Alaskan Fishing, Buying Land, and BS Session

On this episode of The Western Rookie Podcast, Brian catches up with prior host Dan Mathews on land, western fishing, and life.

Dan Mathews was the previous host of the Western Rookie podcast. Brian and Dan met through podcasting and became friends immediately. Brian and Dan used to co-host the Western Rookie podcast, and since the New Mexico Shed Hunt when Dan stepped back, the two have had a lot of updates and exciting news in the outdoor world!

Connect with Dan at the links below.

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Have Questions or Comments? Send an email to Brian@westernrookie.com!

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Western Rookie, a hunting podcast full of tips, tricks, and strategies from seasoned western hunters. There are plenty of opportunities out there. We just need to learn how to take on the challenges. Hunting is completely different up there. That person 26 became animals. You can fold their eyes, but you can fold their nose 300 yards back to the road, turned into three miles back the other way.

It's always cool seeing new hunters go harvest an animal. I don't know what to expect. If there's anybody I want in the woods with me, it'll be you

ao. Welcome back to another episode of the Western Rookie Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Krebs, and today we have everyone's favorite ex hosts back in the studio. Dan Matthews. How you doing, Dan?

That's a pretty good intro. Everybody's favorite ex host. You're the only ex host of the Western Rookie [00:01:00] Branded podcast, so it's by default everyone's favorite and everyone's the least favorite. That's true. Ex host. I just left that part off. Yeah, that doesn't sound as good. Everybody's least favorite.

I might get a, it might get a few more chuckles, but dude, I'm doing good. It's it's been a good couple weeks back in Missouri. We went down to Florida for a month. Went out to Colorado for a week and a half for my brother's wedding. And unfortunately I had two trail cameras where the batteries just died at I, I always get those notifications, like 70% has been consumed 80%, 90%.

I had two go out, one on my new property and so when I got back I went and changed cards and changed batteries and dude, I've got, In the last week, three really nice deer that have shown up and they're all funky in their own way. I shouldn't say all one mainframe. Eight, like just a normal [00:02:00] wide.

He's probably an inch and a half outside the ears, fairly tall. Another one, I still can't tell if it is a split main beam, like a second main beam or just a really unique brow tin cuz it forks real high up. And then it's got two points coming off the base of it also. So it's got four points just on whatever that is, the brow tin or main beam.

And then I had one show up two nights ago that its bases are probably a little bit smaller than wow. A Nalgene. That's crazy. Basically, they basically come together on bottom. There's not much of. Dude, he's weird, man. I'll have to, I'll send you the pictures. I just got like really good pictures of him last night and so this morning I've just been, yeah, as much as you travel all morning over this year, should get the solar panels for your cameras.

Dude, [00:03:00] I need to, the problem is I'm sure they've come with a decent cord that I could get them out and in the sun more. One of my spots just has no sun absolutely none. And then a couple of them aren't very good as far as the sun goes, but I feel like I come back to Missouri enough to where I can get away with just swapping up.

Yeah. I just need to be better about it before. Yeah. I, the woods in our new farm, but the guy was clearing it out, so it's kinda like a small kill plot and so I just pointed it to the gap in the canopy and it's maintained a hundred percent. My brother put one like in the woods. Of his property and there's no hole in the canopy that's just like some sunlight gets through and it went, I think it died now, but it's been going for almost a year.

Yeah. And in the wintertime it gets more light so it charges like back up again. But yeah, it was going for a long time. It either died or something else. Maybe the card filled up. It stopped putting out pictures. Pretty consistently. But yeah, I've been using [00:04:00] the Tcam cameras or the reveal cams with the solar power.

Yeah. Yeah. That panel like we will never, I love them. If we're buying new cameras from here on out, they're probably all gonna be cell cams and they're probably all gonna have solar panels cuz like battery costs a alone pay for the solar panels over two, three years, two. I've never done a test to see how they hold up, but I buy like the bulk Amazon batteries and they're dirt cheap.

Even I'm talking, or even that, you get hundred double batteries for 20 bucks. I can't remember if tactic cams are eight or 12. I think they're 12. Yeah, so 12 batteries, like even if it's five bucks, 12, 10 bucks and you're doing two, three a year, like that starts to add up. The solar panel kit was only like $59 and it comes with a 10 foot cord, a 10 foot armored cord.

Geez. So you can move it 10 feet. Yeah, you could probably get like extension kits or something if you really needed to. But that point you might as well just cut down one tree and [00:05:00] open up a canopy.

It'll probably, depending on what it looks like, it might help your ground. It might help that underbrush grow up and that's just brows. But yeah, I was gonna mention like it's pretty cool. We both bought our first properties. Back to back like you bought yours a little earlier. You were like, what?

January, February, January. And then I didn't think we were gonna buy a hunting property January for years. I thought it was gonna take we'll be lucky if we find a house with an acre. We'll be lucky if it's got a finished basement and a deck and we don't have to do any major projects, but we'll probably have to wait to build a shop.

We'll probably have to wait even longer to buy hunting land and hopefully we can find something within driving distance so I can like hunt after work. And then all of a sudden I was, we had a two month window to either buy a home or extend our lease between like when my wife's residency ends and when we could start using her future staffing [00:06:00] pay for the hospital and like when we would need to give our 60 day notice.

It was a tight window and I was driving home to actually do food plot work. And I was on Zillow while I was driving, so don't at me, but I was just scrolling cuz we're at this point where we're checking every hour because up here, like a good homes were going in a day still, even like still with the high rates and everything.

Yeah. And we found this house and I'm, and my wife was in Texas for a conference and I'm out of town and it comes up on Friday and I'm talking to my realtor like, we can look at this on Sunday. My wife's gonna land at this time, we can come look at it. Will they wait for us? And she's yeah, they'll wait for until Sunday.

Then my wife's flight gets canceled. She doesn't get home until 2:00 AM Sunday night. So I'm texting the realtor like, are they gonna wait till Monday morning? Like we can be their first thing in the morning. And my realtor's I'll try, they've already got four offers. But I told them like, you're flying, your wife's flying in from Texas to look at this house and so they're really interested in waiting for you.

And yeah, we go look at it, put in an offer Monday at noon. [00:07:00] We were the fifth offer, then they were expecting a sixth. Then they didn't even wait for the sixth, they just took ours. And yeah, so in 24, 48 hours, that's basically, that's all we went from not thinking it was gonna be like a 10 year plan to get like a house finished, a shop, a deck, a nice yard, and then hunting land in it, like 48 hours.

We got it all.

Geez. See that's where we're we're actually torn right now cuz I like the land that we bought, but we've been talking about oh, whether or not that's actually where we want to build. And a lot of our friends are on the south east corner of Springfield or like on the northeast corner.

This is like outside of Springfield on the west side. And I've already got a ton of hunting land out there. Not that like this 20, honestly, this 25 acres seems like it could be. A lights out spot, a small property [00:08:00] that, that obviously holds big bucks. I got big bucks on camera in January when we bought right before they dropped.

And then I've already been getting 'em on camera again this year, and so I'm like, it seems like it could be a really good property. But I look at it and I go, okay, yeah. As a hunting property, is it worth it? An $1,800 a month payment for hunting property, right? I could lease a lot of land for that kind of money.

And if I'm not gonna build on it, then it just almost doesn't seem worth it. But you better believe I'm gonna try to stick it out right for this season and get one of these deer so that I can finally say I got deer on my property. But I've still got big bikes showing up on camera. Yeah. It's in a good spot to build.

It just depends. Yeah. How far do you want to drive? I don't know how big Springfield is. If it was. West side of the metro versus each side of the metro up here, like the Twin Cities metro. That's an hour. So it's okay, that's a big deal. But yeah.

That's a tough call. [00:09:00] Honestly. It's not like in comparison to most places, it's not a far drive, but we've got some friends that live in a really awesome subdivision. Everyone's got like an acre or two. The kids could literally just ride their dirt bikes over to their friend's house, hang out, swim at the pool, versus they're gonna be flying solo out there.

Yeah. It's like 35. I wonder if you could do like a, most of our friends cabin like a, basically a shop that has like a finished corner in it. Not what you were planning to build. Like definitely smaller than that. Just something to store your hunting equipment out, maybe like a camper.

And then just like a cement slab on the corner with water and like a bathroom and a couch Yeah. And stuff. So like you can hang out there cuz you're always gonna be going to that side of town to hunt cuz your other properties are there. Yeah, that k like those little, yeah. One room cabins that they have at K oa.

