Ep. 956: Deer Hunt Reports - Phoning It In

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Next time your hands feel like dried out fish scales, get O'Keefe's Working Hands. I'm telling you, this stuff is amazing. Go to okeefe'scompany.com to get yours today. That's O-K-E-E-F-F-E-S, company.com, for guaranteed relief. O'Keefe's Working Hands. It works good. Welcome to the news show. We've got deer reports from the crew members who are not doing the news show this week, but are, in fact, hunting in cool places all over this great country. We're going to share a couple of hunt stories ourselves. We've got an update from Ryan Cal Callahan on illegal off-road vehicle use. We've got a new segment, a little AMA with yours truly from the podcast inbox. But first, our headliner. Call me to the news headliner. It's a read, but you've got to stay. Oh, I love it so much. That was great. That was excellent, Phil. Steve hates that one. It might be the most visceral reaction Steve's ever had to an audio drop. Yeah. But we already decided that the ones that Steve doesn't like are the best ones. The people love them. In Montana, the big bus carrier is Beachliner, right? And so on our football trips, we'd be like, big old Beachliner, which was a carryover from past generations when, you know, what is that? That's Jefferson Airplane, right? Yeah. Steve Miller Band. No, Steve Miller Band. Sorry. Yeah. Well, our headliner today, unfortunately, is is not good news for our audience here. If you've been listening to the new show, we've been covering this over the past few months. Proposition 83 in Colorado, which would guarantee a constitutional right to hunt and fish to residents of Colorado, it appears has failed at the ballot box. We are reporting now this morning, the day after Election Day, and the latest numbers that I was able to find were. No, it's 55% to yes, it's 44, 45 ish percent. And I think looking at like 76% of the votes are in, but it seems like folks have called it. Yeah, it was unsuccessful. I've seen Coloradans for responsible wildlife management or leading the charge on that front have acknowledged that the the amendment did not pass. But disappointing, disheartening. I think probably in a future episode, we'll we'll dive into this a little deeper. But if you have thoughts as a former Coloradan. Yeah, I mean. The political landscape in Colorado has changed a lot in the last, let's say, decade, maybe maybe even longer. It's gotten more and more. Going more and more in this direction of like kind of unfriendly to hunting. So it's not a gigantic surprise. They had. An uphill battle from the start because because it was an amendment to the Constitution. It requires 55% of the vote, which these days is yeah, a lot, right? Like a lot of elections are decided 51 to 49 needed like a 10 point victory. Yes, yeah, yeah. And instead it lost by 10 points, which is probably related to this larger blue wave that we saw come through last night and some that some are still being inside of this. Morning, but it's like part of this kind of national trend. So, yeah, disappointing a quote from Dan Gates at at Colorado Coloradans for responsible wildlife management that I saw was. Colorado hunters and anglers didn't lose anything, right, but they didn't they didn't gain what we wanted them to gain. So, you know, it's not this doesn't mean that hunting is going to become over overnight. It's going to be. It's going to become illegal. The thing that that is not going to happen is what this would have done is kind of given a buffer against things like the cats aren't trophy ballot measure that got defeated. Those things are going to happen in Colorado again. It's inevitable. And this measure would have would have offered some protection against that. Another. I'd like to read you just so you're staying on your toes. This really caught my eye. This was from a proponent, a supporter of of not passing this amendment, like not having. A constitutional right to hunt and fish in Colorado. This comes from Eric Washburn. He is the president of a group called. This is very interesting. A president of a group called Colorado. Hunters and anglers for sensible wildlife conservation. Sounds great, doesn't it? But it really caught my eye once I read his quote. He said voters rejection of Amendment 83 speaks to how much Colorado cares about wildlife as a big game hunter. I am exceptionally proud of Coloradans for establishing an ethical system of hunting in our state, Washburn said, adding that he was even more. Proud of my fellow Coloradans for rejecting this ballot measure. That caught my eye. So real quick, did a little little Googling and. This group is is backed by animal welfare, animal rights, anti trapping, anti trophy organizations. It is it is not a group for hunters and anglers. It just has a name that suggests that's the case. And I think we've we've. we steve talked about him last time we covered this in his resume he'll talk about being some sort of founding member of trcp which is dubious at best but trcp itself has come out in favor of proposition 83 so the guys the guy's not on your side right yeah i think and i think too one takeaway from this i don't believe um i would be shocked if this precluded sportsmen in colorado from trying this again right and in a different election cycle when there's yes better turnout on one side versus the other yeah like in a in a in an election year when there's huge conservative turnout huge rural turnout like you could very well swing it the other way and it seems like over the past few years colorado's hunters have had to you know lead campaign after campaign to defend themselves against a barrage yeah like ballot box wildlife legislation all that stuff so you know hopefully this is just one bump in the road that leads to a bigger bigger victory down the road well it doesn't have to be because the history of these things in colorado is unfortunately like a fantastic example right like every campaign the winning side and the losing side learns a lot yep and they have to evolve for the next one yeah um you know it was really interesting during this one how much time was spent chasing like these non-sequitur response campaigns to oh my god if this passes then this will happen right right right and it was masterfully done to dilute the vote and cause confusion and i think like the gap and the numbers that you read it, uh, say at where it's like, there's plenty of people in Colorado who are like, boy, I don't know enough about this one to even vote, even put pen to paper. right and those counterpoints if you call them that were as simple as well it won't allow fish and game to make uh adjustments on regulations yeah right which was completely unfounded yeah and this washburn guy um made the argument that um amendment 83 uh could overturn past voter approved restrictions on you know trapping and bear baiting and things like like there's a lot of like disingenuous language surrounding this thing so hopefully like like you guys said they get another chance at it down the road man just another reason why we need independent fishing games yeah in every single state yep i also think you know when you when you're like we're talking about a statewide election right and um i don't know what the current numbers are in colorado but this thing hinges on non-hunters yes and so again it's always just man tell your story to people who don't live in your world be a good ambassador for our community and um put yourself out there because if if all we're doing is hanging out on hunting message boards and it ain't gonna work yeah i mean you got to get out there and you got to get the general public educate them it's tough it's an uphill battle but it's something that well i mean it hunting is still generally well approved of nationwide right um so if you paint non-hunters all non-hunters as the enemy you're just shooting yourself on the foot yeah need a big tent uh anything else on colorado all right phil we're on to our news now as i alluded to in the intro here uh the office is empty it's uh been that way for a while it has this is a particularly egregious week uh and not just the office but our our satellite offices in arkansas and elsewhere it seems like everybody's out there hunting as they all should be empty trivia office yes the the head trivia man is gone um but we've we've managed to recruit them to participate in some way in today's news show by giving us an update on what they're seeing in the deer woods and uh we're going to kick this off by heading far to our Northwest to Southeast Alaska where Steve and Seth and the meat eater crew uh they are doing a blacktail deer hunt uh so Phil roll that roll that clip okay here's the first week of November update from Southeast Alaska it's um very nice day today just rain but today's a nice day today's a nice day it's just rain I'm afraid of the bed and then the next few days they're calling for somewhere