00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number two hundred and four, and today on the show, we're preparing for shed Rally weekend by sharing our best shed hunting advice, and then we're joined by Jeremy Moore to talk through some really interesting next level antler dog insights. You're gonna enjoy this one. Okay, guys, I need to cut in here and give you a little pre introduction to what you're about to hear, because in a second here you're gonna hear me in this original intro laying out the plan for today's episode, and part one is you're gonna here is me and Dan talking about a lot of stuff related to shed hunting. But then you're gonna hear me mentioned part two, which features Jeremy Moore of Dog Bone Hunter and him and me talking about training shed hunting dogs. And the reason why I wanted to add this little prologue is because I think in that original intro I kind of undersell that portion of the podcast. But now that I've actually recorded that interview. I'm now feeling compelled to oversell because I think it just turned out really really cool. If you someday want a shed hunting dog or if you have one now, I think this is a really unique and helpful conversation that's different than most other shed dog training interviews or resources I've seen out there. Me and Jeremy and this one we go in depth on my own personal shed dog challenges and frustrations, and the insight that Jeremy provided on this one was it was just it was just really awesome, so much so that I came out of this conversation with a whole new level of excitement and interest in my dog and his antler finding future. It was just kind of a I don't know, it was neat. I really enjoyed it, and I just want to have this little prelude to make sure you knew what was coming. Um, So enough of that. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. And now I'm going to drop you right into the original recording. All right, folks, welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, brought to you by A Sick of Gear, and Today on the show, we are talking shed hunting. Um, we're talking bone, we're talking white gold, and we're talking about all this stuff because of course it's that time of year and um it is also shed Rally week. So remember that one year you and me went shed hunting and we were just like all of a sudden, randomly each one of us. Ye shed rally in the mountain in the woods. That was was that, just me and you? Because there was what does Corey was there that? What does ross yelling? Does you guys have um something that you hell yell? And it's when you guys find antler. Well I've always wanted to yell bingo, bengo if you find a really big one. Um, I don't know, I just yell shed um or I scream expletives and start to cry and break down emotionally because of the build up to that point. But yeah, dude, Um, shed Rally is this weekend, which is this you know, this event that the folkstore White Tail Properties started a handful of years ago and it's just become kind of a cool thing for everyone. Um, just a weekend where everyone tries to get out and go shed hunting wherever you're at. Share pictures share videos stuff on social media. UM, and it's just been a good excuse for me and my buddies to come out to Iowa each of the past few years too and do some shed hunting. So we've got to spend a couple of those weekends together, Dan and Uh. We got another one coming up this weekend. So here's here's the first question before we get to everything, and I guess let me rewind the tape. Here's second. On today's episode, we're talking sheds. I want me and Dan here. We're gonna talk a little about our most recent shed hunting exploits, and then I want to talk a little about some of the things we've learned about shed hunting over the years. We've talked about shed hunting in past years and past seasons, but now you and me are old farts, we each have kids, We've been around the block. We're gonna talk about our final lessons, learned, the most important things, etcetera, etcetera. And then later in the episode, Jeremy Moore, the founder of Dog Bone Hunter. He's been the podcast before. He's the guy who trains shed hunting dogs and has a line of products related to that training products. UM, we're gonna get him on to talk about some more things related to dogs and antlers and try to cover some new ground there. So that's kind of what's in store today. But back to my question for you, Dan shed Rally is this weekend I'm coming. I'm coming to Iowa. Are you going to be joining us? Or are you not well? And arrangements? There's two things right. Number one, it's snowing an Iowa right now. M yeah, that's not good news. No, especially to the part of the state where you're at. But I think it's all gonna melt. It's gonna be sloppy as crap. Um. But my goal is to be able to drop the kids off because my wife wants to come with me too, right, So, um, I gotta try to find I gotta find a happy medium this weekend where I can go with her because she still wants to go, and then I can meet up with you guys, or she'll come with us and or whatever. But um, I think there's still a lot of ground to pound. That's you know, a lot of shed hunting left to do. If I'm not mistaken. Yeah, well, here's here's an update, and this is you and me hashing out our personal plans in public here, I guess. But um, without getting into too much detail, we are actually probably going to be shed hunting some southern Iowa ground now, Um, we have potential access to a big property down sort of in your neck of the woods. Um, so that might make things easier for you if you want to like have your mom watched the kids or something like that. And I don't know, maybe we'll be able to swing over. You've talked about want to hit some of your properties. Maybe if we're in that neck of the woods, we might be able to do that with the group now one Oh yeah, dude, I'm down for that, um, because I think the property that you're talking about is maybe fifteen minutes away from my my mom's house, so so it's about the same distance as the property that I normally shed hunt. So um yeah, definitely an option if you know, if we can, If we can pull it off, we'll have to we'll talk details off the air, but but that'd be fun if you could join us. We we had a good time last year and a lot of good times over the years, so shed really weekend is gonna be a good one. I'm excited to get out there. I think I'm actually gonna leave Thursday night and be there all day Friday, Saturday, and then part of Sunday in southern Iowa or eastern Iowa where were previous years. I think probably maybe the first night I'll go up to our Eastern Iowa spot and walk the property. I have permission to hunt. UM, check all that out on Friday and then um and then head down south for Saturday Sunday. Got it. Sounds sounds good man, So yeah, hopefully we're gonna have some more shed hunting stories coming out of that for next week's episode. And uh, I just want to interrupt real quick. Okay, remember the first time you came down to shut Hunt with me, just it was just you and you found uh, you know Mark Kenny in side. Remember that the the the infamous first shut Hunt. I was walking in that. Okay. So the second year you came, you and Corey Um, I think it was just yeah, you too, and we walked to that big bottom bean field, right that was That was the year that it was. That was the shed rally weekend and we're shed hunting. We're all pumped and we're driving around looking at properties and we here snoring in the back seat and we turned around. Corey has just passed out. Right. So anyway, anyway, on Sunday, I walk up to this creek and I just started laughing out loud because I remember when you fell through the ice trying to cross that that creek up to your chest, remember that. So I'm sitting there, I'm sitting here laughing in the woods. And then I'm like, hey, man, we can go back to the house and change or whatever. And You're like, no, man, I can. I can still walk it off shivering. We had sheds to find. We did, and we didn't find any. But that was it. When I fell into that, When I fell into that river and you didn't even come to try to help me at all, I knew this was a doomed partnership. Well, I thought I thought you were under the ice for a second, because you from where I was standing, you fell behind a tree, eat like a clump of trees, and I couldn't see you, and I'm like, oh my god. So that's why I started running your direction, because I thought there was some like magical current under this creek and it took you under, and I was gonna have to try to find you or you know, call your wife. That's a real deal. Though. I've heard about that being a real thing, like getting sucked in under the current. I've heard of people's dogs dying like that, which is a real bummer. Um, So you're lucky I made it. Yeah, I am lucky. This could have been a very different kind of podcast if I was dead. So she hunting hunting? Uh So last time we talked, you would had the best shed hunting day of your life almost you found nine in that day. I tied for the best ever. And then I told you about finding my biggest shed. Yeah wait, I don't think that. I don't think last week, because you found that big shed this week, right that match set. I found it on Wednesday. We we talked about it. We talked about her right wen day of this week, Wednesday of last week. But we recorded on what day do we record? You had kid issues? So we recorded Thursday night? Okay? Remember that? All right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, we talked about it. I'm telling you, I'm telling you my life's over. You are you are losing your mind? Man? Um, But we haven't heard about your most recent weekend of shed hunting. And I had another shed hunting story to tell, So talk to me about your trip with your wife. Yeah, man, we uh, we tried to go out, you know, with the kids at one point, and that lasted one yards and then we had to turn around and go back to the car, which I was a little frustrated with about. But then what we did was we drove all the way back down to my mom's house. We dropped the kids off at my mom's then than me and Sarah went down, uh and did some shed hunting in a place where typically we'll find a couple of sheds. And sure enough, we were walking this area that last year, I think we found one, two, three, four. We found five sheds between the two of us in like an hour and a half walk in this one little oh it's it's like a timbered strip of that leads from a bigger chunk of timber down to a creek, and uh, you know, there are some corn stubble, and so we walked up and down these buffer strips looking and my wife found one and I found found two, and that was how we kicked it off. And then we went back to the same field that we found the um antlers that I found the antlers in the previous year, and I found what two more sheds previous previous week, excuse me, previous week, so, um, they were much smaller. One was just a four corn side and then one actually was a broken tip of an antler, so who knows what that was from. But uh, and then we we started because I only walked half that if you can remember me telling you that, so you had all those those are all right sides, right, so you know, there's a bunch of left sides out there somewhere right and they're probably all in that corn stubble which I tried to walk and it's very difficult to even focus on what to look for. But anyway, um, I found some. And then we walked the second half of the that big field and we started running into other bootprints, so I think somebody was there and walked it, um sometime in between when I did and then the next the next week, so we didn't find any more sheds, but it was cool to get out there and uh, you know, pound some ground with a wife. Does she have a good time? Yeah? Man, I mean she finds it's funny whenever she finds one. She makes this who like like almost like a who all, like a mini Ric Flair. So yeah, so she went out, she she came with she found one, and uh that makes her happy, and she's but she's that kind of person who's like, where are all the big ones at? Like the ones you find. I'm just like, sweetie, you gotta walk a lot to find the antlers that I've found over my however, many years of shed hunting that I've done, so it's not just like last year and this year were I don't even know how to put it. They were, you know, they were outlier years where I've just had really good luck. I was probably the first guy to walk that field. I hit it, you know, at the right time, and you know from there, you know, this weekend could be one of those weekends where I don't find another one, and the weekend after and I don't find another one. So who knows. Yeah, how did you find last year? Oh? Man? I think last year, between me and the wife, I think we only got out once or twice. And let's see five, six, seven, So we found eight that one day. So a total between two of us total of maybe like ten or eleven. Okay, yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, And this year, just me, I found thirteen so far. So yeah, it's crazy, and it's very dependent on where you live. And you know, like here in Michigan, it's really really really hard to find any at all unless you just have some kind of mega property. Um. But most years, even I traveled to Iowa, I traveled Ohio, most years I only find a handful of sheds any given year. I can't imagine how cool it must be to live somewhere and have time to go a lot where. I know. I see some of these people online who find a hundred fifty sheds a year. Um, you know, our our buddy Hossman and his wife, they annually get fifties, sixties, seventies sheds a year between the two of them. Um, that would just be insane. I can't even imagine what is like to have just piles of sheds like that. I think last year I found uh, last year, I think I found two sheds a whole freaking hear. Yeah, I don't know, man it And it's it's so dependent on I think weather and food source. So this year, on the on this crop rotation, the corn is back off the road further and the beans are up front, and so I think it's just the deer are coming from further distances and they're spending more time in this field, which allowed because I think the combine is an old combine and it's not very efficient. I mean, there's there's half kernels or half ears of corn in this field and there's you can you can see colonels all over. So it's a great food source for these animals and there's a lot of it. So it's just a great place to concentrate throughout the area. And what also helps and as you know my neighborhood, they're not having to go to other properties for their food this year. So um, yeah, we had a lot of snow and just just a decent neighborhood. Yeah yeah, so yeah, Well, I mean you still gotta you still have some hunters, you know, other hunters that you have to work with. But I'm just never gonna let you live that down. That one time that you said it's a decent neighborhood. