Big Buck Management

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks with Ben Mosely about his passion for managing his property and chasing big deer in America’s Dairyland.

Ben started hunting when he was 12, joined the military when at 18 and took a 6 year hiatus from hunting to serve as a rescue swimmer in the Navy. Ben bought his first piece of property after getting back from his first deployment in 2013. He moved back to Wisconsin in 2014 for school but ended up taking a Search and Rescue job in Louisiana where he currently lives. Due to his 14 days on and 14 days off schedule he is able to travel to his property in Wisconsin to hunt and get much needed management work done.

Dan Mathews: [00:00:00] All right guys. Welcome to today's show. And joining me on the show today is Ben Mosley. Now, Ben served in the military after getting out. He bought his first chunk of property up in Wisconsin, which props to him. That's the place to buy if you're going to. But then took a job down in Louisiana and so he actually travels pretty consistently up to Wisconsin to manage its property and to hunt up there.

So I'm pretty excited to pick his brain, hear what management practices he's got going on, the types of deer the age class, the rack size, all of those improvements that he's seen since beginning his management practices and hunting on that new chunk of land. And so we're gonna jump into this episode with Ben, right?

Like he was doing things that were just badass. That was one of the coolest moments of my life. I was really scared, but knowing that Dan had the gun, I did have the rifle, like we would be okay.[00:01:00]

Dan Mathews: All right guys, welcome to today's show. And joining me on the show today, I've got Ben Mosley. He is a Wisconsin native, but now lives down in Louisiana after serving in the military, getting a job down there, doing search and rescue. But this guy is a passionate whitetail hunter hunting in what some would consider the best county in the country for Whitetails.

We're gonna dive into Whitetails, start to finish on this episode, so I'm pretty excited about it. Ben, thanks for hopping on. Hey, thanks for having me. For the listeners, why don't you start out by giving an intro of yourself, maybe talk about who you are, what it is about whitetails that just gets your blood boiling.

Ben Mosley: So I started deer hunting when I was 12. I think 2001 is when I started deer hunting. I started bow hunting then too right away. And the way it happened, it was funny, my dad just grabbed me, was like, Hey, we're going [00:02:00] bow hunting. And I'd shot league before a little bit when I was a kid.

Shot a little bit. I was okay. He basically set me up, say, Hey, shoot within 20 yards. And then one day, like I said, we just went bow hunting, like no prep or anything really. Went up on my uncle's farm, put up a blind, and that's where I ended up, shoot my first deer was on his farm. But I didn't really get seriously into bow hunting until I'd say my senior year in high school.

And that's when I joined the military. So there was a big six year gap between me getting out and then really starting to pick up. I bought my farm in 2012 or 2013 when I was on a deployment. Started out with 38 acres and then I bought another little adjoining piece. And I keep trying to buy parcels as it comes up for sale by me, but it's like pulling teeth to find land.

But

Dan Mathews: yeah, there's a lot of big players searching out land in that county. . [00:03:00]

Ben Mosley: Yeah, homegrowns gotten pretty big. They're actually selling a farm. They're selling one of their pieces. Oh, really? And they've, I know they're starting in Minnesota and Kansas, I believe, but they run their outfitters a lot different than most outfitters I found.

They run a four year cycle where they'll have hunters for three years and they're no hunters for the fourth year. Oh, okay. I think that's a good thing. That's a really good thing as far as the potential of the antler size that you'll see. They're not gonna start smoking a bunch of three and a half and four year, four and a half year old.

Dan Mathews: Yeah. No, that's, that's awesome when you leave a place to rest like that there. People don't understand just how much benefit comes from that type of thing. And honestly, yeah, I haven't put a ton of. Stock in that until all of a sudden I moved out to Colorado for two years.

Nobody really hunted this property here in Missouri that I've got access to. And I came back, went out [00:04:00] late summer scouting and man, the amount of big bucks that are out here, and I'm not talking like 180 inch deer. I don't have a bunch of one 60 s running around. But compared to what I saw before I moved, it was night and day.

I'm talking, going out into a field and watching 7, 8, 9 bucks that are a hundred inches up to one 40 all walking through. And I had never seen that in all the years I hunted it before. And that was just two years that we were gone.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. And some of that could just be the pressure that's put on the pro.

But I think as far as homegrown goes, it's cuz the, I think their success rate's pretty high. Yeah. . Everyone that goes out there shoots something that's pretty, pretty good. I haven't seen anything posted on there, social media that's less than one 40.

Dan Mathews: Yeah. Yeah. And it makes sense as an outfitter you want high success rates so that people come back or you want yeah, you just want big buck encounters and a lot of them.

[00:05:00] And the more you can facilitate that, even if you have to take a year off every four years, it's gonna be worth it in the long run.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. And I don't take years off, obviously. I don't, I really can't think of very many people that do. But the way I have my property is set up is I can hunt it.

I've got certain stands where I can hunt every. and it would be very little footprint or impact on my property. So long as the wind and thermals are right. Yeah. But I've got stands, I come in using a creek and basically go right to the base of the tree, climb up, and then I can come back down and nothing will ever see me, nothing will ever pick up ground scent.

It's I've got a couple bulletproof stands. That's cool. I'm a vacant parcel that I can hunt. I've actually got one spot that's in a little three acre patch that's in the corner of someone's driveway and main road. I can watch everybody drive down the main road about 50, and I see a lot of deer there.[00:06:00]

The buck that I was actually after this last season, I had an opportunity at him at 27 yards. Didn't shoot him . He he came into the water hole and faced right at me. Downhill. And I drew back. I was drawn back for, I don't know, a couple minutes. And I think he's just started to know something was up.

I think he picked me up in the tree and then didn't run. He just bounded off into cover and walked away. Dang. And then prior to that, I had another opportunity, Adam. The woods just blew up. I think it was like November 8th, the woods blew up. There were bucks running all over the place, and he came through, hard nose to the ground, six, seven yards.

I had my bow in my hand already, so I drew back, but there was, he was not stopping. Yeah,

Dan Mathews: dude, those encounters are heartbreaking, man. Yeah. You're like, it's all [00:07:00] coming to it right now, and then all of a sudden it doesn't work.

Ben Mosley: But at the same time, I was a little happy. I didn't shoot him because he looked like he was starting to get a little bit of a drop tie on his back left main beam.

Oh, nice. He's gonna be nice next year while opening week in a rifle season. Watched him get shot by the neighbors. There was a a hot dough in there, and he was running around. I saw him on the hillside chasing the dough. Neighbor, missed him once, and then 45 minutes later he came back, oh, no. Same spot and got shot.

