00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon, Welcome to the. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on the show, we're doing a little fireside chat of sorts with myself and Giannis pitel Us, reviewing our year in the outdoors, the highs and the lows and the lessons learned. I'm looking forward to twenty twenty six. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, and Merry Christmas. You are listening to this on the day it airs. I guess I don't know what to say. It's Christmas Day. I hope you're spending most of the day with your friends and family, but if you're spending a little bit of time here with me, I certainly appreciate. And today we're going to be sitting down, me and Giannis here in a minute to reflect on twenty twenty five, to look back on our year and all of our experiences outdoors, the adventures, the hunts, the fishing trips, the other exploits of so many different types and really talk about what we did, why it was special, why it sticks with us, maybe a little bit of how our criteria has changed over the years as far as what's important to us and what's not. And then we spend some time looking forward into the new year and talking through some of our plans and adventures and hopes for twenty twenty six. And I share all this, and I'm sharing all of this, this whole conversation with you today because I hope that it can be a little bit of a thought trigger for you, something that helps you do something like this yourself. I've found that taking a little bit of time, especially at this time of year, to look back on the last twelve months is so help well. 00:02:00 Speaker 3: It's so. 00:02:02 Speaker 2: Rejuvenating and satisfying to just take a moment to appreciate what we just experienced. It's so much of life is go, go, go, go go. At least I'm guilty of rarely taking time to enjoy the present, of rarely taking time to enjoy, you know, all of the weeks and months and incredible experiences and fun moments and laughs and trials and tribulations even too all on the way. So what I try to make time for during this Christmas break of sorts? Is is some of that quiet some of that maybe just on your own or maybe with your spouse or a friend or a buddy or whatever might be. Just talk about some of the stuff, or think about some of the stuff, or write it down and talk through what were the things that really went well? What were some of the things that didn't go so well? How do I wish I could have changed things? Or maybe you know, what do I want to do different this coming year? That is a useful and like I said, it can be a really therapeutic exercise sometimes too. So that's what me and Yanni did today. I kind of have framed it in my mind like a fireside chat, like I've imagined wishing that me and Giannis were hanging out at my house, sitting by the fire, drinking a coffee or a cold beer or something and reminiscing. And so what we're gonna do is, actually, using the magic of post production, we're going to add the sound of a crackling fire, which let's cueue that fireplace right now. That sounds pretty nice. So from here on, how we're gonna chat with that soothing sound of the cracking and popping fireplace, and I hope you enjoy this relaxed conversation with myself and my good pal Giannis Boutellus, as we reflect on this past year in the outdoors, as we look forward, and as we hopefully can be a part of a really nice Christmas Day or Christmas break with you and yours. I'm wishing you well. I appreciate you being a part of this community, and here's to a very happy holiday. Enjoy the chat, all right, Yannie. I want you to imagine that you and I are sitting in a nice cozy living room or I don't know, den family room area of sorts with a fireplace, all right, and imagine it's Christmas season, could be Christmas Day or around that, and you and I have just gotten to sit down. We've got a cup of coffee or tea or eggnog or whatever, and finally have some quiet time to catch up and look back on the year that we just had. That is the stage that I'm setting for our conversation today. And even right now you can't hear it, Yanni, but there is actually a crackling fireplace playing in the background. Right now, our listeners can hear the beautiful fire popping and crackling as we as we chat. 00:05:05 Speaker 3: Are you wearing an ELF outfit? 00:05:09 Speaker 2: I should be wearing an Elf outfit. My kids are wearing literal Santa themed clothing right now. Today was their last day of school when we were recording this, so so there's a lot of Christmas Eve stuff going on around me. But I know you are too. You were dressed up just recently, weren't you. 00:05:30 Speaker 3: I was actually in an ELF outfit two evenings ago. It didn't we're on the live tour right now when we're recording this, and two nights ago, I think we were in Birmingham, Alabama, and yeah, the joke just didn't really hit. You know, no one even commented that there's like a grown man in an ELF suit. You know. Brent got the easy job of being Santa Claus, so it didn't take a lot of imagination. But for me, you know, I had to really go into character there, and yeah, it didn't really hit. So steve veto the outfits for last night. I think we're not going to dress up tonight, but I just like to say, if we're in this room, you know, I was joking about the LF outfit. But I'm imagining you might have like a white turtleneck with like a nice Christmas sweater on with your eggnog. 00:06:20 Speaker 2: I follow, I follow what you're getting at here. Speaking of that, the white turtle neck makes me think of Christmas Vacation, the movie, right. I just went to a bar the other night that was completely themed on National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. So everything was decked out in you know, nineteen nineties Christmas decorations. All the TVs were playing the Christmas Vacation movie. There was Wally's World mugs that you could get with eggnog and other Christmas Vacation themed drinks. It's highly recommend it. It was an an arbor Michigan. It was a great Christmas spot to hang out. So random aside, but we should go get a drink there someday when you're in Michigan next time in Christmas time. 00:07:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, we were at a bar actually with the Southern Outdoorsman Boys when we were in Birmingham after the show and they were playing a Scrooge or a what's the actual story? A Christmas story I guess which it must have been a funny version. There was no volume but I was kind of like, man, there's so many other better, funnier Christmas movies that people know, you know, the lines, and it would be better. It just didn't seem fitting for a bar atmosphere. 00:07:35 Speaker 2: But how are you guys feeling about the live tour? Otherwise it's going well, man. The crowds have been super energetic. Everybody is telling some great stories I got telling you before we started. You know, bus life it takes a few hopefully not more than a few nights. But the sleep on the bus, you know, it's not sleeping at home, right, and so even though you're sleeping through the night, it's kind of like sleeping in a tent where you sleep all night, but at the same time you're sort of aware of the night passing and so obviously you're not in that just deep, deep sleep that really gets you. 00:08:17 Speaker 3: Just refreshed the next day. So yeah, there's a little bit, you know, a little bit of weight in the in the eyelids, but otherwise, yeah, it's great. It's you know, getting to meet the VIPs. They come through. So before the main show, we have seventy five VIPs they come through and we basically just do a meet and greet, shake some hands, take pictures, and sign some stuff, and just getting that feedback loop from them, you know, what they're like in how we've affected whatever they're doing, and just getting chat with them. It feels good, you know, and it gives value to what we do. 00:08:58 Speaker 2: So yeah, I've always felt like those those types of events can be really exhausting, right, shaking hands and saying hi to one hundred people or a thousand people or whatever it ends up being, but it is also like very energizing because to your point, it's it's good to just see the people that are listening and watching our stuff and hear how, like you said, here, what I think and how it's impacting them, and that is nice. So you've got an event tonight or tomorrow or when's the next one? 00:09:28 Speaker 3: Every night we're in Memphis, Tennessee tonight, then we are in Ville, Arkansas, then Dallas, and we finish in Austin and then we fly home on the twenty third, hopefully with smooth you know, smooth skies and uh, you know, no crazy Christmas travelers, no crazy weather. 