00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the modern white tail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the wire to Hunt podcast. I'm your guest host Tony Peterson, and today I'm speaking with public Land guru case C Smith. All right, folks, welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. You might notice that this is not the voice of Mark Kenyon. He sent me a text last week and said that he picked up a new hobby called duck herding. When I asked him what that was, he said it's all in the name and that he had to go pick up his new flock. So I don't, I don't, I don't know any more, guys. Anyway, today I'm speaking with Casey Smith from The Element. Casey is from Texas, but every year he heads out with his partner in crime, Tyler Jones, to hunt a bunch of different states, all on public Land. Both guys have been on an absolute tear in recent seasons, which is really cool to see. Throughout this show, Casey and I talked about why he chooses to research certain states, what he really factors in before deciding to buy a nonresident white tail tag in one state but not another. This episode is full of good advice if you're interested in taking your hunting on the road, and it's really kind of like a part one. Next week I'm sitting down with Andy May to dive deeper into this hunt planning topic. So we really kind of have a back to back breakdown of this issue for two weeks in a row. Really cool episodes. Casey, how are you doing? Brother? I'm good man. Just had a long not with the Toddler and ray to rock and roll. You know how this goes? You know, like it does it matter how much you sleep? And that's whatever. It's actually kind of uh keeps you in the hunting season mindset all the time, even when you're not on a trip. You know, wait, how does it do that? Well? Just lack of sleep and pure exhaustion all the time. You know, instead of uh being cyclical where you get to come home and rest, you might as well just spend all fall super tired. How how holds the little guy? Now? Uh, don't ask him months. He's pushing on too. He turns two in March, so yeah, he's uh, he's getting on up there, or we've reached that new stage where he winds a lot more than the east to because he understands like his way, you know. So uh, but that's the human condition. We all wanted our way. Yeah, definitely, Man, how has that changed? You know? How is having a little one changed your travel schedule or how you think about being on the road because you, you and Tyler travel a lot for for the element, and I know what it's like to go hunt four or five six states a year and have little kid is at home. It it makes things different. Man. Oh absolutely, Man, it's it's uh, you know, honestly, the change is emotional more than anything. Uh. I have a really understanding wife. Of course, we talk things out, you know, and she has a good job, so I'm able to go and be a bum, you know. And I I definitely you know, make my contributions income wise as well. But um, and a great family dynamic where I always have plenty of people to be babysitters and to hang out with him and stuff. But honestly, the missing the kid is the hardest part for me. It's it really is. And it's it's so strange because my wife isn't gonna listen to this, so I can say whatever I want, right, But like, um, I miss her, but in such a different way, Like we we spent a lot of time in our life, uh in a long distance relationship, so I can love her from Afar and be just fine. But it's like, you know, how fast they grow. It's like if you're gone for five days, you come back and it's slightly a different child, you know, and you're like, man, all this stuff on this. So I think that's the thing that's the toughest part for me, Like I just don't want to string together a bunch of like the month of November. I want to be gone a week or nine days and come home for you know, at least three or four days instead of just being a full on just travel guy. And it's that's not realistic for anybody, right, you know, Like just being gone for a month. It's just just tough, man. So that's that's what shan for me. I had. I had a conversation with Tom Miranda about this way back when my girls were born, and you know, I just kind of kind of said the same thing, like, man, I feel guilty traveling to do this, and you know, he was like, man, I've had so many people say stuff like that to me over the years, you know, and nobody's traveled to hunt more than that guy. I mean, he's he's been all over the world for thirty five years, you know. And he said he kind of framed it. He said, you know, if you were a businessman and you were traveling for meetings or whatever, nobody would bat nine. They would they would just be like, that's an acceptable thing to do for your rear. But when people look at it and like, oh, you're just off hunting, they don't. They're like, you're just being selfish. And you know, it sort of feels that way when you when your kids are little, because you know, you do enjoy parts of It's not like you're just flying out doing a bunch of meetings and trying to sell you know, vacuums or whatever the hell you could be doing. But it does it changes the game a lot. And I know for me with you know, when we had the girls, I was in heavy travel stage. Like that was when I was really trying to string together you know, two or three good bucks on public land every year and and really make it happen. And it was a weird motivator for me, like get this done, like, don't waste your time, like this is not lay around in your tent in the middle of the day, like make it happen and go home. And I remember, uh, just this this one time I was in South Dakota, probably in I think it was like and I was struggling and it was Halloween and I had this plan. I was like, I'm gonna go sit the pond. It was pretty warm. I'm like, I just want to get this done and get home because I'm doing the math. I'm like, if I shoot a buck this morning and get him out, I can make it home in time to take the girls trick or treating. And I just happened to, you know, nine ten in the morning, had two bucks come and chasing the dough and I thumped one, packed him out, made the drive home, and as I pulled into the driveway, I could hear my girls knocking on the neighbor's door. And it made me so happy because I'm like, I got it done, Like I killed the buck, I drove the six and a half hours home, and now I get to go walk around with him. And it's just it's weird, weird. It's weird how it changes your perspective on this travel game. Yeah. Absolutely, man, It's it's um It's so just last week I was in Oklahoma and uh honestly caught myself making some like quick decisions that I wouldn't make otherwise trying to kill a deer. And I'm I kind of have this um way of approaching watchail hunting where I try to be knowledgeably aggressive, is what I say. Uh, Tyler and I talked about it a lot, where you make the most aggressive move you can get away with and it's still be a smart move. And I breached to that ceiling a couple of times where I did things that we're kind of dumb, but it was kind of like a hail Mary type thing like this might work, you know, and retrospectively, if I'd have played it safer, uh might have actually came out with a better outcome where I did kill it deer sooner as opposed to trying to make it happen in the next two minutes, you know what I mean. Yeah, a lot of this stuff I think. I think when you talk to people who really really get it done in a bunch of different states and you know, have a pretty good track record of you know, filled tags in in wildly different environments. You just you get this sense of sort of this equilibrium between that super cavalier and you know, go get it done versus Okay, I gotta let this breathe you and let this situation bring the deer to me. And you just kind of get this feel of like that that gut instinct like okay. Sometimes sometimes it is that you look at it and go, look, I know I could blow this deer out, but I could also crawl up to the edge of this draw and shoot him, you know, instead of being paralyzed, you know. Or I could go move right in there. But I got faith in this little pinch point, and so I'm gonna I'm gonna let them play around over there for a little bit because somebody's gonna make it my way. And that comes from a lot of experience traveling, but you hear that kind of vibe come from a lot of people who are at least a lot of people who I really respect as white tail hunters. Yeah, it's a it's a weird deal, and you have to kind of judge the environment to you know, especially you start looking at like that, I'm thinking of specific dear, we were crawling around in some pretty monotonous habitat. I just kind of that, I don't know, river bottomsk top stuff where it's just a bunch of elms and hack berries and sayers, you know, just so there's not a great pinch point. There's not a great um food source either. And so you put eyes on a deer, you glass of deer up at a hundred ten yards and you're like, oh, also the winds blowing, like thirty five is the day that front rolled in and you've probably seen this, but a lot of times in one of those super windy days, those deer will be on their feet, but they'll just stay in stationary for an hour or two, you know. And that was kind of my thought in that specific scenarios, like, Okay, there's no way for me to really set up on this deer, and um feel good about him walking by, so I might as well go for it. And got to forty yards, just didn't have the shot, and then he ended up, uh, you know, doing stuff with the cameras a lot different than not, you know, and I had a camera guy. When the eric is great, you know, he's feeling just do a ton of stuff this year, and he's awesome at it. But just in general, uh, two big fat humans walking is a lot louder than one. So you know, who knows what happened, but you know, blew them out and but at the same time learn some stuff from it, you know. And I think that that's any time you met us up and don't learn, it sounds so cliche. I hate to talking cliches, man, I really do. But if you mess up, you've gotta learn, because if you mess up and