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you this. So I had I went to the Iowa Dear Classic this weekend, right, and I talked to d n R officer who kind of is in this area. And here's an announcement. Remember that buck Gordon Bombay, Yes, the super wide one yep, he he he was shot by the neighbor and he was found by a trustpasser. So yeah, so they confidence I think they confiscated that. Um, they confiscated that rack. And I so, uh, Sunday, I went to that guy's house who shot him, and I said, hey man, they found that buck, so um yeah they yeah. So I think I'm gonna try to get that back from the DNA officer to give the guy who actually shot it. So hold on the guy that actually shot at Is this the neighbor that we talked about last time or is this a different neighbor? Uh, it's uh, it's a different neighbor. Okay, okay, different neighbor. Wow. So how did the DNR end up in possession of the rack though? Because the the trespassers got busted while they were carrying the rack out or something. Well, the trustpasser is a convicted felon and he's gotten busted for multiple things several times, and so when they went into his house, they found out that you know, like, oh, look at all this stuff that has no tags to it. Dude. I he showed me four pictures and I think or four or five different bucks. And of those deer, I had one, two, three, three, three or four trail camera pictures of these deer on that property. So and none of them had tags with him, right, none of and he they couldn't. They said, well, this guy, this one guy shot it with a bow and then he gave it to me. He gave them ount to me. Okay, yeah, right, what everybody? You know what I mean? So I don't know, there's a court date set and all this stuff. I don't know, but hey, he got pinched. So that should mean one less person doing all this dumb ship on the properties that are like the property that I hunt and the surrounding properties. So yeah, well hey, hopefully it's good news to the future. Right, we've kind of taken a turn here. Let's go back to shed hunting because yeah, because it was like yesterday or Sunday, you had a day out scout two right, yeah, man, um, I did. So last week Wednesday I was in Ohio and um found my biggest shed ever. And then yesterday, so I'd be Monday, I went to go scout a new property I have permission on here in Michigan, and that scouting trip ended up becoming also my best shed hunting day ever as far as numbers was found, found six, which isn't many for some people, but for me being a Michigander, that's that's a good day. So um. Yeah, man found six sheds yesterday, which is super cool, um, especially since it was kind of more of a scouting mission than anything. Of course I was, you know, keep an eye out for sheds, um, but that was awesome. I found nothing super big, um. I guess I think I found three antlers off a year and a half olds and three antlers off a two and a half year old. Um. But two of those were a match set or laying right on top of each other. So that was pretty awesome. Just actually nice seven pointer so that was cool. Um. I found a dead buck on this property, which is a bummer that looked like it would have been quite the deer this year. I think he was probably three year old last year. Um. He had triple brow times on one side. Yeah, so that was disappointing to see. Um. But other than that, things are very promising on this scouting trip. It's a it's a really really cool property. It's something I'll be talking probably a lot more about over the course of the year. Um, but it's it's probably the best Michigan spot I've ever had access to, and um, I think it's got lots and lots and lots of potential. So I I'm pumped to start digging into it more. There's there's a lot more to figure out. This is different than most of the places, as we've talked about here in Michigan that I have access to. Our like a forty acre piece here, twenty acre piece here. Um. You know, my biggest farm I've ever had to hunt here in Michigan is the ninety acre main Michigan spot that I talked about a lot um, but this is this is on a different scale. This is hundreds of acres um. So it's gonna give me an opportunity to maybe have a better Michigan year than I usually do. So that's excited. I feel like your Instagram told story told me that yes, you were out shed hunting, but it was more of a girl Scout eating trip, cookie eating trip for you, Like you had more posts about you eating girl Scout cookies than you did about walking and finding sheds. Dude, you gotta keep you priorities straight. You know, if if I'm gonna do if I'm gonna do a bunch of walking, it gives me an excuse to eat Girl Scout cookies about feeling guilty, So you gotta take advantage of that. So I did. I packed a healthy lunch of an apple, some jerky uh, a little package of almonds uh, and a whole box of Girl Scout cookies. So all in all the recipe for a good day. Um. But it was it was interesting. Um as for the sheds, you know, and I think this applies to what I want to talk about a little more here of the coming minutes, which is the keys to finding sheds. I these days, more and more, I feel like when I first started shed hunting, I just wanted to walk everything. You know, if I had access to a property, I was just going to scour that whole property. And now when it comes to looking for antlers, I'm much more focused. I feel like for me, it's become much more effective to be efficient with your shed hunting, So focusing on the very best late season betting and the very best late season food and just scouring those specific spots. So you know, I was scouting a whole bunch of things, But then I also knew there was a few areas that I knew would have the highest chance of their being sheds because of that good betting or the good food. So when I got to those areas, I really picked those with a fine tooth comb. UM. And the spot where I found five of the sick sheds was It's kind of kind of imagine um almost a bowl, almost a bowl. In the bottom of the bowl is a green food source, actually an old food platform past years UM. And then on the sides of the bowl is just like kind of overgrown CRP type grass and bushes and stuff. So kind of like absolutely ideal um winter bedding. And that south facing hillside where you get that sun and where it warms up the most. In that tall grass I found you know, most of these sheds all just tucked in, you know, next to the bushes, are out in the open, because these deer lots of times if they can find the place close to food and then get on one of those warmer hillsides in that grass, they're gonna hang out there, spend a lot of other time, catch a few rays of sun and then be close to that winter food source. And whenever I find a spot like that, I just I know, to spend a lot of time and usually it pays dividends. So this was definitely a case where I thought this should definitely be a good shed spot and reduced which is nice to see. Um And Yeah, I don't know. I think that's been one of the very most um impactful changes I've made to my shed hunting tactics is just you know, we have limited time to shed hunt, so when you are out there, I think it's much better focusing your efforts on the high quality locations and hit more high quality locations instead of spending your time spread across everything, um and and and maybe wasting time and spots where your chances of finding one are much much lower. What's uh, I don't know. Maybe that's my biggest shed hunting lesson or like one of the most things. What am I trying to stay here? One of the things that stands out to me the most is the most important things I'm thinking about this time of year. We're what are what are some of the things for you over over these years that you now keep in mind? What are your most important shed hunting philosophies, right, And just like you, if I had the time, I would scour everything. But because I can't want to go to the places where i've number one, had historically good years and fines, you know, I keep hitting these these two specific fields right off the bat right before I hop into the timber or these other CRP fields where you know there there may not be a close food source. But what I like to do is just I almost I guess I have this theory where I'm hunting, right, it's like reverse hunting. The shed is now you and you are now the deer. Right, so the shed could fall anywhere between betting, transition areas and food sources. Right, So if once you identify those places, then you can spend your time walking back and forth in those places, whether it is a a food source, so you scour the food source, or it's a transition area or a staging area, and you walk those places, and then you walk the betting areas, right, and you just treat it like almost like you're almost hunting, but you're your mobile all the time. And if you can find the deer, you know those places where the deer are betting and the deer are eating, and you just walk back and forth between those areas, I feel like you've got a really good chance of finding sheds this time of year. So let's talk about those types of places, because we're talking we've been talking generically good betting, good feeding. What are the places that you find in Iowa at least that are good late season food sources that tend to attract deer and sheds or what tend to be good betting here as this time? What are the specific things are spots that are you know, that actually fall underneath those labels, right, So I'll just give you a specific example, and that is the the corn field that the corn stubble. Right. So what this is there's timber and you know, some decent betting surrounding this field and even this giant buffer strip with trees in it that go right up through the middle. So the they're betting in there as well because they have direct sunlight, they have trees that they can trees and terraces that they can bed on the down wind side, so they're not getting beat to death by wind, so they're warm and there um they have the advantage when it comes to wind and they have food nearby, And because this winter was so cold, I feel that the deer are going to be bedding closer to the food sources to not waste as much energy. So if they can bed at the food source, I feel that's a win win for these animals. And they have the tall grass in the buffer strip to call home. And you know that that's one specific example that I like to focus on this time of year because it's plus, it's easy to walk. Yeah, And I feel like consistently, if you find a crop field that has leftover grain, if you've got those buffer strips, the grassy edges or grassy strips that go out into the middle of it like year in here out, I feel like between me and the buddies I go out shed hunting with, those are always some of the best spots. So if you have that kind of terrain out where you can shed hunt, definitely hit any of those grassy strips, any grassy fields or hillsides adjacent to food food plots or crop fields or anything that's another hot spot. I would definitely check out um because it just seems like they love kind of you know, betting there maybe in between while they're feeding or just before, just after, etcetera. Um, it's hard to beat those strips. Those are always some of the things that I when you see it, you just want to get there right and in these strips or not. It doesn't even have to necessarily be in a strip, but this time of year, the soil is starting to warm up and some of these plants or grasses are starting to bud out right and they're starting to grow again, and that little bit of green, these deer are eating right, and so any if if I could find those places in which I feel I did in this in these buffer strips, this brand new grass coming up, and they're eating, they're spending a good time. Because every almost every one of the sheds I found was in a beat down like patch of grass right with like deer poop all over it. And that tells me that there is a lot of animals beating that grass down, and you know, that's just a great place to look for him. Yeah. I feel like when you see that kind of sign to that is always like a huge flashing yellow light that says slow down, focus, you know, look all around. Lots of times when I get into a spot like that, I like to walk, you know, ten fifteen yards to stop into a slow like degree spin and just look at the whole area. Because it's really easy to just walk past sheds too. Especially you know if you don't frome every angle, lots of time to shed, even a big shed, could you know, you can miss it behind a log or behind a clump of grass. Um. So it's good to every once in a while look behind you look at things from a different perspective. I've always found that helpful. Um. So you mentioned the grassy strips. We talked about the crop fields. Of course, trying to understand what those crop fields are the deer feeding and now and lots of times that's you know, cut corn field that might have waste grain. Sometimes you know, a bean field might have some waste grain that's still left over maybe. And of course if you have a standing crop field, that's