00:09:57 Speaker 2: That's a grind, that is a Whoever put that schedule together right before Christmas is a little bit cruel, but I'm glad you're doing it, not me. 00:10:09 Speaker 3: Listen, I make sure I Yanni gets plenty of time to hunt. So when we're done with this, you know, we're gonna enjoy the holidays and then Mingus and I are going to go on a roll and just be pounding the mountains around Bozeman trying to catch some cats. 00:10:25 Speaker 2: That'll be good. So that's a perfect segue the main thing I want to talk about, which is, you know, looking back on our outside years. So I don't know if this is something that you can relate to it all, but sometimes all I do is look forward. It's always the next trip you've got to get ready for the next project you're working on, or the next thing you've got to do at home, and you never end up actually looking back and really like appreciating and thinking about all the cool stuff that happen, and at this time of year especially, I try to make space to do that. But it's the only way it happens if is if I like actually set aside time to I don't know, take Kylie out to dinner or something and tell her like, hey, let's just reminisce. Let's talk about the year. What were your favorite things? What did you think one? Well, what didn't? So I kind of was curious about your take on that, Like when you look back on the year, when you think back on twenty twenty five in the context of like your outdoor related activities, hunting and fishing and all the other things you're doing out there, did it did it live up to your expectations? 00:11:33 Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, Yeah, I had a great year. 00:11:36 Speaker 2: How Like, what when you when I ask you that question and you think that, they're like, why do you say? Oh yeah? Why was that so such a fair answer? 00:11:46 Speaker 3: We we had big plans, and I had big plans kind of both personally. Uh And they actually were kind of the personal hunting plans that I'll tell you about. They came about sort of in a in just like a happenstance manner, you know, kind of rushed like I wasn't really planning him, and then sort of they just came together. And what I'm talking about is my trip to Manitoba for a spring bear hunt, which was very last minute and the Alfre just was able to secure another tag and get me in there and get me in there late and was a great guy. Is a great guy Craig McCarthy and his wife Melanie and North Mountain Adventures and through that he at that time was looking to expand his operation to northern Manitoba for some caribou hunting, and he hadn't been up there yet and he sort of was like thinking about an exploratory trip for the fall. As soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, sign me up, you know, like we can maybe make this work. And so like, the more I do this stuff. As much as I love my wife Tael deer Hunt, I love turkey hunting, and I love my Elkhunt, like I feel like I need some level of like legit adventure, Like that's what really fuels me. And it's like I love everything else I really do, but that the adventure, the unknown part of the adventure. I think unknown it's synonymous with adventure because I feel like, yeah, if you know what's gonna happen, it's hard to really have a good adventure. But when you have a thing you're gonna go do it, there's a lot of unknowns. You don't know how it's gonna happen, how what's gonna happen, Like you're guaranteed a good adventure, and I feel like the bear hunt it kind of went as expected, not to adventure some but to then come back to Manitoba, where I didn't even know they had caribou until I was up there in May. And then come September, you know, we fly up there and take whatever four or five planes to get the northern Manitoba and had a very Alaskan adventure in Manitoba, and uh, you know, landing on a lake with tons of lake trout, tons of pike. I mean, probably some of the best lake trout and pike fishing I've ever experienced, you know, like every time you put on a glassy evening, every time you pulled into a new cove, like the first six casts were guaranteed to have a top water bite from a pike. I mean, just you know, it's pretty special, you know. And then we as a family decided this was gonna be the year that we were gonna go h take the Renella's up on their invitation to their fish shack in Alaska, and so we joined the Rannella family, the Henderson family. Andy rad Julowski was there. Who am I missing? Seth and his wife Kelsey. They have a cabin up there too. Now they were there, I feel like there's oh, Jammy Romero was in our group. Anyways, we did that and you know, that might have not been such a huge adventure for me, but for me to get to to be able to share that place and those activities with my family was awesome, you know, super stoked to get them there. See how they dealt with the conditions. You know, even on the best day. Alaska it's like not that nice, right, Like it's always kind of wet, kind of rainy, kind of cold. But we had a great time. They thrived. They that water's like fifty five degrees or something, maybe come pushing sixty. They swam every single day in that water. Like yeah, they're just they're like little otters. You know, there's water around, they're getting in there. So that's how I can answer that so quickly, is that just like right off the top of the head. I can just like you know, come up with, like, you know, a couple of three trips that were big time fun and adventures, stuff I hadn't done and and if I had done it, like it was, I got to, like I said, with a fishing trip, got to share that with my family and uh hi, oh, Stephen, Ranela, everybody, Mark Canyon. We're doing a wire to Hunt podcast. Figure out. Okay, Yeah, there's three of these rooms. You're welcome a shower in there if you want. He must have been napping getting situated for the day. Yeah, but he's got a good plan. He stays on the bus. Everybody else comes into the venue and starts sort of occupying the greening room and all these you know rooms in the basement of a venue, and then Steve ends up having the whole bus to himself. It's quiet, it's comfortable, and he stays in there and works. So it's a good plan. 00:16:58 Speaker 2: Smart. Uh So what are the girls other than loving to swim? What do the girls think about their first That was their first Alaska experience, right. 