don't learn, it's complete waste, you know. And from that went in the next morning and UH had an opportunity on two more bucks because we learned some stuff there. So well your point about you know, high winds, frontal conditions and watching those dear I think one of the reasons that it's so fun to go hunt, you know, maybe Kansas or you know, some parts of Nebraska, the Dakotas, is because you get to watch actual dear behavior, like mature buck behavior sometimes in those conditions. And if you pick most of the white tails range, you don't watch that stuff. I mean when you think when when you think about all the people I shouldn't say all the people you think about the Dan Infall type of guys who are talking buck betting a ton and they're they're piecing together dear behavior by looking at sign and then you know, hunting and seeing what happens. But a lot of it is like I gotta fill in the blanks because you don't watch those dear bed in the swamps a lot of time, right like you're in timber. But when you get out to some of those playing states, you can actually see, you can you can sit there and get the spot or on him or your binos on him, and go, I know what that buck does in these conditions, or at least I know what he did. That stuff so valuable, Yeah, absolutely, I love it. We actually just recorded a podcast yesterday talking about this stuff. We kind of did like the um, you know what we learned through runt and the rut this year and that sort of thing. And um, we were in Kansas. I was in Kansas nine days, tallers in Kansas eleven days sequentially, right, So we got to see from November one to November eleven how things ramped up and got to observe bucks interacting with those at long and short range. So it's exactly what you're saying, where, man, I've gotten to the point where, uh, I really enjoy way hunting the more open stuff because of that, because you you just get to observe dear. And don't get me wrong, next year, I plan on being in Iowa about November five, you know, but I'm gonna hunt it hard. But it's just so much I don't just hate to say easy. Were better to be able to look at him and see him. You know. I watched I stalked a buck for um, I don't know, four or five days before I shot my dear that was on public, you know, pushing those real high numbers. I'm not gonna are too much out there, but he was big, the biggest dear I've ever been on, and I was on even hard, had him at twenty yards one day, and uh I got to see him go from, Hey, I don't like your decoy. I'm leaving my does here too. I'm going to try to kill this other buck that's within a hundred yards of my doughs. My doughs, you know, And it's it's neat to see it ramp up that way and see their changes. And one of the things I realized is that this uh rut activity window that we all like to hunt, you know with the bucks or you know, you can start with them in from a hundred or whatever. That's a lot smaller, at least in my observations. You know, I'm I'm mid thirties, right, so i haven't hunted a whole lifetime, and I've hunted a lot, and uh, the time here that you have on a specific deer that he's just going insane and ready to just whoop, the world is pretty pretty small, you know. And that's something I really realized, and so it kind of changed my perspective on how I hunt deer in the rut um at least for the moment, because I I really like that aggressive stuff. I like calling, rattling, doing all that stuff you have texting, you know, like it's just kind of it's kind of a way we are, you know. But the the concept of those deer, like that buck was the master of the planes, Okay, like he was the guy had a harem of six to nine does every day. And on November two, uh, we showed him a two dimensional decoy at eighty yards, and he decided that he wanted to leave as opposed to five and just leave those does with us. And you think about that and you're like, man, I would have thought that that guy was just you know, he was just a brawler, you know, just because he's so big and old, and it was in the case. Um, I think I totally agree with you that there's those The windows are a lot tighter than we think. And I also but I also think there's more of them than we think. And a lot of them happened in October, and I know, I mean I've snort weased in Bucks and killed him in October when you shouldn't. You're not supposed to be able to not only Bucks that shouldn't probably be responding to that because they're not the king right and also a time period. But you know how it is when you see I don't know, you you watch these deer and you can see their body language and go, this is probably gonna work or not. And you know, sometimes when you're sitting there and they're just they're going point A to B. They're not they're not messing around. You know, they've got a destination in mind that that deer. A lot of times it's like uncallable. You know, you'll get his attention, but getting him fired up and turned around. Different story. But if you get that buck that's kind of meandering and he's you know, nipping some buds here and there, and he's kind of looking around and he's just like he's waiting for some action. Like they just look like there's something going on, and it's it's pretty subtle a lot of times. But man, there's a big difference on calling to those two kinds of deer. Oh absolutely, Man, you've seen this and it's like we're in a plain state. I see a deer a hundred yards is November two or whatever, and you're like hitt him with a grunt, and he's acting like he doesn't even hear it, and you know, the winds eight to twelve. You know, it's like, I know he can hear this thing, and he just doesn't care because he is focused on whatever he's got going on. And I think that, Um, I used to think this was kind of I don't I don't want to be read proud, but I used to not really believe that much in the whole uh Druries in their thirteen phases or whatever. And I don't know, uh for sure, how that all plays out biologically, but I am truly convinced that, Um, it's not as much by calendar, but it's per animal that there is much more than pre rut rutting post rut. There's so much more than that going on. And I think that I wouldn't have those revelations if it wasn't for hunting places where you can't observed. Dear. Yeah, And I mean you can get a little bit of a glimpse on trail cameras, but it's like not even oh man, yes, you know, we've when we were in trail cameras quite a bit, especially for guys who end up not hunting anywhere near a trail cameras a lot, you know, because we like, you know, like to add that observation. And I have a little property here in these Texas that run a camera on a lot over food. And UM, I was thinking that I was just having a terrible year because we we've been on the road quite a bit. You know, I'm not seeing do anything on camera. I got quite a few pigs, you know, and just dealing with that, and then UM, out decide after we get back from Kansas one day, I'm like, I'm gonna go hunt it. You know, why not I can hunt from a wife least for work, and uh see like two mature bugs, but they just weren't on camera, and then proceed to have the best five six days worth of hunting I've had in East Texas in a long time because I didn't pay just attention to the camera, but the cameras were showing does right, and you know like if you got does, you're gonna have a buck scenario later. And that's that's what I saw, you know, pass some some pretty good deer uh here in East Texas, which is something I've never really got to do. Uh, let's talk. You mentioned a little bit ago that you're gonna draw Iowa next year, uh or you know this season. I should say, um, what's what's the planning process? Because I know Tyler was texting me does he have the same points as you? Now we're kind of on opposite points schedule, so he drew and not nineteen Um, and we're gonna we always kind of swing for the fences for I We want to hunt, you know, the which I don't know if there's a bad unit, but we try to hunt the really good stuff. Um that we we know a little bit better and it's a little bit more obtainable. Um. But anyways, we're on opposite schedule. So he hunted and nineteen, all hunt in twenty two and then he'll probably hunt four or something like that. Yeah, depending on where the points, you know, depending on what it takes to draw. So you you guys live in Texas, you hunt public land all over, uh, you know, kind of the western fringe where a lot of people go. But you also get into the Midwest obviously, what's the planning process for you? Like, how do you sit there this time of year in the winter and go, Okay, I want to hit you know, if you know you're gonna draw i we that's to take precedence, right, But you're gonna You're not only going to Iowa. So how do you figure out? Like, man, this is a state I really want to try. This is an area of a state I really want to try. How do you how do you go about that? Uh? So I don't think about trophic potential too much except for top tier stuff, right. So Iowa of course is awesome. Uh and that's where world class bucks are. But I don't really think about going to Iowa and killing a two d if one walks by, that'd be great, But realistically, I want to go up there and have a good hunt and kill, you know, a really respectable deer in public It's what I'm gonna do. Um And not because solely because I think public land is cool. But I also just not the guy with the finances to pay for an outfitted hunt if I if I had that, I might do that because I'd really like to kill a really big deer sometime too, you know, But I like to be realistic with my expectations probably the first thing, right, and and think about what can you actually get out of a hunt and how can you be the most efficient um, I guess um, you know. On a more broader spectrum, I think about population densities and how that plays into, uh, the amount of public land. You know, you have states they have pretty low population densities, but if they have a decent amount of public access, you can define in pockets of deer that you feel like you're you know, I don't know, and you know, central Illinois on a green field, you