even better. Um. Lots of times winter wheat, at least by us can be getting hit hard really right now, and that's another thing to look for. Um, My clover food plot on my Michigan property is actually getting slammed right now. UM. So that you know, I think a lot of this comes down to checking food sources. And finding out where that hotspot is and then knowing, Okay, I need to focus my efforts around this. UM now for betting areas other than the grassy stuff you talked about, see RP buffer strips, things like that. UM. And we mentioned already the south facing hillsides that warm up faster, they get melted snow faster, they catch more sunlight, and those are key things to look for. Another thing I like to look for is thermal cover, So like evergreens, conifers, pine trees that are going to hold in some heat. Lots of times that's gonna be somewhere the bucks like to bed, or deer in general like to bed during the winter. UM. That's where I found holy Field shed in a little stand of pine trees. UM. So that's another thing, like kean On, whenever I see like clumps of cedar trees, I'm always checking underneath those because that just seems to be another spot that lots of times of buckle bed next to an isolated cedar tree and some brush and he gets a little out of protection. UM. And you mentioned earlier are Iowa shed hunting trip that I went on with you when I fell in the river. UM. That was an example of finding a buck bedding area out on the points off of ridges, right. Um. That's another place I check often is when you get these spur ridges that come off lots of times you get a buck that might bet off on the end of one of those knobs. And that's where I found the Mark Kenyon ship was a big knob coming off of a main ridge. Um So I always check those, um in watery like wet land type stuff when I'm looking for betting. If you've got like a marsh land that's next to one of those fields that we talked about, if you can find those high spots in the marshy area, again, that's a spot of buck my bed that you might be able to find something. Um So, those as I'm trying, as i'm speaking this all out, those are the main types of places that I look for as far as winter betting. And then of course like any really really thick brushy stuff you know, generic betting cover um like autumn olive or different things around here in Michigan that I look for. The deer find that just extra tight, really thick, high stem count type cover. Those places can hold sheds too, So so that's that's what I focus on. I focused on those types of betting areas, those types of food sources, and I scour them. Um, this time of year is about as good as it gets. Um, is there anything we missed as far as specific locations, I mean we we haven't talked through every single little different place, but as far as the very most important things, I feel like that kind of covers the very most important locations right right. And to be honest with you, I've never I don't think I can remember a time that I have found a a shed in what you would consider what you just described as a cedar thicket. For me, anyway, you haven't. I have not know a majority of my sheds have been found, like you said, on either the ridge like a like a I don't know, a ridge leading to a food source, let's say, like a transition area just like you if you were hunting right, you would be down one third of the way and there'd be a trail that would be on there, and I found my sheds there. I found my sheds at the points like you described. I found my UM sheds a lot in the on edges, right. We all we all talked about how edge is good habitat for deer, like we're timber meats c RP and they're walking that edge. Um a lot, a lot there A couple of times I guess on French crossings, but that's not guaranteed, right, So but never for me personally, never really in that that quote unquote thermal cover. But you know it could be just by circumstance, you know, Yeah, Yeah, it's definitely been one of the places that I've found found some but um, you know, there's no guarantees, that's for sure. I've walked into plenty of spots like that thinking oh, for sure, there's got to be a shed there, and then they never find anything. Um. But now a couple other quick tips for shed hunting in our quick kind of cliff notes review of shed hunting here. Um, I think of cour it is one of the very most important things is just putting a lot of miles on your boots. Like it is a numbers game. You're not going to find a lot of sheds unless you walk a lot of miles. Because even if you're in the even if you're in the very best property and all of Iowa, you still gotta walk a lot of ground to find them usually, So you gotta put in the work if you want to find a lot of antlers. And then probably the most important thing, in my opinion, other than being somewhere there's antlers and walking a lot, is staying focused and having a good attitude. It's it's really easy and I'm guilty of this too, that you can go shed hunting and get the sky high, sky high expectations and you start walking and an hour past is you haven't seen anything, Two hours past you haven't found anything, four hours, five hours, six hours, seven hours, You walk and walk and walk, and you don't find anything. And it is really easy to get bummed out, to get tired, to get frustrated, and some people get frustrated or at the get go. And I think if you fall into that trap, if you get too frustrated, if you start to get bummed out, that leads to a lack of focus. And as soon as you lose your focus, you start losing on opportunities to find antlers. Because if you want to find sheds, you have to stay focused on looking for them. They're not just gonna pop out in front of you and have a flashing light that says I'm right here, pick me up. You need to really be focused, constantly scanning, constantly thinking about what you're looking for, um, because they're easy to miss. And if you get all bummed out and frustrated it always, I mean it happens to me. I sometimes get frustrated and I know that I lose my focus. I'm not paying as much attention. I start looking at my phone, I start thinking about dinner, or I start whatever, and that's when you miss your opportunities. So try to stay focused, try to have that good attitude. And I try to tell myself more and more now going into a day of shed hunting, to just from the get go, look at this is like, here's an opportunity to have a nice walk in the woods. Like I'm gonna enjoy the day. I'm gonna enjoy looking for antlers. But I'm trying to always keep my expectations low. Because I would keep my expectations low. I find myself just having a better time because I'm not bummed out that I didn't find anything. You know, right, absolutely, man, it makes a lot of sense. So that's that's I think important. And if you have if you have the time, you know, like I'm looking at a map right now, the property that I have permission to hunt. It's big, right so realistically getting through it in one day would be impossible. And I know that there's time constraints. But if you can break it down into multiple shed hunts over a certain period of time, I think you're not only will your mindset be better, but he'll probably find more sheds as well. Yep. I think that's smart, and that that applies to scouting the property too. Um breaking things down. That was one of the things I had to think about yesterday, because this property is pretty big. I was it's easy to get overwhelmed by it and just start walking willy nilly. But instead I decided that I was going to break it up into little section and then just think about, Okay, on this, you know, eighty acre section, what are the main features that are important here? And focusing on those main pieces just within that eighty acres. Okay, this is where the best food is, this is where the best betting is. This seems to be how they're transitioning. And then you move over to the next hundred acre piece or eight acre piece, you do the same thing, and then you can kind of like understand each one of these parcels as an as an individual piece. And then once you've done all that, once you've identified the key areas, and then you can look at the bigger picture and start putting them all together. Um. But that seems to be for me at least, an easier way of kind of wrapping your head around a new a new area, whether it be a big piece of public land or a new private farm or whatever it might be. And I think, like you said that that works a lot when it comes to sheds too. Um, you gotta scream baby behind you here. Yeah, my mom's in there taking care of it. So I'm good at ignoring that stuff. Um, alright, any other final things we got to add and then are kind of annual cliff notes shed hunting review here, and I just bring toilet paper. Yeah, that's true. That's all I gotta say. Bring. And speaking of other things to bring, uh, good boots. I mean there's nothing that can bear yeah, binoculars, um snacks and water. You know, that's another good way to revive your attitude and your focus is take a break for some water, for some food that can get you going again. Buddy, I like shed hunting by myself when I like on that field right that day. That would have sucked if I had to share those sheds with some with somebody. But you know, on some of these bigger walks and like the timber and stuff, it's almost impossible to cover it by yourself. And it's just fun going with a group of people sharing that experience, and it's a great foot in the door for new hunters. Yeah, no, that's a that's a good point and great when it gets your family involves, right, that's right. So that's our that's our ederrelly review of shed hunting advice for the year. I guess, um, if you don't have anything else, Dan, I'm gonna say we wrap up this portion and then get Jeremy Moore in here to talk about dogs a little bit, cover a few more things. Um, he's got some more shed hunting advice to given how much time he spends out there in the woods. And by the time this is all said and done, for anyone who wasn't already ready, they definitely should be ready for the next upcoming weaker or weeks of shed hunting in come. Before that, though, real quick, let's take a break for our Sitka Gear Story of the Day. For this week's story, we're joined by Chase Reatherford, who tells us about ending a seven year drought. I haven't been able to hunt the past five years because I've been filming and shooting other hunters out in the field, um it being my job and for and it's been seven years since I actually got to drawback and actually shoot a deer. So this year all the stars aligne I found I had some time to get out and hunt. Um it. I sat probably four days and had plenty of bucks and does walking under my tree. UM. I remained undetected by playing the wind on October at a small button buck that came in, which she always came in every day, and he always seemed to get bumped out by other dear um A couple of minutes go by and I noticed that he was getting nervous and he was looking behind me. So I threw round and looked, sure, now there's a big buck walking in with split browd times. UM. I quickly grabbed my bow, spun around the tree. Only had a few seconds before he was gonna get out of range, and I stopped him with a grunt and let the arrow fly and I hit him and he tried to take off, and he fell down the ravine right below my tree, and within a few adrenaline rush seconds, my seven year role was over on Chase's hunt. He was wearing sikest Fanatic system. If you'd like to create the sickest story of your own. To learn more about technical hunting apparel, visit sitka gear dot com. Alright, and we also want to thank our partners at White Tail Properties, but instead of our usual white Tail Wisdoms segment with a land specialist, I just want to make sure that you understand what this whole shed Rally thing is that we've been talking about, um each year for the past I think it's four years now, white Tail Properties has been putting on and promoting this event essentially a digital nationwide event encouraging everyone to get out together and go shed hunting with your friends and families on a specific day or a couple of days. That's what they're doing again this year. It is this coming weekend, So if you're listening to this when this podcast is first going out, um, it's this weekend March ten and eleven, two th eighteen. And here's the gist of how it works. On those days, post creative photos or videos from your shed hunt on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag shed rally, so that number sign, hashtag sign and then the word shed the word rally. If you post that, you are then eligible to not only you know, be part of this, you know, great kind of slew of interesting photos and videos that you can view on social media, but you're also eligible for prizes from white Tail properties, Winchester Real Tree, Yetti, Lacrosse, Legendary white Tails, sent lock In dog Bones, so lots of cool prizes, a great excuse to get out in the woods and what I enjoyed doing in past years during shed Rally. If you're not familiar with this, you can go on Instagram or Twitter and you can search for hashtag. So search for the sched realy hashtag, click that and then it will show everybody else's pictures that have tagged it with that same hashtag. So you can go and you can see all the pictures and videos from the shed Relly weekend. That was just a lot of fun for me in the past. Usually gives me a lot of shed envy, but it's pretty cool, so hopefully you guys are participate. As you heard, me and Dan are going to be out there in Iowa. It should be a fun weekend. We're gonna be recording a pod cast during the weekend. We're gonna do lots of Instagram, lots of Facebook. Um, I'll be doing a video blog. So expect a lot of interesting things coming out of our sched rally trip. And uh hopefully you'll be getting out there too. Good luck. And now let's get to our interview, our second part of this podcast with Jeremy Moore talking Antler Dogs. All right, we are back and