I'm like that'd be cool to throw [00:10:00] that out there. It's already got sewer electric water. Yeah. So it's like I've got all the hook. I could just put a little like 20 by 20 prebuilt deal out there. Or even like the sheds. Yeah. Those like more intricate sheds that you buy at Home Depot. I would build the shower, put that out there with a toilet in the sink.

Cause you're gonna start accumulating stuff. I've got, oh yeah, you do have a shop? I've got a shop. Yeah, it's already got a shop on it, but it is, it's not set up. Yeah. For. Like a room, to sleep out there or whatever. Would, I would be cool. I would put a second structure out there would be, ours is set up the same way as yours.

Like yours when we talked about it on the way out to Colorado. Yours is like a long, deep lot. So you get more of the benefit of your neighbors because you're like, you're past, you're shooting past through deer instead of a 20 acre square where there's not a lot that you can do other than just try to attract them to your square.

Ours is a 40 acre square. Yeah. But the block, it's on, [00:11:00] it's like a horizontal rectangle of about 300 acres of solid habitat between like oak hills, I wouldn't say ridges, but just knobs, hills in the middle of like mature willow swamp. Yeah. And like super thick. You can't see into it at all from any direction.

And R 40 is it's like into the middle and smack dab in the center left and right and so it's gonna be perfect. And that's just our block. If you zoom out, there's across the road about 3000 acres of continuous habitat. 800 of its public to the east, like five miles. There's a 15,000 acre public.

So I think a lot of pressure on those other publics are gonna push deer out eventually. But it also has the capacity to carry a lot of deer throughout the year on average. And then down the road from my house two miles. Yeah, there's a, it starts a 3000 acre university research project. So it's, they're looking at prairie research.

It's not even prairie, it's like an [00:12:00] oak forest, but like they're doing like wildfire research and they have some bison out there, so they're looking at like long-term grazing research. And so no one's supposed to hunt that. I think one person that's like the son of the management guy hunts it, but that's 3000 acres right down the road.

Yeah. Of like basically wildlife for refuge. Low fence refuge. And and no one does food plots in a five mile circle. I can't find a single food plot. There's egg. But once that egg comes off, if I can cut in some food plots that swamp, I'm thinking like completely covered. So like security to the max, those deer could just walk out.

They won't be able to see any houses or any roads at all. And then it's right in the middle of the habitat. I'm hoping that really draws out some daylight bucks, dude, I hope so. You're gonna have a lot of activity in there, man. We're in such a weird spot, man, [00:13:00] because almost every place I've hunted growing up has had just pressure everywhere.

Everybody hunts on every side. And now I've got two properties, one's a huge chunk of ground, and then my 25 acres. I literally don't have any hunting pressure north, south, east, or west on any bordering properties at all. And it's so crazy because both of them, I've got a chunk of timber that's surrounded basically by ag field or just open field.

And both of them are the northernmost point of the woods, like of the continuous woods. So like my little strip of three to five acres of woods. Oh yeah. There is no more hardwood north of me. So like deer coming up, it's their last bit of cover before going into a hundred. Yeah, they're definitely gonna ride that edge corn, and it's a perfect [00:14:00] funnel because yeah, the woodlot is only like a tree in the middle and the last thing with your bow, so Yeah, exactly. I can shoot east to west. Anything that comes through and they just seem to be destroying that place. They absolutely love that tiny little woodlot. In fact, a couple of the mature bucks that I'm getting on camera, they're in there all throughout the day.

I'm like, dude, they're betting in there somewhere because they'll be in there middle of the night and they'll be in there at 4:00 AM Then they'll be in there at 9:00 AM then they'll be in there again as the sun is setting. And I'm like, I'm sure they are. They've gotta be down. Get some, cause they're prob, when it's been hot, they're probably not out there laying in soybean fields during the day.

They'd probably like to get in the shade if they can. So I'm sure they are just like milling around when they get bored, get up to stretch, get some water somewhere.

Yeah, I, the one thing I haven't done yet is [00:15:00] got out there with my spotter. I need to do that. This is typically the time of year where I'll go out an hour before sunset. Sit with my spotter with my phone on it and just watch the dude. It's like a cir or a caravan of bucks that come through and you just get to see every single one.

And you know how it is. You see a buck in person versus on a trail camera. It changes everything. And so I'm hoping, fingers crossed that a lot of my bucks from last year are back on the big property. I think they are. Oh yeah. Cause I keep getting eyes like way in the distance on camera, but they're not passing right in front.

And I haven't had any of my main bucks from last year show back up. But if they do, I'm talking, they're gonna be the biggest bucks I've ever pursued. Yeah. I'm excited. I made the mistake of driving around without my spotter. I just had binos. I did a, I got on the 4th of July. Our 4th of July weekend was all messed up cuz my wife was working and then we were traveling and so the 4th of July, I [00:16:00] basically just moved.

The entire garage. We had a tra, we had got our enclosed trailer and so I got done at that perfect time up at the farm. So I'm like, I'm gonna just drive around on my way back and look for deer. And sure enough, I found bucks within three miles of our farm. And there I am trying to like line my phone up with my binos and I'm like, I should've brought my stupid spotter, cuz I have that new magnetic phone adapter.

So it just, oh, love it. I will never it's probably the best. How do you like that thing I've ever bought for a spotter? I'm gonna have to check one out. This one I don't, haven't liked most of the setup up. So we have a 10% discount code for him even. Cuz I loved him so much. So I went to get an affiliate set up with Nathan. We had him on the podcast way back when. But the eye piece of your spotter stays on your spotter.

Yeah, all the time. They made it so that it doesn't dig into your eye or your face when you're looking through it like the other ones, they got big plastic ridges all over the place, so you never leave it on and it's got a rubber, it's like a rubberized Yep. Outer layer. So it's [00:17:00] like softer and then it's got four magnets in it, four circle magnets in the eyepiece.

And then the phone case, like it's literally, I know the listeners can't see this, but this is just one of the cheap plastic Walmart phone cases. Like the rubber ones you just snap on quick. It's like this, but then like one thin plate, yeah, that goes over your camera and that's got four magnets in it, so it's really slim and sleek and easy to put on, snap on, snap off.

And then you just go up and either hold your phone horizontal or vertical or just get it close and it just boop makes right onto it. And it's always perfectly aligned to your camera lens. And so what the nice thing, the reason why I love it. Both of both sets are made to stay on. So you're like, when you get on something, you're not like trying to force this eyepiece on with your phone attached cuz you always bump your spotter like you just got everything dialed in.

You got it zoomed, you can dial all the way to 60 and then you just lightly tap it and it's lined up. [00:18:00] Yeah, just tighten everything down. You don't even really have to tighten stuff down and then you tap and you're still on. As long as your spotter's not loose. Like sometimes I forget that I'm like glassing and so I put it on in the spotter tips.

Yeah. But yeah, as long as it's like somewhat tight, like especially if my angled, cuz it does it like puts more of the weight just into the tripod. Not like hanging off the end but yeah, you just hit record on your phone and you just, yeah, like that's their marketing is like that. You get part of the video as they're like going into snap it and then your camera like freaks out for a split second and then all of a sudden you're glassing this thing in.

Perfect clarity.

Dude, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm definitely gonna hop on. I'll use your affiliate code. I'll help you out. I gotta, cuz I, I just really am unhappy with the setups that I've had in the past. It's that same type of thing. You get it on the spotter and then I'm sitting here trying to wedge my phone inside of the case, like just at a little bit different angle.

And it drives me nuts [00:19:00] because then it's like now all of a sudden I get on it or I get clarity through the scope. Yeah. And I've moved, so now I have to readjust. And so I definitely need to change something up this year as far as that goes. I love my spotter. I love my tripod. I love my phone. Yeah. And the camera on it.

But that connection point been, what's funny is, so Nathan Good work came up with the idea. Then he got some business partners that he pulled in to help him really launch it and do it right. And so I'm I don't know if I'd say I'm friends with Nathan, like we go back and forth, but since having him on the podcast, getting it, loving it, but now I'm starting to pay attention when I'm watching shows.

Yeah, almost every single Western show is using it now. All of the hush guys are using it. Shed Craz is using it. The Mountain ops brothers are using it. Randy Berg's using it. Cory Jacobson's using it. Like literally everyone. Oh, west is using it because they're all like, this is phenomenal. Yeah.

It's one of the fastest, it's brilliant, man. Oh, and another cool thing, the eyepiece that stays on it comes with a cap, like an eyepiece cap that's also [00:20:00] magnetized. So you like, when you're done, you just snapped that on and I'm like, when are you gonna come out with the objective lens cap?