know what I mean? Like it's um. Population densities are a little weird sometimes because they don't account for the um micro habitat pockets, you know what I mean. So that stuff pollock for And of course all this relates back to map scouting and I'm trying to be more bullet pointed, but that's not how my brain works. I hop around a hundred million places. So yeah, sorry, But you know, I think about how population densities relate to, uh, what the habitat looks like on a map. And if I look at a state and I see, like, say, for instance, um, I want to hunt Illinois next year. You look at northern Illinois. Um, pretty good population density, but there's a ton of agriculture and they're not a lot of a lot a lot of temper up there. And you think about, Okay, if I go up there after the crops are out, like, there's gonna be a lot of deer in these little pockets. And that's even that's kind of exponential because it's kind of the best of both worlds. So I think about that stuff a lot. Don't pay too much of attention to approach tough trophy potential. We all pretty much know that, you know, hoping young top deer can be killed about here anywhere. Um, So think about that, think about the availability of tags. I like to hunt it over the counter states, really do, because uh, you just know you can go, you know, and and I don't. I would rather spend my time scouting, map scouting, boot scouting, whatever you wanna call it on over the counter states and figuring something good out then spending a ton of time thinking about point and how to draw and all this stuff. That's just I don't really crave that too much. Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. I do play the points game, and you know, in Iowa and I played out Western a few states just because just because I know I'm gonna have, you know, maybe one or two really cool oltcons in my life or you know, you deer hunt or something. So I but I'm the same way. I love a state that will just sell me a tag because I know I can do a bunch of research and I can go there this year, Yes, exactly. And that that's the thing, man, I don't. I live my life a little bit scatter brained, and I am not the most organized person either, so points don't go well with that. You know. It's like, wait, did I buy my point this year? I don't remember some states if you missed two years, they penalize you. You lose them like that that made you want to cry, you know what I mean. And so like, it's just it doesn't play well for me. I'm much rather just concentrate on the season at hand pretty much kind of like what you're saying, and you know, it feels good to know. And the other thing is to like, um, some of these places have public access that's rotating. It might be in this year and out next year, and and YadA YadA, crops changed and you know this and that it's the m r I stuff. Most recent information is what you got to work with. And um, I like being and I do like to go say, I know I'm gonna draw this state or I'm not gonna go hunt this state this year. Let's go spend some time in the summer or uh, you know, in the early spring, and put some boots on the ground there and then hunt it just fall. I think that that same year scouting is super valuable. Oh me too. You said something about Iowa that I think we should dive into a little bit because when you talk about habitat and population densities, this is something something that drives me absolutely nuts. I hear people like I see it on hunting forums, and you know, somebody will be like, hey, I'm thinking about going to Nebraska this year. Anybody have just just general recommendations, I don't want your spot. You know. It's kind of like a it's like a cliche at this point, but the responses will always be Nebraska's only two public there's no public left to get shot out or you know, name a state, right, and I'm always like, listen, we're talking about white tails here. And so when you think, like take Iowa, for example, when you take Iowa and you go, okay, I was I don't know what percentage of public land Iowa is. It's not super high, but the public land it is in Iowa probably isn't tillable, so it's probably really good cover for Iowa. And so even if only two percent of the land mass of Iowa is public, it could be the best ground around. It could be the best timber, it could be the best river bottoms, and there's like a pretty high likelihood it's gonna tilt that way. And so when you look at this stuff, you go, Okay, well maybe this state isn't uh, you know, like a typical Western state where half of its public and I can go anywhere and there's BLM and National Forest and all this stuff. But some of these white tails states that don't advertise like a ton of public land. The public land is really good for white tails, or you know, theoretically it should because it's gonna be the best cover. And I think people kind of get hung up on that and they think, well, you know, if there's only only a little bit of public land here, you know, patchwork there, it's probably not worth going. And it's like, man, I don't know, you got to think about what's the core area of a white tail. And you know, when you look at Iowa, it's like, not only do you have pretty pretty dense population in some of those places, you know you're not gonna be dealing with winter kill almost almost a guarantee. Yeah, they're dealing with some coyotes and maybe some bobcats and some of the parts of the state, but you know, low hunter population compared to other states. So you start factoring all this stuff in and going like, man, even though I might only have a smaller amount of public land to work with, there should be a really good population a deer there. And I know, you guys have seen this traveling, Like I see that in places where I'm like, people will complain and be like, oh that you know, the deer huntings sucks here And I go there and I'm like, there's freaking deer everywhere. Like this is like Oklahoma that you were just in. Every time I go to Oklahoma, I'm like, this place is just fun because I know I'm around a ton of deer. You know, yeah, absolutely, man, you can see it whenever you dry to drive around. I was driving around the place the other day in Oklahoma scouting, and uh, it was kind of neat because I was using uh this layer on X where you can see crop data and stuff like that, you know, and there was like a bunch of wheat there last year, but this year there's only one eight acre pocket that they kind of no tilled in, but it's not doing great. But it looks like, I mean tunnels through the fence, you know where, because I get I would assume that in that situation, it's a big creek bottom right with with a decent amount of cover around. Um, but deer have been depending on you know, three or four out acres wheat there for a couple of years at least, and there's been a decent population build up. Well now they just all concentrated on this one tiny field because it's the only thing that got planned with wheat. And man, there's a lot of deer around, just like you're saying, you know, and things like that. That's where like being on the ground is just kind of invaluable, you know, because it can't map scout that you can't figure that out from just looking at the map. But but yeah, man, I think that people super underrate the amount of public land that there is. I'm from Texas, right, and that's also kind of cliche. Everybody knows Texas at him with public land, but there's some we hunt it, you know, um, and it's not bad hunting. The thing you're gonna deal with in these states that have low amounts of public land if they are over the counter low relative, right, um, is uh, lack of age class usually because deer get shot. And you know, if you're willing to accept that and be happy to go shoot a three year old somewhere, yeah, you know, it's it's cool. And you know, I was different because it's pretty tough to draw and fairly expensive to get into, so you get kind of the best of both worlds. But um, the people who say like, oh, there's not much public land, I feel like that's a very Western perspective, you know, like if you're from the east, and you know put that in air quotes, right, pretty much anything east of the Rockies, Um, I guess east of the Plane States you're kind of used to that. You know, Like shoot, man, you start thinking about it, Texas is uh two point six percent huntable public land, and of that you can hunt deer like one point four ur or less. So it's just you know, the percentage. It sounds just you know, abysmally, it sounds terrible. But um, you start looking at a state that's you know, the size of Poland and then you realize, oh, that's still a decent amount of acreage, you know, so there's there's some ground to hunt, you know, and like you're saying, uh, we don't have as good a crops, but you know, a lot of the flat grounds and cattle production or hat production, so um, all the stuff that ended up in core engineers or whatever is all kind of bottom lands. And you know you got your habitat Yeah, well a couple of things there. So when you talk about, you know, maybe not the best age class on public land, like that's a that's a very common complaint, but it's also the reality that most of us, if we're traveling out of state, we want to go we'll have a good hunt. You throw a dart on the map, man, if it lands near some woods or some cover, there's a buck that probably uses that that all of us would be happy with. And so a lot of people plan their hunts around you know, I really want a one forty or one fifty plus or something, and that's kind of a scary thing to focus on. Instead you should be looking at just like where can I go to have have a badass hunt? And I really would caution people there's there's such a we're in a weird place with public land right right now, because it's it's freaking busy, and it's busy across the spectrum right like, doesn't matter what you're hunting, but there's still great opportunity is out there. But there's also a lot of loud voices that are bitching about it about all of this pressure. And if you if you're interested in traveling out of state, you might you might visit