with me, we got we got rid of Dan and now with me is a much better guest Jeremy More. Thanks for coming back on the show. Jeremy, Yeah, you bet. Now, don't put too much pressure on me More. Okay, well, both you and Dan have pretty good beards, but um, you rock a stormy crowm are better than I'm sure Dan would. So you you've probably been right there. Bonus points for that, my friend. So we had you on the show a couple of years ago. Um, but you know, for people who haven't heard that episode, and if if they haven't, they should go back and listen to that one. But if if they're new to who you are what you do, can you just give us the quick the quick store, the quick background on what is you do these days related to dogs and deer and all that. Absolutely, yeah, and and so first off, I really appreciate you having me back. This is your podcast was actually probably one of the very first ones I've ever done. So and I get more people, I see more people, I bump into more people that recognize and have you know, hey, I heard you on Mark's Wired Hunt podcast. So that that I appreciate you having me back. And yeah, the the you know, we have a small company UM called Dogbone. It's one of our brands, and we basically have developed training products UM built around the do it yourself dog trainers, So someone who wants to train their own dog to either shed. We were kind of our niche thing. Our our specialty is UM shed training, so getting dogs prepared for shed, you know, for for the spring and shed hunting. And then we've you know, and I don't know, back when we talked, it might have been like I know, it was way early in the the idea of people recognizing it. But we also have a line of products for game recovery or tracking. So our our thing is we kind of brand ourselves as products to products, and it maybe more importantly information And that's something that's probably shifted more in the last few years, is the stuff and then how to use the stuff if you're interested in training your dog. Is what we're kind of branding as a deer dog or a dog that will shed hunt in the spring and help us track in the fall. Yeah, that's kind of the dream dog for a guy like me or YouTube. Totally, totally, And and that's just it. The the person that is a avid like the person who's an avid deer hunter. There's prior to this idea of what we're doing. It was just it's hard to connect the dogs to it. And I'm a big dog person. I always have been, and I'm I I now have great purpose and reason to put a lot of effort, the same amount of effort I used to put into my gun dogs and bird dogs, only it's gonna actually help me with my dear stuff. So I think it's just a perfect fit for for a lot of people. Oh yeah, and I gotta tell you, since we last talked, and I think when we first started talking, a long time ago was when I had just gotten my own dog, UM, and I was trying to train him to become a deer dog, trying to training to find sheds. And so I had picked your brain way early, um about different ideas, and I was trying different things, um. And at the same time I had another friend who got a who got a lab, and he started training his dog to find nailers. And then around the same time, I had another friend who got a dog that he was training to recover deer. So I've got these two buddies. One of them has a dog he's trained to find sheds, one of them he's training to find blood. And then there's me, who is trying to train my dog to do anything. Now, you know, six five, six years later or whatever it might be, I am in the unfortunate position where my one buddy has a really really good shed antler dog. She's great. My other buddy has a really great tracking dog. She recovers dear like a champ. Sure, I'm sitting here with my dog and he won't do either of them. Well, I'm glad you got good buddies, right, Yeah, I have failed with my training, Jeremy, um So I'm gonna ask some questions to try to understand where I went wrong with all that. UM, it's it's been a little depressing. I love my dog, he's great. UM. But before we get into my specific failings, and it's probably my failings, UM, can we get a quick review of your high level training program when it comes out? How do you teach a dog to findaniler's UM. Let's just set that foundation and then we can dig into some of the more specifics because I want to. I want to cover the basics for people that are new to this, but then also for our listeners who heard you last time and who understand the basics, I want to talk about some next level stuff too. So how do we take a how do we take a train dog and make him a great dog? Um? Or how do we deal with challenges like what I've had to deal with? UM. So that's kind of my thoughts here, so foundations that So first off, backing up, I want to give you, uh pick me up to you to the first thing that you said to me was you recognize that the what happened with your dog is probably not the dog. I think it's how you worried. It's probably something that I've done. Okay, first off, that self awareness is really important because the majority of trainers don't aren't willing either don't or aren't willing to say that. And I and so I commend you with it. And I think it's something that we as handlers and trainers really have to understand. Our dogs have are capable of. I don't. I can't tell you. I can't name one dog that isn't capable of more than what we as handlers are able to get out of them. So that it's there, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get it out of them. That's the key. So so you, first off, you recognize that. Now. Second off, so back more to the point of this question, I think you what really you had Towards the end of it, you had said, you know what makes a good dog a great dog? And so I love I love that question because I actually I use that. I mean, I use a line like that a lot. So, first off, I'm big on repetition and consistency forms habits like that's all dog training is. And so what we really have to understand is when I'm i'm repetition, I'm and I'm consistent with a lot of my stuff that I say when it comes to training and what what really is super important is the idea of we as trainers have to figure out how to talk so that these dogs understand what we want. And so what makes a good dog a great dog? Well, my the way I tie that line in is mechanics and technique are one thing, Like, that's that's nuts and bolt stuff. That's mechanics. That's that's stuff that you know, hold the lead the right way, set up drills a certain way. Um Like, it's very mechanical, and it's very high on on specifics of technique. The other part that I think so that you can get a good dog if you've got mechanics, you can, and mechanics are typically what's talked about. Then there's the other end of the spectrum that I think is equally as important in the equation of training dogs, and that's the connection the field, the trust that the dog and the handler have. Now, if you don't know if you're picking up sounds around me or not, but I've got like seven dogs in this room with me right now, and they're all on there on different places. I don't have enough beds from all. So I've got some on beds, I've got someone the matt in front of our stove. Um, so if you're hearing stuff, that's what it is. But the feel and the truck, like, I've got a dog right now in front of me that I am literally looking at and I'm putting my hand up and this little dog is looking at me and she's really wagging her tail because she really thinks this is kind of fun. But just now, how she just sat for me. So I didn't have to go, hey, spry, sit down. I didn't have to now. Early on, mechanically, there's parts of training where I would say, okay, time this physical thing with this verbal queue and get this reaction out of the dog, and then praise they do it right, praise they don't do it right, we give them correction of some sort. So the reality is that the dogs don't understand what what what we want, and so what we need to do is figure out a how to communicate it to them. Be when they do it, we need to have them understand that's what we want them to do. And then when they don't do something right, we have to understand how to use that to create a situation of a win. And so now you're talking like a little bit more than you know when we talked. Last time we talked, I think we talked about some drills, and we talked about some concept general generalized concepts of shed hunting. You know, they cover a lot of ground, and they use their nose, they use their eyes. All of that stuff makes sense and and the idea of you know, I'm probably getting ahead of myself on this, but you had mentioned, you know, for anyone someone who's listening right now and goes, I don't know a ton of stuff about this. So the basics are here here. It is like really in a nutshell, training dogs to shed hunt is very simple, Like it is not complicated. And I can say that about just about anything, whether it's sheds, gun dog, upland it doesn't matter. Foundation has to be there first. And the foundation is the is the basic stuff that we build off of. I can't do advanced drills without dogs that know how to do very very fundamental things. And I say that's very simple for heels, sit, stay, come when I call you. So like with some of the struggles that you might be having with your dog, I bet you if we got into them, and maybe we will here. I bet you we can almost always circle it back to it's probably a foundation issue, and so we plug that hole first and then we build off of it. So but when it comes to that, mechanics covers a lot of the foundation. But the connection, the feel, and the trust part of it is the part that a lot of people don't talk about. And I think it's that's the part that I believe takes good dogs to great dogs, because you can have good dogs with either. I've seen some people that have dogs that are um genetically probably we have no idea where they come from, Like we just don't know that we don't know. But a great case in point is I've seen so many rescue dogs that have turned into tremendous dogs in the field and in the house, and a lot of the times people will come to our workshops and they might have a dog like that and they really have no formal training as a trainer, but I can see immediately they have excellent feel and they have great connection. They probably have pretty good timing. I think timing is something that's overlooked a lot in training. But they might have all that stuff, they just don't know how to do the the actual technique stuff to create a really nice dog out of it. So the balance between field trust connection that takes time, that takes some stuff that you can do through drills, but you combine that with mechanics and technique, that's how you're really gonna get great dogs. Yeah, and I feel like that that's probably where a lot of that secret sauces is understanding how to how to establish those things, and that's that might be partially where my mistakes have coming. I don't know, right, So what about this, Jeremy. Can I explain to you what I have done so far, like how I tried to train my dog, and then I'll describe to you that the issues I'm having, and then can you try to diagnose where my mistakes were or what what? What's the issue? What could be done? Yes? Okay, So when I got my dog boon or booner Um from a young age, I knew I wanted to try to train him to find shed. So I started him out with the with the dog bone um soft antler and also you know, playing with that, just developing like a fun fetch type game with him. There. Eventually also had little tiny sheds that he chewed on and and you know just came to like I wanted to establish that just a positive association between the antler. UM. Then I moved on to the next thing where I would develop a fetch. You know, he he learned to retrieve antlers for me in the house. UM, and I would you know, he'd get bring me the antler, I praise him, give him lots of love, etcetera, etcetera. The next thing I did was then we started doing like Hyde and seek with the antlers in the house. So we've been playing with it and then I go hide it somewhere, he'd go find it, bring it back, praise him. Um. The next step I started taking that outside, so playing the same heyd and seek game, but just in the yard. Um. And he did really good at all these things. Um. Eventually then and now he's I don't know this, maybe he was a year old or somewhere around there. UM started doing some more advanced stuff. And this is kind of the I continue doing this every year. UM. Where I started taking the height and seek but into the woods. So I would go, I take a group of antlers, taking like a backpack full of antlers, maybe four or five antlers, and I go plant them out in a corn field in the woods, in a grassy field. I'd have my dog inside the house and then i'd come back. I'd get the dog, take him out to the property and then we go shed hunting. And you know, after you know, slowly working him up to that, he got really good at it. So that's kind of where I've gotten now. I've I've done that same basic kind of training where every year in the winter we start and we go out and we do this, and he can find those antlers really well, and he gets pumped. He loves antlers. He knows like when I pick up an antler off the table in my man cave or anything like, when he sees me playing with antlers, he gets really fired up. So he has like a positive connection with antlers. And when we go out in the woods and I've on a training mission, he snatches him up. He he will go out there. He usually can catch that scent and he knows to go find him and he gets a kick out of it. And he seems to do pretty darn well when training. Yep. The issue comes when I go out in the woods when I haven't planted sheds. Yep, I get. I get a couple of things happen. Number one, it seems that he doesn't keep that focus level. Like he'll be charging around looking smelling for a while, but after I don't know, an hour or something, he slows down. And he's in a good shape. We do a