between one and two inches of rain each day plus gusts of 60 knots you know what they say if you don't can't tie knots tie lots 60 knots that's a lot nuts but we've been we've been uh no no antlers this we hunted a day and a half now yeah no books saw probably a half dozen does yesterday maybe more but that's what the bucks are after and it's that time of the year so half a dozen does yesterday called in a doe today bumped uh in undetermined deer stood a couple does uh yeah it's a bad weather coming for two two days of terrible weather like maybe unhuntable weather and then it's gonna supposedly get a little better but not great add to that stuff I don't know how many of these reports you guys got but I'm guessing some other reports or hopefully people got better reports like I said 100 yesterday evening and today it's uh you know early afternoon so we haven't been pouring the coals too bad and I'm only sweating it because I think we're going to lose two hunt days like I was saying that makes me start to sweat cause the thing is the last time we did this hunt was it four years ago or so yeah I can do it about once every four or five years we've seen more deer in the last well we saw more deer yesterday than we did that entire time yeah so things are looking up yeah just this uh just you can't tell what's going on we're hunting blacktail deer in southeast Alaska which is a um it's it's a weathery time of the year to be up here it usually seems every time I do this it's like a weather issue yeah what's what's fun is likely somewhere on the box of that camp stove it says do not use as a heating source right yeah it's just like fog becomes a problem and you might be wondering what we're doing right now like you might be thinking those boys ain't hunting at all this is lunch break that's why we're here we're fixing the pack up and get going we stopped for lunch about one o'clock and we're gonna get up and racing out here but we got a long Descend we climbed we climbed up about 800 feet through the rainforest now okay yeah that's the report from Southeast Alaska um Cal you've been up there I've been up there for this thing it always sounds like oh man they're gonna be rutting and running around on the beaches and we're gonna call them into our lap it's like doesn't seem like that's the way it works maybe it's later like that later I don't know well no the people with those stories are the ones who live there full-time right and they're like oh today's a nice day yep I'm gonna yeah it's a hunt that's like not for the faint of heart um you wear rain gear all the time but you're still soaked because you're wearing rain gear all the time yeah he had heavy he had heavy slicker pants on and extra Tufts yes um and hiking or like you kind of gotta wear the extra Tufts but then when you start climbing around in those things it's like God I hope I don't break my ankle yeah I put my hunting insoles in my extra Tufts and that's the way to do that for sure it's not only gives you a little more traction the um mental part too is like if you didn't know anything about Alaska Southeast Alaska the ocean it would be very different but for folks who have spent time up there fishing you have to any day that isn't a good hunting day and you're out there hunting just for the extreme off chance that something good happens you have to reconcile every step with like this would be like another bucket of spot prawn tails yep this would be however many Dungeness crab exactly yeah because those those little Sitka black tails they're tiny man so like it's like one halibut nice 50 pound out of it versus you know but it's cool you're hunting in the rainforest it's such a different hunt so yeah and then you turn the 50 pound halibut into 10 Dungeness crabs and then you know it is a funny funny deal yep yeah and clearly they have plenty of fuel for that stove yes yeah because it's just ripping anything else on Southeast I think we'll get an update here in a couple days Phil roll that second update from Spencer new hearth hunting mule boys I am on day three of my mule deer hunt here in Montana the rut report is that the rod is not happening yet um I have not seen really any rutting activity I think the most uh indicative thing is my hunt that I had last night I was hunting the edge of a wheat field and I had a group of 13 does come into the field and then I had a group of 11 does and then I had a group of five does uh not a single buck with them not a single buck showed up I think if it were like three or four days from now definitely a week from now there would be multiple bucks out there and it was just not happening but I did just kill this look at there a Western Whitetail I am in a spot where I've never seen a Whitetail before I've never seen a doe here I've never seen a spike I didn't know they lived in this place and I shot him right over here in this draw he was standing in there making a scrape he's got this area just littered with rubs that'll teach him Spencer just mature Western Whitetail oh that's four by four he's thick he's got double split brows I love these deer thank goodness that we got these so I got something I can kill while the bucks aren't participating in the rut yet well I was gonna say the Whitetail kid hunting edges a wheat field yeah it's like that's my rot report you know yeah it's uh those Whitetails are not participating in the rut yet I was gonna say the Whitetail kid hunting edges a wheat field out there it's like that's my rot report you know yeah it's uh those Whitetail kids hunting edges a wheat field out there it's like that's my rot report you know yeah it's uh those Whitetails can just show up anywhere you know just anywhere especially this time of year oh and this is just solid pre-rut activity I in my mind it's pre-rut time for both still yeah I I like I I don't doubt for one bit that there was no mule deer activity going on where spencer was i just had a buddy in town that came up for a mule deer hunt um we had a much different experience uh every group of does we saw had a buck or two with them some of those bucks were following does the my buddy got a like a nice three three by three buck pretty nice one um and that buck was with four does like he was like with them with them you know not just like hanging out by them he was like that was his group of does um tending he was tending yeah so i you know these reports are all great and interesting and fun they are very interesting and fun um but you kind of got when you have like location specific rut reports you kind of got to take them with a grain of salt because the other side of the mountains or the next river drainage over or whatever like things could just be dead where you're at but You go over there and things are on fire you know even i've certainly have it i'm sure you have too where it's like the rut activity is in the morning right like it's cold they're puffed up and they just decide to do it yep and that can happen in the middle of october sometimes yep so i think there's just all these little cycles and obviously when you're talking about a group of animals the bell curve is very real yeah where you have a little intro tail where you could have some anomaly does start to produce the right pheromones yep and then you hit the bulk of the belly and then on the exit you have these little anomalies popping up too which people call oh it's the second rut or the third rut or whatever but or there's 30 does out in a whitetail and a great big giant old buck gets a burr up his ass and it's like you know what i'm gonna go over there and see what's going on yeah it goes over there and maybe he stays maybe he doesn't i think the most impressive thing is i was soliciting these videos last week spencer said i'll have a dead buck for you yeah spencer gets it done man he doesn't screw around i like that the way he hunts man that must have been public land he was on right um i think he's got something just joking just joking spencer's the master listen you can be that confident when you're the master of the deer permissions yeah his letter writing games i mean very impressive i know people like i i have friends of friends whose families have received letters from spencer new hearth that i was sending out trapping letters and steve sends me a picture of his of my letter and he said you're on this property because i'm on this property in military families service is more than a job it's a legacy at american military university that can help open new doors through education if someone in your family served in the military you could be eligible for reduced tuition take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life learn more at amu.apus.edu slash military when you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need 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perfected their craft to ensure your success. Head to ZambrolandUSA.com for handcrafted boots for every season. ZambrolandUSA.com. Do