a bunch of different sites that are dedicated to traveling to hunt or you know, these forums or whatever, and you you're gonna hear a ton of negative stuff and like, but I I almost think you should not use any of that stuff. And and I know it's like it's a dangerous blanket statement, but you don't know who you're getting advice from, Like, you don't know what their motivations are. You have no idea if they know how to hunt. And so you might have somebody telling you not to come there because all the dear Diety h D or the rifle hunters shoot them all. This person might not have killed a buck in the last twenty years. They might just be a keyboard warrior, right, And so I think, really, and I'm curious if you guys do this, But when when you go hunt a bunch of different states on public land and your camping and you're doing your thing, you just realize how much BS is out there, and how how what we think and we say we know and what we believe. When you go out there, you just realize, like, Nope, it's totally different. There's there's quality to be had, there's action, packed hunts to be had. There's just fun, enjoyable hunting, and it's not easy, Like it's not gonna be easy, but it's always worth it. And so you kind of got to close those browser windows, stop listening to those people, and just go, I would love to hunt Missouri, or I would love to hunt whatever. I'm just gonna do it and start really doing that that maps coding that you're talking about and the research for yourself and just go. Just acknowledge that there's gonna be enough deer there for you, and there's gonna be deer. They're gonna make you happy right off the bat. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that you need to model yourself as the top of person who can be happy, because if you just have a mentality where you're just not very happy, you're not gonna be happy with the hunt. You get what I'm saying, Like it takes a value to be a tra aveling public plan hunter. You have to, uh, you have to be able to appreciate what you're doing, appreciate the landscape here and appreciate the animals and and like it. You know, not to be too hippie, right, but I can't. I am a little bit of a hippie. So like you, you need to know like how to be happy. You need to figure that out, and then you can be happy with the type of deer that you shoot, right, And I think for sure we run into that a ton. And then I used to just just be all over the hunting forms and stuff, you know, just listening, trying to pick up on little things and taking notes and all that. And now I just realized that, man, it's an inverse bill curve um, you know, and there's gonna be a whole bunch of people on each side. There's gonna be guys that are that you and this. These guys usually the people you talk to in a camp or something like that. Oh yeah, man, there's been three one seventies killed here, you know, like those guys, and then and uh, there's the other guys like, oh man, it's terrible. There's hunters everywhere, and uh, you know, e h D is just it's been killing us. And it's like, you know, what, if you just go show up at you know, said state on a piece of public ground, spend three days, you'll figure something out and probably find some deer. You know, it might not be withmany but you'll see something which is kind of on the middle of all that. Yeah, and what what's cool about it is at least with white tails now. And this is this is why I know people get mad when you encourage people to go hunt public land, But really we've just got good opportunities right now, and I don't I'm not confident they're going to be here in the future as far as like over the counter tags and places you can just buy your tag online and go show up and hunt and have a great hunt. And so I'm like, take advantage of that now because we don't know where that's going. But you know, there's there's also the reality of doing this where it's like and you kind of alluded to this. You know, if you if you hunt at home and you've got your lease or your grandma's farm or whatever, and you're you know, go to the same tree stands over and over and you're like, man, I'd like to go saddle up and be mobile, Like find a state, find a find a situation that's gonna allow you to do that, or like you mentioned earlier, if if the if you're kind of squirreling, you got a bunch of a d h D going on in your brain and you want to go try to find deer and stock them. There's states they're going to sell you a tag where you can do that. Like there's there's opportunities to expand your worldview of white tales. That's what's so cool about it. Like it's not just go you know, Like the Iowa thing is a perfect example. Everybody says, I want to go to Iowa because I want to kill a big one. Man. I drew Iowa last year, and I had more fun hunting there than anywhere because I saw so many deer. Like I knew I was going to go in and I could get I could get a layer back from the other guys who were hunting this public that I was on and I was I wasn't gonna blink. And you know how it is like when you hunt a state like that, you see enough deer, one of them is going to be freaking awesome, or a couple of them are, and it's just it's so fun to hunt that way and have that and you and I've seen that in states. You know, it's not just Iowa, right, Like some of these states where people just really don't know how good they have it. You can go and have see a ton of deer and have an awesome hunt and it's freaking over the coner man, it's amazing. Yeah, absolutely, And I think that when you start planning and think about your hunts, you look at these states that everyone knows is amazing and uh, hunt the fringes of those. Man. You know, if if you want to go and have a good hunt, you can do it anywhere. But if you're trying to find a place to start and you don't really know how to do that, like you zone in on whatever state, I hate to put a spot out, but you know, you find one of those states that everybody knows, great state to hunt. Oh yeah, man, it's awesome. Well, you know what, there's there's state boundaries right there pretty close to that that you can probably have a pretty good hunt on too. You know, it's not it's not super hard to figure out. And you know, I've I've done some of that and guess what, the quality of bucks on that side of that imaginary line are about the same as over here. Uh. You know, there might be a little bit increased hunting pressure depending on what's going on or whatever, but um, it's but there are so many arbitrary, imaginary lines that we place on ourselves that animals don't give a hoot about. Um. And you can take this back to uh, we've been talking a lot about this, like Rhodes man, and I know we're talking on a big scale, but um, dude, dear, don't give a hoot about roads, not even major interstates. Man. I mean, yeah, of course they they're going to consider it when they cross one because there's a bunch of cars and stuff. But um, we were hunting somewhere this year and there were deer crossing the interstate every day, just not like, hey, it's the rut. I'm gonna do something weird, just like how they lived, you know. And you take that and then you apply to white rock that you find in Iowa, Missouri or whatever, like they don't care at all, you know, it does not matter one bit. And we think about like, oh, I don't know if I want to hunt next to that road, you know whatever? Tywa, Tywa? What am I saying? Tyler kild in Iowa. That's how fast I talked sometimes, Man, I just come fitnesses into one word. Tyler kildan, Iowa. On a place that we mask at it. That was eighty yards from a road, you know, on public ground, and it's just like, yeah, I probably wouldn't hunt right next to the parking area because that's kind of a foreign thing to do, you know, like, oh, you know, I could have run there. But dear, don't care about this stuff that we make up, you know, they just don't. They don't care. And it goes back to the rut schedule all that stuff. We saw. Deer in Kansas also locked down on Doze um, you know on November five, you know, and it's not there's not a specific There might be uh in other states. And I'm not gonna uh down anybody who has a ton more knowledge than me, like say Bill Winky friends, since I love Bill Winky. Bill Wink is so smart and he's such a good deer hunter, such a nice guy. Um, he believes in specific lock down dates, right, and very well could be that on the places he's hunted inn Iowa, having hunted those places. But I don't see that, you know, hardly at all. I think that in any point in time the month of November, you can have a buck who's wanting to hang out with buddies, you can have a buck that's running around being crazy zombie mode chasing those, and you can have a buck that's hanging out with this girl. He's gonna make sure he is within five feet of her all day long, you know. And that's just that's what I've seen. So that's completely the other direction of what we were just talking about. But yeah, there's kind of bring it back out. Like for people who are planning hunts and thinking about going on places, don't let human boundaries affect your deer hunting right in in every sense of the word boundary except for property lines, because you probably don't want to cross on a private property unless you have permission. That I think I find myself when I when I think about this stuff, I find myself having to what kind of default to the negatives? Right Like we we say, okay, there's gonna be too many people or you know that interstates right there, so I don't want to hunt by that. We we we go negative a lot. But the positive thing about white tails is they're going to tell you where they are. They leave a lot of sign and so you know your example of you know, Tyler killing right by an interstate. I mean I I scouted a spot in Iowa. I didn't hunt it, but I scouted a spot right along the interstate where I'm positive you could have killed a big one fifty yards from that interstate. Like I found spots where I was like, holy sh it, like they're they're cruising right along this, they're crossing it. I found places where they were crossing it, and