Cause like now it's perfect. Two magnetic caps, keep your glass protected at all times. Yeah. I can't wait,

dude, that's brilliant. Cuz Yeah, that's the same thing. You just have to monkey pieces punch. Haven't I haven't taken the eyepiece off my spot or something like that when you're doing it a different way. Yeah. D.

And that's my thing. I'm like, dude, now I've gotta take that cap off, throw it in my bag, I've gotta take my phone case off, throw it in my bag, put my other phone case on, because I didn't trust that the phone case that came with it would protect anything. And so I'm like throwing all these pieces around.

Then when it comes time to actually get up there, and especially if I want to use my spotter or my BNAs to record a shot, I end up just not recording. Cuz I'm like, dude, that's too much junk that I have to deal with right now. I've got a perfect shot at this elk or at this deer or coyote or whatever. [00:21:00] I'm just gonna abandon.

And that's the other cool thing. So the phone case, like it's not an otter box, it's not gonna protect your phone, like if you drop it off a building. But when I go on a hunt, I'll leave it on the whole time for sure. And it fits in my pockets fine. Like it's not super big and bulky like the old ones were where they had like other plastic ridges popping off the back of your phone, like it's super slim.

He could probably tell you it's probably three millimeters of ac, like that's what that magnetic plate is. That adds, so it's like a normal thin case plus three millimeters. Yeah. So it's actually narrower overall than an otter box. It's just up in the camera. But the nice thing is you can like for you, I know you like to glass outta your binos a lot, you have that set up with the binos on a tripod.

They are starting to come out with io eye pieces for the binos. So now your same case. Could go back and forth between your bino and your spot, or you just tap this, tap that. And you can leave it on your binos all the time too. Like it's not gonna mess up your eyes, dude. I'm told man, you need to go to trade shows.

Yeah, no, it's a great, it is a super cool, you talked [00:22:00] about this now. It's a super cool product. It's a cool company. Dude is amazing. It's out in Utah, small business out in Utah. It's out in the outdoor entrepreneur Mecca of Utah. But yeah, it was a really cool brand. But yeah, that I need to bring it, I need to just leave my spotter in my truck so that way when I'm looking for these whitetails, I can get good video cuz the video I took just sucks.

But there are some good bucks out there at the new farm.

Dude, the next thing someone needs to come out with is a window mount where you can have your spotter. Connected to it, but also rolled the window up basically. You know how like a red dot or a magnifier on an AR just pivots out of the way that for a spotter or binos or something, shit handle or it could just, oh shit, connect to the handle, like above the window.

I don't use window mounts, I just use that. I'm like, cause so I put my tripod, this is actually a really cool [00:23:00] hack for anyone out west or anyone that likes glassing. Cuz like you said, the window mounts, you can't leave them on. I'm always a little concerned with driving with it on, with my spotter mounted cuz it's like a lot of torque on that window if you hit bumps or you're turning or whatever.

Plus I don't really wanna be driving on the highway with my spotter hanging halfway out the window. And so that wasn't, and then the biggest thing was the plate didn't match my tripod and so I was always switching plates. Which I know you can overcome that. I just didn't wanna buy a new thing.

And so my tripod, I have that old original vortex, like UltraLite backpacking, one that breaks down pretty far. And yeah, it's called the summit. And so I'll put two, the summit two or whatever it's called out, and I'll put 'em on like my driver's door on rest area. You know what I'm talking about, like where the handle is in a pickup.

And then I'll put the third leg, I'll put it out at a farther angle and I'll put that on my center console platform. And then it just sits right there. Perfect. And I, with that angle, [00:24:00] I can angle it towards me and point it and I can look like 135 degrees behind me, or I could point it forward and angle it up and I can look like I guess I have 45 to the front and a 45 to behind and everything in between.

Whereas like a straight spotter, you can't really do that. Like you, you can't get the right angle. And then when I. Yep. Yeah, I'll never go back. You'd angled spotters to where it's at. Last week I just did a gear dump and I talked this, I started with a straight, I thought I would never like an angled that I broke it.

They warrantied it with an angled, cuz that's all they had. Now I'll never go back. Yeah. And then when you're done spotting, I just collapsed the legs, leave 'em at the right angle, like the right lengths and I just lay it if in the passenger seat, if I'm alone or I just put it on the center console.

But here's the secret. With that system you can also do the same thing. Put two legs forward on your, the front of your center console and one leg to the back of your center console. And you can look straight out your front windshield if you can't get it on their driver's side. Or you can do two legs on your [00:25:00] center console, one leg over on your driver's door, and shoot it out your passenger window if you need to glass out that window, which those two things you can't do with a window mount.

Yeah, with the window mount. Yeah, I might have to look at that cuz I've got that exact tripod. Yeah dude, I've got like 15 tripods right now, but I could easily keep one in the car, keep the spotter in there, especially this time of year and I just need to start getting out more. I gotta get out in the evenings and just see where these deer are moving, see where I need to move a trail camera to get better intel.

Cuz like I said they're all out there. I just haven't got closeups of them. And I've got one more camera that I've gotta, not maintenance, but get out and attach a solar panel to or change batteries on. Cuz that's the one where I had a those monster last year show up and dude, that was, that thing's got like a 12 inch brow time.

It's [00:26:00] huge. He showed up, I'd never seen him before. He showed up 30 minutes after shooting light on the last day of season. Like he knew the calendar showed up with a bunch of doze hung out and I'm like, dude, I don't know where this. Oh yeah. I don't know where this butt came from. Haven't seen it since.

Sorry. I've seen it a couple times since, but not since it dropped. And who knows? Man I think this is gonna be a really good year. I think I could take two of my biggest butts. Yeah. Get a tractor over at that new farm. Start doing some food plotting to pull 'em through your woods.

Dude, I need somebody, you have contractors to just come out and work on mine. What kind is it? Yeah, it came with the property. It's a case 1862 I think. Or 1682. 1860 sixes, something like, guess 1460. 1486 is 1880 sixes maybe. I don't know. I'm not a case guy, but those older tractors are actually really easy to work on cuz there's not a lot [00:27:00] that can go wrong.

And people have been so used to fixing them for so long that everyone knows how to do it. This is, that's in that game. Yeah. Oh, that's easy. This, I think this is just a starter issue cuz we All right. Sorry about that folks. We had a brief technical issue which is what I'm learning about podcasting is that technical issues are like part of the description of being a podcaster.

Do you, you wanna be a podcast so everyone thinks do you like talking to people? Do you like, like the sound of your own voice? It should be more like, do you like solving tech issues? Like why is this breaking? It worked literally five minutes ago.

Yeah. Mid midway through. And I feel like once you start using any platform, any piece of equipment, things just are gonna go bad. I had one the other day, there was a power surge. Literally all the power in the whole apartment just [00:28:00] shut off for three seconds. Perfect. And then kicked back on. I'm like, beautiful.

There's not a storm. There's nothing that should have caused this. We just lost all power. Now I've gotta restart my board. I've gotta change the settings on it because if it just shuts off outta nowhere or gets unplugged without like actually being powered off all my settings go back to default and I'm like, dude, this is a mess.

When we're recording on the way up to Colorado, it's just part of it. And you stopped my pickup and the auto stop turned on. So like our whole Oh yeah. All, we're like mid conversation. All six of our speakers pop. The board shuts off. We're both looking at the dash of the truck. Like what just happened?

Yeah, we, your truck just got fried by something now it just auto stopped and didn't have enough juice to keep the recording going. That's just. It's life. You just gotta figure it. Yeah. Figure it out. Yeah. Roll with it as it comes. Yeah. You meant, you texted me the other day about, Hey, you're going to Bo Fest, and it was the first I had ever heard about Bo [00:29:00] Fest, which is sad since it's literally in my backyard.

Dude, it's, that's the story I've been getting from a lot of people. I feel like it started out, there's a loyal group of people that show up, but as a whole, a lot of people don't know about it. And I think they also took a break during Covid. And so that might be a big part of it where people are like, oh, I don't know what that is.

And it's oh, they're back up and running. It's from what I understand, it is the largest hunting, or sorry, largest archery and music festival in the country. They've got six 3D ranges or sorry, six 3D courses that you can shoot. It's all on a ski slope up in Superior Wisconsin. They've got.

Live music every night, the whole vendor, village, food trucks, all that stuff. So yeah, I got an invite to go and I'm gonna go hang out there. Yeah, it's gonna be sweet. Do some live podcast recordings. I have some buddies from Minnesota that go every year in camp and so I'm like, oh, [00:30:00] you should stop by the Noma outdoorsman booth when you get there.