yourself a favor. Go to O'Keefe'sCompany.com to get yours today. That's O-K-E-E. F-F-E-S. Company.com for guaranteed relief. It works good. Randall, you didn't need to get permission for your bull. No, I didn't. Yeah, I was lucky enough to kill a bull on Saturday. I hunted the opener with Corey, and we were. Snuggled up under a tarp together. Yeah, we had a miscommunication about who was bringing the tent, so we got to our. camp spot after hiking in two and a half miles, and we're pulling stuff out of our packs, and I said, I said, we agreed that you'd bring the tent, right? And he said, I can't tell if you're joking, and I said, I'm not. And he said, but even if you were joking, you'd still say you weren't joking to make the joke funnier, right? And I said, no, I don't have a tent here. He didn't have a tent either, but I had a tarp, a little backup tarp. Kind of like the thing those guys were using. Exactly, yeah. So we, we rode. rode out a little bit of weather in the tarp. We got close, but the elk went the wrong way. We had a bull that was, we just needed him to step out in the open on the public side. He stepped out in the open on the private side. But then I went out on Friday afternoon and spent the afternoon glassing, just, just glassing as much country as I could and found a bull slightly before dark. And actually it was funny when I was looking at him, um, this, this vehicle came up the road and pulled up right next to me, like five feet away from me. And they said, hey, you don't mind if we, if we share the glassing knob for a minute and glass with you, do you? And I said, no, no, not at all. Thinking that they'd then drive away, you know, and set up 30 yards away. They just put it in park. Like they could have reached out of their window and touched the can-am. And, and they just sat there with the engine running, glassing, you know, and, and there was a bull out there. Meanwhile, I, I have this bull. So I just turned my, I turned my spotter to look at another mountain. I'm doing everything I can to not look at the bull, but every now and then taking a casual glance back around. And, uh, they took off at some point. Um, never saw him. No. And I also, there was a, there was a vehicle at the trailhead, um, to go up this drainage. And it's like, I, when I saw it, like I, I was thinking about hiking in there anyway, but I saw a vehicle at the trailhead. And I said, I don't want to, you know, hike in on top of these folks. Cause just the landscape, the way that it is, if there's someone in there, you're going to run into them, you know? Um, so I was waiting for them to shoot the bull. And I just watched that bull until dark and I didn't hear a gunshot. And I watched him go into the timber. And then I drove up to the trailhead. The vehicle that was there previously was gone. So I parked the can-am and I slept in the can-am at the trailhead because I wanted to make sure that I was the first person. Hiking in. When you say slept in the can-am, you're not saying like in the bed, like in the back. No, it's a two seater. I guess technically a three seater. It's like one bench and a little bed in the back. And, uh, I, I dropped the steering wheel as low as it would go. And I covered it with jackets and things. And then I put my feet up on that. I leaned back against the passenger door. And I wouldn't do it again. I had a conversation with myself, in which I said, you know, people sleep on planes all the time. How could this possibly be worse than a plane? It was, um, I did sleep. I did sleep several times. Um, and then woke up in the morning and, uh, got up the hill, got up to where I wanted to be. I knew I'd be looking right at where this bull had come out the night before. And sure enough, like 15 minutes after shooting light, he, I, I saw one elk, kind of starting to go into the timber. And then I saw him behind it. It was just the night before he had had a smaller bull with him. And that same morning, it was the same two bulls. So then I shot him. Did you shoot him with a great big giant Randall gun? No, I didn't know. Six, five PRC. Oh, there you go. and, uh, yeah, called, called Sydney, called, uh, called some buddies and called Alex Zimmer. Uh, for as long as we've had a meat eater flagship store, my wildest dream, has been to interfere with its staffing, but by having the store boys three years ago, I walked into the store and there was all these strapping young lads in their twenties. And I thought, I bet they could carry out parts of elk. So sure enough, uh, Alec, Alec was supposed to work. I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm about to head into the store. And I said, do you have backup? Cause I don't. And, uh, so yeah, I had a crew of four come down and meet me and I got the ball quartered up. So they hiked up and, and we got them out of there quickly, uh, before the grizzly bears came and had lunch. And yeah, when we were sitting at lunch, I realized between Sydney and, alec was the newcomer but between sydney and my two other buddies collectively they've had i think 10 or 11 tours of duty on five different bowls of mine over the years so you're spreading out some meat to that crew well not really i was just thinking about how grateful i was it was kind of you know it's it's like it's pretty fun when you get you know people people are they come out to do something that's just objectively unpleasant and like um i've killed a couple bulls solo and it's like miserable cutting them apart solo and then these people come up the hill and they're all smiling and high-fiving and hugging and uh yeah and you suggest they take the hind quarters no i took i took a hind i took a hind and and the head um but yeah it was real civilized sydney only carried out i think the backstraps loins and some trim nice you know so she got out of it easy but yeah it's just good to you feel really lucky when you whenever i kill a bull elk i'm still like it's just wow i'm living out my wildest dreams here and then good people come to help you and it's just man i have like a warm and fuzzy my cup runneth over moment whenever that happens now you got time to hunt the mule deer rut that's exactly right that's exactly right once we get through this damn news show i was at a public glassing knob uh years ago just an after work thing right um and for all you kids out there why why go home and watch tv when you can go watch a mountain man and uh i'd literally never been there before i just knew people did it and so i drove up there was sitting there glassing around you know saw a couple of does here and there and and but really nothing compelling and uh it was a friday and i was like you know still like where the hell am i gonna hunt tomorrow uh this isn't it and same deal there's like two other trucks eventually roll up and sitting there sitting there sitting there and just about dark dark because i was like oh other people are here i wonder if something this guy comes over and he goes so uh did you see him and i was like well i guess i know where i'm hunting in the morning so but i have always thought yeah of doing that to somebody else just for fun oh yeah like not seeing anything and being like so that's good you saw those three big bulls did you did you see them they looked real comfortable i think one of them had a broken leg he'll be there in the morning yeah yeah yeah i gotta watch kids in the morning okay no it's a fun it's a fun time of year it's a very fun time of year nate you've also been up to some fun yep i uh shot a buck pretty early mid-september with a bow so to deal with my crippling depression not hunting the rut i'm running steve's trap line while he's in alaska business is booming so we preset everything on saturday sunday season opened check traps on monday day one got a beaver a mink and a raccoon and i'm running steve's trap line while he's in alaska business is booming beaver was in a foothold trap on the bank then that's a little beaver yeah he's a little guy i was gonna say that was a very small raccoon yeah he's about this hey actually that's a pretty big mink so maybe it's throwing right there you go and a huge cutting board uh that is a giant cutting board um got a mink and a pocket set and then a raccoon and coon cuff this picture is at steve's bat cave not my kitchen counter um so hopefully no diseases were transmitted there and then day two we went out and got two beavers and a raccoon and a raccoon and a raccoon and a raccoon and a beavers one in a foothold and b750 on a caster set and one the 330 and little travel corridor got that coon in the pocket set they got the mink the day before and a muskrat another 330 on a little feeding slip so learned a lot this is your first foray into trapping first time and he's steve's latest um minion latest absentee trapping assist how long latest in a long line how long ago did steve sort of nudge him and he's like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i'm