I'm like shit, my season's done. So I loaded off the truck and drove back down to Louisiana. Yeah.

Dan Mathews: What's that like? Having such a hot spot that you've put a lot of energy and time into and figuring out the deer, having the bulletproof stands, but then living on the opposite side of the.

Ben Mosley: Even though I live on the opposite side of the country, my two week schedules where I'm off two weeks on two weeks and I've got a wife that's pretty [00:08:00] understanding I just hop on a plane, come up to Wisconsin, get my work done, and I'd say that I still have more time to do it than somebody that lives right on their property.

Someone that works at five, five days, two days off. Yeah. Type of scheduling. I was just up there for six days. I spent most of the time pissing around with the tractor trying to get it fixed, but brand new tractor service ended up having to come out. I left and then they fixed it. Dang.

Dan Mathews: The what kind of work have you done since you purchased it on the.

Ben Mosley: the main thing that I've done. So when I purchased that property, I can stand on one ridge and look all the way through the entire property. So I've dropped a lot of trees, a lot of trees just going through with the chainsaw. And what I like to do is I layer it when I drop everything.

So my property is like a [00:09:00] wood, like a lot of people would call it like a, just a secluded wood lot. Okay. Cause I'm AG fields, the woods itself is 28 acres. I've got a marsh on the east side and then open ag on the west side. And then the neighbors is adjoining and it's a pretty open wood lot and more agriculture to the south.

It's all pasture. So the main thing that I had to do is thicken enough to cover I'm lucky to where I never really, I don't have an issue with invasives. I've got very little buckhorn, very little bush honeysuckle that I just take care of when I walk up to it. Usually I can just pull outta the ground.

It's usually pretty young. Yeah. The bar I usually carry little bottle of Roundup and Blue Dye for the buck Thorn. But the bottle, I don't have it here, it's up in Wisconsin. It's like a little roll on bottle. It works really well for just having in your pocket and little baggy to zap something [00:10:00] real quick.

Yeah. So yeah, I would say the biggest thing that I've done is just dropped a lot of timber. I've put a lot of the open fields that I have into C r P and then left. I think I've got about six acres of food on my property that I'll rotate through. Greens, beans, and corn.

Dan Mathews: Oh, okay. . Nice. The ag field that's around you what kind of crops are they typically putting?

Is it all corn, hay. Hay.

Ben Mosley: Okay. I've got very little grain where I'm at. That's around me. I would say the closest corn field that's actually harvested is three quarters a mile away. Wow. And it doesn't have cover. I'd been in, I'd been in that area when I was a kid. It's actually my grandpa that leases it and does the farming for.

Dan Mathews: Oh, okay. That's awesome, man. To not have that kind of grain close by. That gives you a huge advantage on your property with putting stuff

Ben Mosley: in. Oh, [00:11:00] and then to the south of me, I can see the, I can see it, but there's the farmer right next to me, he just doesn't, he has a Turkey farm, but he put in corn and beans just as a food plot, but his cover's pretty bad there.

And I lost you for a minute, but this winter after they cleaned me up, that's where they're at. So they're about, I don't know, half a mile, three quarters in that flew plot, but I can't imagine it's gonna last through February. Yeah.

Dan Mathews: Dang man. So you've got this secluded wood lot, you've done some habitat stuff, and I hear that all the time.

This is my first chunk of land that I'm actually able to do stuff on. I've put in small food plots here and there, but as far as actually creating cover or anything like that, I haven't been able to on the properties that I've had access to. But I hear all the time, chainsaw that's all you need to if you wanna make some serious improvements at a cheap price, a chainsaw is the way to go.

And yeah, like just [00:12:00] dropping timber, getting some more cover in there getting some more of that understory growth promoting that, like you'll produce a ton of food and a ton of cover all at once.

Ben Mosley: Yeah, absolutely. The only thing that I would suggest to most people before they go in there and just start dropping stuff is bring a forester in.

Learn the tree species. Yeah. And take care ofs before you do that. You might have just a lot of young bush honeysuckle. I know bush honeysuckle's an issue in Missouri or buck Thorn or something like that, but it's a lot easier to take care of that when it's a foot to two foot tall and just zap it right as it starts greening up with foliar spray than it is to have to go in there, cut it, and then treat the stomp or do some kind of basal bark treatment.

I was lucky I didn't really have to do that. Yeah. So lot of red, maple and deer love the tops as soon as I drop 'em. Actually while I was home, that's what I was doing mostly was I [00:13:00] had a hillside that I wanted to get a lot thicker that adjoins a food plot. So I went in there, dropped a bunch of timber, and then I think a day after I was done, I had two two big bucks back on camera that I hadn't gotten in over a month on camera.

Dang.

Dan Mathews: I so when you're dropping this stuff, are you fully cutting it down? Are you doing hinge cutting? What are you doing for that? I don't

Ben Mosley: like hinge cutting. There's some tree species where I will hinge cut only in certain areas. So most of the time I'll just flush, cut it to the ground.

Usually about a third of the height of the diameter is what you want the sump to be. But as far as hinge cutting, the only trees that I'll hinge cut would be like an elm. Cause it's got that tight fiber it hinges really well. Maples tend to barber chair and tear and they just, they don't stay alive.

Some people have had a lot of luck, but for whatever [00:14:00] reason, the red maple that I have on mine, they do not hinge cut. Okay. And places where I'll do hinge cutting is like on the cr, on the crown of a hill. Or a point where I know deer will bend in that area. I'll hinge cut those trees just to create a barrier screen initially until that ground cover comes back up.

And then usually I end up going back in there and I'll cut those hinge cuts flush to the ground. Okay.

Dan Mathews: Yeah that's good to know. I've, like I said, I haven't been able to do a lot of that stuff yet, but this property I'm on, it's got a small amount of woods on it. Only like three to five acres of woods.

The rest had been pasture and it looks like they had done crops in like years back. Yeah. But the nice thing is it creates a natural funnel. So I've got big wood south of the road, then I've got this long north to south finger of trees. Then a single tree fence row or like a [00:15:00] single row of trees on this fence line that lead to the north and it's all corn north of me.

So it's probably, I'd say about 160 acres of corn. So I've got this natural cover or this funnel that's cover that goes all the way up. And I was pretty pumped yesterday. I put out a trail camera for the first time. I mean we've only been in it for a week or on this property, went to put out a trail camera yesterday, had four dos bound out of that little woodlot and That's awesome.

I was like, yes. This is amazing. I go through there. There were two seaters that I found. It was close to dark, and so I wasn't gonna hang out in there super long. But I found two seaters that were both too big to get my hands around that were just shredded. Like three feet of them were just tore up.