00:17:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I know my oldest was there when she was one year old, but yes, that was their first real Alaska experience. Man, I wish they were here to answer that question. They had a great time. I think a lot of time for kids. It's like they were there with their friends, right, and so that can kind of make it or break it, right, Like who you're with, you know what they're doing because they're not necessarily remembering how great the fishing was or which a lot of fishing, how great, you know, the one hike that we did was how great the whale watching was. Like they remember that interstitial stuff when they're just running around on the beach with their friends, you know, finding crazy stuff the rocks or going swimming or whatever, and it's a it's a good group of kids and they have a great time. So yeah, they never got down like they thrived in that environment, which was great to see. Like it wasn't hard for my kids to go, oh, we just got to sleep on pads and like on a wood floor in a damp cabin, and our clothes are gonna be damp for a week, and we're gonna be sort of like in a space a lot of a small space and a lot of other people. You know, showers are kind of limited, like you can get a shower in, but it's really like every other, every third day kind of thing. But they they thrived, you know, and they I know. My oldest was actually awarded the Coveted Cock of the cove Award, which is basically given to the person that is just constantly Steve gives us out this award, but it's given to the person that when Steve at like pm, it's like, hey, there's a little bit of daylight left. Let's go dig some holes and bury some rocks to anchor down this new part of the dog. And everybody else is like, oh my god, I'm tired. I just want to drink another beer and go to sleep. And I was like, oh go, And then you know, she's like, well, then after that we got to go shrimping, and I was like, oh yo. And then anytime there was you know, we basically all the kids had to do the dishes, and there was fifteen people there, so there's a fair amount of dish dishwashing to do, and d stepped up, washed a lot of dishes and just really was a was a helping hand. And so yeah, like I said, they thrived, you know, and just yeah, just just had a great time. So yeah, other than I don't know if I can give you any more details, we would have to ask them, like now that it's been you know, six months, asked them what they thought about that trip. 00:20:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, are your criteria different these days when you think about, you know, what makes a trip great or a year great? You know, I don't know what would your answer have been different if I'd ask you this ten years ago or fifteen years ago. 00:20:19 Speaker 3: I'm sure it would have been. I'm sure that my criteria different. I feel that like now I'm able to just articulate it or I just know, you know what's going to make a good trip for me, and I know what I like to do, which is pretty much hang out outside. You know, It's not like it's that complicated, right, And I like to have that adventure sprinkled in. But I also love my you know, fifteen days hanging out in a tree saddle in Wisconsin and just sort of meditating for that period of time, right, And again, we're extremely lucky that it's not like we get one of these adventures a year, right, Like I got to go hunt and mountain mule deer on a backpack and hunt. I got to go el cunting for I don't know, I didn't hunt that many days because I killed a bull early on in the season. But you know, I think more and more, like I know it's planning twenty twenty six. Like I'm very much taking the approach of like asking my girls, like, Okay, what hunts do you guys want to do what hunts are we definitely going to do, and then making sure there's time set aside for that and then all plan everything else around it. As much as they want to hunt and do stuff, I'll make it happen. They're probably good for like three to four haunts a year, right. We have like a big Turkey camp in the spring. That and then in the fall we have the Montana Youth Hunt. There's a Wisconsin deer camp, and then something else kind of sprinkled in there. My girls are not like some of my peers kids that are just ready to go shoot stuff every day of the week, you know, no matter the season. So yeah, as long as I have them taken care of and like we're doing stuff together. I was telling another we did a little short interview after the show last night, and she asked me about I can't remember how it came up, but anyways, it got me to think about how without this hunting and fishing thing with my kids, since I have two girls, I would spend like a huge percentage less time with them, especially less quality time with them than I do, like if they were not into it. And it's something that I'm always worried about. It's like my girls at any moment just be like, you know, it's been fun, but like I'm going in a different direction, right if there's a higher likelihood, I feel like with two girls doing that than two boys. And so yeah, I'm very I'm very grateful that we do have those three or four trips every year where we're spending that quality time. And no, it's even though it's like doing things I like to do, it's still that quality time that you get from being out the outdoors because you know, you don't have the phones and the screens and just the craziness of life around and you know there's just time to talk and hang out and get to know each other. 00:23:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like if I didn't have hunting and fishing with my dad, I don't know what our relationship would be like. That's that's the main core thing we have in common. That we can have shared time together and something to to just just like a core thing in common is so important. Yeah, it's huge, and I do feel like for me now, my criteria has definitely been shifting, right. I Mean for a lot of years it was just how do I kill the most big bucks and and now it's definitely shifting more to I'm feeling that adventure bug again. I really I feel like that need for something bigger and new and wild and outside of the outside of the ordinary and different. But then on the other hand, I also have the desire to priority so prioritizing kind of two things on either side of the spectrum. One is like the unique adventure, something different outside the element, my usual element. And then number two is is the core foundational family stuff like more time with family and friends on those types of things, you know, taking advantage of as much time as I can with my dad at our family deer camp for my kids and that kind of stuff. So I feel like I'm trending towards you know what you described, which is first, figure out how do we block in those family trips, make sure those have got a spot on the calendar, and then budget in the other stuff on the on the on the gaps, I guess, because that's I don't think. When I'm on my deathbed someday, I'm gonna sit back and wonder, well, did I kill fifty four big Bucks or fifty one or twenty eight or whatever. It's gonna be. Well, the memories with the people you care about, or some like really unique, special, outside of the norm experiences. So trying to start prioritizing a little bit of that personally, which it started pretty well this year. Not just this year, but had some of those experiences this year, which is pretty cool. 00:26:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you did. I would say, Mond time with your kids. 00:26:05 Speaker 2: I'm lucky in that they are, you know, like your daughters are. They're into it, they love it, they want to be out there, you know. Like we went to the Keys, the Floria Keys this spring, so this is like one of my main highlights. We did a family trip to the Keys and we had a little rental place on the water. So we had a dock that went out I don't know, fifty feet or a hundred feet or something, and so every day, you know, my oldest Everet, he would just want to go out there to the end of the dock and just fish the whole day. And then my youngest Colt, who's not as into it as ever, but but some you know, he'd kind of come back and forth. You go play in the pool for a while, and then he go out to the dock and fish for all then he go playing the pool for a while and then back to the dock. But they just want to be outside the whole time. They want to be looking for fish, looking for crabs, catching barracudahs and grunts and snappers. And there was even tarpin