gonna nudge you and say hey have you ever thought about oh getting like certified six months when those certification courses were popping up so i did it and uh i'll tell you it's so fun it is like a i've never really fished so i don't know it's like a treasure hunt mixed with chess mixed with something else that's real fun but it's so much work i don't i don't know with this little one at home i don't know trappings in the cards for the next year or so but till then well just keep an eye on steve's travel schedule and save any of them beaver hams or raccoon no you wanted them all for for bait yeah yeah so i screwed up some of the skinning there we do need we do need um some muskrats for a for a culinary experiment i got both that muskrat and mink are full and they're both in the freezer perfect so um if you're thinking about it man it's fun it's so fun but you got to have a lot of time a lot of time or you got to have a lot of time a lot of time people that work for you or yes or minions like myself yeah yeah one of those two muskrats pretty often eaten yeah game what what's the interesting experiment there well if you haven't seen if you haven't listened to our new audio book meat eaters american history the alaskans we tell the story of a man named curtis who just boiled muskrats for an hour head down in the pot flipped him over another half an hour and he was like oh my god i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry i'm so hungry unskinned mixed in some no skin skin mixed in some flour and then just did like a biscuits and gravy yeah for that was that was three days of meals was 10 muskrats yeah that's like uh never cry wolf or the what's the yeah that's the one where they ate the mice yeah yeah it's never cry wolf yeah that's a great one i think my biggest takeaway is those minks are pungent shockingly lovely yeah yep phil how about we go to the next one we get a uh a variation on the deer report and we'll head out to western kentucky for a small game report with the one and only mr kevin murphy jordy i also thought this was interesting i began with him just calling his dog for a while we can scrub ahead no you you know what you're getting one jordan murphy just like and it's not gonna be a linear narrative kevin murphy with good news from the world of small game honey shorty and i are out in the clark's river bottom we got our number two squirrel it's been pretty tough today wind's blowing it's going to get up to 33 mile an hour gust today it's sunny uh still got about 80 foliage on the tree so that makes it difficult hunting so shorty had this squirrel treed he's got another one over there but uh took me a while to find him up there with the wind blowing usually the tail gives away but there's so much leaf cover it's hard to see him whip it around out there i looked and looked for him and finally i was about to give up and then he showed himself and then i made a i think maybe a pretty decent shot on him off-handed with my taxel 22 so he's the second squirrel we've got yeah he saved those shoulders in the morning maybe we'll get a couple more i'm just kind of out exploring it's not really an ideal day to be squirrel hunting but i'm off from work today so if i go out and prowl around look for some swamp rabbit sign that's one of the best things a first can do is just go hunting when they can and that way you get to pay more attention to maybe the trees here's a willow oak right here that's a 10-8 leaves and it looked kind of like a willow willow tree that's not a very fine specimen it's been been shaded out and uh stunted so but um looks like we're gonna have a good rabbit season this year we had a a really dry um springtime so that gave the rabbits a chance to multiply but we went into a really wet summertime but i think they got a good start and rabbits don't eat when it's wet rabbits around i watched six or seven run out of a soybean field the other day a friend of mine wanted me to go muzzleload hunt with him i just thought well i'll go over there and sit in a sit in a ground blind with him and we just watch and see what's going on and it was very unique to see seven cottontails run out of a out of a soybean field so i'm using taxel 22 semi-automatic a lot of people their shotguns this time of year i pretty much try to try to stay with rifle i'm a rifleman uh not that i won't use a shotgun but when i'm squirrel hunting uh one thing that i've got too is a suppressor and another tip if you don't have a suppressor and you've got young kids you don't have to have the tax stamp anymore so go and get you a suppressor and you can just buy it like a farm you don't have to do the big paperwork and all that uh but down here in the clark's river bottoms 12 000 acres of hardwood uh made uh developed mainly for migratory songbirds and We see a lot of them course. They are all gone south pretty much now for for the winter I know that they trapped one bird Spent a few years back. They caught him like three times He was probably going down to Central America, Costa Rica somewhere in that neighborhood But this is a very unique place flora and fauna full of swamp rabbits deer, raccoon, a few turkeys, some waterfowl Get a chance get out and get the woods. It sure will make you feel better if you're having a bad day. That's All the good news I have from the world of small game honey Well, just the hunt when you can advice. Yeah, I mean, that's yeah Wait on a perfect day. You're gonna end up waiting a long time. What a philosopher If you enjoy the poetic musings of Kevin Murphy Check out meat eaters season 14 Out now the first episode is features Kevin and Seth Steve takes them Bobcat and small game Bobcat trapping or hunting and small game hunting in Texas Kevin is a fan favorite. He's good for good reason for good reason All right, it's time for our new your news it's your time for your news Phil As Kevin I played it you were talking over it Randall, it's fine. Sorry No, it's just I'm just letting you know if we can move the show along and I think guys the show's going pretty good And this is your news Presented by banish as Kevin just said It's never been easier to get a can and boy. Howdy. Are they nice? Speaking as someone who shot their bowl with a can and then yesterday took someone out for a cow elk hunt who had a muzzle brake Oh 300 were you ready for it? I was I brought I brought ears for everybody But still just like a little slap in the face every time that every time that gun went off We're gonna do a quick ask me anything segment in this case for Randall after our full-length episode with Steve we had some listeners right in with questions for various members of the crew and So if you have a member or a question for a member of the crew right into the meat eater podcast at the meat eater calm In this case, we're gonna ask Spencer. I'm sorry We're gonna ask Randall Spencer's deer hunting Spencer's deer hunting Spencer Ryan the right the person who wrote in asks so kinds of there's Ryan I know Let's run it back tough. We're interviewing Randall Spencer Ryan is a listener who wrote in and he says Randall as a fellow gun enthusiast. I use a Ruger carbine 44 mag on our deer drives But this year I have switched to a new Marlin big loop 45 70. What's your preferred weapon for deer drives? I've never participated in a deer drive. So I can't speak to that. Well, you guys didn't do them in, Ohio Mm-hmm. You were talking about all the shot the buckshot you got. Oh, yeah I just have a ton of buckshot for my 10 gauge, which is probably what I'd use But when I got that 10 gauge, I got like a case of ammo like slugs a lot of tungsten lucky guy, but In any event, I think the Marlin 45 70 I have killed deer with one. In fact, I killed Three or four of my first few deer with the Marlin 45 70 down in the great state of Kentucky But what intrigued me most about this question is his mention of the Ruger 44 Magnum carbine if you're not familiar with it It's a semi-automatic 44 Magnum It looks just like the classic 10-22 with the barrel band and everything. I had one briefly I sold it before I shot it and had a cracked forehand and I didn't want to get into that I sold it to a guy in December of 2020, I believe But what I really wanted to do Phil if you'll play that picture When I was working on my dissertation, I was going through some old issues of field and stream and I found perhaps. What is my favorite? Advertisement of all time if you're a listener, you're gonna want to go on YouTube and see this It is a full-page ad from I believe an issue of field and stream in the 1960s And it depicts a man who sort of looks like what's the NYPD blue? Do you know him? He looks like a You know, I'm talking about that actor in any event There's a there's a there's a burly man with a shirt unbuttoned all the way to his navel and he's holding a Ruger 44 Magnum carbine, is that a telegraph? Yes, that's amazing And and next to him is a silverback gorilla that he's killed