And I'm pretty excited. We'll see what I can turn three acres into or five acres of cover into. But also there's a tractor on the property. It doesn't run yet, but hopefully it will. I'm [00:16:00] hoping to do some work with that. I'm just pumped, man. I'm super excited. So I love talking to people who have done work on properties already and had success with it.

How much water do

Ben Mosley: you have around you?

Dan Mathews: A lot of it is wet weather water. If it's spring and raining like crazy, there's a lot of cattle ponds that will hold water. There's creek systems that will flood. But in the summer, most of it dries up. . And so that's one of the things that I'm gonna be doing is putting in water out here.

And I've got some guys that do a lot of dirt work and they've already talked to me about it. One, I like to frog gig, I like to duck hunt. And so I do want to put a body of water in out in one of these fields. Yeah. But also from when the previous owner ran cattle on it all the way on the far west side, only about 40 yards north of the cover are two water spigots on a fence line with big old troughs right there.

So there's water all the way out to the far corner of the property. [00:17:00] And I think that I could solve the water issue pretty quickly out here.

Ben Mosley: Yeah, that's awesome. I hunt over a lot of water holes. I do water tanks. I don't know if you're familiar with the company Earth Lines. , but they're actually in Chippewa Falls, which is fairly close to me.

I put those in, put two of the 80 gallon tanks in before I was doing the cattle watering holes like a hundred gallons. They did all right that I just liked the way the earth blinds look more and I don't have a stick in them. The rodents will they can climb up the side of the earth blinds and I've put sticks in before and then had deer come in and knock that stick out.

And then I go back and there's three or four dead mice floating in there and that's never fun.

Dan Mathews: No, that would suck. Yeah, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to check that out cuz there's, excuse me. There's a lot of opportunity to get water in. In fact, [00:18:00] one spot in the woods. It was completely dried up when I went back to look at it, but it looks like it used to be.

a wet weather pond. But yeah, now it's all full of leaves. I don't know what it would take for that to actually hold water, but I'll definitely check out. Wow. Excuse me. I'll definitely check out that

Ben Mosley: water tank. Yeah. The other thing being in where you're at in Missouri too, the other thing that I would consider as far as shallow, natural, I wouldn't call it natural, but like a dugin pond is e H d.

I don't, I haven't really experienced e h d where I'm at. Yeah. I think I lost you. You there? Yeah, I lost you for a minute. Oh,

Dan Mathews: okay. Yeah. E h d that's definitely a concern down here. If it's stagnant water that's the number one Yeah. Issue. But if you can continue to keep the water [00:19:00] fresh or moving somehow the threat of that goes down significantly.

Ben Mosley: It's actually the mud where those midges breed, oh the mud

Dan Mathews: On the edge

Ben Mosley: and all that starts receding. You start getting that cracked mud and those midges will stay in that crack in the mud there, and that's when they'll breed and become more prevalent. Yeah. So that's reasons why I've stayed with the plastic water tanks is I, if I can avoid having e h d in my area, I'm gonna do everything that I can to avoid it.

Dan Mathews: Man, that's really interesting. I didn't, I guess I didn't realize that it was more the mud, I would always hear on the dry seasons where the water would recede. I just, I don't know if I just assumed it or what, that it was the fact that when the water recedes, you're not having it coming and going out of a pond, and so it just was stagnant, but it's actually the mud on the edges.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. Yeah. That's actually where they're living and breeding. [00:20:00] Dang.

Dan Mathews: That's great to know. So yeah, that's another big benefit of the plastic water tanks. And,

Ben Mosley: I know Earth Blinds did release a bigger tank. Okay. I think it, it's considerably bigger. There's 600 bucks, so they're not cheap.

But really, when you look at having an excavator or a track loader or something coming in to dig you a pond, that's still gonna cost three, 400 bucks to dig it. Yeah. If it's all, and then that's not even guaranteed to work. I can't tell you how many times I've heard of people having a pond put in and it doesn't hold water.

Yeah. And then they try putting liners in and the deer step on the liners, and then they put holes in the liners, and then they're I can't remember what the stuff's called, but it's , like some sort of gravel, not, it's not gravel, but they'll put that down and pack it. And that doesn't always work.

I would just rather use the the big water holes. The earth blinds are, I don't know, a little over a [00:21:00] foot deep. You've got the sides that the roads can climb up like I talked about. They're pretty easy to put in if you're willing to spend a little bit of time with a shovel or if you've got a tractor with a front end loader.

And so

Dan Mathews: they're pretty durable. That'd be worth checking in or looking into for sure. I know around here a lot of the farmers have cattle ponds that they've put in. Luckily the earth down here, there's a ton of clay in the soil as soon as you get down just a little ways. And so that seems to be what a lot of them do.

They'll just push out from the center, they'll get into the clay, and then that ends up being the top layer of the whole pond. And then once it's full, I mean it. , it stays full pretty well. There's definitely something that you drive by where you're like, they didn't do something cuz it's bone dry at the bottom of it come June, July.

Yeah. What what do you have, what do you have going on now with your property? Or, actually, let's back up. So you bought your property, how many years have you had it now?[00:22:00]

Ben Mosley: 10 years. 10 years. 10 years. 10 years. Yeah.

Dan Mathews: So over the course of that 10 years with the habitat improvement, with, being able to put the time in up there and then having the time to get out and hunt, what have you seen, like success-wise with the deer herd, with the numbers, with the age structure?

What has that been

Ben Mosley: like for you? Huge. It went from the wintertime, not having a single deer track in it. Very little deer. in general to now I'm the person that's killing the biggest deer in the area pretty consistently every year. Dang. So last year I didn't kill anything. That was my mistake.

Dan Mathews: At least. At least you can own it. Yeah,

Ben Mosley: but like these two back here are my last two. My wife doesn't like having a lot of head mounts in the house, so the rest are hanging up in the garage. I've got some still in Wisconsin. There's some other [00:23:00] stuff up in the attic, but I've killed I think I've killed a buck every year, but 16 and 19.

Okay. Really busy with school. And 19. I just had a, I just started working here at Bristow and actually. That buck right there. I'd hit that one in the corner. Yeah. I shot him in 19 hit him high. Like I was already calling the tax DMIs and like day before rifle season, so he got away.

I'm just like, great. That sucks. As soon as I saw the arrow hit and I saw the arrow flip, I'm like, that was a really bad shot. Tracked him probably tracked him for a few hundred yards and then lost of blood. I could tell right away I was just a, looked like a muscle hit blood.