out there, so I caught a tarpin off the with the kids and everyone. So getting to see all that, share all that with them was was really cool. So so many of my favorite stories from this past year are with them. We did our first four night backpacking trip with the whole crew this summer that was awesome. Did their highest elevation three day backpacking up in the saw tooths that was really awesome. And then a lot of hunts so I don't know if I told you, I probably did, but Everett killed his first turkey of this spring, so m hmm, yeah, that's that stuff really really stands out. But then also, you know, I went and got to do that trip with Kal to the Arctic Refuge, which was like one of those big adventures way outside of the norm, So that one stands out too. Is just unbelievable just to see somewhere like that finally, so and I'm finally it's like a Barbell is kind of how I'm seeing my world now. I want some on that far side of the spectrum and some on the far other side at this phase of life, for whatever that's worth. Do you do you feel like any of this has shifted your white tail kind of growing? I don't know if it's growing love or if it's returning to that love. I mean, the last like five years or so, you've been on this expanding whitetail kick. How does all this fit into to where you are there? On that? 00:28:33 Speaker 3: Well? I had a it was fun. It was good. I say that now that I'm removed by a month but very humbling white tail season. Spent counting the days with my daughter in a tree rifle hunting. I think fifteen days, and certainly i'd say at fifteen, probably at least ten, maybe eleven days were dawned to dusky switched tree, so I was out of the tree for an hour midday, but like put in some mega hours and came up empty handed. And you know, I had I think I sort of had in my mind like, oh, just like persistence can be enough, you know, if I just like go in and just pound, like I'm in a good enough spot like I can sit on the funnels. It's the rut, like something's gonna walk by me. They didn't, and so it's sort of it's sort of like reset me, and it's kind of reset my. I don't know it's in the end. It's great because I love a challenge and I'm still even though I've been doing it my whole life, i still am, you know, at the more of a beginner stage as a white tail hunter, and uh that is great because it makes it fun. Like I'm learning and I'm like, I'm sure at one point, I think I've told you this before too. Like I always feel like once I feel comfortable enough to like take someone else out and be like, yeah, come with me and I'll show you how to do this, and we can probably get something done and sort of guide somebody. Like I can do that with Elk, I can do that with Turkey's white out deer. I did tell a couple of guys where to sit this year in our camp for rifles season, and they did kill, you know, two nights to the nice cups that we killed, so like that was validation. These are two spots that I've sort of pioneered on the property sort of figured out. We've sort of made them into permanent spots. You know, one as this treat as a ladder stand. One just has a kind of a natural log slash brush blind and uh they both produced, right, So that was that was super cool. But uh yeah, I mean I did come away from it, even though I mean I did get to spend I don't know, I think my daughter hunted with me. I have a tree three four days. I did come away with it. 00:31:03 Speaker 4: Kind of thinking, like, man, fifteen days, and you know, are all those days worth it to not be doing something else, not be you know, hanging with my kids or whatever. 00:31:15 Speaker 3: And again I'm lucky that I'm doing it for work, But I did come away with those thoughts. But I don't know, like' like I said, I'm still new to it. I'm having such a good time now, especially owning a little bit of land doing all the you know, property management, to see that already kind of come into fruition. I mean, we had some bucks hanging there this past summer. They hung out there really through hunting season. I mean, like like they all do. They sort of disappeared here and there for a week or two. But now the hunting season's over. Two of them have come back and are like, you know, regularly regularly on camera, and honestly, we haven't. The fruits of the labor are like maybe ten percent of what's gonna be there, and so that it's great to see and gets me super excited for the future, knowing like what we're planning and hopefully what's gonna happen. 00:32:15 Speaker 2: Did you feel like you were able to get the sense that, oh yeah, like stuff made a difference this year, or is it? Or is it oh yeah, so yeah. 00:32:23 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, like where we thinned. I mean, for those of you that didn't listen to me talk about our property in Wisconsin, I mean it's just square. It's a forty acres square. The northern half is mostly a oak dominated habitat and it was like the classic you know, clost canopy. Southern half was white pine dominated. It had been cut about thirty thirty five years ago and it had never been thinned. So it's just this kind of scraggly thick. I mean I went, like the deer moved through it, but they never really hung out, like it was kind of a desert, and we basically took out every single pine out of the southern twenty and left what was remaining for of these like you know, they're only eight inches, Like there's two big oaks in there that might be a foot at you know, breast height. But just doing that cutting that and then letting you know, letting sunlight hit the ground and then what came up that has really made this like thick, you know, a lot of cover, a lot of blowdowns. Like there's just a ton of food in there. There's a ton of bedding covers, so that the deer are definitely spending time there. The northern half because we're doing this three year project with the US Fish and Wildlife Service sort of creating an oak savannah, So we cut ninety some percent of the trees but left some really nice big oaks and it's gonna be left that way now. And the oaks are spread out basically where if one falls, it's not gonna hit another oak. That kind of gives it paints a picture of how you know, spotty these oak trees are. You can definitely see across it now. Now there's because we've been spraying herbicide. There was like nothing growing, so the deer aren't using it. Like, again, they're passing through, but they're not using it. But in three years when there's four to six foot tall grasses and forbes all through there, I mean, it's just gonna be great, great habitat for all kinds of stuff. Right, So I would say this year, yeah, we saw great results in kind of twenty acres of it, but there's another twenty acres that really the deer were just kind of like, yeah, whatever, and that's gonna change and it's gonna be sweet. 