with the 44 Magnum carbine and it's it's hung by its wrists Like a house kind of looks like that gorilla is cheering for it does the gorillas mouth is open and sort of a grotesque expression and then at the top of the at the top of the image is a reproduction of a telegraph and it reads as Where where did it go? Oh You got it, this is awesome Frank Delano returning today after 25 days Safari in Gabon commissioned by Los Angeles County Museum to collect rare lowland gorilla stop He claims it was his toughest hunt stop after week tracking succeeded in killing 450 to 500 pound lone gorilla estimated Very date Oh estimated 50 to 80 years old stop Delano is only American to have killed this type animal stop terrifying cry traveled in canoe to gorilla country with excellent trackers Stocked animal in swamps and rainforest up to chest stop. Oh you you skipped one line that I think is great. Yeah very dangerous and intelligent stop fast as leopard stop strong as 14 men stop Now I will have to find the the scientific Formula that transfers gorilla strength into man strength. I assume it's something like horsepower I like the idea too that someone's like it's as fast as leopard you're like well I have no idea how fast a gorilla is but I have a very clear sense of how fast a leopard is his trophies exhibited in Peabody Museum stop Yale University stop San Antonio stop, Texas Children's Museums, South Carolina and Los Angeles County McHale again, you skipped over the critical line here used 44 Magnum carb Ruger 44 Magnum carbine Stop so stocked animal in swamps and rainforest up to chest and and then at the bottom at the bottom of the at the bottom of the ad, it says the Ruger 44 Magnum carbine is generally regarded as the world's finest firearm for hunting and thick cover and it says the standard model with open sight and a and and then at the bottom at the bottom of the uh at the bottom of the ad it says the ruger 44 magnum carbine is generally regarded as the world's finest firearm for hunting in thick cover and it says the standard model with open sights is 108 dollars i have been i've been texting this photo whenever something sort of tickles my brain i've been texting this to friends over the years it's just so bizarre um and i didn't know that i was going to show it today but then i was reading that letter and i thought hey here's how i can finally tie in this ruger ad to the news show it's kind of like in high school when you legitimately thought there's part of your that's like i am a hero now yeah for killing killing this deer and coming home or killing this bull and coming home and this is the way this reads it's like thank god for frank delano yeah so spencer so spencer ryan i don't have great deer hunt deer drive weapon advice but frank delano trusted that 44 magnum carbine when he chased a gorilla that's as strong as 14 men so it should do just fine for your local whitetails we should we can't take that to nantucket i think that is a great listener challenge yeah nate i'm sorry i'm this is unsolicited but give us your best hunting story in what is that eight lines of western union telegraph style yeah oh yeah that is a great that is a great second right in yeah the meat eater podcast at the meat eater.com with your best hunting story eight lines subject line telegraph yes and we'll read them out yep diesel fuel eight dollars a gallon stop hunted very close to home stop all right on to the next question this comes in from evan i really enjoyed your segment on hunting in austria from episode 923 what would you bring from the austrian hunting european culture to the u.s man this one is tough because i i can't say that i am you know if you came if you were foreign and you came over here to hunt for 10 days your impression of hunting in america would in large part depend on who you went hunting with be like oh man hunting in america is awesome you backpack into these vast wilderness areas and they're full of game and uh our guide cory was very knowledgeable and our guide cory is very knowledgeable he's a great uh he's a great voice actor or you could end up somewhere where you know you're sitting in a box blind and and shooting deer over pile of corn or you end up you know like i don't want to generalize so i i at first i i just want to preface this by saying uh my experience was very specific i was hunting with two guys who were phenomenal and their families were just phenomenal hosts and uh i bring the people here for sure um i do think it's it's the licensing aspect of it is pretty cool like there's obviously double-edged sword in austria you have to do a lot of hunter ed to get your license um it's a much higher barrier to entry so on the whole your average hunter is much more knowledgeable um about conservation and about tracking and about recovering game and about the laws and all that stuff and and that's really appealing to me on the other hand it keeps people out of hunting so i don't know that there's like a perfect middle ground the the really interesting thing is fishing is similar so like the guys i was hunting with they're like man someday i'd love to get a fishing license me too and i'm like here in the u.s they're practically begging you to just go buy a fishing license even if you have no intention of fishing right it's just but but there is like yeah i need to set aside some time go through all the coursework and everything to get my fishing license um so i don't know i what would i bring um what about the varieties of dark beer oh for sure i mean the beer and the culture i mean it was it was alcohol and hunting it's a good mix yeah hey after a nice long hunt warming up next to the fire having i mean we have no good dark beer in america anymore what about this though randall you took game that freshly killed game into a restaurant and said yeah cook this one that was very cool that was very cool um you know another another thing about it was like the guy at least the guys i was hunting with and other people we encountered it was kind of like the kevin murphy attitude it was like you go out and you're hunting and you might end up with a big buck or a little buck or whatever but you're out in the field you know you call the deer in you make a good shot and regardless of how big that deer was at least in my experience you show it to people or whatever you know people ask you how your hunt was like it was very focused on the experience and just being out there and i feel like those guys again it's like anecdotal but those guys were just so very appreciative of the opportunity to be out in the field and they're also very aware that you know not everybody over there has that opportunity um there's just a lot of gratitude involved in it that you know like it's easy especially around here you're like looking at people who aren't in the office and they're out hunting you know and who got a big buck and who got a big buck there and who's got what tags or whatever and there i the impression i got from my very limited experience was it's just like they don't take it for granted it's like yeah it's like kevin murphy like any day you can go out and hunt it's just fantastic yeah so i like the idea of always having a dog with you when you're deer hunting yeah that was cool too that was cool too and like a real a real boost of confidence we didn't have any situations where we needed to track anything obviously but like to just have a tracking dog there with you because that's obviously like the worst case scenario in your mind is you're you run up to where you hit a deer and you're scratching your head um so yeah there's a lot man there's a lot and i'm excited to have that those episodes come together that's great yeah third one if phil you can pull up the photo this is great it is uh a few weeks back we we went back and forth on doctor's notes and this is one we sent out to alonzo not a question but just a thank you for uh sending a doctor's note this is a photo of alonzo on the right handing our signed doctor's note by dr randall and honorary doctor steve to his trigonometry professor hopefully there's more people out there doing doing this i mean it it delights me to no end that alonzo actually took our fake doctor's note and gave it to someone with a position of authority well it's a real doctor that's true yeah i mean if medical doctor no yeah he's handing it to a professor so if anybody's gonna if anybody's gonna respect the credentials it should be this guy yeah but he does look skeptical he's he's holding his eyeglasses as if to apply an additional degree of of skepticism to this but a alonzo has a big shit-eating grin on his face and a big thumbs up so this is wonderful this is wonderful thank you for sharing alonzo all right if you have any questions for a member of the crew or a telegraph ready hunting story write in at the media or to the meat eater podcast at the meat eater.com thanks randall thank you nate in military families service