it's like you would look at that and go, that's probably not where I want to hunt, or there's not gonna be deer there. Then you walk in and they tell you like they let you know, and it's the same thing, like you're you're anecdote about the parking lots and you know everybody you know it was get seven miles back in the back country for white tails, it was get a mile or two back. Now it's like, you know everybody's doing that, so you can kill one right by the parking lot. And it's like, yeah, there's a little from column A, a little from column B. But the reality is they're just gonna show you. And I know I've had times in my life where I felt like I had to get back so far where you just you're like they are pushed act. A couple of layers deep. And there's times where you're walking back there to those spots and you run across tons of sign right by the parking area. I mean I've killed I've killed a couple of bucks in different states where I could see my truck like two minute drags back there, and you're not a public land. You're like, this is stupid, but you just look and go, this is where they are. And so it's a matter. You know, people people when they're planning these hunts or they're like, i'd like to go try that. You get you fall in love with these ideas that you're east scouting, and and east scouting is super important, like I fully believe that. But it's like a foundation and then you get there and you gotta go, Okay, well, I love this spot. I dropped a pin here, I love this body dropped a pin here. Pay attention what you see on the way in and the way out, and pay attention to whether you were right or wrong, because you get that stuff wrong all the time. But somewhere in that process, if you have that kind of rough plan but you're open to freelancing in a little bit, you're gonna run across that concentration assigned somewhere. Even if you're in the big woods, eventually you're gonna run across something, even if it's just one community scrape or whatever that speaks to you. It's out there, and it's just it's so freaking fun to show up where you don't know where that's gonna be, and then when you find it in that place is just humming. It's so cool. Yeah, absolutely, man. You know something else that you talk about, the walk in and that kind of stuff and finding stuff in the way and something else that people don't like to do. Um that can really benefit you when it comes to like actually going in hunting is uh, guys are down with the walk in far thing nowadays, right, But a lot of times I feel that people don't want to walk in through junk, like just terrible places to go get to that stuff. Like you and it's kind of like the scenic thing almost where it's like, well, I'll walcome mile in, but I kind of want to go, you know, through this creek crossing and look, walk through some timber and get there. Whereas in Oklahoma, at the best spot we found the other day, you had to walk through three quarters of a mile of gray east to two inches just nasty just across the hay meta right to get to this spot, and um, it's just not very scenic, right, it's not very enjoyable, especially when it's thirty five and windy to just walk out across there and get blasted. And I think that, Um, and you have to decide what you want, right, If you want to go in and kill a deer, then you've got to be able willing to do that. If you want to have, um, a pretty walk in, then you don't do that, you know. But but I think that's something else that kind of stems off of what you're talking about. It's like, uh, don't, um, you know, fall love of the spot because the whole area looks great. Man, you only need, like you just needed Buck to be in one spot to kill him, right, he needs he needs to be twenty yards from you one time. That's all. That's all you need. Like you don't have to have this place that's just beautiful or whatever that you walk into, you know, right, like hunting next to the interstate stuff. Man, that drives me crazy. Only did it one time this year because I just it handle that concept. And it's because that's not what I wanted out of the hunt. Um. It also probably helped that I didn't see a booner in there that day, but if I did, I probably wouldn't hunted there a lot, you know, So, uh it makes a big difference. And still even on stuff stuff like that, you can learn on the way in and figure out, hey, this isn't where I need to be because you know what, on that same hunt we went in, I already told you about putting that stalk from that deer that was a failed stalk, but realized you can glass from that position, and then realized how much the deer we're still using that bald, nasty hay meta. Early in the morning, right there was like a grove of trees out there that uh, I think they were soap berries. And in the summertime they folly just so thick that it blocks out the sun. Well the winter, there was a ton of green grass growing up underneath there, and you know sometimes once it gets to December, it's dirt and green grass. That's all they got to eat, you know. And there's these little even as little food pockets. Says, you don't even realize you're there, you know, And it takes that nation stuff, that learning that you do on the fly out there to realize that stuff. We've been really conditioned to fall in love with the aesthetics of certain places. The turkey hunters do this all the time, right Like if you if you public land, turkey hunt a lot that kind of dreamy pastured woods that you know, with the cornfield in the corner like that, that kind of place that would be so awesome to run and gun on private land, that that place will be worthless on public land for turkeys. And turkeys figure it out. And so when you think about white tails, they just are where they are. And a lot of times it's not the nice places we want to hunt, you know. I know a lot of states have you know, state planet planted food plots or you know, the the lease out some ground and you know it looks amazing, right Like, it looks like the kind of place if you showed up on a private chunk, he'd be like, I'm setting up on the edge of this. But when you get there on public you just go, this is this is just a place everybody's gonna be and you start you start figuring out that what I like to look at and what I'd kind of like to sit and hunt in is probably not where these deer going to be, because we're all kind of wired to do that. And you get these moments when you do these kind of hunts where you figure out that those deer, even though you know, like a prime example where I've killed a bunch of bucks in South Dakota, there's egg mixed in. There's a lot of walk in area stuff, so it's it's working ranches, looks amazing, and you can you can find good bucks on that stuff. But a lot of times I find those deer back in these meadows and back in these places, on these benches where they're browsing, and I'm sure they're ending up on that egg at some point and starting there in the morning. But where they're killable are the places that just don't look as deery, but that's where they're at, and it so consistent, and so you kind of have to reframe your thought process. If you're if you're planning on going on an out of state white tail trip and you've only ever hunted you know, private land in your home state, permission base, whatever, you sort of have to go, Okay, this is going to be a different thing probably, like this is where the deer are going to be in that state I want to go to, and how they're going to use the land is going to be somewhat different probably than what I'm used to. And I think a lot of people struggle with that. The same thing with you know, trail cameras. If you if you take a bunch of trail cameras with you on a trip and you've got five or six days, like that's probably not a great idea for most hunts because you're you're working backwards on that and you need to be in the moment more and so you have to think, like, Okay, this this trip that I'm planning, this is a different thing than what I do all year at home. And I think I think people until you really expose yourself to that, it's kind of hard to understand and hard to get into that different mode. But it's pretty necessary. Yeah, that's a that's a thing that outdoor TV has sold somewhat of the we're gonna show up and put truck camera out and see you know, and and uh, you know, not to be rude to those guys or whatever. You know, all those guys are pioneers, but that just isn't very um applicable for a five to seven day out of state hunt. There are a few things. One thing that we do, uh, in this specific situation you're talking about, we use some multi sale camps, right and and will uh find a piece of you know, maybe state planet Baggs stuff or whatever on some public ground, hang that camera on a obvious trail that you know it's gonna be nighttime. But you can somewhat plan if you if you're good at scouting, you can say, Okay, that buck was there at ten PM. I know which direction of travel is. Let's go back and find that sucker and killing a half mile from the camera, right and Uh, that's something I've seen. Another thing I've learned from you is, um, I think you know, when we first started talking about stuff, probably you knowen something like that. Um, you're big on October and hunting deer then, and I think that when you start talking about going to public land and finding these places that look really good, be like, man, every other guy is gonna be in there. Well that he is true, But you can actually hunt at times when there's gonna be a lot less people than others you know, uh Tyler planning to his Iowall hunt in twenty nineteen, kind of on the front and back end of the vacation toyp hunts. You can then, you know, think about the same thing. We go to UM South Dakota for October one archery opener and hardly ever see another person that's hunting white tails because you know, there's uh if you hunt private ground in South Dakota, you can start in September and then after that a lot of people are trying to hunt Mulei's anyways, and then every everybody else is kind of waste in the run rut. You can go up there in October when there's