Yeah. And 2020 is when I ended up killing him on Halloween. Ended up, I actually ended up [00:24:00] switching stance twice cause I knew what he was gonna do. I started out on the west side of my property, central and first thing in the morning. First I'm walking in and I got in late and I looked down into the hayfield that borders that western side, and I see a whole bunch of just figures of deer.

So I'm crawling on the top of this hill. I've got a bunch of c r p up on top, and I'm using the tractor field, crawling the stand, get up the stand, and about as soon as I get up the stand and I'm settled, I look down and I see a big body deer put my binoculars on it, and it's him standing there. I'm like, oh shit.

Okay, cool. Can I swear on this? Is that Oh, yeah. Is that okay? Yeah, you're good, man. All right. Just making sure. And he he went up into one of the really thick bending areas, budged a dough and a fawn around. And I texted one of my buddies. I'm like, I think I know where he is gonna go. I think he's gonna go right path the stand in.

Then I'd hit him in [00:25:00] before. So I get out of my stand and I run west. and I've got a big hill on that side and I basically all the way around the property using the terrain as cover, and I get in that stand. We've also got 19 mile an hour winds that day. So I can pretty much make as much noise as I wanna make and I'll be perfectly fine.

Yeah, I get that stand and I, 20, 30 minutes later he comes through that be area, but he's skirting the stand. He's, he is like, there's no way I'm going up there again. I'm not getting shot. , he didn't hear it. But he is about 70 yards away and he goes out, cuts the corner of the hayfield, goes over on the neighbors and I'm like I know where he is gonna go cuz a friend of mine had said, Hey, I just saw a huge buck cut across the hayfield and cut through your small patch.

I'm like, okay. So I get outta my stand and just before I walk outta the woods, I'm like, I better glass the neighbor's wood line and just make sure he is not standing [00:26:00] in there looking. This way, as soon as I put my binoculars up, I see his head turn. He was about a hundred yards walking away down the fence line.

I'm like, okay, 19 mile an hour winds, he's in real tough. I just started following him, just started walking along my fence line and the neighbor's fence line. And I'm like, I know what trail he is gonna come up. And he got pretty close to that trail and he started turning like he was gonna go towards it.

And I ranged the tree, but right by the trail. And I'm like, okay, 48 yards and we're down in a bottom. So the wind's just blowing over the top. He steps out, hops out of the thick cover into the hayfield. Then I shot him. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Gotta be kidding me. . When I wounded him, I shot him at like 12 yards.

I was just like, you were screwed up like a chip shot. And then when I killed him, I shot him at 48. So I was like, okay.

Dan Mathews: not only 48, but like getting down like, oh, it's [00:27:00] windy enough, I'm gonna, I know right where he is going. You, what a wild story to actually end up circling back and connecting with that deer.

Ben Mosley: It was nuts. It was absolutely nuts. And then come to find out he was shot at the night before. Really? Oh my gosh. Kid, about three miles north of me had shot at him and shot right under him. Dude,

Dan Mathews: that, that, that has got to be one of the worst feelings as a hunter aside from like shooting wounding and knowing that it died, but like never recovering an animal, like shooting at one, missing it, and then the very next night it getting killed by somebody else.

Obviously you love how that story ended, but I'm sure that kid was not thrilled. Yeah. .

Ben Mosley: I was at the other end of that this year and like I'd said it was completely my fault. Yeah. Where it's completely my fault. I mean I could have shot him feel like my setup, my arrow set [00:28:00] up. I could have shot him.

But I was just thinking, oh he's gonna be bigger next year. Yeah. He's made it , nobody's killed him. He'll be fine. And then just sitting in the box line. I do not take gun season seriously at all. I basically go there just to make sure I don't have trespassers and I've got my nephew with me and we're in the big box blind.

I call it the Snapchat cuz that's what I do. time is just sleep, eat. And my. Five year old nephew is the one that saw him. He goes, there's a deer. This deer is like two, 300 yards away. And I'm like, oh damn. I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's him. I wasn't really able to confirm for sure that it was him, but just assuming, cuz I knew he was betting over there and on mine, I'm like, yeah, that's definitely him.

Neighbors shoots at him. I see the dough running around, I see him running around. I see two other smaller body deer falling behind. I'm like, I [00:29:00] hope they just go over the bluff and don't come back. And 45 minutes later I hear the neighbors shoot again and didn't see the deer on the ground. But then the guy's wife with the side by side came over and I saw.

Four times up in the back and I'm like, I think that's him. Go over the neighbors and neighbors like, oh yeah, you can go take a look at it. It's in the back of my truck. And I'm like, first I'm like, oh, cool. It's not him. It's that it's that other, I was thinking that it was this bully buck that we had.

Cause all I saw was like short times. Then as soon as I stuck my head over the top, I'm like, okay, that's him. . Oh man. Like I said, went home.

Dan Mathews: Yeah. That's a bummer. I gotta ask. Okay, so that buck back in the corner, how wide is that deer? Because I can just, it, it's not huge on my screen, but it looks so wide.

Ben Mosley: Do honestly, I've never measured it. I've never, I don't score any of my deer. [00:30:00] Hang on, I'll go get a tape measure real quick. Yeah. Get

Dan Mathews: a tape measure for the people listening. I say it's not that big. I'm saying on my screen. , the actual image size isn't very big, but that deer looks like it's four inches outside the ears on each side.

And I've seen some wide bucks, but that thing is just, oh my gosh. And now that you're walking back to it, seeing the character of it, who I love those big square frame bucks that are just wide.

Get 'em all like this. Oh, this is to watch. I'm

Ben Mosley: slowly turning.

Dan Mathews: All right. He's off . Holy cow, dude. Oh, man. For those that are watching this, you're gonna have to go on or listening to this. You're gonna have to go on and check [00:31:00] this out on YouTube because that is a monster buck.

Ben Mosley: He is

Dan Mathews: 20 and three quarter, 20 and three quarter.

Three quarter on the inside,

Ben Mosley: dude.

Dan Mathews: What a stud.

Ben Mosley: And then, I don't know if you can see this guy here, but how this curled around? Oh my gosh. He was he was bigger the year that I'd hit him.

Dan Mathews: Dude I don't know what I would do if that deer walked in front of me. I would hopefully shoot it, but that is a stud buck, man.

Congrats. And that's awesome that you got to connect with him the next year. It was it

was

Ben Mosley: a pretty fun hunt. And then when I texted my buddy that I was texting, he is you what? I'm like, yeah, I just shot him off the ground. .

Dan Mathews: Is that the only buck you've shot off the ground like that? I can't imagine that happens very often.