Cuz they're just like us. They're all our age. Bow hunt. Some of 'em Bow hunt a lot. Yeah. Some of 'em just have bows and shoot and they haven't shot anything yet. But it's gonna be a fun time and I wish I could go, but that's literally our last weekend where we're, me and my wife are both available for the summer, so we're gonna go to the lake instead this year and next year.

I'm like, oh, okay. Going to be there. I'm gonna make it a mission to be there because I think it would be a blast doing podcasting from a show and just, I don't know if I'd do, I probably wouldn't do like full hour episodes with random people. I'd probably do 10, 15 minutes and then just stitch 'em together.

Yeah. To a episode. But yet they're gonna be fun. Dude. Yeah I'm trying to play that out cuz I'll be up there for five days, so I'll do a couple, like longer episodes, but I, Ooh, fingers crossed. I think I'm gonna do one with Waddell. He's gonna be up there. You almost had the opportunity.

He's something that always wanted to chat with. I missed him at, [00:31:00] dude. I know I missed that opportunity. Just barely. So there's been a couple times where I've almost sat down and chatted with him. This time I'm going to Oh, for sure. So that one I'll probably do a full episode out of. Yeah.

Cause he's just got so much to say. And then I'm gonna, I open it up to a lot of guests. Even if anybody's listening to this, if they're gonna be at Bo Fest, I'm gonna sit down and record a ton while I'm there and Vortec. Partnering with them again this year. They sent me some sweet gear.

I got a bunch of hats, stickers, and their newest pair of Binos that I'm gonna be giving away. Nice. That'll be exciting. Yeah, I'm sure they'll be there cuz that's in their backyard too. Yeah. Have you shot the Bo Fest course or are you going to shoot the course as well?

I will, yeah. Can't you shoot 'em? I've gotta pick which one. Like I said, there's six, seven, can't you shoot 'em all? If you're gonna be there for five days, let go. What? Oh yeah, I can, but I'm like, dude, I'm gonna [00:32:00] have so many recordings, so many people. That's where my family's from too, so I'm gonna have family stopping in nonstop and so I don't know if I'll have time to shoot every course.

Also Matt, the guy who I'm in contact with there, who's helping put on the whole event, he's dude, let me know if you want to get out and like jet ski or go fishing or anything while you're here. And I'm like, Jesus. Yeah, that actually sounds pretty great too. So dude, he's trying to run both. I gonna take you out jet ski and fishing too, by the way,

dude, I'd be down. And then he asked me also if I wanted to, if I wanted to host or mc like in a award ceremony while I there, I would over that. So I'm gonna do that. That's one of the transitions I'm hoping to make from podcaster to like real world is like MCing events. That's when you know you made it when people are asking you Yeah.

To do your radio voice, but in person, like hopefully you can perform literally in front of people. Cuz like when you and I have this podcast, no matter how many people listen to it, it just feels like it's two [00:33:00] people. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Once you do it, and I used to speak in front of people every week.

I'd speak in front of 80 to 300 people every single week. And so I'm used to that, but I'm like, dude, this is like a bunch of people in the industry. I don't even know what awards I'm giving out yet. And the fact that he even put me in like the lineup with all these people, there's a list of eight or 10 like hunting celebrities, like proper hunting celebrities that I know.

And he's yeah, dude, send me a picture. We're gonna throw you up on there with all these guys. And I'm like, oh wow. Like I don't know if you know who I am. Yeah. Or if you just think way more highly of me than you should, but I would not expect to be on that. You gonna do it like Rick style at the AMAs?

I want to, man, I kind of wanna just go in there and just swing for the fences, make it a thing where he's to do a hunting [00:34:00] spin on it. Nobody cares. Nobody cares if you shoot a fix blade. No one cares if you shoot an expandable, nobody cares. Just shoot your bow, shoot the course, write down your score, send in your card.

Exactly. I kind of wanna mix it with that and then almost do a roast of some of the celebrities that are there and musicians that are there. Yeah. In a very friendly way, obviously, but yeah, Hey, listen, if you were born before this time, you're probably gonna know this next person. Or too bad you don't shoot throw little too bad.

You don't run your bow as good as you run that guitar.

Exactly. I'm like, dude, it'd be fun. It'd be fun to just kinda get that in with a lot of people and hopefully, the award ceremony happens. Oh yeah. After I've actually connected with them in person. A little bitwise, this guy just coming in hot. But dude, it sounds fun. Sounds fun. Sounds like the, also like probably the best all inclusive way to get a gauge at where you [00:35:00] are for a western archery hunt is shooting these mountain course events.

Yeah, dude, I have never done a mountain course event like this. All the 3D range stuff I've done, it's been at like a local park or conservation area or shooting facility where it's like you walk through the woods, there's no crazy angles, there's no real challenge to it. And so to do it on a ski slope like this, like they do it like the tack events, I would love to have a course that was like, obviously a lot of it's designed to be fun.

But for like real training, I would be like, I would love to have a course where it's maybe just shorter, but it's like really gonna give you a gauge. And it's like you walk to the station and you have and the target's kind of hidden. It's not super in the open. Like when you're on the ski slope and it's just down the slope from you and you're like, okay, there's the target, but like more like in the timber and you like walk to the [00:36:00] place and the, there's like a square on the ground where you're supposed to shoot from and there's like a guy there and maybe like good hunters probably will figure out where the thing is first.

But like the whole point is you get like 10 seconds. I'm gonna point it to you. I'm gonna start a timer and you have 10 seconds to knock an arrow, range it, draw and shoot, and then you're done. And if you don't shoot in the by time, the horn. Yep. You get zero points whether you punch it. Punch the 12 ring or not afterwards.

Like it doesn't count for your score. Cuz that's like what elk hunting is like. It's oh shit, there's an elk. Sometimes you're ready with the arrow knocked if you know there's like elk in the area and you're calling them. And so then it's a little bit easier. But sometimes you're like eating lunch, you're like, shit, and now you gotta knock this arrow.

Drawback. It's in a, or it's like at this station you have to start on like from a knee though. Like you have to do this all from a knee. Yeah dude, it'd be so sweet to set up a totally realistic course like that where even you could have a speaker, like you get up there, you push a button, [00:37:00] all of a sudden someone's Hey, the wind shifting.

I can feel it on my back. Dude, you be, you better shoot this thing now. Like almost putting you in that mindset, cuz how many of us have been in that situation? All of a sudden, boom. You feel the wind on the back of your neck. Yeah. Or have a, and you're like, like it's over. Have you seen the pull systems, people build moving targets?

I would love to do like an elk. I wouldn't shoot the moving, cause I never, I don't shoot anything with my bow if it's moving, unless it's like carp or pheasants if I'm trying to do that. But have it have an elk on a track that's 40, 30, 40 yard path or maybe 30, 40 foot path. And there's a couple places, like maybe it's just naturally this way.

Maybe they brushed it. So it's like there's a couple natural windows where you would shoot, but this thing's gonna move until you stop it and yeah. So that's like a nervous grunt for elk hunting. Yeah. Like the bar doesn't work for elk. You have to do something in their voice and and then wherever you stop it, the guy's gonna hit the button.

Yeah. So if you time it wrong or maybe he'll let [00:38:00] it go another half second, because that happens too. Like you do it and the baltics a step through your window and then stops behind a tree. So now you gotta move over. And yeah, like that would be super fun to, to see how Chad like just to throw random stuff at people and see how they perform.

Yeah. I feel like it's, it's crucial for hunters to understand how much of that happens. Like I've seen some of these like New Mexico guided hunts where they get on 12 or 13 bowls before they actually have a good enough window to shoot one. And to do that exact thing dude, you might get to a spot and they could have one, they could have one 3D spot every single round where you don't actually to shoot at it.

Yeah. Just to mess with you. Just to put you in, and you're like, what the heck? And I'm like, dude, it's hunting. Not missed your chance. Yeah. The last time I, Wyoming is our favorite state. We really got a spot dialed in for our tree [00:39:00] group. I call it team. Our team's spot. And the last time I was there with the group, it was either 33 or 39.

We had whatever it was, let's just say it was 39, cuz that sounds cooler. We had, there was a, there was seven of us hunting, so we were always in group, like three different groups. There was e there was 39 situations Yeah. Setups where there was a bowl vocal within 60 to 80 yards. That's the line sometimes They were close.

Close and we got two shots. Oh my God.