00:34:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's gonna be exciting. I Uh, I feel like that has been my favorite part of my habitat work in the past, has just been the seeing the cause and effect stuff. It's like doing a thing and then that first time you see something that is that is really truly because of the work you did, that is super rewarding. Something you said a second ago made me really curious about your perspective on a debate that sometimes happens that you uniquely could give an answer to, which is white tails versus mule deer mule deer hunters. I feel like your typical mountain guy, uh might sometimes want to put their you know, turn their nose up on white tails and sale, white tails are easy, nothing compared to hunt mule deer's mule deer. What's what's your take which is more challenging mule deer hunting or whitetail hunting, or how would you compare and contrast the tue given the fact you've done both pretty seriously now. 00:35:47 Speaker 3: It's it's apples and oranges. Sure, they're both deer, but like man, and I'm sure there's some places, you know, maybe eastern car Auto, Western Kansas, where they're kind of doing the same thing, right, because they're both there. But like where I hunt mule deer in the mountains, and then compared to where I hunt white tail deer in the deciduous forest of central Wisconsin, they're just so different, and the habitats so different, the tactics are so different. And I would say that right now it's way harder for me to kill a mature buck in Wisconsin. But I think that's more because the lack of experience. You know, I know plenty of people, we both know plenty of people that are very successful year after year with mature whitetail bucks. And you know, I went on a five or six day hunt this year in the mountains out west and killed a nice mule deer buck. You know, I haven't scored them yet, but it's a buck. I think that, you know, most people would have a real hard time pass right, but they're just so different. I mean I feel like that mulier hunt required uh just physical uh, you know, stamina and just being in shape. I mean we really we carried you know, heavy backpacks, you know, a couple thousand, three thousand feet up a mountain, and we have to have the skills to be up there camping and surviving and living and then hunting at the same time. And it's great, but like I kind of know what to do right, and it didn't happen at the first spot we went to. We adjusted. It was challenging. We were seeing too many people, you know, spent a bunch of time looking at on X. I had done some scouting in the summer, so I kind of had some plan b's, but you know, went to a plan B and it happened right with the white tails. I don't know so much to talk about mark, uh, Like I said earlier, like this just straight persistence, Like I know how to apply that persistence on a mule deer hunt of just like, Okay, you're just gonna have to get up to glassing points and just pound the glass. If you keep doing that, you're gonna turn up a buck. And like that's what we did. And I sort of thought I had that formula for white tail deer hunting in the first half of November. Is like, you know where the funnels are, the pinch points, like you just put in the time and your three year older plus is gonna eventually walk by. And I don't know what it is. I mean, is it just coincidence that there can be years where you just keep picking the wrong spot and like they go by the the other pinch point one hundred yards the other direction or whatever. Yeah, it happens, you know, And we know you've interviewed guys that you know, the seat equity guy, right, he's just like kills big bucks up north. But he sits there for days on end. I can't remember his name right now, but days on end without seeing deer, and that's hard to do, extremely hard to do. But he knows, right, that's the formula, that's his tactic. He knows that eventually, you know, the mature buck walks through there. So I don't know. I sit squarely on the fence on this one. I think there are lots of Western hunters, but there's no way they can let alone do a full day, ten to eleven hours sit in one tree. They could do it for four hours until they're just like I gotta go, I gotta move, you know, Like having that patience and that mental discipline to sit there and just put your time in. Is it sounds easy when you just say it, everybody knows, like two days, three days into it, all of a sudden the grind sets in. You know. 00:40:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, it is an underappreciated challenge by those who've never done it, that's for sure. So was your big takeaway from your white tail season the thing you led with, which was that persistence isn't always enough? 00:40:20 Speaker 3: Is that the big takeaway this year? Or did something else as you look back? 00:40:23 Speaker 2: Yet? Was there something else that you'll carry forward more than anything else? 00:40:31 Speaker 3: Man? I mean, honestly, I'm still digesting it, you know, because it just it really was humbling to put in that much effort and not be able to come away with you like just like a better encounter of like, oh, you know, I had him at thirty and he just went behind the wrong tree or you know, you heard me draw on my bow or something, but like I didn't even get that close. Yeah, I don't know. Just and again it's the rut right, Like there's just there's nothing guaranteed of of the movement, and stuff's erratic. And so it's got me thinking about, like, well, maybe I need to try a different approach as as opposed because the last five years it's just been like, well, I'm gonna show up sometime between November one and November seven, and I'm gonna stay for a week and that's gonna that's like my program. And maybe it's time to you know, sort of get out of my comfort zone of that. Instead of relying on the rut, I rely more on some scouting and and and patterning them and come and hunt in September or early October and uh, you know, try to find some feed locate or whatever it might be. But so yeah, I don't know, I think. Yeah, the other takeaway is, yeah, yeah, you're not as good of a white tailed deer hunter as you thought you were, and you got to put more effort in and understand these deer better and uh and and figure it out. 00:41:59 Speaker 2: I think something you said a minute or two ago, though, is something that you should keep close to your close to your heart in the coming eight, nine, ten months to your next whitetail hunt, which is that sometimes you really, truly can do everything right and it still just doesn't happen because of the randomness of these critters and the fact that if you're bouncing around, they could always be at the other spot. So sometimes it's just not in the cards, no matter how much time you put in. So don't beat yourself up too much. Now, Yeah, what about this? What was more mentally taxing your fifteen days of close to all day sits in a tree stand in Wisconsin or running your Hunter mile race? 00:42:53 Speaker 3: Oh? Man, I mean fifteen days obviously a lot longer than the thirty three hours it took me to run one hundred miles. I think it was at times more intense running one hundred miles where where you're just you get to points where you know you just sort of your brain's having a hard time wrapping around why it can't make your legs actually run anymore. But yeah, even then, it's like, I feel like it's easier because you're still you're moving there's like a thing you can do to have an immediate impact on the outcome, which is put one foot in front of the other. And on a white tail deer hunt, you don't have that at least the way I hunt, right, Like, there is that there is this other version that we you know, you've interviewed people. I mean I think that you know Zach from the Hunt in public is best known for it's like, well, just go find the deer, don't sit in a tree waiting for the walk by, Like, go find where that buck is and try to kill him that way. And maybe I need to take that approach. So I would. As hard as that hunter miler was, I think it was, it's still because I was. I was legit burned out by the end of it, and I have a hard time saying no, like even when. So what we do now, it's a great tradition is we have Wisconsin Deer Camp for the opener and on Tuesday we kind of have a changeover the camp where like the deer hunting crew, the camp leaves and my brother, my daughter, my dad we stay and then my sister's family shows up, my family shows up, my brother's wife shows up, my mom shows up and then we do Thanksgiving there, and like I basically get to continue to hunt. I'm not hunting as much, but I'm still making I'm making like at least a nice morning or nice evening hunt every day. And I'm I have a kid with me, or you know, my wife comes with me or whatever. But like I have a hard time you know, having two Well yeah too, I say, because I had an archy tag unfilled, but you know, buck tag unfilled in my pocket and not going out. It gets very hard for me to do. Even though it's you know, you're whatever, twelve days in and the family's there. I'm like, well, I'm getting up tomorrow morning again at five, and I'm gonna go into the woods because I just have to. I have to go. See. So what was the actual question? I feel like I rambled when you were. 00:45:39 Speaker 2: Riffing on the challenge of all those days compared to you know, yeah, the hunter miler. 