lot of active stuff, so it's not like it's physically not in shape. But he seems to lose focus. He just seems to eat a lot of deer crap. He just runs around from brother. Yeah, he goes from pilot deer crap to pilot deer crap and um. And he doesn't find sheds. He does not find real sheds. I've had, I've had, I've found I've found sheds myself and wait for him and he'll sometimes he'll go up and sniff him. Um. Sometimes he'll pick him up. Sometimes he won't. But I've I've yet to have him have a real find. Now. I will say that I am in a not a very shed rich environment in Michigan, so there's not a ton of them out there. Anyways. I've taken him to Iowa twice. Um, and he he didn't he didn't latch onto it. So now we just shed hunting here in Michigan, and a few times when we do find an antler, it's usually me. It's always me who finds it, and he shows little to no actual um, what's the word I'm looking for. He's not working with the real sheds the way he does with the training sheds. And that's where I'm at. Now, I've I've lost, I've lost, I've lost some enthusiasm and faith in it. Sure, yeah, he know, he knows it. I can hear it in your voice, Mark when you explain it like and I and I say that I'm not joking, Like I can hear your frustration. And I believe this is like good dog trainers are able to read the situation. Dogs read us better than we can read them. We have to figure out how to read them. So I have gotten better and better and better over the years at reading situations. And that transfers from dogs to people to everything else. And so I literally feel like I have developed a knack for reading emails. Now. I know emails are slippery, like a message can be read totally two different ways, the same words, but we can perceive it differently. So I understand that you have to take that with a grain salt. But I can read. I feel like I can read emails and and sense tone frustration, anger, excitement, happiness. I can get that out of reading people's emails. You've got to read a lot of them, like I get a lot of I get a lot of messages and and and so your story right now is like you're not the first person who had this feeling and had this experience. So but so I'll tackle it a little bit first off, like you just said it the very end, and it's keywords. It's just picking up on keywords. One of your words. You know, you've lost a little momentum with it, You've lost a little bit of excitement with it. You I can hear that in your voice. And you're just simply telling me that, like a long time after it actually happened. So, now, if I know humans and I know anything about because I've been there before, put yourself back into the last position you were. Now, how old is boone? He's six now, okay, And what what would you say the majority? So I'm gonna start asking you some questions. What would you say the majority of the time frame was when this was happening like you probably maybe put this is what I'm making an assumption, but you probably put a lot of effort in early on. We're excited about it, gained momentum, it was things are going good. You started to shed hunt. It didn't go that well. You said, that's okay, I know he's young. I'm gonna put a little more time into it. You continue to do that. You had a few more opportunities and a few more experiences, things didn't go well. You lost momentum and said, I just don't I'm obviously doing something wrong, but I've got a lot of other things on my on my plate, and I've got a lot of other things going on, and it just kind of slowly went back burner a little bit, back burner, a little bit, back burner a little bit, and then maybe to the point where you went, you know, the hell with it. I'll just take him for a walk with me, and so be it. That is true. And this was the first year every year since I've had him, every year, and like exactly like you said, I had tons of momentum, was working really hard with it earlier, and then I started like taking him out in the field and he wasn't finding anything or that. I took him to Iowa and we found sheds and he just ignored him almost and that was really frustrating, even though he would pick him up when we were at home and all these things. So so yes, it slowly went downhill. And every year, though still starting like the day after deer season usually once I'm not worried about, you know, hunting these deer, I would still go out and train with him. And this year, this year is the first year I said screw it. I didn't even do any training within this year, I took him out for a walk. I found a shed. He he got a kick out of it once I picked it up and gave it to him. Um. But I was like I was this year, I'm frustrated, and I'm like, he's six years old. He just he's not into it, um and he just so Here's so here's the thing like dogs, when we go through a process of training a dog, I talk about it. I've talked about it recently. We did some stuff. We're doing some stuff right now for Shed Rally. We're doing this road to the rally where we've done these live training things and we've talked about building up to this coming weekend, and so one of the things I talked about was the importance of and in the in the process of when dogs get stuff like we work with them. I was working with a group today at a at a place actually in Michigan, a store that I do this training with called Mighty Pet. We're doing this project Mighty Pet. We're working with these dogs. It's not hunting related. But one of the things that we talked about today was the same thing I talked about last night on the shed rally thing, which is the same thing I talked about this past weekend at Best Pro Shops, which is the same thing I talked about last weekend at Cabela's. So it's a really repetitive thing, and it's a tone that you hear from me a lot. Is the idea of when we're training dogs, we're putting stuff into them, we're getting a behavior. We do it so many times to form a habit, and then it almost it's like it clicks, like the light bulb goes on. I had a girl send me a picture a video today of her dogs first find and relatively young dog and the dog had had it was in a hayfield Stevie Wonder could have found it. I mean it was laying in the middle of the hayfield. It wasn't it wasn't hidden, but it was an opportunity. And she actually got the shed because someone sent her a message that they found it in the field and they knew she had a dog and they wanted to give her an opportunity. She brought the dog out and the dog actually got ran past it, like stepped over it, definitely caught wind of it, circle back, picked it up, and she went. She treated the dog. I could save the world, which is exactly what you want to do. Now that's one like, that's one chance. When we do things with dogs bird hunting, for example, So if you take a dog and you prepare it for for to be an upland dog, the beauty of upland dog training is we incrementally get them to birds. Like we we start out with a balled up sock. We go to a canvas bumper, We taped some wings that we had and sent cold game, fresh kild game, live pitches. Take a bunch of steps before my dogs ever see birds. And we do it over the process of a year plus Like it takes a while I'm not. I don't rush anything with dogs because I don't think dogs can be spent speed trained. So things just take. They take as long as they take. So I go through this process with these dogs to get them ready for birds. Then prior to doing that, I like to go if I'm not if I'm gonna go out to South Dakota for pheasant hunt, I'm gonna go to a game farm, and I'm gonna spend some time at game farms, and I'm gonna have a few birds out. It's gonna be very controlled. I'm gonna know where. We're gonna make sure we have some success. We're gonna simulate a hunt as best we can. That's the value of a game farm. But my dogs, before I take it to South Dakota for the first time, or before I take it to North Dakota and we haven't a blind and opening morning opens up of a duck season, my dog is gonna have seen and done a lot of things that are extremely close to the real thing. And so we prepare them. Like gun dog guys, bird dog guys. We know we gotta do that. The guys that go out there and go I hope my dog turns into a bird dog and they take him with the first time. It's a coin flip whether or not the dog is gonna make it, and if he does make it, it's because genetics, like we didn't prepare him with the training, but the dog just has enough in it and we've lucked out in the situations to get that gun dog or bird dog. Now with your shed training. So let's back up. So that's a big picture philosophy idea. We back up and we look at what exactly. I'll break down exactly what you said to me. So you started out in the house. You got this game mastered in the house. The dog understands that you know the shape and the starts to understand the smell of something like that is going to equal. Dad gets pretty happy. I get a reward, retrieves it. You know, the retrieve is the reward. My dogs don't get treats for retrieves. The retrieve is the treat. And I praise him to confirm it. So dog gets to understand that the little retrieve makes sense. Well, then you said you from there you went what you say, did you go from the air to the yard. Then start playing in the yard like that and you had some success with that, right found it back to you. It was a nice little game. It was a really nice step in transfer from your house because you added some distractions, but not overwhelming. Like your dog already knows the backyard. Your dog already knows the art whether you're shed hunting or training for shed hunt or not. So you got a dog that's pretty stable and pretty comfortable in an environment. Location is important to dogs like that influences behavior. So you transferred a game to a little bit different location with a little bit more distraction, and you found success in it, and that bet you the third, fourth, tenth, fifteenth time was better than the first, second, third, like it just they start to figure it out from there. It sounded like you went to hiding it in some timber, really simulating um more realistic shed hunting conditions. Does that sound right? Okay? So you went and you did that, and you said, I think you said you put a backpack full of vantlers out. You went and put them out, took the dog out and put them on it. Dog did well, right. Let me ask let me ask you this, how big of an area and how long were those sessions? How long did it take to do those sessions, because really I train in small incremental sessions like short I think short, short sweets how they learned stuff. So how long was were those? What did a session like that look like? So a session like that would be you know, I get up in the morning, I'd keep him in the house, I go out with the antlers. I drop him out over the maybe a size of I mean maybe five antlers in a ten to fifteen acre area maybe, um, and then maybe even maybe the last maybe ten acres, five ten acres. I'm trying to vision what I've got this field. Yeah, and five acres is big. I mean five acres is a pretty nice I mean, that's a pretty nice nice field. So there's a field and then some tall grass and a chunk of timber that I've kind of that's easy to get to for me. And then Wade we get out there, and man, he'd be so fired up because he knew what was going on. So he'd be in the house and when he sees me walk out of the house with some antlers or something like that, he's at the door jumping, just so excited, wants to be with me. Um. So then I come back to the house, I let him out, and I'm like, all right, get the bone, get the bone, and he just goes tearing out there, just on fire. And you know, over the course of an hour or something like that, he he'd or less. I mean, sometimes he would just bomb out there and find them all quick. But one of the things I think that was happening I started picking up is you would see him following my trail, so he'd followed my footsteps, and so that was one not dumb, No, they're not dumb. So I tried to like throw the antlers far off from the distance, so at least there'll be like a fifty yard difference between where I was at. Um. Sometimes I tried driving out in the quad and dropping him that way, but but I still came back to he must be focusing more on the me smell and less of the dear smell. So everybody thinks. That's what everybody thinks is I think they I think he picks him up because my scent is on him, or he understands that these are the antlers that we trained with and it's the other antlers that he doesn't like. That's that's human nature, and that's human that's the way a human would analyze that situation. Here's my thought on it, Like is that part of it? Yeah, potentially, really really great potential of it. But there's a way more to it. Because here's the beauty of these dogs when they smell, because do they smell? Other sense, your sense, whatever else is on it. Yeah, they do. And I credit them because they're brilliant with their nose. Like for them to be able to track shows me he's super efficient. Why waste time looking where there where? He knows there's not going to be anything like he's looking for, he's following. He knows what how to get these things quickly. And so like you said, you got a five you got maybe a five acre field that over the course of probably pretty quick. Like I think about it, and I don't compete with dogs. I don't. I don't. I don't compete with dogs. I have no interest in it. I think you have to train to do things differently as opposed to hunting in order to do well in typical competitions, whether it be shed uh, field trials, doesn't matter. The skill sets are different for that which is judged, and if you want to do well, you have to train for it. But what I see, like i've seen, I've seen these types of events, winners, finish winners find I don't know how many sheds ten or twelve or I'm not sure the number a bunch in a matter of two minutes or less. Like they it's it's a friend. So what we we in order to in order to do well, you have to train to be a