is more than a job it's a legacy at american military university that legacy is a legacy can help open new doors through education if someone in your family served in the military you could be eligible for reduced tuition take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life learn more at amu.apus.edu slash military holy smokes i've been running around in some zamberland boots and my god are they comfortable damn out of the box ready to wear i can't believe i haven't done that in a while i've been running around in some zamberland boots and done it before and the hunting tradition right has always been about knowledge and skills handed down from one generation to the next whether it's field memories with your parents or sharing the experience of a first hunt with your own kids that shared connection is something the family at zamberland boots truly understands since its founding back in 1929 three generations of zamberland family boot makers have refined their craft in the mountains of northern italy maintaining a tradition 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take a beating dry cracked hands can be brutal when you need to get work done or keeps working hands hand cream get your hands back and work in order this stuff is the greatest stuff in the world like most hand creams you put them on and then you're all kind of greasy and slime and you can't grab stuff you put the stuff on your hands are ready to get back to work it absorbs fast creates a barrier to lock in moisture and doesn't leave your hands greasy at all do yourself a favor next time your hands feel like dried out fish scales get o'keefe's working hands i'm telling you this stuff is amazing go to o'keefe's company.com to get yours today that's o-k-e-e-f-f-e-s company.com for guaranteed relief o'keefe's working hands it works good now on to the news now yannis it's it's very applicable here to be talking about this on the news show because he's hunting a newsworthy buck and he's going to give us a twofer his results in kansas and his outlook his preview for his upcoming wisconsin hunt there's a great millennial pause from yannis here so i'll just let that play good morning gentlemen thanks for having me on today sounds like he's addressing the nation reporting to you from kansas but i'm going to give you two states for the price of one today just spent 10 days in kansas hunting with my bow trying to kill a buck that would land somewhere between two of these a large buck and a very large trail cam pictures of him unfortunately all the pictures of him have been at nighttime um the highs here have been between 70 and 80 degrees and we've had little to no daylight activity rent and i hunted for nine of these days and i think we counted nine deer total that we saw in the last couple of days and we're going to be hunting for from the stand and seven of those nine days we sat dawn to dusk so we put we put the effort in um but it has just been slow and um that's what we saw that's what the cameras were seeing i spoke with an outfitter a couple days ago put the effort in required to sit last week of october here in kansas was the worst hunting he's seen that week in his entire career as an outfitter um so that's how it goes sometimes um it got cool today it was rainy but i did see a small forking horn on his feet at 3 p.m and we had a probably two or three year old buck um on a camera around 5 30 which is half an hour before dark so i've got one day left tomorrow i'm hoping to make something happen now this is how you get two states for the price of one my camera's in wisconsin which i've probably got two dozen literally um moultrie trail cameras trail cameras set up in wisconsin they have been blowing up the last week i've been running cameras up there for five years now and i would say that this is the best camera activity i've ever seen in a single week in wisconsin um it was cool the last week of october and i mean they were just going bananas every day um daylight activity um i've already had a bow a doe yeah excuse me i've already had a buck locked down on a doe for an entire day they daylighted on the same camera three different times that was two days ago um so that must have been maybe the first of november it's a whitetail and go there daylighted yeah they make up right now it's a little bit rainy but uh i'm heading there on thursday because friday the high is going to be 45 and it's going to be clear and cold and again i'm expecting good hunting then and the good hunting to continue so um yeah that's my report um from kansas and wisconsin i've got the seat equity put in here in uh kansas i just needed to uh pay its dividends now thanks guys equity see that's a like that is the problem with going to places where they don't allow you to walk around it's like all the tools at your disposal are picking a tree and sitting there all day yep versus finding the sign where they are yeah and being like i i'm running low on time i need to start doing some still hunting and change things up the honest looks worn out well if you pull up that picture phil there's a reason they sat nine days in there that's that buck they've been hunting and that's a feeder back there big old feeder kansas moby feeder 3 52 a.m not daylight not not daylight boy that's a that's a tanker yeah i'm a little worried about you honestly it seems like he's a bit run down i've been shaving a little bit hopefully hopefully wisconsin's kind to him spoiler he didn't kill that buck i think he'll be okay all for the now for the moment everyone's been waiting for ryan cal callahan oh well that's you have something to get off your chest i mean this is just a public service announcement so we've covered ad nauseum uh executive order 14408 removing unnecessary and counterproductive restrictions on access to federal lands which uh directly targets travel management plans like how we designate roads and trails for what type of travel anything from foot and hoof to um in this case fixed wing aircraft uh and everything in between um that executive order did what a lot of executive orders have done here in the last two years which is make big statements and then if you get down to the fine print it says nothing changes as long as there's a travel management plan in place that is the law of the land where you can go when and with what um we've certainly talked about this before but there is an increase in illegal uh true off-road off-trail cross-country travel activity as well as destruction of signage and gates on our public lands across the forest service system so i went out and dug up some photos right here uh in uh our surrounding national forests of illegal activity uh that we're talking about phil do you have some pictures up here just buzz through them real quick so uh here is a seasonal closure on a road and somebody uh rammed through this gate and broke it and this is a gate that we all pay for and uh the seasonal closure the travel management plan here that has this seasonal closure um that is something that we all participated in as a public process as well um and there's often very good reasons for these seasonal closures like you know protecting elk calving grounds or whatever it might be let's just pretend we're a bunch of hunters listening to this show yeah right yeah um these are your friends yep like the reason that you can come up to these areas and consistently see elk uh and have that feeling of opportunity is because of the travel management plan uh next one phil uh this is a user created road and this is really important because also right now uh the the public comment period has ended for this but the usda has uh said that we're going to revise the travel management rule and the travel management rule uh addresses a bunch of things but it essentially sets the guard rails for how we create travel does it address these lazy asses here uh so this is a user created road this is illegal off-road use um this one is another seasonal closure uh and you can also see the sign here that says uh 50 inches or less uh which is another type of restriction but you can see the dates here like this is a closed road with um uh fresh tracks on it so illegal motorized use um and uh that you know that previous one the user created road one of the things that uh the usda has said is they want to look at all of these roads every single road versus versus just the legal roads that exist on maps all of these user created roads and add all of them to the inventory and and one of the hard things is is we don't have the personnel the staff or the cash to maintain these roads uh as is and i can get into the the numbers of that too and no longer have the staff to enforce illegal off-roading well and that's where the the huge you know we as users need to help out here uh so this is another example here of you have a legal road or trail and you have a designated trail and you have a bunch of knuckleheads right here uh you can