Oh, that's nuts man. Yeah, that's just, yeah, that's crazy to think that you're gonna have that many ENC encounter, like you could have that many encounters and the percentage that lead to shot opportunities and the shot opport opportunities. My brother got his dude, the other guy was like a clean mess.

So we only went, we went 50 [00:40:00] 50 on the shot opportunities, but we're basically two and a half percent, like of our encounters came to sh like sh a lethal shot. And 5% of them came to a yeah, what would be called like a shot opportunity, like 5% shot opportunity. When you're that close to elk, like it was crazy.

We had, I was calling, I had a buddy that was shooting and it was 20 yards. He's I can see the freaking antlers. I could see the antlers the whole time. And it was so thick I couldn't see anything but the top of his antlers and he was only 20 yards away. And so I started trying to back up, pull 'em.

I tried to drop off a ledge and move a little bit and we just couldn't get this elk to go where we wanted to. So then we're like there's elk in the area. Let's set up. Then we're eating lunch all of a sudden an elk bugles. And my buddy's oh dude, that's close. I'm like, I feel like that was like 200 yards away still.

We're gonna go, but like I don't think I need to draw back yet. And then all of a sudden these antlers start coming up from the below us over this rise. And he's at 15 [00:41:00] yards, 15, no 15 feet. He's like on top of us. And I'm like, dude stop. And he's like trying to get his stuff together cuz we're like getting ready to go and I'm trying to draw back.

I knock an arrow, but I like bump. It pumps off my string so the arrow falls down. I'm like, that's unfortunate. And then I'm like, I'm trying to get this all to work And yeah, it's just so hard to pull it off.

Dude, I, that's one thing that I just really have got to finally do. I've gotta do it. I keep putting in for different places, man. I am striking out, dude, this year I struck out on literally every extra draw that I put in for, and even, I don't fully understand this. I do. I put in for a mule deer in a unit in Colorado this year, and then all of a sudden it came up in the secondary draw with multiple tags available.

And I'm like, I put in for, [00:42:00] so somebody's account, oh, that's what happened. Got, they try to charge it or they opted outta actually buying the tag, but it happened like a half a dozen times. And so I'm like, oh, surely I'm gonna get it in the secondary draw. So I put in for two different units in the second draw.

Don't get either of them. As far as my western hunts go this year, I'm hunting elk and that's it. Like that is it. I may try to do a Wyoming antelope hunt cuz that's something I've never done is antelope punted. And I know I can get over the counter for a dough. I dunno if that's gonna be available this year.

I'm trying to get someone from Wyoming Game and Fish or the Wyoming Winter Range Foundation on the podcast. But Wyoming antelope got hit so hard this last winter with mortality from like some units. They were reporting like 80, 90% die off.

Dude, there's a, yeah, if you look at the map in northwest Colorado, [00:43:00] there's the whole northwest corner. They cut the second rifle season down almost in half. It went from nine days to five days. And it's still over the counter unlimited in most of the units where you can still get a tag, you can go buy one, whether you're a resident or a non-resident.

But they, some places are stating that a hundred percent of last year's calves, yeah. Didn't make it. Yeah. Like one, to think of 90% mortality on antelope, that's adults. All of the fawns died, you know that None of the dose, like I would say probably most of those dos probably had miscarriages.

There's probably no recruitment this year, like it's gonna take a while. Now that being said, I like animal populations bounce back way faster than habitat quality comes back. From over pressure. So if we have, yes, good moisture, we got good grass, we'll probably get good recruitment next year. Because the numbers are [00:44:00] lower, there's more food feed to go around and so I'm hoping it bounces back faster.

But I would say for the next couple years there's pr there, there will be changes coming to Wyoming Antelope regulations. I don't know if they're still gonna, if it's gonna affect the whole state, maybe there's still places to get over the counter tags, but that's probably just gonna go faster. Yeah. Cuz people are probably gonna move units around.

So yeah, if you wanna do that, I'd be really on the ball of buying your tag as early as you can.

Yeah. Yeah. I've gotta do that. I've got a lot of different hunts coming up this year that I'm pretty excited about. So the intended parents for this surrogacy journey that we're on are in Florida and he's got a, he's part of a hunt club that's got like nice 3000 or 6,000 acres down there. And he is dude, there's coyotes, bobcats, hogs, deer, you name it.

So I'm gonna go down there, but he and I are gonna do two hunts in Georgia Oh, nice. This year on Cumberland Island, on that conservation deal. And we're gonna [00:45:00] do a archery hog and deer hunt. And then we're also gonna do a rifle hog hunt. So I'm actually gonna be down in that neck of the woods quite a bit this year for Hunts.

Texas, that's a go. But yeah, as far as my western big game tags, I keep striking out, but I'm hoping fingers crossed to get back out. Good blast. I'm thinking an upcoming episode so I wanted to do a deep dive episode on gear just in case people are out there like planning it's summer.

Like what should I get, what should I spend money on? People that are new, like maybe they're doing their first elk hunt this year, that can be overwhelming. Do I really need all this? And I could break it down. Here's where I would start. It was. Boots and pack is like the two things I would probably spend money on first and then put up with the rest until you can, slowly add to it.

But I think another good deep dive episode would be like point strategies like across all the states. If you're a mule deer hunter, like this is what I would look at. If you're a an antelope punter, here's how I would do your points. If you're an elk hunter, here's how I would do your points. Like here's some [00:46:00] tips and tricks like the Arizona two year point trick, where if you need a hunting license in Arizona to buy points, but their hunting license lasts like 375 days if you buy it early.

So you can buy it early the first year and then it'll still have, you have 10 days of overlap. So you can buy your points the second year without buying a new hunting license. And so that cuts your costs down a little bit and then the third year you'll have to buy a license again. But stuff like that, like just a point strategy here's my point strategy, here's what I think about if you want change it like.

Like you said I want to shoot a big meal. Deer. There is hardly any, I don't know if any, over the c truly over the counter meal deer hunting except Idaho. And that goes really fast. So yeah, you gotta have some type of strategy, so I'll do that.

Dude there's so much strategy that goes into it. And even just managing like my time, or like I said, this 25 acres, [00:47:00] I was talking to my wife about it, and I'm like, all right, how much do I want to spend on all of the money property? Dude, realistically, just in interest. Just in interest.

Not even going toward the principle. Yeah, just an interest. I'm spending like 14 grand a year on this hunting property. What could I get with that? I could go on multiple out of state hunts. I could go on guided hunts. I could go to Alaska and hunt like I. If I factor in my whole payment over the course of the year, I could pay cash for a moose hunt in Alaska.

Yeah. So that's where I'm like, but you also gotta remember how much do I want this property? 14 grand. Same thing with all this year. It's every year it gets less and less. If you ever pay it off, it's gone. But then like to do, oh, for sure. All of the things you said that you could do with it, those are also gonna go up in the future.

And then the cost of doing the wato land's only gonna get [00:48:00] worse. Like the only way to lock in land inflation is to buy it. And I hear you. Exactly. It's like you don't wanna go bonkers. Yeah. I think that's the key. Like you wanna balance it out, but then also if you are into the flip game for sure, like you buy a hunting property you pay interest on it for two years, which was the bulk of the interest.

You pay the interest up front, you get it back when you sell. If you. Like the amortization schedule you're ahead on the interest and then you get the value back you sell. Oh yeah. But then if you sell for a 20, 30% gain, cuz you bought the right property and did the right equity into it to build up that value, now you can start like snowballing and down the road, get to a point where maybe you have 250 acres and you really haven't contributed any more cash than what the first property would've cost you all this time.

Like in payments, right? Cause you're rolling positive equity into each successive deal. And so that's how you can offset some of that. Cuz it sucks. I'll tell you what I mean we're well over, we're well over that for our property. But we have a house. 40 acres.[00:49:00]

Yeah. And that's my thing. I'm like, dude, long term is a great investment. It really is. At, in the short term, I'm like, dude, there's a lot of stuff that we could do with this money, right? And we were just completely debt free. But like now I look at it and I go, okay. We're making our money work for us in different ways.

Renting out one vehicle which basically makes the payment on one of our new vehicles. And so bouncing all of that around. And then also, this all ties into trying to get out and hunt out west, try to hunt out east, try to hunt different places. It's like what frees up my money to be able to do this?

While at the same time you also probably hopeful making money are unique down the road. Because money is the limiter for you, not time. Which sounds funny cuz you guys are very successful but like you have such a full flexible schedule that you could go on six western hunts of fall cuz you have that time for it.