That's

Ben Mosley: the only buck I've shot out of a tree stand. Oh, really? Most got outta ground blinds. [00:32:00]

Dan Mathews: Oh, okay. But like actually on foot going after him.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. Spot. Yeah. That's the only, I mean that if any other day I think, I don't think I would've done that. Cause I would've been like, I'm just gonna bust this deer.

Yeah. But as it was, you could just hear that wind tearing up over the top of the hill and I couldn't even hear myself really walking, so I wasn't really too concerned about it. I'm, I got in the tree the first I'd gotten in and it was a little bit smaller and I'm up in the tree. I'm like, this is stupid.

Dan Mathews: Really? You're just getting ready to launch out of the tree or for the tree to snap off of you in

Ben Mosley: it. Yeah. And I should take a picture of that tree and send it to you and you'd be like, why did you put a stand in that tree that. , but it, that stand's getting pulled this year, but it's actually rotten right underneath the stand.

And I didn't know that at the time that I'd hung it in that red maple. So it's gonna be pulled and moved back. I [00:33:00] found another tree. It's gonna be about five yards away from it. But yeah, I always that's , the stupid stand,

Dan Mathews: the nap shack and the stupid stand. I like I hear people's creative names for their bucks.

I like your names for your stands in your hunting spots, .

Ben Mosley: My dad, I had him hunt out of that year that I shot that buck. And he came down and was like, I'm not hunting in that stand anymore. He is that is way too high. I'm like, that stand is not high. But it's on a hillside, a really steep hillside.

So you're up it and it looks like you're a hundred foot up.

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We killed 150 pigs in 19 coyotes, just from the air. On top of that, we went out thermal hunting at night and got up close and personal to more hogs. I didn't have to worry about bringing guns or ammunition because all of that was provided [00:34:00] for me, and it is to this day, the most action packed day of hunting I've ever had.

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Yeah, I don't, I, I never hang high in stance. I just, I'm not that guy. I don't care to be super far up. My stand, my average stand height's, probably between 12 and 16 feet, I would guess. Or even when I sit in my saddle, I don't go super high up and I've just never been that guy. I've got guys, I had one guy who came out and I was like, yeah, dude, you can come out and hunt.

I don't think he's killed a deer in Missouri or had at that point. And so I was like, dude, put a stand up. There's this like four-way fence crossing that makes just an [00:35:00] dissects the property into four different quadrants. It's a creek system that runs through it. I was like, there's cattle that come through all the time, like I don't see a ton of deer activity right there, but I do know that they use it.

But the cattle all day long are running in and out of it. I go down there to pull some stands. I think it was like two years ago. that joker had to stand like 35 feet up in this tree. I'm talking like you're passing multiple crotches where like giant branches are coming out and it gets to the point where this tree's six inches around and he is got his stand hanging in there.

I climbed about 25 feet up and I was like, I'm not doing this. I'm not pulling this standout. And so I climbed back down and made my buddy go up and take it out the rest of the way. , I'm not that guy man. I'm not getting up to the top.

Ben Mosley: That stand really isn't hung high, but it's at the top of a hill.

Yeah. So it's only about 20, 22 feet up and most of my stands are in that 20, 22 feet. But when you're hunting like midway down [00:36:00] a hill, you gotta get high enough for the wind and you gotta get out of their sight line too as you just, you're asking for bad news. But my wife is she convinced I'm gonna die of non-natural causes.

like last, or last spring and summer for me was just, Bad year in May. I, yeah. End of May. Just before my wedding, I got hit by Lightning at work. Yeah. We'd flown out to a platform to do a medevac and we landed, we were flying in weather that we just should not have been flying in. And I'm in the back and I'm just like, this is fucking stupid.

This is fucking stupid. And the pilots are like we're in it now. I'm like, yeah, I realize we're in it now and we land on this shit to get this guy off. And as soon as we land my boss is, he's, he was the crew chief that day and I was the swimmer. And then we have a medic on board and two pilots and we land and left seat pilot's Hey, hurry up and go get the passenger.

And [00:37:00] I look out the door and I'm like, yeah, John the storm, it's gonna hit us in 10 seconds. We don't have time. And seat pilot's we gotta spin the aircraft back up, or we're gonna get blown off the ship. And we just get hit with 60 mile an hour winds. And at one point the aircraft starts listing and it's sliding across the deck.

And luckily in our right seat pilot that day he saved the aircraft and everybody on board, and he's basically flying this aircraft on the deck. He turned it into the wind, was flying it on the deck. And then to make matters worse, the ship had to turn, take it so that it wasn't broadside in the wind.

And that's when we had started listing really bad. And finally it lets up enough and we get off the aircraft. And I don't remember a wa, I don't know what was going through chief's head, but he went to the baggage compartment to grab something like, dude, what the fuck? I'm like, let's just get [00:38:00] off the deck and like right close the cabin door.

We get hit and have you ever hit a, touched an electric fence before? Yeah. Oh yeah. That pop that you hear. That's exactly what it was like. And I just hunched up pretty good and looked over my right shoulder. I didn't get it as bad as the other two guys. And they're both on the deck.

Like they, they got dropped, but they came too. Cause it was just flashover, it wasn't a direct hit. And they go running off and so yeah we were the ones there to medevac a patient and we ended up being the patient and get in the Lafayette general. And they're like, wait, what? You guys have the medical crew?

And now you're the ones here getting checked out. . Oh my

Dan Mathews: gosh, man. How wild. And yeah, I would imagine, like you're flying out in some nasty stuff. I've got a, I've got a buddy who does search and rescue. He's a. He's up. He used to [00:39:00] be up on Kodiak for the Coast Guard. And he was a rescues, yeah, he was a rescue diver up there and an instructor.

And he had stories like that, but I have never heard a story where he got electric or got struck by lightning while trying to save other people. What's

Ben Mosley: his name?

Dan Mathews: His name's Andrew. Last name. Gosh, why can't he married? Oh my gosh. He married a Messer. I, we knew his wife a lot better than him.

She actually introduced us to him. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. Cause I actually work with a lot of ex-co guard swimmers that were one of 'em was up in Kodiak that's still there. He

Dan Mathews: was Kodiak. I'm trying to think where he got stationed now because he was up there for several years and he, they actually invited us.

That's the only reason we had ever gone to Alaska is cuz we went his sister His sister was good friends with my wife in high school and then they ended up getting married. He got stationed up there [00:40:00] and they're freaking awesome. Like he got his pilot's license, they bought a plane, they've got Husky.

Or a Husky and now they've got twins. Yeah, super cool dude. But he had some wild stories from up there.

Ben Mosley: Name's not Jason McGrath is it?