00:45:47 Speaker 3: Yeah. So at the end of it all, like as Thanksgiving went came and went, and I was still you know, getting out there, it was I definitely got to a point where it was losing a little. It's luster big time, you know, the grind had set in. I don't want to say I was grumpy, but I was definitely just kind of like, ah, what can I do? I need to change something, you know. But again I'm like, well, I'm just gonna be persistent and it'll happen, you know. So it's tough till to swallow when you know it gets dark on your last haunt, you know, and you got to go home the next day. But it is what it is, you know. It's not like you have a bad time. It's like a you just gotta, you know, eat your piece of humble pie and then go, oh. Right, But I still got to hang out in the woods for you know, fifteen days in Wisconsin. It was beautiful. You know, it's great. 00:46:52 Speaker 2: You're training for your Hunter mile race. Yeah, days and days and days and days and days and days over the course of a year, probably even more than that really, but for a long time leading up to the big race, you were training doing a hard thing for a long period of time. For days on end right, you were consistently having to get up early and go do the thing you didn't maybe always want to do. Sometimes it's freezing cold, sometimes it was raining. Sometimes you were just really tired or sore or whatever, but you train yourself to be able to do that. Then you did the thing the one hundred miles, and you had to go through that kind of in a microcosm all over again. But instead it was over thirty three hours, non stop, having to force yourself take one more step, go up one more hill, et cetera. 00:47:41 Speaker 3: Did that. 00:47:43 Speaker 2: Mental grind over the months in any way help you handle the fifteen day mental grind of white tail hunting? Like, did you build a mental capacity through that physical challenge and training for that physical challenge that translated to your deer hunt or anything else? 00:48:04 Speaker 3: I can't. I can't say that the two are really related. I'd say more than anything, my capacity now for these longer sits comes just from age. Like, I'm just much more comfortable being happy because I think what is hard about sitting for ten or eleven hours in one tree, for especially people these days, with as fast as stuff is happening, you know, and sort of the media that we intake and just life in general, is that it's the slowness of it, and it's it's literal boredom, and are like, we're not used to being bored. It's not actually, I mean, it's like a bad way to describe it, but it is what it is. Yeah right, yeah, Like there's it's boredom, and like I think, now it's easy for me to go, oh, but it's not. And you should appreciate the fact that you can enjoy this long chunk of time that goes by so slow, and like, I feel like I'm aging slower because when when I'm at home with doing the kids and everything, it's just like six months just go by and clips and just fast and right, and you look and you're like, oh, my kids oldest one is fourteen. That's insane. And then you go, oh, right, I aged fourteen years too in that time that is taken to get hurt, you know here, And so like, I really appreciate how slow time moves when you're sitting in a tree stand because I feel like there's I don't know, I think the only other thing you could do is like legit meditate or I feel like when I'm doing a hard workout, like you're like, oh, it's only an hour, but like when you're in the grind of a hard workout of an hour, time seems to slow down to But yeah, I just think that it's just has come with age that I appreciate stuff where it moves, what time's going slow. 00:50:05 Speaker 2: So what do you think that means for next year? Do you see yourself doing I mean, I guess you said possibly some different time periods. Do you envision more just in general time, like more white tail time next year, less white tail time next year. 00:50:23 Speaker 3: I think it'll be similar, And a lot of that just comes with where with this geography, right, it just doesn't make sense. Not that I couldn't hunt deer Montana, but I really like hunting deer again in the deciduous forest of the Midwest, and uh, but I like hunting everything else, and so to put more time to it, I just don't see that happening. Like, I'm just fine. It's obviously gonna take me longer to get better only hunting, you know, one to two weeks of white tails every season. If I lived in Wiscon said full time, that would be more of my like major thing, and the elk hunting would only be a week out of the year, right, But I live in elk country where we can go after work, you know, we can go on the weekends on a short on a short stint, but I do have a for me. What's out of state true out of state hunt planned. Brent Reeves and I are gonna go hunt Kansas together. He's got a spot and hopefully he's also. I have a bunch of points i'll draw, hopefully he'll draw it too, and we are going to uh co film each other. So Brent's gonna film me, I'm gonna film him. The cameraman will be characters in the episode. And I think we're gonna have a great time and I'm looking forward to it. I've spent some time with Brent, wonderful human. We're gonna laugh a lot. At some point we're gonna disagree about how we're gonna hunt, and uh that's gonna be fun too, So I'm looking forward to that. You know, I've never hunted Kansas. It's uh it's right up there with Iowa and the other great white tail states. I'm looking forward to, you know, seeing some new country that'll probably just like hunting elk at different locations, or just like hunting anything other than what your like primary species is like it makes you a better hunter in some way. You know, it's not always a parent, right, but I think going to hunt Kansas will probably give me insight to how to hunt my place in Wisconsin better, you know, and that'll be cool. 00:52:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so true. 00:52:37 Speaker 3: But yeah, if I if I had to guess, it'll be roughly the same. I'm sure I'll do a week in Wisconsin bow hunting, and I'll probably be there for roughly a week for the rifle opener and Thanksgiving, and then I'll have this Kansas home with Brent, So you know, maybe maybe it will be a few extra days, but pretty similar to this year. But yeah, nice, definitely looking forward to it. 00:53:05 Speaker 2: So you had a long couple weeks of white tail hunting. You had an epic adventure in the Manitoba for caribou. You showed everybody up in the Elk Woods by killing a big bowl in like three hours or whatever it was. You killed a mule there in five days. You went to Alaska, you ran one hundred miles, You went on I don't know how many days of mountain lion hunts, but I'm sure you had a lot of fun doing all that. Like you said, amazing year. But do you have any regrets? Is there anything that you wish you had had done in twenty five that you didn't or that you wish you did differently, or anything like that. 00:53:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, I should have put I should have put more time into the construction of the apartment above my garage. Is that is that your wife whispering that in your ear? No, because the plan is to rent that thing, and you can't rent it until it's done right. And so yes, my my sort of like absurd passion for hanging out in the woods gets in the way