Whereas most people are like, money ain't the issue for hunting out west. It's time. I can only do one or two hunts a [00:50:00] year anyway and I budget that and it's fine. And so a lot of people probably aren't re reaching some of these different Yeah. Pressure points that you're reaching just because you have such a flexible schedule.

It's I wanna do it all. And now what's that? Co. Now this land interest is actually impacting how much I can go out west.

Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of the day, like it's not gonna limit, it's not gonna take away a different hunt for me, but I, I just think about, yeah, if this is only a hunting property, right? It's 25 acres, it's right next to 350 acres that I can already hunt, so it's not really adding anything. Sure I get different bucks on camera, but as a whole, I can go right there and hunt for that same amount of money.

I could lease a couple hundred acres in central misery. It's not gonna be as close to home, but like I could effectively double my hunting acreage. Yeah. Did you? I just wouldn't own it at that [00:51:00] point. Or I could buy way more land. Like I could have bought 80 acres. Way farther out. Did you listen to the Josh Bomar podcast with the Hunter?

What's, what are their names? Jared and Jeremy, I think I caught some of that. I didn't listen, I didn't finish the whole thing. Who does a five hour podcast? Yeah. And I don't know, I, I have mixed feelings on Josh, the Bo Mars. Anyway it was a good, it was a good podcast, but he talked about I like to buy properties in his words, low income areas.

Which he's talking like Brown. It's down like places that aren't known for qdm. A so like Buffalo County, Wisconsin's the opposite. And then he, that's because he can have the best property in that's own. Yeah. Like he can't have the best pr. What he's saying is, I can't have the best property. If I'm neighbors with the juries and the Lukowski, they're gonna beat me.

And then now we're all fighting for the same big buck. If I go somewhere where no one cares. Yeah, and they just hunt. Hunt how they wanna hunt, shoot what they wanna shoot. I can have the best property and then [00:52:00] eventually the most dominant bucks are gonna take over my farm as they're betting and push other deer out.

And I was like, that's a great strategy. But also like places like that usually have lower property values so you can get in easier. And then you do that work and now you can sell it and market it as a trophy hunting property with all kinds of trail camera pictures of giant bucks and sell it for an above market rate for that area.

Yep. And treat it basically as an investment, like flipping hunting property, but like specifically targeting areas like that. Not southeast Iowa, Western Wisconsin.

No. Could you imagine like that business and then that also as a hobby, like you go and you improve a property, you get the bucks pulled into it to where you're proving on trail camera and with filling tags. Check this property out. It's amazing. Like in two years, this is what I've drawn to this property.

This is the change that I've made. [00:53:00] I shot a target buck on the second year also. Now I'm gonna sell it for an insane profit. And then you do it again and again and again. Josh said he has shot six 200 since I think 2019. And they've all, he's killed them all on property that he now owns. I think he said one of them, he leased it when he shot the 200, but now he bought that property.

And he said people like give me a hard time. Like I, I released like Penn raised bucks. But you can tell that's not true because the genetics of that deer, like you can tell it was born on this farm. And then you said people will then accuse me of releasing dough with, bread dough and I'm like, I haven't owned this farm long enough for that buck to be born and grow into a 200.

So that doesn't make sense. Which is just funny. But I'm the point I was driving towards is what do you think if you spend, let's say $3,000 an acre for a hunting property, cuz that's probably a lower value area, 3000 [00:54:00] bucks an acre. Let's just say you spend $3,000 an acre. Doesn't matter necessarily how big it is.

It's big enough. Whether it's a 40 or a 200, it's big enough and it's $3,000 an acre. Yep. And you shoot one or two good bucks on it, but there's a living 200 plus on camera, on that property when you go to sell it. What do you think that does for the property value? Do you think you just find a whale that's I wanna shoot a 200, I'll pay you six grand an acre.

I don't care. I'm gonna buy that property just to kill that buck. I, you can have it back when I'm done. Like that kind of person dude. A hundred percent, man. A hundred percent. That, that has been proven by some of these bucks that people get on camera. There's one. If you look back, this was probably 15 years ago, maybe more, and it was in Buffalo County, Wisconsin, and I think, oh really?

His last name was Kirkpatrick. This guy got a video, a guy got a video from 400 plus yards away of this buck, and the title [00:55:00] was New Walking World Record question Mark. And he posted that video and he had people, I can't remember what he was charging. I think it was like 15 grand a stand to come in and hunt this buck.

And his neighbor ended up killing it. For real, dude. His woods were loaded with these people because they're like, this legitimately could be the new world record, typical deer. When it would turn its head and like its times from each side would offset. It was basically just. A foot and a half block of nothing but handler that you could see rusting from the air moving around his, near his head.

I don't know if I could sell the property. Oh my God. Or the, or that's the problem is yeah, you probably could sell that situation for a lot of money, whether you're selling hunts or selling like outfitting it or just selling the property. The problem is like, would you sell the property though if you have a living 200 on it?

Yeah. You'd have to be so dedicated to the investment game and you should just have to be so [00:56:00] confident that you're like, yes, I'm gonna sell this 40 with a 200 on it, because by doing that, I can buy three more fortys. I can make a ton of money. I know I can get another 200 on another property. Maybe I've already shot a couple.

I don't know. It'd be so tough. Yeah,

dude. The thing is, at the end of the day, a 200 inch deer is a world class deer, right? There are so many counties in the US. That could very easily host 200 plus steel. It would be interesting to, I bet you could make money just selling the county map that has like red, green highlights of the counties where at 200 has been confirmed, killed in, and and then you could make guesses like, Hey, there hasn't been one in this block, but all the way around it, there's been one.

And so or there could be, there's the 200 somewhere, maybe not this year, but there's Yeah. 200 potential, yeah. But it's dude, I look at it and my mom on the property that she hunts every year with her rifle, I don't [00:57:00] remember how many it was very in very close proximity to her stand.

They got pictures of what they thought were on the property or off property record. Typical they got, okay. It was on the neighbor's property, but just over the hill from where she hunts. So they got pictures, a daytime and a nighttime picture. It's just gone. Only time this buck has ever been seen.

Nobody's ever seen it. No trail camera pictures other than these two. No. Deadheads found, not even a shed found. This is, there's probably a, the only evidence that there's this deer ever existed, there's probably a high fence. Deer with the gps, got pictures and my owner like, realized he got out and went and tracked him down and tracked him and brought him back and just did it in the middle of the night.

So now he's whew, almost lost that one

dude. That, like the, these deer exist out there. And even here, man, I'm sitting in my stand a couple years ago and I look out and, I'm throwing my [00:58:00] guess, best guess at it, but I saw Buck. It was a morning that I was sitting there with my bow. I see these two deer running through the woods and I see one or through the field and I see one and it is a monster wreck.

I'm talking like biggest buck I've ever seen while hunting in person. And I see a deer in front. I think it's a small dough, right? Like I think it's a like a yearling dough that this buck is just chasing. They're running through. I pull my binos up, I get a good look at this rack. Wow. And my best guess is mid 180 s in this area.

Yeah, dude, nobody sees bucks like that. Nobody sees buck like that. And I'm thinking, dude, this guy's right here. He's in my field way outta range, obviously. And then they go into this little thing of yeah, fog. The dudes coming up in the morning super foggy, and all of a sudden I see a deer coming down the fence line and I know it's not him.

[00:59:00] I can see with my naked eye that it's not him. So I pull my binos up and I'm looking at it and I scanned behind looking for this big buck, and he's just gone. And I'm like, no, you gotta be kidding me. Turns out that this thing that I thought was a small dough in front of him was actually a two and a half year old buck.

And just the sheer size of this other buck made it look so big. Yeah. Like it just offset it that much. That's crazy. And this other buck was outside of his ears. Like he wasn't a small deer. He was outside his ears and never saw that buck again. Never had a single trail camera picture of that buck.

Come to find out the, there is a person that lives on the next bl like country block who has pictures of this buck. And he's just a freak. I still have yet to see the trail camera pictures. But a buddy of mine said he talked to him and he is dude, there is a monster buck out here. Mainframe 12.

Every point or every time is huge with trash. That's crazy. Coming off of everything. Yeah, [01:00:00] they're out there. Exactly what I saw. I mean there was guys that shot a 2 39 non-typical just two miles from our family farm. Yeah, just a huge junky looking 2 39 gross. Not net nets are for fish in my book, but yeah.

Yeah, they're out there. That's what I'm wondering. Maybe that'll be my new goal is to go find like the cheapest land you can find in a, like obviously it's gotta have deer hunting. Like you like that part of Kansas we drove through on the way out to tonight Colorado. I'm sure you could find a 40 pretty cheap out there, but you're not gonna, you're not going to attract a 200 inch deer.