Dan Mathews: No. His name's Andrew and his wife's name is Taylor and her maiden name was Messer and I can't think of what their last name is for some reason

Ben Mosley: that story, it just sounds really familiar cuz we had a, we've had 2, 3, 4 or five ex Coast Guard swimmers that have been from Kodi.

and one of the guys, Jason, he came back to the States. His wife was finishing school for a pa. She finished and then he is I can't wait to go back to Alaska. And they went up to Alaska. So that's where they're living now. He is like the hunting's, the best hunting I've ever had. And that's what I keep hearing.

Another guy [00:41:00] who lived in Oregon, he is yeah, when I was stationed in Kodiak, he's like the best hunting I've ever had. And they're like, their star cases are nuts. Yeah. Still works with us now Scott, he's on coast Guard, Alaska and Deadliest Catch a few times and he is dude those shows are such bullshit.

He was like, we went out one day and I actually remember seeing the Deadliest Catch show. He'd gotten hoisted and the weather was really bad, like it always is out in the barring sea. And he swung into a ConX box. And he is yeah, we went down there and dude's dead. This isn't his like first rodeo, like seeing bad stuff is normal for this guy is like whatever.

I think his first call was like the TWA flight that exploded in New Jersey. So he comes back, he gets hoisted back up and the takes his helmet off cause he is sweating and the production team [00:42:00] made it look like he was crying. .

Dan Mathews: Oh no. He's

Ben Mosley: Are you serious? He said he called the producer and was like, what the heck?

Yeah. Sorry it wasn't my call. Somebody else did it. Like whatever. But yeah, no, that's, the story

Dan Mathews: does not, that's rough. It is cool up there in Alaska though, and a lot of those flight guys in the rescue crews, they, they're big into hunting. And it's funny because you walk down the hall. and you see all this stuff from like The Guardian, the Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher movie where they're, where he is training to be search and rescue.

And then you go down this hall and it's like all of the animals that these guys have killed on Kodiak and all throughout Alaska. And I'm talking, there's bears, there's mountain goats, there's deer, there's moose, elk, all their big fish that they've caught and they've got like vacuum sealers in there.

I'm like, you guys are awesome. This is my kind of crew. Not to mention you guys are flying all the time, so you probably see where all the best [00:43:00] animals and hunting is on the island. And they're like, oh yeah, dude, trust me, we're all taking inventory. Like we can't hunt the day after flying. But we're definitely keeping tally of where all the animals are that we see on a regular basis.

Ben Mosley: Yeah, that guy Scott, that I was telling you about, he, he did over 20 years post guard, but his description of doing this job, . We act like children all the time. Yeah. But he is he's dude, doing this job is like being in fifth grade and going to recess all day. . He's cause it's such a close-knit community.

You just, you get to screw around. And like when I left the military, I was worried I was gonna get fired. I'm like, I'm gonna say something to somebody or do something really stupid and I'm gonna get fired real fast. And luckily I got picked up at this place and it's all the same people. .

Dan Mathews: You're like, man, you guys have bad mouths.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. I'm keeping my cussing down to the bare [00:44:00] minimum. Hey,

Dan Mathews: listen, we just poured concrete in our shop today, so I've been hearing it all day long. It's, it, I'm no stranger to it. . I've got plenty of guy friends and I've worked construction enough that I can handle it.

Ben Mosley: Yeah, that's something I've never done.

I've never poured concrete. I've hung drywall and what, and that there's a lot of m effort has dropped when I'm doing that.

Dan Mathews: I saw a comedy thing online. I think he was on the Instagram the other day. This guy was doing standup comedy and he is man, if you walk by a construction site and you hear the construction workers and they're like, oh shoot.

Gosh darn it oh geez, this stinks. He's that place is coming down. Do not trust the work that they do. He's the more they cuss, the better job they are at building or the better job they do at building. I'm like, Hey that's probably pretty accurate. I've

Ben Mosley: seen that same skid. I know exactly which phone you're

Dan Mathews: talking about.

Yeah, it was good. I got a kick out of it. Back to Whitetail honey. Yeah. What bucks do you have? [00:45:00] Obviously your buck that you were going after he got shot. Do you have a good group of uping cameras that you've been keeping track of?

Ben Mosley: Yes. So I had a three and a half year old that I let go of multiple times.

He's probably 140 inch three and a half year old, very clean 10 point on my Instagram. I've got a video of him walking right underneath me. But then the neighbor messaged me cuz I had this really short time to eight point bully buck that was just absolute jackass. He was pushing everything out.

I had a triple beam buck that just disappeared. And then it was just him that three and a half year old. And then the buck that got shot, the day that he ran by me at six or seven yards, I'm pretty sure that bully buck kicked his ass. And he disappeared for about 10 days. and like I was getting that bully box on camera nonstop.

And I, oh, I had another eight [00:46:00] point in there too. That was okay. But when that bully box showed up, he was the only one on camera. He was ugly. He just not impressive. I was like, I don't wanna shoot this guy. And I went and talked to the neighbor and he is he's my wife is shooting that buck cuz I don't wanna wrap my tag around it.

He's I really hope she kills it. And he texted me after gun season. He is look what I found. And it was that bully box deadhead. I'm like, oh, thank God, . I'm like, it's dead. And then shortly after he found that triple BM buck showed back up, I finally got a picture of him. And then I got a really big 10 pointer that showed up on camera.

Hundred 60 inch, 10 point, super clean. He's on camera a bunch of times now, and then that three and a half year old. So next year I'll have, I think I'll have a good lot to pick from. I'm really hoping that triple Beam shows up more like he did last, the season before last. Cause [00:47:00] he was a three and a half year old, super clean eight.

But he had, he started to get that unicorn coming out of the middle of his head. I would've shot him if I had the opportunity, but he's just huge body. I was calling him tank. Cause every time I'd see him, I'd see his body and I'm like, that looks like a baby cow runner through the woods. And sure enough that every time I put my binoculars on, I'm like, yeah, that's him.

And the neighbors to the south of me, they'd see him standing in their pasture right by the Turkey barns all the time. All the time. So when he appeared, I'm like, where did he go? And then about a neighbor. Neighbor about a mile and a half away is Hey, is this that buck you're looking for?

I'm like, oh. So he is over there now. I'm like, great. Like that bully box. Gotta go.

Dan Mathews: Yeah. Dang. It's crazy. It's awesome and crazy to see the deer interactions and how socially things play out on a property, because I had never seen that. Yeah. Like I, I would put cameras out and I'd get [00:48:00] crappy pictures way back in the day when cameras first came out.

And then I hadn't really done anything with it. I bought some, like real cheap ones from Walmart for a little while. And then finally I got some that take good video and I was like, sweet, this is awesome. I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna go in pull cards. They send pictures of my phone, but not the videos.