of construction projects for sure. You know, I don't know if I have any true regrets. I try to be living without them, but there's always If there's anything I'm working on these days, it's probably personal relationships. You know. You and I have these conversations about having relationships with our dads, and obviously now we have it with our kids. But just trying to you know, do better at that, even do better, you know, having the best relationship possible with my wife. And I'm not regretting, you know, how the year went, but I think that always like looking forward to being like, oh I could do that a little bit better, you know, spend more time with them, you know, be more open whatever it is, try to have more real conversations, you know with those people. Yeah, but yeah, I think hunting and adventure wise, no real regrets. You You don't seem like a guy that regrets more. 00:55:32 Speaker 2: I mean, like you said, I try not to. I feel like every year gets away from me, though I always feel like it. You have these grand plans or or even small plans, but important ones, and then they tend to slip by. I always struggle with something you mentioned there, which is like balance and personal relationships. Every year, I think I'm gonna do better, and maybe I do a little bit better, but I probably still miss the mark on those on those things sometimes. So it's like trying to balance these grand ambitions, these big plans, these adventures, satiating all that, and then balancing that with you know, the family stuff, the relationship stuff. I think I'm guilty sometimes of saying, oh, I'll do that someday. I want to do that someday. I want to take so and so on that trip. Someday, We're going to do that someday. But I don't want that someday to never get here. That's something that I probably need to just make happen sooner than later. You know, those types of things, But but yeah, I guess I don't. I wouldn't say I have major regrets either, just I am glad. You know, this year I did not film as many things, which opened my calendar up for more family hunts which were really important, like family time, which was really good. So I was glad I was able to do that. 00:57:00 Speaker 3: So that was it. 00:57:01 Speaker 2: Would have been a regret if I hadn't had that. I'm glad that I did get that. And then this coming year, I think I'm going to be filming more this coming year with like a bunch of new things. So I'm very excited about that because there's a bunch of adventure and new stuff coming down the line for me. But it's going to be how do you how do you balance? That will be my challenge this year. 00:57:24 Speaker 3: So I do feel like the more the more effort I put into the home stuff and make sure that everybody's happy there and you got those good relationships at home, it's not only easier, but it just seems like the universe sort of make sure you. It's like you're having a better time on your adventures away when you know that everybody at home is pretty stoked, you know. 00:57:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, very true. Well, being stoked is important, and I want to make sure that you are stoked tonight on your live show, Yanni. I want to make sure you've got the energy necessary to perform on stage, so I should let you get to the rest of your day. I do appreciate you taking some pre uh live podcast time to do a virtual podcast and catching up with me on so O and stuff, so thank you. 00:58:15 Speaker 3: You can't you can't call it a live podcast anymore though, because we don't record them, we don't air them, so it's really just a live show. Yeah, it was forebody at home. It was. When we used to do that, it was very difficult because every night you needed to have one hundred percent new content because if you're just listening from whatever city that we didn't go to, you're gonna you don't want to listen to the same episode six times in a row, even though we moved six cities. So you'd have to make new content, new jokes, new stories for every single night. And it, uh, it's a lot. It's a lot. You know. That's why comedians have like their their set and they repeat that set, you know, and they refine that set, and it's kind of weird that we're like in that space now, right, we're such like amateurs. You know. Randall was making some hilarious jokes last night about like, oh, you expect these guys that like mostly hunt and fish, but now all of a sudden, like you're gonna have them going a tour and they got to get up on stage and like understand how like you know, stage production works and do all that, and yeah, we're just like like we're not professional you know, actors or theater people or speakers or whatever. Right, but so. 00:59:41 Speaker 2: Set properly low expectations if you're going to the shows. Low expectations. 00:59:45 Speaker 3: Please, No, Like I said, man, everybody's been having a great time. We've been getting lots of laughs, and as the week goes on, we're we're finding the shows. We're finding the sequences and the stories and the jokes and you know, dropping some things. But no, it's been good. Everybody's been having a great time. Been giving out a bunch of killer prizes and just you know, a bunch of swagged everybody and everybody's you know, having a great time. So is there not? Is there not one? Unless you really have to go. We've got a few minutes. We didn't even make it an hour. 01:00:30 Speaker 2: We can keep talking if you want as much, as much as you like. 01:00:35 Speaker 3: You forced me to reflect on twenty twenty five, but it's so much more fun talk about what we're going to do in twenty twenty six, right, true, true? So what's your big adventure? What's the big adventure for me twenty twenty six. Yeah, I've got. 01:00:51 Speaker 2: A bunch of them, Nie, I've got some wild ones coming. 01:00:55 Speaker 3: So you're trying to move out west. That's a pretty big adventure. 01:00:59 Speaker 2: Well that's possibility, ye know, Yep, that's a big one. Another one is I'm working on this, you know, I don't know what we're calling them, but short a film or an episode or something that is exploring the reality and all the controversy around wolves in America. And so I'm going to go And I spent about part of a week in October searching for wolves, learning about wolves, spending time out there around them, bound some watch some from afar. We're going back in January for a full week in the winter, camped out in the back country with wolves, trying to follow them and observe everything they do for a week. So that's going to be a pretty cool adventure. Then sometime in the spring, I am doing a excursion following buffalo in an undisclosed location and it looks like a buffalo hunt as well. So studying what buffalo do in the world wild, how they impact the ecosystem, how they used to, what they're doing, where they've come back, and then yeah, getting to to do a buffalo hunt that's seemingly pretty close to for sure happening. We're working on a Arctic caribou trip of sorts one there's one possibility that might be a hunt in the fall. There's another excursion for another show I'm working on that might be seeking out and following one of these Cariboo caribou herds during their calving event and observing what that's like and documenting you know, when two hundred thousand caribou all of a sudden give birth all in one place, then the predators swarming in to try to take advantage of that, and the whole ripple effect of all that. So trying to find and document that that's something that might be happening in June ish. So those are a couple. There's a few others that are like on the table I told you about my prong Horn idea, right, have we talked about the prong Horn trip? 01:03:03 Speaker 3: Oh? I don't think so. 01:03:07 Speaker 2: So another one of these trips that that hopefully will be approved for another project, will be following a pronghorn migration on foot for more than one hundred miles and following them and backpacking along the way and documenting everything they have to go through to get from their summer range to their winter range and all the challenges along the way, and kind of explore wildlife migrations and and what's going on with that these days. So one hundred mile ish backpacking trip across some wild places would be a pretty cool adventure in October next year. So yeah, those are some that are up there. 