So figure out something like where that's like a pretty good yeah. Balance point and then buy it and do a little project and see what's the biggest deer you can get in five years and is that deer big enough to artificially inflate? Not artificially. It's pretty official, but official, like in raise the value of the property in someone's book.

There's gonna be people out there no, I'm not paying you any extra for that. I don't dear [01:01:00] Hunt, but then there's gonna be someone's I wanna shoot a 200 or I wanna shoot a Boone and so I'll pay extra. Cuz you have a living Boone on your property.

Dude, you gotta think. When I look at, when I look at properties online, if it has a picture of deer and Turkey on it, which I'm not even a huge fan of turkey's. Yeah. But I know that if Turkey are hanging out, there's gonna be deer hanging out. And if I see that on like the listing, yeah. It immediately throws my interest through the roof.

I'm like, okay, if that's what they got on camera, what are they not getting on camera? Also, these people obviously care enough about hunting to have trail cameras out there and these big deer are on camera or and so I think about that and I go, okay, so say I'm buying 40 acres, would I spend an extra 10 grand on it?

Just, oh see, oh, 10 isn't even a Joe of actual for sure, 10 grand from like with the day this year. But that's dude, what if we're asking 10 grand over, not 10 grand per acre, but like market value, that's 250 bucks an acre. [01:02:00] 40. So yeah, I would for sure per acre pay an extra two 50 an acre to know that there's good habitat.

Yeah. And so it's like just looking at that's just for pictures of active deer on the property. Yeah. Now you throw in that there's a Boer or a 200, you better believe there people willing to spend went more money. I went to a couple money shows back in the day for bow hunting.com and I got to meet some of our local whitetail properties agents, and now I know 'em pretty good.

And I was talking to 'em. They invited me out to their team dinner at one time at the thing. So I was talking to 'em and they said, I don't think this is a secret. I think they want you to do this. They said, We, our data shows that if you have trail camera pictures on your listing, you will get 10 times as many clicks on your property.

I don't doubt that at all. In fact, I told my buddy he doesn't specialize in hunting properties. In fact, he sold [01:03:00] very few of them. Yeah. But I've been sharing my pictures with him cuz he's a hunter and he said, listen, if you property, what kinda Hunter doesn't keep big bucks picture you get on that pictures going back a decade.

He, I mean he's saying with the intent of sharing them in a listing and I'm like, of course dude. If I'm gonna sell a property, I want to go to a hunter one. I also kinda wanna put a clause in there that Hey, I have a cousin that did that. He sold the piece and he had 20 year tonight. Anyway, it's part of the deal.

Yeah, that's what happened. Sold it to Farmer. See, I'm kinda hoping that I sell it to a farmer, like one of the neighbors. And just say, listen, I'm gonna sell this to you, but I still get to hunt on it. And you have to leave four, four rows of corn up all around the woodlot. Yeah. Throw something like that in there.

But dude, I think about the same thing for going out west. Looking at western Nebraska, Western Kansas, Eastern Colorado, Eastern [01:04:00] Wyoming, the spots where you drive through and a lot of people are like, dude, this is the worst drive ever. There's gotta be little pockets of water or little river systems that flow through where there's property, but it's so far from civilization.

Oh yeah. That the price of the property is really low. And you could have own, I think you could heaven, you definitely could buy a lot of land cheaper. There's places in Wyoming and I don't know about Colorado, but Wyoming for sure, where I've seen land as little as three, $400 an acre in big tracks.

Cuz it's just, Worthless. Yeah. Quote unquote for production. Like it's, those prices are based off the production value for like beef and I don't, it's like I don't care, I don't wanna produce on it, I wanna recreate on this. Yeah. And yeah, if you bought 400 acres in Western Kansas in the middle of nowhere Yep.

You could turn in into a place where you're shooting big bucks. I just don't think Western Kansas, you're probably gonna have that good of luck growing like an actual 200 just cuz of the nutritional quality of the ground. But you could still grow Boers, I'm [01:05:00] sure. You could put in water, you could, I suppose you could do, if they allow it, if that state allows it, you could do supplemental feed to increase protein values.

You could just plant food plots that offset the deficiencies of the soil. And maybe you could grow some 200 s out there.

Dude, I think. Some of these spots are so underrated, and I would've never guessed it had I not known people and seen the like Oklahoma, the number of giants in Oklahoma actually like trophy pictures, dude in, in north northeast Colorado. A spot that I would never be like, dude, there's monster white tails there.

I'm talking actual pictures. Wow. Of 200 plus inch whitetails. That's confirmed because he killed it. 200 plus inch mule deer. They've recently started getting more elk on the property. Yeah. Got place. I'm, this is [01:06:00] hours away from the mountains. Yeah. And there is nothing but planes. Oh yeah. All the way around them.

But they're on a river system. And the amount of big animals will blow your mind. And it's, every year I'll get picked. They'll be like, oh dude, check this deer out. Check this deer out. Check this deer out. This one is, we're not gonna shoot this one. We're not interested in him at all. And I'm like, dude, those are bucks that I would never pass up here in Missouri.

Those are bucks I'd never pass up in Wisconsin. And you're passing them up the middle of spot country, white Dakota at all. Where I shed hunt. It's it's there's, it's desolate. And a dude picked up a shed. I scored it. It was 88 and a half inches. Yeah, just one shed. He's do you think it breaks 70?

I'm like, dude, you have no idea what you're talking about. You're sup. He was a guy that runs gun dog shed, shed dog trials like he has professional or not, sorry, master quality, like master titled shed dogs. He's yeah, do you think it breaks 75? I'm like, dude, that thing's over [01:07:00] 85. And he's no.

And I'm like, I will score it for you right now. Yeah. And so that's middle of nowhere. Pretty much. Oh my gosh, that's pretty much getting close to a gross 288 and a half. You double it. That's 1 75 without a, without an inside spread. Yeah. Dude that's unbelievable, man. I feel like all of these overlooked properties you really could, you could turn 'em into something great.

They could be something great already and nobody knows about it. But I am very interested in finding larger tracks of land in some of these, like you said, low income areas, just states where you can pick it up. Just start adding states cheap. Cause think about it, dude. Think about it. Us and a couple friends, like we had a group of four guys.

Start buying these tracks of land and now we've got five different states that we own land in and it's a lot of land and you'd have to do it, you should pick it. I mean it's [01:08:00] just more hunting it goes. It's a double-edged sword. Obviously if you picked your five closest buddies from Springfield, that would be nice in a way.

But also it would be nice if your team of five, there was one person in each of the five states that you bought land in. So it's like we buy a big parcel two hours away from your house in Missouri and like you are responsible for getting that property set up to like how we all agree. Like obviously one guy might wanna do a hundred thousand dollars worth of work.

And we're like, okay, that's on you then because I'm not gonna do a hundred grand on mine. And or what, whatever, like you have to be on the same page to some degree. But that way like everyone's taking care of the local property so they don't have to drive to all five of these states to to do the food plots and the maintenance.

And then when it come fall, you guys just hit the rotation yep, this property always pops off early season. This one's a great rut state. This one's a great, late season. This one's just set up better for more food. So we're gonna come in and muzzle loader season and just, throw some black powder in the sky.

It'd be perfect,[01:09:00]

dude. And in those areas, you know it when you find the spots that are so far out there, you could totally get in with the neighbors. Hey, I just bought this track next to you. Just curious, do you or find, I'll be out here this whole week if you need grandma and grandpa's farmstead that moving to town or for.

As bad as it says, don't need anymore. And you just offer to buy the old house and because they probably built it themselves. Yeah. So there's it's probably undervalued, buy off market, undervalue, and now you have a hunting cabin in that area. Yeah.

So much opportunity really is. You got my wheels turning, man. We took a dive. I'm ready off of the western topic, but that's what happens. Something dude, fish jack, dude. This all ties into our conversations. Yeah. That we've been having all week. Like a fish shack. Find this fish stack up somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Dude, Kodiak Island. I'm telling you there are spots in Kodiak Island that you could own property [01:10:00] that's so remote you could go and fish for salmon. And deep sea fish. You could shoot blacktail, you'd have grizzly encounters. I just had a yeah. So technically there's nothing inherently hunting in the western rookie title.

And Alaska is farther west than the Missouri River or the Mississippi River where we put the boundary. So technically we could talk Alaska fishing. Yeah, because I had a, the reason I was thinking about it, cause I had a guest from Alaska that does his own outfitting and chartering. And I'm like, dude, if I bought a cabin or like first year, I would just come up and rent Yeah.

