DSS: Mitch's 2023 Pennsylvania Archery Buck

On this week's Deer Season Special bonus episode of the Pennsylvania Woodsman, Mitch is joined by his buddy Aaron Hepler.  Aaron takes over the hosting duties on this episode and they discuss Mitch's 2023 PA archery buck.  This was Mitch's second largest archery buck on a brand new property.  They discuss scouting the property leading up to the evening of Oct 27 when Mitch put in his first sit of the year on this property hang-and-hunt style.  These two chatty characters swap plenty of deer hunting stories and experiences throughout this episode - this is what it's all about this time of year!

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You're listening to the Pennsylvania Woodsman Podcast Deer Season Special. These bonus episodes revolve around deer hunting stories and experiences from a host of deer hunters. These whitetail hunting BS sessions will be launched every week during the 2023 hunting season, adding fuel to your fire in the deer woods.

Be entertained and hopefully learn something along the way. The title sponsor of the deer season special series is Vantage Point Archery home to the toughest machined. One piece Broadheads made in the U-S-A-V-P-A products are built to last, which is why they have a lifetime warranty. And if you're not completely satisfied, you can send it back, which I highly doubt will occur.

New to the lineup this year is VP's Omega Broadhead. It combines the features of a single bevel with strength of a devil bevel. This broadhead also comes with lay flat sharpening technology. You heard right, a single bevel broadhead. You can lay flat and sharpen without a jig. You can find the Omega and all the other broadheads at vparchery.

com. The Pennsylvania Woodsman [00:01:00] is also brought to you by Radix Hunting, home of the M Core cell camera, stick and pick camera accessories, and much more. Also brought to you by Vitalize Seed, a one two planting system designed with diversity and biology in mind, making it the best food plot available. And lastly, by Huntworth Gear, quality hunting clothing at an affordable cost.

Makers of heat boost technology. This week we're joined by Aaron Hepler. Aaron and I are going to swap roles this week and Aaron's going to be the host as we break down my buck harvest for 2023 in Pennsylvania. We're going to talk about the stories leading up to this hunt from the off season work to my New Jersey hunt, as we touch on, and then getting into the meat and potatoes of the evening of October 27th.

It's a great episode. We swap a lot of stories. We share a lot of experiences. It's a great episode. Hope you guys enjoy it and I hope that your season is going well. Enjoy.

[00:02:00] I love cameras. Fortunately, like I, why I have cell cams, are you run token? I I don't have a lot of areas where I get really great reception that I like to hunt. Or me, maybe I'll have enough bars to send a text while I'm hunting, but it's not, it's it's in and out of SOS or, I think there, there definitely is a difference, but I think that a lot of people are forgetting about the woodsmanship part of it.

So I think that sometimes if you're like really relying on the dopamine drip that you get from like checking a pictures, um, if you're just really relying on that for hunting, you stop having fun hunting. Cause you're not getting, you're not. Taking out of hunting what you need to. And then you forget to Oh I'm hunting where there isn't a deer trail anymore.

There's no poop around here. There's no deer track. Why I think you really need, it's a fine balance. And I'll tell you, like I hit that buck this year and I checked that camera. I had [00:03:00] checked that camera. I don't, when did I check that one? I think I checked it in September and from the time. That I checked it or no, I didn't I checked it one other time I went in there to hunt in the first week of the season.

I checked it and I went back in there to hunt for this 10 pointer because like I knew This is it's like the big buck in the air wherever you get up there always does they all like They take each other's place from year to year and they it's, they almost assume the same personality.

It's very odd. I had an idea. I had the big buck on there that I, we had last year on November 1st and I was like I know they like to move through this area. Cruising, cruising, doe bedding or whatever. And I pulled the camera after I hit that buck. We had three bucks on that from the first week of the season to when I shot him.

And I was like, there's only three deer on here. And I just saw four bucks this morning. Only he was [00:04:00] the only big one, but I was like, none of those deer were on the camera and none of them were going to be on the camera. There's just so much room around a camera that you don't. Especially when you're big woods hunting, like if you don't got like that deer only has to walk five feet out of the frame and that's not a hard thing to do.

I've heard people talking about multiple camera angles in certain locations to try to catch stuff and one camera misses. Yeah Greg Glicksinger will put two cameras next to each other. He was talking about that. Yeah, he he picked that up from Johnny, cause he's told me that for a couple of articles.