hardly anybody around and sit on this you know, picturesque spot and shoot a deer because it wants a hunt dere on October four. You know, that's at least that's kind of the what it seems people have the opinion of. So I think that that's kind of a thing that you can also figure in if you're trying to hunt out of state, especially on the early on the front end of that UM you know, push for pressure in November October is a pretty cool spot, especially if you want to go try something new. Um, you can still make it home or wherever your traditional rut hunts body is, go tr October somewhere else, you know, especially if you're kind of from the south, you can go further north a little big, get some cooler weather, and see some pretty good deer man. Well, you know, my thing with October came from growing up in a state with a super early gun season and just you know, not never so many years in my life I never relied on the rut at all because it wasn't an option, and so it just hunted when I could, which was I hunted every chance I could. Let me put it this way for years and years and years, and you just realize, like, Okay, these guys are telling me middle October sucks, but I'm going out here and I'm having fun hunts, Like what's going on? Here's a disconnect here. And then when you when you see there's trends in the hunting population, and you see these things we just internalized so much, and I'm a contrarian. I'm like, I don't want to be I don't want to be there when everybody else is there. I would rather theoretically have harder hunting quote unquote in the middle October and have fewer people to deal with than just show up during the rut. And I think a lot of people make a planning mistake around this. They go, I gotta be in Nebraska in September one because I want a velvet buck. Well, yeah, you and other guys are thinking the same thing. Or you know that the rut is even more popular probably in most of these states, and you go, I gotta be there on November seven, that's the date, And listen, you can have amazing rut hunts on public land. You can. But you're you're saying, I'm I'm gonna play this in a way where I hope the deer out of their minds and they're running everywhere. But I also know there's gonna be more pressure in the woods with me, more competition than any other point of this season except maybe opening weekend. And then you've got all this space between there, and you go, listen, do I do I want to just try to work the deer, or do I want to have to factor in, like heavily factor in the pressure. And for me, I'm like, I want to compete against the deer. They're they're a hell of a lot easier to work with than you know, when the parking lots start filling up and people are everywhere, and this is a this is a message people like I think they don't believe it, almost like because we've heard it so much. But go spend some time doing this. And I say this, so a great way to plan your first hunt is pick a state like Oklahoma or some state that's gonna be a target rich environment probably, And but you know, you maybe aren't necessary really going their dream in a one sixties, right, You're like, I just want to go have a good hunt. Maybe kill a couple of doughs, maybe run into a decent buck, whatever, maybe a pig. Just go to have a fun hunt. Do it in a time where you're like, I'm not gonna feel guilty because I'm missing a rut hunt, right Like, I'm not gonna feel guilty because I should be here there wherever, and go experience that, you know, like go go spend that time, go camp for a few days, and go hunt during those off times when you have lower expectations. You have less into it than maybe waiting that three or four or five years for the Iowa tag and see what you can come up with, because you're going to have a hell of a lot of fun. I bet yeah, absolutely. And the thing that Tyler and I talked about a lot is go hunt places that, um you have to find sign as opposed to interpret sign. Like I can't imagine showing up to Iowa after waiting five years and just being like, what do I do because there's this isn't the truth, but it feels like there's a scrape in a rub almost every tree and a lot of this stuff, and you're like, oh, I'll just go right here. You know. But if you go to some of these states and you you learn a little bit more about traveling and hunting, interpreting sign and doing that, you'll be way more prepared for when you do draw that good tag. You know, like if you have to go and figure out how to kill a deer in say North Dakota, then whenever you do draw Iowa, you it's not your first time trying to figure out how to kill a deer on public ground, you know. And you've seen the difference in nighttime sign that's laid down in daytime signus laid down, and you've hunted, say you know, if you're wanting to plan hunts and thinking about drawing up a hunt like Iowa or something else, go hunt some hill country somewhere else, assuming depending on what you you're gonna hunt, you know, but go practice in a state that's easier to draw or you know, over the counter that's similar habitat, and learn how the deer interact and act there. It's not gonna be too different in Iowa or you know, wherever you go. I hate to keep saying out, but it's it's just what's relative to me, right, Um, Like you'll you'll know what to do there. You know, you'll know, oh, hey, they run the tops of the ridges whenever they're you know, trying to smell does or whatever it might be. Right, It's it's all about accumulating knowledge, and the way you do that is experience. I mean, dude, I would take three days in the woods over a year's worth of reading form comments, you know what I mean. Like, it's you can you can learn from both, but it's you know, it's the difference in practice and playing, you know what I mean. It's it's just it's just so much different. Well, yeah, and you know there's a there's a good point to acknowledge there too. On so much of the hunting advice that's doled out from from everyone. Everyone who does this is big Bucks, big Bucks, big Bucks. Here's how you find big Bucks. Here's how you kill big Bucks. Here's how you set up, here's how you call them. But when you start traveling and you go, I'm gonna I'm gonna burn seven days a vacation, I'm gonna go hunt this date because I've always wanted to. What you realize is your first job, whether you kind of even acknowledge it or not, Like it's intuitively, you know, I have to find a dear concentration first, like I have to I have to figure out you know, I know, I have a square mile or five square miles of land here. I gotta find some pockets of deer. Then start whittling it down and we we kind of go in and go, oh, that's you know, that's night sign or this is only where does live or whatever. But really, when you start finding where deer concentrate, you're going to have one that you want to shoot there. And it's like a I mean, I know I said this earlier, but I'm always so surprised on you know, I'll put in so much ea scouting time and sometimes just nail it. Like sometimes I'm like, holy crap, I did a good job here. But a lot of times I show up and I go, this is not It's not what I expected. And so you go, Okay, Well, I gotta kind of go back to the drawing board. And I did this in Iowa. Uh last year when I drew. I mean I had freaking way points. I mean I had put in a stupid amount of time. I had been down there turkey hunt and look around. And I got down there opening day and I just I was kind of like, I don't really have a plan, like I have I have these spots. And so I hunted the first night and that and after that night, I was like, I gotta go fine deer, Like even all this work I've done, like I still don't feel like I'm on a concentration. And so I sand backed the morning and I went and hiked around and I found three spots where I was like, I'm on a concentration of deer and there's bucks here, and every one of them proved to be freaking awesome. But it was like it was like kind of humbling right to be, Like, dude, you've spent so many hours East scouting and so many hours thinking about this and you still got it wrong and had to just get there on October two or whatever it was and just walk around and go, Okay, this trails pounded their scrapes there, there's rubs there, there's obvious fresh sign. Now I have these three different little areas that I can start really you know, diving into and start observing, start figuring things out. And it's like, man, it's just the whole process has to be there, and we kind of like the idea of just you know, getting some insider information or you know, finding this pinch point on east scouting, it's gonna be good enough. It's like, no, all that could be great, it doesn't mean anything until you get out there and you're really ground truth this stuff. Absolutely there's a number of things that could be wrong with this. Last time, for instance, I went to Oklahoma. I've been to Oklahoma twice this uh you know, mid to late November and then once in December, and uh got up there, had to rework my spots the first time because they weren't as good as I hoped because the egg was different than I expected to be found something out, learned something on about day three and had to come home on day five, right, and had some good encounters with some bucks, just didn't get shoot one um. And then I'm like, okay, ready to go. The next time I go up there, I know exactly the place to be, go in there, and there's a hundred cows in the place. All of a sudden, it's like, oh gosh, you know, and you have to relearn all this stuff all over again, and being able to adapt and learn and change is super important. You cannot fall in love with a place like a specific spot, because honestly, it's not that you love that and you think that it's a great place to kill a deer. It's that you're prideful and you think that you were smarter than the environment around you, or however you want to phrase that, right, And you gotta put away the pride and just do what it takes to maybe find a deer and have to be able to look yourself in the eye in the mirror and say, you know what, I gotta scratch that whole last week