A place. But if I bought a cabin as a non-resident, do you think I could actually come up for a week fishing trip and catch enough fish to like package and ship home and have a year or a half year supply of fish and ac if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna go all in. Is it gonna be worth it?

Or The regulations for non-residents, just too restrictive. Like you can keep two salmon, it's probably not worth buying a cabin to get two salmon a year. But he's no, dude. There's no possession limits that I know of here. So it's like your daily limit. But [01:11:00] once you clean and package it, that's food.

And that doesn't count anymore. And so he is yeah, you can do shrimp pots prawn. Like those are almost unlimited. Yeah, you can do crab, you could get rockfish, you could do, he's we went halibut fishing and it's two a day for residents. First day we caught like a bunch of 30 and 50 pound fish.

Everyone limited out. So we went back the second day back to back. My first two fish were 70 pounds and a hundred pounds. The a hundred pounder was the first one. So I'm like, I'm good on halibut for the year. Now I have 300 pounds of halibut. Oh my gosh, dude. That's the type of stuff, man. We're. It's like you can build your wealth through hunting and fishing properties and opportunities, because I do, I see people who do that stuff.

Even being down in Florida, man, the life that they live, they go out and you can catch 30 different species in a morning. Yeah. And in Alaska, dude, there's spots if you wanna get that feel, there's spots that [01:12:00] I could tell you about and bush pilots that I could direct you to where you can go and rent a cabin that will sleep like four to six people.

Ooh, that'd be great. For 39 bucks a night. In the middle of, I'm talking, he will drop you off on the front dock. In the float plane. You'll have to dodge grizzlies on your way in. You can blacktail deer hunt. And I think certain, depending on the season, you can get up to three blacktail bucks.

You can fish for salmon right there. You could get. Dolly's you could get, just insane opportunities and that's my kind of thing. I'm like, I could have 30 years of these opportunities or own one chunk of hunting property. I could own one chunk of hunting property or have 15 different properties in less known areas.

Farther away. It's gonna be travel. I get that. It's gonna take a lot of work to get them to where I wanna be. I think the only issue I, but think the problem [01:13:00] is the buy and hold on the hunting property strategy. As long as you don't buy and hold, I think that can help you get to those other ones.

Yeah, that's the problem. People buy it, they fall in love and then they never sell it. For sure. And so then that kind of closes off the future expansion. But if you're like, no, I like, because I'm in a great spot for this. I have my house now with that 40, like I'm not gonna sell that. And I have the family farms.

We're never gonna sell those. So I always have those emotional properties for me the sentimental properties. So now I can be like, I'm gonna buy this 40 and I'm gonna grow some deer and I'm gonna sell it. This is the plan. I'm not gonna get attached going into it, I know I'm gonna sell it, so I'm just gonna keep myself from getting a it attached.

Yeah. Maybe if there's like a big, like maybe there is a 200, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna wait a year to sell. I'm gonna try to shoot this 201st, but I'm gonna sell this property. Yeah. You don't have to get a tax Unless someone pay me like times GU rate to buy it with the 200 living on it, then I'll just buy the neighbor property for market value and [01:14:00] shoot the 200 and sell the property.

I. Look at it this way, look at how many people will pay to do a high fence hands and tens of thousands of dollars to go down, or, yeah, that's a little bit higher guarantee, but there's also no equity available for that. At least when you buy the property to shoot the deer, you have the equity.

Like you, you gotta make the bank work and stuff. Like you, you're probably gonna be, you know exactly. Underwater if you put a mortgage on it, but if you bought it with cash, you can do whatever you want.

Yeah. But it's dude I'd be curious, what's the going rate for it? Oh, hi tail. That's thousands, tens of thousands, I'm sure on, yeah, I would imagine. I would think that, you're probably entering in at, yeah. 15 grand for a Boer, and then every inch goes up from there, 10 inches goes up from there.

The high fence it is almost a guarantee. If you like, I wanna shoot a 200, you're like, all right, there's a 200 in [01:15:00] that pen. That's almost a guarantee, but it's also there's no demand. Yeah. The supply demand curve is like artificial because they can grow as many two hundreds as they really need and so a wild 200, yeah, for sure.

The supply is virtually zero for the average guy, so now the demand can go way up cuz every, no one wants to be like, oh, I shot this 200 in a fence. They wanna be like, I shot this 200 on my own land with a bow. This is a wild deer. So you would probably get more than the 15 grand extra for a high fence hunt.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's like the value there is exponential in comparison and it's like you already have people who are willing to pay that much to do it, where there's not necessarily a challenge where everybody, like 10,000 people could go and hunt deer in high fence. Ranches in multiple states.

My business strategy could be like every single year and shoot a boomer buying properties, growing 200 and then selling them. Josh.[01:16:00] That's my whole business plan is I'm gonna buy a property, build a 200 and sell it to Josh. You only have one, but yeah. That's funny. Yeah, dude, there's, I mean there's a lot of strategy for that kinda stuff and I'm just, I'm ready for season, man.

I'm so ready. Yout chop my bow yet, were just shy of two months out here and I'm doing a guys' night tonight we're i'll bringing our bows and some targets. I'm gonna break em out. Cause 200 yard, I'm the same boat shooting now with my bow. Very resty. Once we move in, I won't shoot 200, I shoot a hundred a lot.

Dang. And I can do that in my yard. So yeah, I'm excited. Dude, talk to your buddy Josh. Get a big Sasquatch decoy and put it at a hundred yards. No, I'm worried you'll burn my truck down when he comes out to the farm. Dude, I, oh man. I want to talk to, which will probably be at Bo Fest. I love you. I know yeah. I need to make some more connections man. [01:17:00] Cuz I wanna start sending arrows long range on. Oh yeah, that'd be so fun on animal targets instead of just blocks. Awesome. We're coming up on over an hour, coming up on an hour and a half, so I'll probably have to cut this one off, but I also have to keep getting stuff moved.

And we're going to Canada fishing tomorrow, oh. Have fun with that. I'm gonna go do some property work, change out some batteries. That'd be really funny. And if your camera then shoot my like, died. And the last picture it recorded was like the first shot of a multi-shot sequence and it was like the nose and the tips that are like already out to the nose and then your camera dies.

Dude, I'm about to send you some of these bucks, but I've had a couple bucks. I had one the other night. I couldn't see ears or any fur whatsoever. All I could see was, I guess its in entire left side sticking into the frame. And I'm like, this is a giant I see [01:18:00] one. Then you can get no other features when velvet, you can tell like how big the hair is and I'm And then like gauge how like much mass is there.

Yeah. With their, it's honestly harder when they're out of velvet cause you don't know how close they're to the camera. So it's Is this a heavy antler that's just the tip and like a short g4? Or is this the whole antler and that's just a really crappy g2?

Yeah, dude, that's, that's the same with shred hunting. I've seen that where it's like cameraman, Chris Antler. This is, I can't tell. Chris is, it's dude, this could be a monster. I've seen an encounter that's small or a dink and it turned out to be a dink. So no, I haven't either.

I didn't know they ex, I thought they just natural, I've seen spikes that they were already bigger than that this deer or this elk, unless that was like a freak genetic deer, almost everyone, or elk where either that was his spike year and instead of growing a spike, he grew a small four point side or an incredibly bad genetic elk where that was like, [01:19:00] that was his rag hor ear.

Oh, an antler cow. What if it was a, what if it was a cow? Could been, it could've been a cow that just had some weird, that could been that's an interesting thing. An antler cow. You should try to convince him that it's antler cow. Whatever was smallest antler I've ever seen on from just like psychologically.

Let's do it. I'll be like, Hey dude, you mind if I scrape? Can I just scrape a little bit off the pedicle and I'm gonna see? No, I wouldn't even go that far. I'm gonna take, I would just be genetic. Oh no. Yeah, Chris found ant cow shed and he's I did. And he's oh yeah, that one you found was an antler cow.

Cause he's not a shed hunter. So he'd probably believe us. Yeah, he probably would. Let's do it next time. Next time you talk to him and just be like, dude, I can't believe remember that time you found that antler cow. And then my luck is he finally started listening told podcast and he's already onto us and I,

yeah, let's hope not. All right. We're gonna get them. Yeah. Nice talking to you. Have fun and go fast. Awesome. Thanks for having me, man. And we'll have to catch up the [01:20:00] next time you're up in this neck of the woods. Awesome. Thanks for listening folks.

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