see them uh not using the designated route and has created this very braided trail and what this does right is it spreads noxious weeds invasive grasses outside of the single trail zone it creates all these routes that funnels uh uh runoff and creates more erosion less feed for our public land grazers less feed for public wildlife and visually extremely unappealing right uh this is another simpler version of the same thing illegal trail cutting this will also channelize that runoff create erosion diminish feed spread noxious weeds um and this person just couldn't stomach staying on the trail uh even though it's not a motorized vehicle to just follow the trail yeah it's that you see this often when there's a switch back and they just cut the switch back yeah um i'm not sure if we have any that's all of them thing else yeah so um big thing here is it is hunting season these pictures are taken during hunting season and everybody out there is going to assume hunters are out here breaking the laws and breaking the rules and uh we need to understand that there are travel management rules in place those travel management rules um are what keep public wildlife on public lands during hunting season um all of the available science which happens to be paid for in large part by hunters say where uh motorized things go and how many of them go there and how fast directly correlates to how long public wildlife is going to be there and how many of them are going to be there and how many of them stay in areas um and that's kind of the simplest way i can put it i can rattle off a bunch of um you know a bunch of the study names uh of which there are many um and uh in this travel management rule revision um there's a bunch of fun things and just for you know popular culture sake uh if you have not seen the travel management rule revision um i'm not sure if you've seen it but i've seen the season 29 premiere of south park titled south american biker gangs uh they do a phenomenal job of tackling one of the interesting things in the travel management rule revision which is expanded use of e-bikes specifically class one e-bikes and our good friends over there at south park who i'm sure are you know licensed hunters and anglers um tackle one of the big issues with class whatever e-bikes which is there is no regulatory body out there that says this bike is a class whatever and there's no way to enforce that so meaning it hasn't been decided if they're motorized vehicles or not well that's a whole separate issue that's a separate thing yeah but the class one class two class three was supposed to essentially say how fast something can go right um or that something goes and um so you know one of the things that we've been discussing with the usda is like hey before you expand use for class whatever e-bikes you should be aware that the manufacturers haven't decided what a class one e-bike is the writing groups haven't decided where the class one e-bike is and right now you can have something that's called the class one e-bike that goes 30 miles an hour um uh and that's just you know one in a long list of of things that we need to be that we have regarding hunting and angling on our public lands um and that's a big deal to me so uh and i don't like this that it even exists i don't think it should exist but we at backcountry hunters and anglers have an illegal motorized use program uh we offer you should clarify that you have an illegal motorized use reporting program yeah yeah not a how-to everybody knows how to uh we have a poaching program but basically if if you provide the information that leads to a citation of illegal motorized use on our public lands uh will kick you a 500 reward and the reason that i don't want this don't like it and don't want it to exist is it shouldn't we love our public lands yeah they're full of amazing adventures and and our system of rules and regulations allow for those opportunities um and we need to be stewards of these resources if we want those opportunities to be repeatable and something that we can count on and pass on of course to the next generation so you can go to backcountryhunters.org and look at that motorized um that illegal motorized uh uh reward program how would you say it randall you say it i would i would just not call it an e an illegal motorized use program it's kind of like a tip poaching tips yeah like that's what it is a poaching tip line versus just like a poaching tip um can i add something here yeah go for it's important um we're not like you're not attacking legal off-road use in any way shape or form right like in fact if this would be protecting legal off-road use well let's let's also clarify something like for the most part when we're talking about off-road vehicles we're talking about using off-road vehicles on that's just what they're called but you're using them on roads or any of the off-road groups yeah they define off-road as anything off of pavement tires off of pavement it doesn't mean you're just driving wherever you want correct yeah and if it's an open road to trucks four-wheelers whatever you are an off-roader like you're an off-roader but you're you're allowed to be there yes um and we're not in any way attacking that practice at all hunters use that practice all the time um it's just the bad eggs that leave i mean it's like it's like poaching and hunting right you know there's just because you use an off-road vehicle doesn't mean you're tearing up trails but there's an assumption that when people see torn up like newly established roads where there's no off-road vehicles they're just like oh my god there shouldn't be roads and all that stuff it's like the blame gets lumped on one party and i think you know i'm i'm always surprised when i talk to folks um it's obviously it's obviously like can be confusing it's a complicated process but i'm surprised how many hunters out there are not as familiar as they should be with with travel management plans right absolutely like people need to educate themselves on where they can go and when and with what type of vehicle and what type of vehicle they need to go and what type of vehicle they need to go and what type of vehicle they need to go and what type of vehicle they need to go and what type of vehicle they need to go and yeah um you have a trailhead that's properly posted it's got the seasonal closures and there's not a turnstile and a gate and all these things a it costs the american taxpayers way more money b it's restrictive to the legal users of that trail during that times system right it is like these are our public lands and there's like this idea that we're responsible enough humans to go out there and steward them ourselves and and that's a great example it's like here here is here's the law just follow it and i think it's it's easy for some people you know they get to a place where they're not supposed to drive past it but they see that physically they can and they're like oh go another two miles down this road it's gonna save me some time it's gonna save me some some uh like heavy pack out heartache sure but you just gotta it's the same as following the game laws you gotta follow the rules no matter who's watching because ultimately the consequences for everybody and look i think it's important and cal kind of got to this earlier um this isn't all on hunters right like people might assume it is but man if i was a betting man a hunter didn't drive through that blow through that gate would be my guess i can't say that for sure but i'll bet you it wasn't a hunter oh man uh gates are are good friends yeah good friends to to hunters and the reason is this 88 million acres of forest service land outside of capital w wilderness um is within a half a mile of a motorized road and that does not include the motorized trails right okay within half a mile of a motorized road uh there's 259 000 miles of motorized road motorized roads on forest service land um idaho about 20 011 miles montana 19 038 new mexico 11 8 810 utah 10 231 these are full-size vehicle roads 15 695 miles of full-size vehicle road in uh colorado's u.s forest service system and then uh um again you know all like rocky mountain elk foundation if you are a member of which i am we have all paid for all of these studies that show the direct correlation of how and why and when elk move on our public lands in relation to motorized travel and that's how a lot of these travel management plans were built mm-hmm in part elk responses to humans in a densely roaded area elk responses to trail-based recreation on public public forests effects of road management on movement and survival of roosevelt elk identifying migration corridors of mule deer threatened by highway development um the list goes on and on and on um and it's like um there it's very hard at the end of the season to survey hunters out there on the landscape and say would you like to see more access to the areas that you were hunting in terms