of information that I got that I learned and start over and that's the way it has. You know, you just have to be able to accept that kind of stuff. And it's hard for me to do that, it really is. I do my um, I have a conviction to be as humble as I can. But at the same time, it's so hard to make yourself humble, right, other things make you humble. You are humbled. You do not humble yourself, right. Uh So, uh the more I hunt, I can see it happening a little bit. I'm not good at it yet, but being able to not waste days on a bad spot because you're telling you, oh, it's good, it's gonna be good, it's gonna be good. Because I mean, realistically, for guys, not a lot of guys can go to Kansas and spend nine days like I did this year. I realized that, you know, I'm blessed in that aspect. I'm just thankful for for the opportunities, right, But I mean, most guys take off Thursday and Friday and make a long weekend of it whenever they get to go on a hunt, you know, and um man, if you or in that boat and still I feel this way on a nine day hunt, I have a morning that I feel like it's completely wasted and I didn't learn anything. I'm just like down in the dumps about it, you know, because you're just you. There's twelve hours of your life you'll never get back on a hunt that might be seventy two hours left, and you're like, holy you know, I have to do the same thing over again to night and try to put something together and it just doesn't work out, you know, And I think that's it's it's huge, a huge thing for us to learn is that you need to just put any ego or whatever you have aside and just do what it takes to kill a deer. And it sounds so cliche, but it's not the I'm gonna work hard or be stronger, be faster, be a better shot, all that stuff. It's it's the hey, I'm gonna take what I'm giving and do the best with it. You know. You approach, it's a different direction. I think that's that's what helps kill deer, you know well, And you know on that note, I mean, one of the things I preach about all the time that I firmly believe in is give yourself options. And so when you're if you're planning a hunt and you're like, I'm going here and I'm gonna hunt this property. You better have a backup, even if that property is ten acres. I mean, just you know you in Oklahoma as an example, the only time, the worst time of my life as far as like this this scenario. I went down my buddy and I drove down there, and you know, it's like fourteen hours. I did a pile of research. I'm like, we're going to be covered in deer in this spot. It was different from the area that I had gone to previously. We showed up camp there was there were a lot of people there, but we had a lot of ground to work with. I couldn't find a freaking deer. I mean I was like, I'm like I don't know what to do. I'm setting up to observe. I had hours and hours and hours east scouting into it, and I was I mean it literally couldn't see a deer. I finally saw a dough on two fawns the last morning where my buddy and I the night before we're like we're not on anything, Like We're like not on anything, like no deer, and I was like, maybe we got to pull the plug on this and go calling audible and we ended up doing that and just we kind of realized that the area we wanted was probably not a great choice for us as far as like our strong suits, right. It just it was more of a It almost felt more like a Texas hunt would be. To me, like if I showed up in Texas, like, I gotta have to reframe how I think about a lot of stuff because it's just such different habitat. And this was kind of like that. I'm like, we need to go north, we need to get closer to the kind of trees I'm used to, and we need to go just sort of reset. And my flaw in that that trip planning was I became so cocky. I was like, this is it. We don't we have thousands of acres to work with. There's gonna be tons of deer here. We don't need a backup, and we we needed a backup bad And we ended up getting lucky and picking a spot where we went to and had a great hunt and saved the last couple of days of our hunt. But that was like like a card in a rule for mine is like, don't go in with just a spot don't go in with just an idea that this is it. And when you plan these hunts, a lot of times we'll go, Okay, well there's a chunk of public on this side of the road, no chunk of public on that side of the road, So that's good enough. And I'm talking maybe give yourself an entire quarter of a state, like maybe you know, if you show up and it is not working, instead of just kind of like pushing a dead program, you might have to drive a couple hours to a new area and sort of reset. But like in in the grand scheme of that kind of hunt, in the investment you put in pulling up, repacking your tent and your camping gear or whatever and moving three hours down the road, it's not that big of a deal. And it might change the entire course of your hunt. Oh absolutely. And that's something that I've learned as well, man, And I've learned it more from the elk hunt than I have deer hunt. And tell you the truth, and uh, you know, I've talked about this before, but the things that you learned doing X hunt help you so much with a completely different type of hunt. It's crazy, right, And I won't go too far into that. But um, the driving you do and going to bed at midnight as opposed to getting your eight thirty like normally those three hours you lose or three and a half f is so worth it sometimes, you know, and you know what, we can all function on four hours of sleep. Uh if one night, you know, and grabbing the day in the afternoon, you know, like it works, you can you can do it. If it makes it gives you an opportunity to hunt good deer or hunt a good spot, then it's worth doing. And uh, when it comes to hunt planning, that's kind of a huge thing to Like, it's good to be able to go find states that allow you to hunt the whole state because then you have that option. Uh. One of the things that I actually dislike about Iowa is the zones. You know, you have you have to stay within this certain union. It's pretty big, you know, and you know that before you go into it, right, But like, um, I'm kind of I'm kind of a vagabond, right or whatever you wanna call it. Like I like to just well hit the road sometimes and go see something new, and having that option is really nice. And uh, if you do have that option, though, something I've found that really helps me is setting a deadline for that. So say, I'm gonna give myself three days here. If i am not on a good dear or if I'm not on a good pattern or feel like something's going on, I'm gonna pull the plug right then. And forcing yourself to do it right now. Also, it takes some a little bit of h I don't know what you would call it. It It takes a little bit of gusto to tell yourself, Nope, I'm gonna live and die here because I've seen this one deer or whatever like. You have to you have to have a certain uh constitution about you to be able to do that, right. But it's good to have that, um I guess ticker in the back of your head. I work pretty good under pressure too, so it kind of helps me to have a ticker. Um. I noticed in Kansas, um that when I had nine days, I killed on the eighth day. And you know, maybe if I only had four days, I would have killed on the third day. You know, you know what I mean. So, um, I think it's it's super helpful to scout that stuff. Um Ea scout. And then also I think that I'm gonna not only plan for a plan B, We're gonna make sure plan B looks different than what Plan A is because just like you're saying, certain people have strong suits. Um, if you're not used to hunting big timber, heavy cover with a ton of acorns, acorns for yeah, exactly, Uh, like, it could be tough because that do you only have to walk fifty yards to eat and hundred yards to drink, So um, if you're not used to that, but you want to go, try it. Find you something else that's near wheat fields and cotton woods or whatever it might be, that that's your backup, not a backup that's similar habitat, but just a different spot because really that's no no difference and bouncing across the street, right because it's the same thing pretty much. Yeah, and something on you know what you said about you know, giving yourself a deadline and being like, you know, if three days in this sucks, I'm out. One of the things I think that people make a huge mistake on with hunt planning is going with too many people are the wrong people because that situation where if you get there and you're like you personally, you're like I don't like this, and I'm ready to go if you have somebody. You know, the more people you have in camp, the more people you have invested in that hunt, the harder it is to just pull up stakes and move. And it just I know that people don't like to hear this because we like to travel with our buddies, But man, if you can keep it smaller, go solo, you will probably have a way better hunt. And it's I know, I know it costs a little bit more, and I know there's a different you know, safety aspect and stuff like that. But when you're when you're operating on your own schedule, or you've got like one trusted buddy who's like going to do the work and is kind of on the same wavelength as you, it's so much easier to have a good hunt, to enjoy yourself, to to to make better decisions. And the more you get random people involved, and the more you get people who aren't they have different objectives, different work ethics. It's it sucks, man, Yeah, it does. And then a lot of times, uh, when you have those people involved that maybe hunting differently, you're have a different work ethic of YadA YadA um you end up hunting close to each other because you have one or two vehicles, and then, um, it can cause a little uh split in the friendship or whatever you wanna call it, because you just have different expectations of what the other is gonna do. Whereas as we did this in South Dakota, right, No, no lost friendships at all. But we we had six guys in camp, three vehicles, so there's always a pair going out, um, and some of those guys running camera and this and that. But a lot of us end