And so I'll go back and look and then watching these bucks come in, . And it really, it's wild. You see all of these younger, less dominant bucks just scatter and the big dominant ones will just come and push 'em all around. And it's pretty wild. Especially, as soon as that velvet starts to drop, it gets, it just amplifies.

And then obviously once they go into the rut, things get really crazy. But just the feeding structure they'll come in to feed and if that buck wants to eat there, it's gonna eat there and everything else better move outta the way. And I've seen it with doze too. I've got plenty of videos of doughs rearing up on their hin legs, kick kicking the crap out of a couple yearlings or younger bucks.

Get outta here, it's [00:49:00] my turn to eat.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. And I've found it really has a lot to do with that Deere's personality. And I feel like the other deer will know Hey, that guy's okay? That guy's a jackass. Yeah. Like the buck I was after. He didn't seem to be real aggressive. And I've got a lot of pictures of him sparring with younger year and a half, two and a half year old deer.

He, without a doubt, he would kick the shit out of those deer and they'd be gone. But he just didn't seem to be like that. But that every time I'd get a picture of that stupid bully, bo, there'd be no ought deer around. There might've been a deer a few minutes before, but as soon as they saw him coming, they're gone.

Dan Mathews: Man, that's it's cool. I love that side of hunting. I love like everything that goes into it. But you had mentioned there's a three and a half year old. You've got a bunch of other deer coming up that you're gonna keep a close eye on and some that you would've shot if you had an opportunity.

What do you have, like a set, spoken, written [00:50:00] structure of what you're going after or what the criteria is that they have to meet? Are you looking for a four and a half year old deer, or older or a certain size?

Ben Mosley: Usually four and a half or older. And whichever deer that I get most obsessed with is usually what I, and then I go after usually one, one deer is what I've started to do.

L year that I killed him. It was either him or that uniform buck that I was telling you about, the one with the triple beam. And it just, the way it worked out is he came by like point blank and I wasn't gonna let him go. So he's got super tall, bro. I don't know if you can see that from

Dan Mathews: there, bud. I can see, I can see it next to that G2 on his left side.

Ben Mosley: Let's see. His brow times are like eight or nine inches tall.

Dan Mathews: I gotta, I'm gonna show you a picture on here. The listeners aren't gonna be able to see it, but if anybody. Is watching this YouTube video. They're obviously gonna [00:51:00] see it. This buck showed up on my camera the 30 minutes after the close of season this year.

Look at, hopefully it comes through on here. Look at the brow time on that thing.

Ben Mosley: Oh, that's nice, . That's,

Dan Mathews: I'm like, dude, that's gotta be a 12 inch brow tie. It sticks up. He's got a fork g2 and it sticks up just as tall as it. And yeah, the, when I get the camera pictures sent to my phone, it doesn't come through super clear, right?

So it doesn't come through in 4K or, 10 80 or whatever the unit of measurement is, however many pickle pixels. And then so when I go and pull the cards, I get it in the full quality and that buck was about 50 yards from the camera during the evening. . And so I couldn't tell until I went and pulled it and I was like, oh crap, that's a good buck.

I've never seen that buck before. I don't know where he came from. But yeah, he's smart. He definitely [00:52:00] is. Like I said, never saw him before, never had pictures. And then season ended 30 minutes before he showed up for the first time. Yeah.

Ben Mosley: We actually had a buck a lot like that this year. He showed up sometime in November.

Cause I run all cutting link cameras. Oh yeah. Be cams, that's, I have to do that living down here. I wanna know what's going through. I wanna know if I've ever got anybody trespassing, which I did for the first time. I had someone trespassing this year that got nipped in the butt real quick. All I did was send a picture of it to the neighbor and the neighbor's yeah, here's the guy's phone number.

Okay.

But Yeah, that buck showed up on my uncle's farm which I have permission to hunt, but I set it up just for him and my cousin to hunt. My uncle's got als, so he probably only has this season, maybe next year left. So I was leaving it alone to him. [00:53:00] Andrey Pointer came through. The other neighbor, he said that he saw him was like, dude, this deer's huge.

And then we had this 9.4 and a half year old, nine point, another big fighter bully kicked the shit out of him, never came back while the neighbor south of my uncle shot bat buck. Opening day and tank of an eight pointer. He's 150 inch a point. Math. His bases are like that big around.

Dan Mathews: Gosh, man. . I, that's the amazing thing. Not that like every property has those deer, but when you're in that part of the country, Wisconsin leads the country every year in boon and Crockett and poon. Young entries all time they lead it. And then once you get into certain counties in Wisconsin, it's just lights out.

And it's not like that buck. There's bucks like that around every tree. People get that misconception, like everybody's shooting boers every single year. [00:54:00] Like you can get a property to the point where you've got a higher chance of it. But the wild thing is there's people on public land. There's a chance that you go out on public land and you come across an absolute tank and their bodies are big, their antlers are big.

Like we we hunted up there for waterfowl, not this past season, but two seasons ago, and we were over on the Lake Michigan side of the state. For people who don't know Wisconsin very well, the east side of the state, and we had these guys from Tennessee that came up to hunt with us and we were driving around scouting fields for the evening hunt, and there were just some doughs out in the field and they're like, dude, those are the biggest deer we've ever seen.

And we're like, they're, their bodies aren't small. I'm like if you look, I said, those three are yearlings. That one's a mature dough. And they're like, wait, those are yearlings. Like those are bigger than our five year old deer down in Tennessee. And people just don't understand. They're big body deer down or up there.

Ben Mosley: Deer [00:55:00] down here in like southern Louisiana are like dogs, like they're little, but you also don't see deer hit on the side of the road down here. We see like later spring, I'm gonna see alligators hit on the side of the road all the time. Oh,

Dan Mathews: that's wild. Yeah. Yeah I think I would take Wisconsin hunting over Louisiana hunting, and I know they produce some good bucks down there, but just the weather and the elements that you're hunting in.

I, dude, I don't wanna be pouring sweat and getting tore up by bugs all the time. When I'm out bow hunting, I would rather be cold. I have never

Ben Mosley: hunted down here. I work down here and like we have like mutant mosquitoes on our flight line in Galliano. Dude, they bite through our flight suit. I'm like, what the hell?

It's funny because we have another base just on the other side where we did the base closed down, but the mechanics would come and be like, I don't know what's wrong with the mosquitoes here? But they're different. These [00:56:00] things are man eaters. Yeah we'll get in the aircraft. You basically get in the aircraft and you just slam the door shut and you're like, come on, get the blades spinning.