sprinter. And so your situation, now, that's your situation is more similar to that where you've got a five acre piece where there's five sheds or or more maybe, and your dog is finding him really quickly, and he's finding them by following a lot of clues, and he's just he's just a big problem solver. He's taking these pieces of the puzzle pudding together and going here, Dad, here, Dad, here, Dad, her Dad here, dad, and and and you're going, yes, like this is awesome, let's go shed hunting. Now. The difference, and this goes back to what your story was was you had said in the beginning when you told me about your some of your first training, your your first actual shed hunts. You go out and after about an hour, you said, he started to really lose his interest. You just kind of started to fade. Not surprising, like think about how he was trained. If he's not finding it in the first ten fifteen minutes, it's done like you've done at that time. So we've created a dog that is understands like I have dogs. I see dogs make retrieves for people, and they basically run a certain distance, like and it's literally within feet, like they run a certain distance from the owner, and then they start to look forth things and so. And one of the problems that people have is I can't get my dog to work out beyond it. He's just got like this invisible barrier, like he can't get past there. He just wants to always look at a certain distance. And I ask people, I say, stand still for a second, about how far is that? And they'll tell me off thirty to forty yards probably, and I'll say, okay, take this, take this antler and throw it as far as you can. And they throw it and it lands miraculously thirty thirty forty yards away. So it's what what the dog has done is the dog is memorized like there's only so much distance before I have to start looking, because that's where it lands. Almost every single time in training, and that becomes a thing that I think, memorize the steps it takes to get out there. How many steps does it take before I better start looking. They're so smart and they're so efficient. So with training, I really believe that we have to train the way we hunt instead of training the way we would maybe compete. Now, if you want to compete, I would recommend doing that. If you want to do trials, I recommend doing that. If you want to hunt, I recommend preparing the dog for the hunt. And the idea that he fades after an hour is not surprising. An hour is a long time for a dog to focus, like an hour is a long time, a long time for an adult to focus. So to ask a dog to maintain focus, especially if they're not finding anything and they're used to finding things, hell, i'd check out too, because I'd go what, No, I'm not interested. So there's things that I think we can do in training that prepare us for that. And that means the training doesn't doesn't take place over a ten to fifteen minute period. Now that's training skill sets. Then you transfer skill sets to transitional training for the field. So I don't I don't hide I rarely hide antlers for dogs. I don't do it, and I think people go, that makes sense. It's hide and seek. You have to go hide these things and then go let the dog work in area and find them. But I think you get a dog that figures that game out, but they don't understand shed honey. I want This is what I want out of a dog. I want dogs to pick antlers up every time they see or smell them and are on on a hunt. And when I say on a hunt, I mean they're out quartering and casting. I don't want dogs breaking off of their place in my house to go pick up an antler. I don't want so. So we have this gray area. So my young dogs, especially, I have to set them up for success. I can't put them next to an antler, tell them no no, no, no no, and then take them out in the field and go. Now you can, because it's not fair to the little dogs. As the older dogs get get a little bit more experienced under them, I can get away with that. But when I put a dog out on a hunt, meaning I give him a command, like my command is let's go okay, let's go okay, let's go, and all of a sudden. It's a certain tone, it's a certain cadence. And my dogs understand right now, Dad said, get up, go out there, don't be right next to me on heal in heal position. This is where I develop everything with a dog in the heel position, because I get dogs to understand that connection, feel and trust. Then I let them slowly gradually build some distance out and so I let him out, and in drills and training, I'll let him out, and then I'll recall and then I'll let him out and I'll recall them, and I'll get him to start checking back in. And once I get him checking back in, we start to develop a range. I have a particular range that I like with my dogs. I don't like him out besides gun range, Like I can only shoot thirty five yards. I don't want him flushing at fifty, So I don't want him hunting out at fifty yards. That's just my personal preference in the way I build that into them so that I can do multiple things. I don't want to just shed hunt with him. I want to I want a girl something. I want a pheasant hunt in the Dakotas. I want to do these different scenarios. So I set up my shed hunting to fit my bird hunting. But when I get these dogs out working in rills, I don't plant a field, take them through, let him zig zag and find them in five minutes because I have no control over the time there. If they if I say go find go ahead, let's go, and they get out, They're going to be as efficient as possible. They're gonna follow potential scent clues, they're gonna be down wind, They're going to use their nose, which is what I want. They're gonna find it, bring it back. They're gonna find it and bring it back. They're gonna find it, bring it back, And I don't want to be there to go don't find it so quickly, So how do you get them to not find it so quickly? Don't have them out there? So what I do is I don't do drills like that. Instead, I do drills. When it comes to the idea of conditioning in the antler shape and the antler smell to equal retrieve, I do it in very specific drills. And I do it instead of hide and seek, instead of the idea, because that's going from A to Z and dogs don't do that. Dogs go from A to B, B two C C two D they get to Z. So what I do is I like to get dogs to start to understand see or smell and antler on the ground. That equals a retrieve period, doesn't It's not this, It's not so much this hunting part. Yet, hunting part is a separate activity from the retrieving part based on shape conditioning and sent scent discrimination. So my drills are memories. I do a ton of memory work. I do trailing memories. I do circle memories, loop memories. Once you do all these different variations and memories, and what does that mean? So, so a trailing memory. The difference is if I take an antler and I throw it for the dog, I throw it and I send the dog. It goes and it makes it, picks it up, brings it back. It's very natural because it's tapping into predator prey. They see something, it falls, they run down, they get it, they bring it back. That's been bred into these dogs for hundreds of years. Like they used to bring fish out of the nets, you know in in Newfoundland, like that was where this Labrador retriever came around. So they they then they got Then they went, boy, that dog really retrieves well, and we can use it for this. And then they said, boy, I'd like to use it for birds. And they got a good nose and they can find stuff. So over the period of time they've evolved these dogs to do certain things. We've simply evolved them to find antlers for us. It's it's no different than them finding anything else. So but if I I start out with a duck dog by throwing a balled up sock in the hallway, I start out with a shed dog by throwing a balled up sock in the hallway, And I just I do in the hallway because I eliminate opportunities for them to fail. There's nowhere for them to run off. So a lot of people have problems with dogs are running off, circling um, dropping halfway, wanting to wanting to play keep away. If they're in the hallway, they don't have a lot of options. They can come back to me, or they're stuck. And little dogs don't like to sit still. So but I start out with throw it, let them go get it, throw it, let them go get it, throw it, let's go get After we do that we're just bringing out natural tendencies that they have for retrieve. What we need to do then, because we need to get them to understand that the retrieves don't always come from our hand. They don't They're not always something that's thrown. And so if it's a bird, I want them to understand they have to be watching out in front because that's where the birds are gonna come from. They're gonna get shot, We're gonna they're gonna make retrieves when it comes from anler. We're never going to see a buck run through the woods and shed in front of us. I mean, I saw it once on YouTube. That's it. You're not gonna You're just not going to see that when you're shed. Honey. Dogs shouldn't be trained to look for the antlers to be falling. Dogs need to be understanding that these things are You're gonna be laying somewhere, and they might be something I can see, and they might be something I have to smell, But wherever I find them, they're laying somewhere and I'm going to pick them up and bring him back to Dad. So by doing it trailing memory, I replicate the throwing of the antler instead. This time, I put the dog on heel. I walk down to the spot where I would have thrown it to, I drop it. I turned around, I walk back to the original spot. I turned back around, and I have the dog weight momentarily, and then I lined the dog and I send the dog on the retrieve. And so early on, I make it real short, and then later on I add more time and I can add more distance. And so when I start doing that, I get dogs to understand we change their memory. So they have short term memory, long term memory. Their short term me it is very short. And so I'm getting it out of that short term memory of I just saw it, go chase it down and get it. Now they're running out and getting it because I've already done this drill with them hundreds of times, and they understand this whole routine of they run out after Dad does this, they run out, they pick something up, they bring it back. All I'm changing is I didn't throw it this time. It's laying on the ground to start out with, and it's a short period of time, and it's a relatively short distance. But then I can start adding distance, and I can start adding time and so then I can take a trailing memory and I can add it into a circle memory, multiple bumpers in a circle, and we set it up and we teach dogs to not to run. We set it up as a circle. They run straight lines. So there's tons of it's it's just adding layers to the idea of these memories. And what we're doing is is we're building a dog's understanding of they're gonna pick stuff up that's on the ground rather than having to be thrown or rather than having to be seen in movement, and then all of a sudden, we're it's a retrieve for him. I do the same thing with a gun dog. So but once you get so I do these drills, and my dogs figure out through these drills that thing equals retrieve, whether it be an antler, training, dummy ball, tennis ball, uh scented with certain things. I use antlers sent on tennis balls because it's a great reward. Dogs love tennis balls, and we can make him smell like an antler. They're going to connect real positive things to antlers, and my dogs understand the tennis balls equal retrieve. So we we can use all these different items with these drills, and what we're doing is ingraining in the dog to understand certain things equal retrieve. Quick story on this, So my kid. I had a dog that I trained for a client and the dog was I don't know, close to two years old, never picked up a pop bottle in its life, like I never had it picking up soda bottles. Well, I'm walking the dog down the road and one day, obviously, he picks up his soda bottle. He brings it back to me, and he's weirdly wagging his tail, and I'm going, it's weird. I didn't correct him for it because I don't want to turn young dogs off for retrieving, but I thought, that's weird. I've never I've never seen that before. Next day he does it again. Couple of days in a row where this dog is retrieving pop bottles, and I'm going, what the hell is going on? I never did, never saw this behavior before. He's seen a lot of pop bottles in his life, he's never picked him up. All of a sudden, after about three or four days of it, I come back in the summertime and late spring, and I hear some noise in the backyard and I go over to I walk around the corner and peak around the corner and it's our daughter and she's playing here here, she's in their cycling bin and she's in the recycling bin with Newman this litly yellow lab of ours that we're training for a client, and Newman's bringing back so bottles and I go, what is going on here? And in our daughter turns around, looks and she's little it turns around and looks at me and she goes training Newman and I go, your damn right, you're training Newman. And that's where it came from, all of a sudden, All of a sudden, a pop bottle to Newman equal to reward. It was a retrieve. And so the idea of being able to get dogs to under it's just simply getting to understand certain things. Now, Newman had gone through lots of formal drills with me, and he learned certain things retrieve them because Dad really gets excited and then he praises me for it, and I feel pretty good about that. Dogs want to do what we want. Dogs want to make us happy. So when it comes to the shed dog, I'm just trying to figure out way is to get this guy to understand, pick this thing up and bring it back to Dad, and he's pretty he's pretty happy about it. So so back so so when it comes to that's one big thing, it's it's it's replicating closer to the real thing for you. The other thing is is I got a question for you. When you shed hunting