up punting near each other because they drop offs in that situation. Um, one guy has a stigmatism, can't see in the evening at all, like he he he, and he is gonna usually get down out of his tree before uh most of us would. And no fault of his own. I don't even think he can tell. Like when actual you know, into shooting, a lot of is you know what I mean, And so we had to learn to kind of work around that, and then uh, you know, just different hunting stalls and that that sort of thing. One of the things that I find invaluable is just having your own vehicle, you know, just be able to be your mantel Island, you know, Durrell Reeva style. You know, just out there doing your thing, making your own decisions, living, living, and by dying by what you do. That way, you don't have anybody to be upset with, the scept yourself. You know, you can have six guys account, but having six vehicles and everybody able to go one direction, it's not very green friendly, right. I mean, I guess you can drop Tesla's and make it work and be fine, but but you know, uh, just being able to go and make your own choices, I think that's a that's a huge thing, man. And that's why Tyler and I love hunting together so much now. It's because, um, we've definitely changed somewhat to uh mould ourselves to one another as far as hunting partners go. But we worked so well together now because is it's that situation where we've hunted together enough that, um, instead of getting each other's way, we can't go to different states without calling each other twice a day. That can convey information, just because we trust each other so much to make good choices, and we just play shoot holes in the boat every time we talk. You know, just like what can be wrong with this spot, What can we do different? What what could be done different? And when you find that person you can trust that much. Man, you talk about being able to kill some deer, you know, because it's like you have, uh, the cumulative experiences of two experienced hunters working together at once without um pride getting in the way, without um another guy who thinks similar to you can circumvent your pride way faster than you ever thought. You know, like, oh, man, I figured the spot out. It's good. And he's like, um, are you sure you can hunt that on the southwest wind? You're like, oh, what a dummy? So stupid? You know, I having that person is pretty huge for my success at least. I know some people, um you know the whole lone wolf things, the way to go, you know, because they like that and that's fun to you. But I really do find value in that one good solid hunting partner. You know. It's a it's a difference maker. And you know something that you you kind of alluded to this, you know, something that happens when you go do a trip like this is you find out, you know, like how greedy you are for white tails, how greedy your buddies are and it can change the dynamic if you're not working together, and it's I mean, it's a it's a little dance man. But I remember there were four of us we hunted South Dakota maybe somewhere around there, and we got there, did some scouting, uh and the night before the season opened, a couple of us were driving back to camp and we saw two good bucks on public land right off the road going through this one field, and it was like pin drop quiet in the truck because everybody wanted to go after him, like everybody's like, I want to hunt that deer tomorrow, those deer tomorrow. And finally my buddy Eric said something like, well I would go in and you know, like he broke the ice right, and we're like, okay, well I guess go in there. And he went in there and killed that buck. But right away when we saw him, everybody thought the same thing, like I want to kill that ten pointer, like everybody and you know, like now you're like ship, like how do I play this? And you know it worked out for him. But later in that hunt, one of the guys there, so we had one one chunk of public that had a nice bean field you could hunt and the deer were using it. It was it was good and so but it's an evening thing, right, Like if you walk in there in the morning, it's no bueno. And so we were kind of hunting different stuff in the mornings and then trying to kind of gang hunt this this particular property in the evening. Why went out, like third fourth morning of the hunt, shot a buck And when I went out look for my arrow, Um, I see this dude driving back from that ranch, and I'm like, man, he went over there and tried to spot in stock one in there and didn't tell anybody, you know what I mean. And so we were we were all kind of playing by the same rules, like let's save that because of how good it's going to be. This guy just thought he was going to get away with it, and he would have if I hadn't just randomly shot a buck and been able to see the road from where I got out, and that ship happens, man, And you know it's like, dear, you know that that nonresident license price and that trip away from home and and big deer they do stuff to us. It's not good. And you you really learn if you do this enough, like who you can trust and who you can't, and who who you're really going to have a good hunt with. And I think that's part of the reason why some people do function better on a solo trip. Like it's like that's on you, man, Like you find a big one, go after it. You you make these decisions and that and you kind of got to learn about yourself and your buddies that way. M hm yeah, yeah, think, Uh, for us, there's a lot of things that help us to navigate around that. Um. One of the big ones those that you know, just to be frank, you know, we're trying to do this someone as a business, right and not even some white you know, we're trying to build a lifestyle and build a business round until we love doing and um it's uh micro communism. As much as it pains me to say it, right, but it's like, uh, if Tyler kills a dude, it's great for me too. You know, Like we're just all trying to have success. And it's not just because of the business, right, but you you just want them to succeed to It helps a bunch, right If I can't imagine being one of these guys that, um, it's like Hey, I'm you know, I'm thinking about drawing out of this year on on the forum. You know, it's like anybody who else is gonna draw this, you know, let's let's seam up and go. It's like, you know, that's that's very nice of you. But dude, like it's been a lot of trust in somebody you don't know very good, you know. And like once you build a hardcore friendship with somebody, it's like, yeah, dude, you go kill that buck. Let's go pack that thing out and take some pictures together, you know, And I think that, um uh, it's definitely not a keep your friends close to keep your enemies closer. It's definitely only keep your friends real close when it comes to going on a hunt like this for me at least, right like, um, it's you just want to if you're gonna do this with somebody, you want to do it with somebody that you care enough about that it would be cool to see them kill a big deer too. And then and it all boils back to just setting your pride a side. Man. It's it's so hard, um for every human to do this. So then you take a bunch of guys who fancy themselves as alpha's who like to kill stuff, you know, and and like it's real hard to put pride aside, you know, and I truly believe that that, Uh, the thing that will help you do that overb near anything that you know, humans can at least do, is that you have to have compassion and care about the people you're with. Otherwise you're gonna be making priful decisions. You're gonna be making so decisions. And that's it's pretty hard to get around time, man, I know you gotta you got a hard out here, So we gotta we gotta wrap this sucker up, Casey, Where can everybody find the videos, the podcast all that stuff? Yeah, cool man, thanks for the opportunity to talk about that stuff. So the Element YouTube channel starts the Element Hunting or just public Planing Hunting. Well, we'll pop up pretty quick, I think. Um. But actually, uh, Tyler Andiz Kansas books just released in the past couple of weeks, and so if if I can, I'd love to tell you all to go check out those hunts because they were really fun. I mean a lot to him and I both. I killed the biggest public land dear that either of us have shot and then two days later Tyler blewed out of the water with it is, so we had it. We were so blessed this year man, and uh it was it was really really cool, So I'd appreciate that. And then of course our socials are at the Element wild because um, if you just search the Element on social you'll come with a skater brand or something like that. Yeah, that's that's what we got going on. So you know, thanks for the opportunity for that. And the podcast is the on the podcast, so um yeah, search all that stuff on all the platforms that you know of and we'll pop up. Thanks, brother, I really appreciate it, man, absolutely, dude, I hope you uh are excited. Are you done killing pheasants? Are you still got pheasants going right now? Pretty much pretty much done, man, But you know there's still a few states that are open, so there's there's still a chance. It was a good year. It was a good good deal man. That's awesome. We still a few more dear to kill, hopefully, so we'll wrap it out strong man. So thanks for the opportunity to Tony and true good talking to you. Thanks buddy. That's it for this week. Folks, be sure to tune in next week if you want some more white tailed goodness. This has been weird to hunt, and I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson. As I always, thank you so much for listening. And if you're looking for more white tail content, head on over to the meat eator dot com slash weird and you'll see a pile of new articles by Mark myself in a bunch of white tail addicts. Head on over to our YouTube channel check out our our how to videos that we put up every week, or if you're if you're feeling sad and you're missing the rut, head on over to meat Eaters YouTube channel and check out our One Week in November series that we dropped all of November and December