of full-size vehicles and the response is just not is just not going to be yes right mm-hmm so big takeaway follow the rules tell your buddies to follow the rules uh if you see something say something and earn yourself a little uh yeah cash on the side little side hustle reporting off illegal off-road vehicles yeah put put some more cash in that fuel tank all righty we've got yet another deer report deer report number five coming to us from missouri it's the one and only mr brent reeves i just got into central missouri yesterday evening i left yanni up in kansas for to hunt yesterday afternoon and today they didn't give you the report on what we saw up there nothing but i got down here a lot of rain this morning i haven't even been out to make a set yet uh rutting activity here from all reports is starting to pick up but still it is warm and for the love of humanity can we not get a cold front now this rain i'm in a patch of Not rain right now. It's holding off. There'll be another one coming through mid-morning and i'm fixing to get out get a set put up i brought old dave smith decoy with me uh yanni and i had a little success with that had some uh interaction with a couple of bucks that we rattled in in kansas but i'm going to try that here i haven't had a camera out so i'm actually going to this place blind but it's a place that i've hunted before and was this close to getting a good one last year who's still walking around out there so i'll be bow hunting um from a saddle central missouri central missouri um hopefully i won't get rained on this afternoon but i'm looking forward to getting in getting out there after holding a camera for eight days uh with yanni it's nice to be holding a boat for the rest of this week here in missouri i can hopefully we can get it done but temperatures are supposed to start creeping downward which is going to be good hopefully but you know the deer they can't fight that genetic code they've got to get out there and do their thing and the only way to catch them doing it is to be in the tree when they are so good luck to everybody that is your rut report for brent here in central missouri y'all ever hunted over a decoy a deer decoy negative it's so fun when it works it's so i want to put one in the backyard to try to draw some bucks off the neighbors i i lied so we had some the old outfitter i worked for he was a master of garage sales in the summer right and he got the um the cloth like the old montana decoy cloth yep uh white tail deer decoys and i used to go out and set our camp up and get everything cleaned up during our tree season um and would hunt the mornings and evenings right it was amazing time of life and i was i dug this white tail decoy out and and put it out and uh came to the conclusion that it smelled so strongly of the old outfitter's nicotine that it was largely uh an any animal deterrent but that was my experience hunting if you put that thing out there in the 50s and 60s man because they want yeah because in the 50s and 60s it seemed like everybody lit cigarettes were a buck attracting yeah yeah but yeah so the the deer would see this thing in the in the field and then they'd swing around to the downwind side of it and they'd be like oh that smelled smells like uh what the hell was it prince prince uh oh he rolled his own cigarettes prince albert prince albert i guess prince albert in a can yeah exactly yeah yep we were using that one of those hollow ones it's a packing in that morning you just like you touch a tree and it sounded like a snare drum and i was thinking to myself there's no way this is gonna work and so we both set up on it kind of you know we kind of had the cone of death and we had we had three but we almost doubled up when i shot the first time i shot mine it crashed maybe 40 yards away and that brought in another buck who thought that it was our decoy messing around he just didn't give my buddy a shot that was most fun most fun day deer hunt i've ever had hmm heck yeah good to see that interaction and we've got one final deer report for you here mark kenyon who just wrapped up his north michigan archery hunt phil roll that tape hey guys come into you uh on my way back from my rut hunt in northern michigan chasing white tails with my bow and uh you know the conditions i was experiencing from a deer activity perspective were ramping up more and more does beginning to come into heat i can't watch that you know it's like a ransom video level so the rut was definitely starting to ramp up i was seeing a lot of bucks cruising and some chasing happening uh but the weather conditions were not as good as i had expected we had kind of mid 60s for the highs on on much of that trip which especially in northern michigan is not what you want this time of the year and now as you can maybe hear and see in the window behind me uh rain too which definitely you know adds some challenges to it but all that said um you know saw a lot of good stuff had a lot of great encounters and my big takeaway my lesson learned or i guess thing that this trip has left me thinking about he looks like he's been hunting around his eyeballs beyond just that activity that i was seeing starting to ramp up and that should continue to ramp up over the next you know seven to ten days it was this idea of balance and you know making good decisions in the moment which during the rut is especially hard because during the rut we've got really high expectations and maybe we're putting pressure on ourselves because this is supposed to be the super bowl of the white tail season this is when it's supposed to happen so you put some extra pressure on yourself and then also in the moment deer action deer encounters all of that is happening fast you know many times there's chasing or there's a buck all of a sudden showing up or there's a fight or there's there's all these different things that you know during the rut just seem to happen on steroids and then happen you know kind of fast forward and i experienced that um i had a really really close call with the number one buck i was after this one big heavy-bodied mature buck that was uh just a terrific buck for north america and i was like oh my god i'm gonna have to do this and i was like oh my god i'm gonna have to do this and i was like oh my god i'm gonna have to do this he came in and did exactly what i wanted him to do in this setup and in this area i was hunting it's big woods swampy terrain this is not like your standard midwest farm ground where there's very clear funnels and small pinch points and stuff like that this is all cover and so the only kind of concentration of deer movement for the rut that i could find in this area was where a bunch of different cover types come together and so when you have those edges that creates a line of movement so i had a bunch of different edges all coming together in one spot a swamp an old clear cut a hemlock which is a kind of evergreen tree stand and a cut pipeline all of this came together in this one spot so there's all these lines of movement all converging so that's where i was hunting and this buck i was i was hoping he would do what i had seen the sign tell me he was doing and what my trail camera photos were showing me he was doing at times which is coming down that pipeline coming down one edge and he did that uh the downside was that he came through an area where uh i did not have a shooting lane i had a spot where maybe i could have forced a shot and one other spot where maybe i could have forced a shot a little bit of heartbreak coming to us from a rainy truck stop that's hard man a lot of hunters excited about that rut but it seems like it's letting them down a little bit um well that's the problem is it's so early yes yeah it is it's early picking dates right it's hard yeah but it looks like we got some cold weather coming in is that true i keep looking at 10 day forecasts i'm like i'm always skeptical of 10 day forecasts but a boy can dream you're talking about here no across the north well let's hope so either way they're gonna be chasing you know what they say when it's the rut you just got to be out there all day anything can happen well it's i mean remember strap yourself to your seat yeah i'm gonna follow uh i'm gonna follow kevin murphy's advice here hunt when you can't hunt when you can yes it's hunting season uh you know obviously we can't hunt when we're sitting here hosting the new show but i'm gonna hunt when i can and i'm gonna make the most of the weather moon all that stuff be damn yeah if you wait if you wait for the ideal conditions you might sit out a couple seasons neck strength and ability to regulate body temperature and body temperature and body temperature and body temperature of a five-month-old child don't let that be a deterrent all righty well guys this is fun listeners viewers on youtube thanks for tuning in this was yet another episode of 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