those first how many years do you think you put in uh to the point where you said, I'm ready to shed hunt with him, We're gonna take him on real shed hunts. And we already established he probably went too long. You probably got him board, he probably burnt out. You know, the idea of there's nothing here that you've already touched on, the idea of some places don't have shed antlers or as many. That's that's a reality. That's the difference between getting an upland dog ready and getting a shed dog ready. It takes a certain amount of times for things to click. And when I can go to a game farm, I can put out birds and I can hunt them morning and night. I can go out to South Dakota and I can really finish out dogs nicely because I can go in a slow and I can flash a hundred roosters in the afternoon, and so that much experience and opportunity allows dogs for things to click. How many you know when you went shed hunting, especially in Michigan. I'm in Wisconsin, and if I find three sheds by my house this year, it'll be a banner year. Like, we just don't have that many. The reason is it's because dead sheds. Dead bucks don't shed like young deer get shot around here and they just don't shed. How many sheds do you think you came across over that What was the time period, and how many sheds do you think you saw had a chance to pick up over that time period? So I think I think he started, if I'm remembering this right, I think I really started like taking him out when he was too You know, we trained a lot when he was a puppy. In that first year. We probably walked around a cornfield near my house that first year. But I probably started taking him on some serious shed hunts when he was two. And then over the next you know, three years or whatever, UM walked him around a lot in Michigan where we found almost zero sheds. UM took him once to Iowa, and I think that was that. That was a frustration point, because what did that trip with high hopes in a shed rich environment and there were at least two or three sheds on that one that he that he that I you know, we found someone found first, and we waited for him to find it, and sometimes he would just like one time he stepped over one one he knows and picked up but then wasn't super excited about it. But you know, when I look back on it, and there was the whole trip was a whole distraction. There was another dog that was a distraction. So there's all these other things, these things that looking back on it, I can understand. But then fast forward now to Michigan again, over the last few years, we've probably I've only found maybe three antlers in places where I've taken him over all that time that that I found myself. And so when I do find one, I wait and then he'll he'll come up on it later. But I've yet to have him find one himself. And Brandton me right, I'm so I'm running the numbers in my head here, and I did not need a calculator for that. I'm not a mathetician, but I didn't need a calculator like six you maybe had six opportunities, solid opportunities over a period of multiple years, and like that alone. Now I'm gonna ask you just kind of take a step back, and anyone who's listening right now just take a step because you're probably going mark there. These people listening right now are probably gonna mark him in the exact same boat. Thank you for asking these questions, because these are great. This is great, like this makes this is really valuable. And so they're saying I had the same thing happened, And some people might say, you know what, I haven't found six. I did not have a chance to find that many. Some people might say I found way more than that, and so it's gonna vary. But this, this is true. This unless someone finds a lot of antlers, which if they're just I just don't know that many people that do. But that's not very many opportunities. Like that's like asking a kid to be a basketball player and starting him out when he's like in third grade or second grade, like really really young. You help him get ready, to help him get ready, you know, first couple of seasons, and you let him you let him take six shots in games over a three or four year career, like that kid is gonna quit playing basketball. He's just it's just not You can't divide. You can't get very good if you shoot the basketball six times in three years, like it's possible. So but when you take a step back and you assess this and you look at it, I my hope is that you're gonna go. Man, that makes a little sense. And I'm gonna tell you right I'm gonna tell you right now. Like I'm a dog trainer, like I trained dogs for clients, I've really pride myself on the dogs. I think they're they're good, They're real good. My personal dogs are good, man, They're just I'm I'm extremely proud of them. But I will tell you this. Ellie my one of my I think she'll be one of the finest dogs I own. She's two and a half years old right now. She's shed headed one season. She went last year. I did not. I don't shed hunt nearly as much as I wish I could. I used to shed out a lot more before I got into this, but it sounds really counterproductive. But it's the time of year and the business and the things that are going on. Just take away and you know what I'm saying. So when you when I took Ellie out last year, she was, uh, the about a year and a half. I run a big risk. I do a lot of things live training. I like to show the progress of these dogs, and I like to show the good, the bad, and the ugly. And it's very dangerous because you can look like a real moron. I mean you can really look like a bad trainer. You know what I've found it's the most it's the best way for people to connect and understand that he's a real trainer and he's also a real person and his dogs are real dogs. They make the same mistakes yours do. Like what you just described with Boone is exactly what Ellie did, but maybe worse. My dog. I was live on Facebook when she found her first antler. It took over ten minutes, and I stood next to it the entire time, and so all I did was trying to encourage her. I think she bumped into it multiple times. I think she almost tripped on it a couple of times. She it took so long for her to click this is a dog I train and I own, and I'm proud of And I will say this she's gonna turn out just fine. Her first opportunity. She looked silly. But my my reaction to it was what was the most important part, because trust me, the blood pressure was really going, like I was really warm. As I was live, I was trying to move where I could lose connection, and all of a sudden, I'm sorry, we lost you, guys. It didn't I didn't get lucky. So I literally had to watch the dog go over it. And finally, while encouraging it's a game of hot and cold, as she got warmer, she got closer to it. I find it, find it, find it, find it, and I'm picking it up with this tone of voice. And as I say that, every dog in the room just picks his head up, because that tone is what signals to them there's something there. And we developed that during drills, and so as soon as that dog got close enough to find it, and she did find it, and it took a long time, and in my younger years, with less experience and understanding of the word patients, I'd have been pissed, and I'd have picked it up myself, and I'd have gotten negative with her, and I said, come on, Ellie, Ellie, come on, I've trained you to do this, and my tone would have changed and the frustration would come out, and my dog would have left that situation taking steps backwards. And apparently we weren't very far in the first place. So how much far? How far back can you go when you're not very far in the beginning. So I had to take a deep breath and I had to go, Okay, that was one. Let's do it again. She did it again on the second one. But after the third, the fourth, the fifth, they she did it every She struggled, and I found little things that she improved on, and I found little things that she got better at, and then I built off of that. And now we're into a second season, and will she find I look at this season as a great opportunity to simply extend my training with her. That's it. And so if it takes five years, here's the deal. Your dog is gonna hunt for until it's twelve, thirteen years old, and so good like it might lift it's fifteen, but you're gonna get some good years in the field. So if you I was gonna say, so, is it not too late? Like can I can I? Can I resurrect this situation, your dog is your dog is not even hit its prime yet for sure. And and so what I think the key is is take instead of looking at with the with the idea or the philosophy of he's already what is he six? Yeah, I think he's sex. He'll be seven, he'll be seven and a month and a half. Instead of saying he's already six almost seven, I lost four or five good years of hunting, I would say he's almost he's six, he's almost seven. I've got six years left to get better. Now. That's that's like that takes macro patients like you have to be patient to have that approach, because what have you got to lose? Like if you don't, you're gonna have six seven more years of nothing, or you can start to work. And you know what, here's here's the funny thing. You you said you found three sheds in those couple of years in Michigan, right spots where he was with me up. Yeah, So if you find if you put in that was over a couple of year period. So let's just average that out. I'm a numbers guy. Let's average that out. It's one per year. So if over the next five years your dog. That would be mean You're you're on pace, a blistering pace for five, right, and I don't. I'm laughing at it because I'm going, you know what, I'm in the exact same boat if I stay here, like I have to go to good spots to right now. And that's the thing is that I because of how I soured on it, I just stopped. I stopped stopped taking him on the out of state trips because like, he's just a hassle. He's just gonna run around and get distracted and embarrass me and so I and that's kept me from taking him to the shed rich environments. That has then further heard of training and it's a vicious like that's how exactly, that's how you develop a man. So you got five at a pace of one per year. Over the next five years, you're you're you're gonna hit five. Let's just say you keep up your average and you get to five. If your dog finds two in the next five years, look at what it did to the percentage of sheds you phone, Like if you find if you find one a year and your dog finds one a year, you doubled your production. Now it's people don't Yeah, but you only phone one? Yeah, but so did you, like you know, like doubling your production is excellent? Like that is so good? Like you you. I just think people have to be realistic with the idea shed dogs that are trained regardless of good batter and different trains. Shed dogs don't fill the back of the truck while you sip coffee. It doesn't work that way. I wish it did. It doesn't like there have to be sheds there in the first place. And so when you when you like, everyone has relative goals, and I think some of the people that are listening right now that might have had some circles. We've got shed Raley coming up this weekend, and I go, if you've never found a shed before, your goal shouldn't be it's shed rally. And I saw a guy on Instagram post a dozen that he found. Lad that's a like, like, that's there's very few people doing that. So if your goal is to match what you saw the guy on Instagram or Facebook post with his four month old dog, that is first off, man, that's great if they're doing it, but that's not you, And really, who cares what they're doing? Like we have to go all I want, Like, my goal is going to be if you've never found a shed, find one, find one, and maybe the dog picks it up, or maybe it doesn't pick it up, but gain something out of it positive and then you build on that. That's that's all we do. That's all I do with these dogs. Yeah, that it makes a lot of sense. Dude, it's it's you. You You are not He is not a loss, cause he is. It goes back to short falls, and the short falls usually come back to us as handlers, and it's nobody's fault. Like, that's not your fault, mark, Like, how did you? Like you did? I guarantee you and I can tell and I can hear it in your voice. You did everything you knew to try to find success with them. And it's human nature when it doesn't work to become frustrated. And it's also human nature to go I feel like I'm wasting my time in a world of efficiency and productivity, I can't afford to do that. And like you said, it's more of a hassle to bring them on the on the trips. If you look at the shed trips as training opportunities, instead of shed trips. It's not now, it's a different now. You have a different outlook on things like I look at I look at failures. That I can look at failures and I can bitch about it and I can go made a mistake or I can look at a failure and I can go, there's a great opportunity for me to learn, Like it's it's how you, it's how you, it's it's just your approach, how you, how you go about each of those situations. So, so what do you think? And given I mean, we're it's it's early March, just prime shed hunting season. I haven't even really been taking him with me this year walking around just because this year I've just been whatever. I'll just go out myself and sometimes he walks with me when it's close to home, but when I'm traveling, he hasn't come with me. But now you've got me really fired up again about it, which is good. Um, yeah, exactly. So are there any specific drills or things I should try? You you mentioned a handful of different things, but is there anything that knowing what you know about what I have done with him so far, what he has positively responded to, is there anything I should be doing from a training perspective to try to ramp him up? Or should I just just bring him along with me now and just praise him a lot when we find one and all the above? Easy, easy answer, all above, and the idea of you know, I thought you were going down