Get up in the air so we can open the door and shoot these

Dan Mathews: things out. I'm just picturing it like the new Jurassic Park movie flying in a helicopter. And these giant mosquitoes are just like trying to take you outta the air.

Ben Mosley: My my first experience down in Louisiana, there's a, we had a pilot here who's a native to Louisiana, and I'm walking back down the dirt road and I sit down in the grass to look in the bayou or spillway, I don't know what it's called.

It's like a ditch. And I'm looking for alligators in it. It's a grass is mowed. And he drives by and he goes, dude, you are nuts. So I'm like, why? There's not gonna be any snakes here because they give you a briefing on poisonous snakes in the air. I'm like, there's not gonna be any snakes here. I'm like, the grass is owed.

He's yeah, there's other things other than snakes around here. And he just drives off. I get up and walk into my leads trailer and I was talking about a training flight we were gonna go on and I felt [00:57:00] something like sting man. I slapped my neck. Then they all started biting me Fire ants.

Oh, I didn't know what, I didn't really have any interaction with fire ants before, until I came down here and I then I just started swatting myself all over the place and Pete's from Florida, so he knew what they were. So he is laughing at me and he is yeah, you kill Juan. They send off a signal to the rest and they all bite you.

And damn. This

Dan Mathews: place sucks, dude. Yeah, I'm out, man. The south is just weird, dude. Everything wants to bite you down there.

Ben Mosley: Bite you eat, you're gonna kill you. Yeah. That's everything down here wants to do. I'm like, yeah. And my wife is from here, so there's no convincing her to move and now she's established in her dental practice here, so I'm like, yep.

Okay. I guess I have no say so,

Dan Mathews: dude. Are you worried? Are you worried about your kids having the weirdest accents on the planet? Like you've got Wisconsin [00:58:00] and Louisiana like that's gonna.

Ben Mosley: Bad accent until she's around her family members. And then you just hear it . Then you swamp rat come out.

And I'm just like, oh my God. . That's awesome. I called her Swamper. She's do not call me that. And I'm like, why? She's like it. If you look it up, it means hooker. I'm like, huh? Okay, ,

Dan Mathews: dude. That's hilarious. It's funny, man. The, there's certain terms that come up. So I I made a TikTok video like way early on when my wife was getting me into TikTok and telling me like, Hey, social media is how you're gonna promote this podcast, right?

And so I made this video and I said oh, check out my wife. She's super hot, whatever. And it, I mean like the video was, I think it was me walking in, she was getting ready with her makeup. And I go, do any of you Look at your wife and just go, damn it. Damn it. And and then the hashtags on it was like, my wife is hot, hashtag hot wife.[00:59:00]

And a bunch of people were like, dude, don't, is your wife really a hot wife? I'm like, yeah, dude, I think she's really hot . And they're like, do you have any idea what that means? I'm like, N no. And they're like, look up on Urban Dictionary Hot Wife. And mil literally like 1.2 million views on this video.

150,000 comments. And everyone's talking about Hot Wife. And so I go on Urban Dictionary and I look it up and it's like a woman who has multiple partners with her husband's consent. And I'm like, yeah. Oh shoot. Okay. Now I know how to get my videos to pop off really well just tag everything with Hot Wife.

But also there's a lot of people who are curious now if we swing that way.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. I think I saw that, I think I saw that video and I remember seeing that hashtag and I'm like, he might not know what that

Dan Mathews: means. definitely did not know what that meant. Yeah. I'm like, dude, how are you just gonna take a phrase like hot wife and throw that meaning on it?

I, there's probably more [01:00:00] people like me that don't know what it means then do.

Ben Mosley: Yeah, no, I saw some, like when you were first starting out, I saw some of your videos. I'm like, Hey, we should do this. And she's yeah, no, she's way, she's just too bougie. She likes her, like her space and big house and expensive stuff.

I just, I see her to ever live in a, like an RV here. Anything like that. Like my parents have a really nice trailer. Nope. .

Dan Mathews: That's funny. My wife she always gives me a hard time about that. She's . If you would've told me years ago that I would have dead squirrels and rabbits and deer heads hanging on my walls and things in my freezer I would've called you crazy when I first met her.

She was a hip hop dance instructor. I'm talking like high top Nikes, like one sweat pant leg rolled up. Really? She for real, a hundred percent man. And she's I would've called you crazy if you said I was gonna go hunting or camping in Alaska with grizzly bears or [01:01:00] eating venison, eating frog legs.

And yeah she is not even close to the same person that she was when we first got together. There's

Ben Mosley: no way I could get my wife to do that. Like she. Zero desire, which I'm fine with because this is my hobby. Yeah. I was married once before and I'd gotten her into it, and then I real realized that it sucked.

But there are some women that really like to do it, and I think my ex-wife just did it just to try it and it it didn't go over too well. So now his wife, number two, I'm like, do you wanna hunt? No. Okay, fine. .

Dan Mathews: Okay. So I tell all my friends that I'm like I want my wife to like hunting but not love it.

And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, I still wanna be able to do it. If she loves it, that means she's doing it all the time and I'm at home. And she does she enjoys getting out there. And I think the number one thing that she'll see I guess the huntress people on social media.

And it's not even necessarily like that's what they're on there for, but she'll see a cute girl [01:02:00] on Instagram with a buck. And she's oh, I want to be that. Like I wanna be still cute, but also be able to shoot something. And I'm like, yeah, I can understand that. But I don't think, no matter what, I don't think she'll ever be absolutely hooked on hunting.

I think she'll undo it or enjoy it. She'll do it for me. But other than that, she's not gonna just go out on her own.

Ben Mosley: Yeah. Which I'm perfectly fine with my wife not wanting to do it. And she's perfectly fine with me leaving for as long as I do. . When we first met, she was in dental school on two week off rotations, getting on an airplane and flying up to Wisconsin during my two weeks off time and then coming back.

Yeah. How we were the four years while we were dating. So nothing's really changed except now I live down here most of the time. Which is nice to be able to come home from work rather than having to live on. Bass and I've got a wood [01:03:00] shop set out in the garage so I can do that sort of stuff. And I get to go home and play lumberjack and farmer and everything

Dan Mathews: else.

Yeah, no, that's awesome man. To have that kind of separation, to be able to get out and do that type of stuff I just think it's needed. Dude, I appreciate you hopping on, man. I don't want to take up your whole day. I think we could probably talk for forever, but with us being so close, man, we're gonna have to get together up in Wisconsin this fall and grab a beer or something, get out and share more hunting stories, share trail camera, pictures, things like that.

Ben Mosley: Sounds good. Take it easy.

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