, it's you know, it's like, what if we put our wind across somewhere He's gone on, buddy, I mean, you're not fine that dear, you better, wait, you better, mcdar aren't sure he's dead for you get on that track job, because he's gonna smell you before you even get there. So think of every single thing that goes into a track job before you ever go out there. The weather ahead, the weather behind, what's coming? Is it heating up? Is it cooling down? Are you gonna be dealing with frost? And the first thing in the morning, Well, let's wait till it burns off, because you're not gonna see the blood. It's a you know, it's a white carpet out there. Those types of things, UM, will help you. What about the situation where you get out there after the appropriate amount of time and you lose blood? Uh? Do you have a system in place for how you try to like expand out from there with a grid or circle? Or in that situation do you always back out and wait a little longer? What about that if we're convinced that they're dead, if we've convinced we've waited the appropriate amount of time, which more often than not, when we track, we are fairly convinced that animal is dead. I always are on the side of caution. Um, Then when I run out of blood. We look exhaustively and I'm talking hours to three, four or five hours trying to trying to work that track out, because your best chance of finding an animal, in my opinion, is to get on blood, stay on blood until it leads you to a dead deer. Once you once you lose blood and you start the grid thing. More often than not, it's very difficult to find the dear. You can do it. You got a chance. But oftentimes those deer that I end up gritting on, I get on camera in a week later, ten days later, two weeks later, or whatever. Once we start gritting, more often than not, we don't find him. And oftentimes it wasn't the hit we thought it was. It wasn't fatal. If you know it's fatal, you know, if you know it's a it's a gut shot deer, and guts are protruding out both sides of the whole. There was zero blood along the entire track job that I'm waiting the appropriate thirty to thirty two hours or thirty six depending on temperatures, and then i'm my butt is going and I'm I've got a bunch of buddies. Were still quiet, and we spread out and we start gritting it very thoroughly, any any anything beyond the obvious. When it comes to a grid search strategy, there is a just spread out walk you know. It's it's that, it's that grid strategy. And I used the on X app. I put my tracker on to make sure that I'm hitting everything thoroughly and I'm not leaving any holes, and that that app will help you grid and grid appropriately. You know, for years you go, okay, well let's take this, take this, take that. Well, you didn't know whether you hit that area or not with that tracker on you, and it shows you where all you've been and all your buddies have been, you know, whether you've appropriately gridded it or not. Yeah, very very helpful to all. I do the same thing now when you're out there looking by the way. Yeah, agreed. Another thing A lot of times people are thinking about when they get to that body search period, right, it's it's a bad scenario to being. But if you end up in that scenario and you're trying to grid search or just looking for it with nothing to guide you, um, oftentimes people will kind of run out these tropes like well a buck will never run up hill, or a buck's likely to go to such and such place. Are there any of those types of things that you either believe are are very true and we should think about or our myths. The buck up the hill and I just dismissed because I've seen fatally hit deer goes straight up the hill and die at the top of it, one of the steepest hills you could possibly imagine. I've seen gutshot deal go through hill and hollow and die in the fifth one. I mean, it's back to the anything as possible scenario when it comes to that type of stuff. Um, you know, there there are some things that I look for um when it comes to that, but it's it's probably generally the further back you get in the in the in the animal, and the longer it takes them to die, the more likely they become. In my opinion, the more the two things, they'll go seek out really intense cover because they feel fairly vulnerable, our water because they're thirsty, So I have a tendency to hit that really really thick cover and those watering watering holes. It's amazing how many deer you find by a watering hole or a water source when they're fatally hit, especially when the hit is back. Yeah, yeah, that's that seems to be a consistent thing I've I've seen and heard and look in the sky man, look for buzzers, look for crows, look for birds, listen for birds. We found a pile through the years, just you know, mother nature, help help you find him. Uh, coyotes. You know, Terry killed Dangerous Calling last year and he had a hit that was back and low, and um, you know, we we couldn't find the deer. We had rain hit washed the blood trail away. We knew roughly where he went, and um couldn't find him. And one of my you know, my big grass patches on my warm season grasses. Those things are miserable attracted by the way. And you know, Wade and I were hunting, uh, not long after that, when within a day or two or three whatever it was, we hear coyotes open up over and then in the farm. And I'm like, listen, that that's not far off from where we were tracking Dangerous Calling. And now I'm telling you we had gritted and stomped it out and looked, and we could not find this deer. We gave it. We gave it day's worth of efforts, all right effort, and then we heard those coyouts in a little bit different spot went there and there he laid. So sometimes, as Terry said that night, mother nature giving back. Yeah, it's it's nice when they lend a hand in that way. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, we lost the meat of the deer. But I mean we've never looked for a dear harder or more thoroughly than we did for that dear it was. It was days. Yeah, better to better to find it in that situation than never at all. I guess absolutely, you know, absolutely you owe it to the deer to give it all you got. And if you do and you fail, then sometimes you just you chalk it up to experience and you you try to make a better shot the following time. Yeah, let and learn live and learn what life's about about the time you know it always you know you're gonna pass away. Yeah that's the truth. And what well of age or so wise man, they've done it, see it? And I guess speaking of wisdom, Um, this has been another one of those conversations you never failed to uh to be very very helpful. Mark this is Uh, we're gonna have to wrap it up because because both of us are over time here a little bit. But man, really interesting, really helpful. So so thank you, oh man, thank you. I appreciate it, Mark and hope everybody has a great fall this year. Check out deer Cast. Check out deercast Track, and we also added in there this year in the elite version, UH, deer cast custom and allows you to take our algorithm customize it to your farm. You know, if you feel like we're a little too optimistic, you can town it back. If you feel like we're not optimistic enough, you can crank it up a little bit, you know, so we can you can customize our algorithm. And this year, for the first year, we're going into a pay model. Last year it was free throughout the whole year. We had over five hundred fifty thousand people download the app, and uh, this year we've got it. We've still got a free version, we got a pro model at annual fee, one time fee, or we've got the Elite version which has track and custom in the in the ten day forecast and that's uh nineteen nine a nine, So everybody check it out. The other thing that often goes unset about deer Cast. We do an article a day and there there's over four hundred articles in Deercast right now, and you know, by this time next year we'll be over seven hundred. So it's like a little app magazine and it's it's literally loaded with content inside those articles. We've got a staff of of like thirteen or fourteen writers that do a phenomenal job. So everybody check it out and hopefully they enjoy the stuff we're putting in Deercast. Yeah, it's some some really high quality stuff. I can attest to that. And and what what general timeframe or when should people expect to be able to access this new stuff. You know, we're soft launching here in early August, so by mid August hard launch it'll be out and you know, certainly in time for when the first season's open up out West and it's uh, she's gonna be rolling heavy by by late August. But but here anytime, you know, mid August, it's ready. Awesome. Well, I for one, I'm excited to put it to work. So thanks for this chat, and thanks for putting all this helpful content out there for everybody. Oh Man, appreciate you Mark, thank you so much for having me on. I always enjoy visiting with you me too, and that is a rap. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. Like I said at the top, I knew this one was gonna be fascinating. I definitely found it to be. So I'm glad we got to share this with all of you, and hopefully all of us will be able to put this advice to get use in the coming weeks and months as they're hunting seasons kick off. I certainly hope I've got a couple opportunities to work on perfecting my my moment of truth process and my recoveries. So until then, thank you for listening, and stay wired to hunt.