the road. If it's already you know it's already marching like this is prime like in the next before between right now, because I don't know that they've all shed. We jumped a buck an eyo last year that was or last weekend that was carrying both sides. I know some are I would say the majority now have shed, but like there are some that will hold for the next couple of weeks. But within between right now and green up when it starts to get green is prime, like it's this is this is it? Man? This is like? And so I thought you were gonna say, you know, we're already there, and you know, is it too late to worry about getting something out of the balance of this year? I tell people this when they asked me when do you start training? Like, and that's a generalized question of when you start training when they're you know, when you when they're puppies, and and when do you start this? And when you start that? I tell people right away, first off, forget about time. Time doesn't matter to the dogs, shouldn't matter to you, like we just we check. We sweep that away. Don't worry about the time. What I think, what I tell people is the time to start is the beginning, Like today's the beginning. Like my dad used to tell me, today's the first day of the rest of your life, like it was this big thing. It was a big joke that he'd tell me every morning, and and I I was, you know, I didn't need to hear it every morning, But I use it today in my all myself that because I go, you know what, if you want to get to the end, like everyone wants to get to the end. We all want to get to the end. We want I'm telling you right now that the process is the part that I enjoy more than the end these days. And I never was. I wasn't always like that, but now I am. So we all want to get to the end, and I'd like to get to the end too. I just don't know if my end is ever an end, Like I just think that I don't know. We ever get everything out of them. So we all want to get to the end. And let's say the end is shed hunting. The only way to get to shed hunting is to start in the beginning. And that doesn't matter if your dog is six years old or six weeks old. It has to start in the beginning. Now, the nice part about you with a six year old dog that has some foundation, has has you've got your way ahead. So you still have to start in the beginning. But so I back way up and and I probably could spend a little time with that dog, and I probably start in on some some drill stuff just to get a feel for it and have it get a feel for me. And I'd find holes in that foundation, and those would be the things that I'd work on. So in order to do trailing memories are nice drill. In order to do them, I need a dog that's calm, quiet and steady, heels really well, preferably off lead. So if I can't do that, that's where I start, because in order to get my dog to the field, I have to do these drills. And in order to do those drills, I have to have that foundation. So we just finished. We just finished a shed DVD. It's it's actually gonna it's shipping right now. It's gonna be to my warehouse this week. We took what we used to have, which was forty eight minutes, which I thought was good. I thought it was I thought it was I thought it was pretty good. I did it a long time ago, and I loved how you opened this up and said, is something changed now from when you you know, when we last talked. It has a lot of things have. So one of the things is the DVD that we did that was forty eight minutes. I took basically the same outline. I redid it because I felt like certain parts needed more focus. In certain parts, I needed to provide more, more content, more content. We do these workshops. We filmed all the workshops, and then we showed the chapters basically applied in the workshops. It's more valuable to see someone else doing it than me doing a demonstration, because their dogs and those people make the same mistakes as many people do, so we added that to the We turned a forty eight minute DVD that included a process called hold conditioning. We turned it into a three hour DVD, took out the hold conditioning added it in as a separate piece and that's an hour in itself. So we went from forty eight minutes to four hours. And the reason is this because I feel so strongly about the idea of some of these details that we're talking about take a lot of seeing and watching and seeing variations of But then the real work comes when you execute, like you have to do it, like you can watch. You can watch all the DVDs you want. Your dog doesn't learn and you don't and you don't learn like I think it's the handler. Handler is fifty of the equation. But yeah, you can. Then you can do it. You've got such a big jump start on it. But I would say this, have realistic expectations. So so set your goals to be like coming up on the seventh birthday. So set your goals by the time he's tend to pick up on antler, and you likely won't be disappointed. Yeah, And I say it kind of jokingly, but I'm really not because if we take that approach and we have that idea going into it, will never be disappointed. Yeah. And as soon as if we're not disappointed, we're that much more likely to succeed because your dog won't shut down because you're pissed at him and you think he's fatally Yeah, and and so much as we've been talking about this, even more so, I'm just reflecting back on Yeah, this, this is this is my issue. This is this is in my head like software, I wasn't wasn't wasn't giving him the chance to succeed in a lot of ways, because I'd be really fired up and we do all the training and I'd be pumped up, and then when he didn't find the antlers and I'd get disappointed, and then I would take him out less and I'd train less and they was already limited pickings because there's only very very very few shed and so I wasn't setting them up for success. And then it wasn't taking in the place of the worrylers. So it just keeps coming back to me. Um. But I'll tell you what, this conversation, just your encouragement has been enough to get me really excited. And uh, I'm going to North Dakota for a shed hunting trip later this month, and I think I'm gonna bring him on it now and I love watching it, and I you know, I first off, I apologize dude, I get long winded and I probably really blew your time limits out, but your questions makes so much sense, and you're what you're asking connects I think so well to what so many people are going through. I can't tell you how many people are gonna go I like I said before, a lot of people have had heard our first podcast, and that one was totally different, Like that was so that was so mechanical, and it was not to say that it was bad, but it was just a lot different. And so so many people that I know recognized the idea of oh, you were on you are on Wired to Hunt because I heard you talk with Mark and we went through more historical background and that kind of stuff of what what you know, how we got to where we are? This man, this had so much value for so many people. I guarantee you there are people that are going that's exact I'm in the exact same boat. And my hope is that they take their takeaway is maybe I give it another shot, Maybe I try it again, maybe and and go into it not in comparison to the four month old that you saw pick up the shed on Facebook, Like, guys, that's a highlight reel and and mine don't do it. So so if you want to make comparisons, compare them to mind because mine miserably they fail miserably, make comparisons to And we try to show it to you our Facebook or Instagram, our YouTube, all that stuff. We show so many times where our dogs make mistakes because I just think that that's valuables, that's real, that's that's the stuff that people have to see because it's what you do at those moments that form your dog into what they are. Wow, well, this is uh to your point, Jeremy, this has been so valuable to me, like even more so than I thought it was going to be coming into it. I kind of I came into it like, oh, this will be some good stuff, people will be interested in it, but I personally wasn't invested in it. And all of a sudden, my whole attitude and thought process for the next month and a half has changed. So thank you Jeremy for sharing so much. And I'm gonna I'm gonna have to check out this DVD now and and get back into stuff and get going out in the woods. Yeah. I just I appreciate you man for having us on I'm excited being tied into this shed rally thing coming up this weekend. I just think, I just think it's really it's it's really it's inspiring to me. It sounds weird, but it's inspiring to me to have a chance to talk to people that struggling and hope that I can. Yeah, if it's if it's just simply like I joke about the idea of this group that I meet with um and it's not hunting dogs stuff, it's just obedient stuff. But I joke with them about about every three or four weeks, I almost have to give a pep talk to get everybody's spirits back up. And that's okay if as long as I if I'm able to do it and keep them going. I feel like I've really figured out. I think one of my missions was to help as many dogs as I could. That's why I started doing what I was doing. I've realized now that I can only touch so many, but it's easier for me to help people, which ultimately will help dogs. And so I've become more fascinated with the idea of how can I help people to help them help their dogs, And and it's it's outlets like yours. It's you know this, these are this is where people are gonna, I hope take away from it so that that's what gives me motivation, That's what keeps me going. And so I appreciate you as much or more probably than you appreciate this conversation. Wow, I'm glad it's been a win win then, So this is that I'm literally I'm literally going to hang up the phone from this and go grab an antler and go out into the yard with my dog and uh yeah. Now, remember dude, it's a marathon, so so not a sprint, and so maintain. I love to see a maintain, a steady, persistent It doesn't have to be sprinting speed. It's just just real, take a take a big picture of what you've got going, reassess it, and then set a plan. And if I can help you, I will. But that's that's the thing. If people have questions, it's just it's just easy these days to get to help people. Social stuff is just makes it that way so so cool for people that want to get more of you. R. You have a ton to offer people. I mean that's obvious for anyone listening to this for the first time. If people are familiar with you, you have a lot of value, a lot of information, a lot of help for people. Where can people get all this from you? Where can they find you work? They find your products, your ideas, your resources. So at our everything, I try to keep it as simple as possible. Everything we do is at dog Bone Hunter. So like our all of our social stuff UM, our YouTube page, Facebook, Instagram, those are and I just I just started Snapchat a little bit and I realized the value of the next There's so many people that use it, like I mean, my kid uses it like a text message. So I'm dabbling into that a little bit, trying to figure that out. But it's really it's I found it to be really convenient and easy to share a quick story of what I'm doing. I did it last week when we were in Iowa hunting, and I actually used it more than any of our other platforms. They all have their own thing, they all have their own spot where I feel like they add value. So Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, UM, and then our YouTube, which a lot of our stuff ends up migrating there is at dogbone Hunter. And then our website is dogbone Hunter dot com so it's pretty pretty. If you remember Dogbone Hunter, you'll you'll find us in in some some fashion. Perfect. Well, I'll make sure to have that stuff linked as well. And uh man, I just want to say thank you, Jeremy. This has been a lot of fun, great conversation and uh Boone, I think Boone is gonna want to send you's gonna appreciate you. Yeah, he's gonna appreciate it, I believe too. So excellent, man, thank you for having me. Any time that you want to talk. Man, let me know appreciate it. And that's gonna be it. But real quick before we shut this down, and want to give you a quick heads up about something coming up with my pals over at back Country Hunters and Anglers. It's a conservation organization I'm a part of and their big annual rendezvous is coming up in April and they wanted me to share this message with you. So so listen to this and then be sure to come along in Boise, Idaho, because I will be there and I'd love to see you. Tie stubble Field here from back Country Hunters and Anglers reminding you of our seventh annual North American Rendezvous April twelve to the fourteenth in Boise, Idaho, Join and special guest Randy Newburgh, Ryan Callahan, Remy Warren, Steven Ronella for an event field weekend featuring bad Country seminars, our beers, bands in public, Land's group Best, and the world famous storytelling night, all going on at the Boise Center April twelve through the four team. Get your tickets at Bad Country Hunters Dot org Man has just got a way better podcasting voice than me. That that deep baritone, it's got authority to it. But in all seriousness, like I said, I will be there at the rendezvous. It would be awesome to connect with some of you there and hope to see you finally. Then I guess I just want to say thank you to our partners who helped make this all possible. It's so big. Thank you to sit you gear Yetie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, Maven Optics, the White Tail Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt Terra Maps, and finally thanks for being here, thanks for tuning in. Hopefully you're gonna get out shed hunting this weekend. If you do, good luck, be sure to uh, you know, tag everything with hashtag shed Rally so I can see those pictures. Send me some of your pictures and video. It's gonna be a lot of fun. So thanks for everyone, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt m M.