01:03:48 Speaker 3: So what about what about the what about the boys? What's like the big hunt with the boys? 01:03:55 Speaker 2: So the big stuff with the boys would be the standards. They're not the point where I can go on like a out of state adventure thing with them, you know, for a hunt. So we're gonna do spring turkey hunt again, which the kids love. We do a lot of like fake turkey hunts, so like before the season, we just go out and try to call birds in just for like experience, and the kids get love hearing Turkey's gobble and just love being in the woods. And then once the season begins, then they're coming along for a bunch of hunts. And Everett, now, you know, like I said, he got his first bird last spring, so he has a tag and he'll be going after one again. And then I'll have my dad out and he'll have a tag, and then I'll have one too, So we'll do that and then just come you know fall, just hopefully have a lot of white tail season dedicated to just being out there with them. Some of my best spots have gone down in quality in the last couple of years. There's been like a ton of increased hunting pressure around some of my core places. The age class has just been crushed and and so that's that's a bummer in a lot of ways. But the upside is that because there's no mature bucks to hunt, I don't feel the pressure to like treat them with like white you know, white slat satin gloves or whatever whatever the saying is. So I don't feel so guilty about like taking the kids out and shooting a bunch of dose or you know, shooting, you know whatever, because there's not some big old buck that I'm worried about messing up. 01:05:25 Speaker 3: So that's what you won't feel so bad when you take them out squirrel hunting, is they're not gonna mess up the home range or kick out your big bucks. But you need to be doing mark. 01:05:39 Speaker 2: You're right, You're right. I need to do that. I know my boys would love it. They they call it squirreling, so like, hey, can we go squirreling? So like up at our deer camp, they'll just walk around with a baby gun, like, oh, we're gonna go squirreling. 01:05:53 Speaker 3: We're on squirreling. 01:05:54 Speaker 2: So those kind of roam search something out. But I have not done what you telling me to do, which is explicitly have a planned quality squirrel hunt. So I'll put that on the itinerary. They do a ton in the summer, not squirrel hunting, but back I just jumped in my mind back to like the adventure thing with the kids. As you know, you know, our summer ends up being like a really good adventure time with the kids. So we do want to kind of expand what we've done on those like back country trips. We've every year done a little bit more so this past year. Like I said, we did a four day for the first time, and they claim they're ready for a full week, so we might we might try to do that. 01:06:38 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we missed out on ba We missed out on backpacking this year because of the other trips, which is this is fine, but it's definitely on the dock again for this summer. They're still both in the space of like they're sort of like when we start, you know, and planning up to it, but as soon as we're you know, down the trail a couple of miles or in camp the first night, everybody's pretty pumped to be there, you know. 01:07:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, maybe I can convince you and your family to take a couple six and eight year olds with you guys and us, the whole crew. We should do a shared backpacking trip one of these days. 01:07:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that'd be fun. That'd be fun. Oh, my girls, your boys are young enough where they sort of like I think they had that like almost like a motherly or babysitter sort of like attitude towards your boys. If they were any older and more peer like, they wouldn't be interested, you know. But No, that would be fun. 01:07:41 Speaker 2: They thoroughly have enjoyed their past visits, so maybe we can do that. 01:07:46 Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Anything else in your twenty six schedule, Man, I don't have any great adventures planned. I've been trying to draw a tat of an Elk archery Elk to Ba and Wyoming for I think this will be the third year. I guess point creep keeps getting me, but I feel like I just, you know, judging by the numbers, I really should have it this year. And there's actually some running races in these same mountains, and so I think if I think I'll know early enough that if I draw the tag and I could also sign up to run like a big race in the same mountain range and maybe somehow work that into the story. It could be pretty fun do a little scouting while I'm doing a big, big race. 01:08:37 Speaker 2: That's really cool. 01:08:39 Speaker 3: But yeah, that's about the only uh like really big hunt I've got like a three two to three year plant going. I would like to do. A dream mind would be to go on a Alaskan sheep hunt or a Canadian sheep hunt for doll and I think that to make it, to make it something just more valuable to me, Like I want to go and I want to go and hunt with someone that's just got an immense amount of knowledge about the sheep right and that has a lot of time on the mountain and they can speak to you know why those animals just really this captivate people so much. And I think I found the guy and I'm hoping that he's gonna he's older, as you'd imagine, because that's who you want to talk to, an old guy that's got a lot of years in practice. But as sometimes happens, you know, you can catch people at the tail end and it can be too late, right, like they're like, no, I'm I'm retired, Like I can't do it anymore. But I think this guy's got got it in him to both do that. So I'm not even gonna mention his name, but I'm working on a two to three year plan and it really would like to do just like a solid bio piece, you know, through the lends of a sheep hunt, but to really do a biopiece on this person, but also on like what makes this person you know, really want to dedicate their life, you know, to be a being a sheep hunting guide. And so if I can get all that those like ducks in a row and make that happen in a couple of three years, it'd be pretty sweet. 01:10:21 Speaker 5: That sounds cool, make for some good looking forward to that one. Yeah, great, great, great story, great adventure. All right, Johnnie, I'm really gonna let you go this time. Good luck tonight with this show, have fun. 01:10:34 Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on. 01:10:35 Speaker 2: I don't talk before Christmas. Officially, Merry Christmas. 01:10:39 Speaker 3: Merry Christmas to you, Happy New Year, tell the boys and Kylie, I said hello, and yeah, we'll do it again. 01:10:48 Speaker 2: Right back at you, all right, and that's gonna do it today. Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, have a wonderful kickoff to your new year, which will be starting here any day now. And as I mentioned at the top and during me and Yansa's chat, I'd encourage you to do a little bit of this yourself. Do some reflecting, do some reminiscing, try to appreciate the good times, learn from the tough times, and let's all move forward in twenty twenty six with big dreams, high hopes, and lots of good stuff on the to do list. So until then, thank you, and stay wired to hunt,