That was his trail camera tip. So then when I had to go to Johnny, I'm like Greg already used your hang two cameras in the same spot. Oh, that's the one I was going to use. He should have just said, I'm going to use that again because Greg stole that from me. Oh, Johnny's got plenty to say. He's a nice guy.

He is. He's a chatterbox. I had him on, I [00:05:00] did an episode with him. And the summer beginning of fall that I'm going to drop here soon. Man, he's just... Just genuinely loves just talk dear. Yeah, he does Cameron always is like there's not a human on earth. That's more like a whitetail than Johnny Stewart

He's pretty funny man, I like we're going here like a half hour. We didn't even get to that. Yeah, we got to get to the meat and potatoes Yeah, the meat and the potatoes. So we're sitting here yakking away about all things whitetail hunting, with mr. Aaron Hepler Yeah, so good evening folks. Yeah, let's you i'm gonna be your guest host today.

You are gonna be the guest We we got ourselves on here Mr. Mitchell to Talk about his season man. You've had a you had a bang up season Yes, I have tell me about new jersey first because we didn't really you killed a buck in New Jersey, which is, you were on [00:06:00] public there or not?

Yeah. Yeah. And New Jersey is we all know it's the armpit of the nation. It's where, all the dirty things go. Some of my friends say that the ocean can just swallow it up. And they have some choice words. I feel bad for Greg. Yeah. That's what I, so we have Some of the guys that I hunt with Clint, were like, Ah, screw New Jersey!

And I was like wait, what about Greg? And they were like, When New Jersey gets swallowed up by the ocean, he can cross the border. But, yeah, so tell me about, it was pretty warm that week, huh? Later in the week got warmer. So the first day was the twelfth. We're like old men here talking about the weather.

It was pretty warm, yeah. It was. And it's funny, I remember when I was a kid. We joke about like the old older people talking about that. Yeah, it's amazing how well I remember the weather now. It's stupid Oh, yeah, but anyway, I remember it from last year. It was northwest wind 16 miles an hour is about 32 [00:07:00] degrees It's perfect Oh, man, but yeah the 12th the first day was at monday And that was when we actually had a cold front come through because it was like That was the first day that it was in the 30s, right?

Yep, so I remember I was a little bit chilly but as the week went on it did warm up In fact the day I shot mine I was in a t shirt, but it was now an opening day And I had a tree picked out. It was a spot I had a camera that I had a lot of pictures on I mean it was to a point where I was getting daily Bare pictures of the, at this spot, which I was blown away by.

And I had figured at this one camera, I had for sure from the minute that, from the day I put it out in the first 24 hours. I'm confident I had nine different ones on it, and it might have been twelve. So it was like I said, it was polluted with barrier, it was close to a corn field, it was between the corn and the swamp, it was a good spot.

I ended up seeing, the wind was doing 180 [00:08:00] degrees different what they were calling for. So that kind of burned me a little bit, I think. I saw a sow with four cubs that morning. And a buddy I was with, he saw he saw nine different bear. We had a great day, we saw a bunch of bear, but we saw a lot of pressure, and I got nervous about what that's going to bring when the muzzleloader season opened up later in the week.

Didn't see anything on Tuesday, and I had to go home because I had kid duty, and I was back and forth do I go back down, do I not go back down you know what, I wanted to do this, I put time scouting in it. I've wanted to shoot a bear with my bow. I'm just going back down. So I went back down Thursday, and that was the first day of the overlap, muzzleloader and archery.

Two of us had bows, two of us had muzzleloaders. 8 o'clock in the morning, my buddy Jason shot a real good one, like a 150 pound male. Nice. And then I ended up shooting a buck in the morning and my bear in the evening. Yeah. So that was crazy. That's a good day. It was a good day.

And it was funny because I [00:09:00] had fully expected, like I, I was telling you about this early in the year. Like I just didn't take the time to do a lot in the off season. But one thing I did in September, I had off Fridays in September. I think three out of the four of them I went down and scouted in New Jersey.

Yeah, and we never got to do that because we had planned on doing something together. I know. We live five minutes apart, people. You'd think that we like live miles apart in order to schedule something, do something together. It's just juggling schedules. It's getting better though. This is the second time we've hung out.

It's getting easier. We're gonna make it happen this year. It's definitely easier. But yeah, I was on cloud nine at that point. My season was complete at that point. Yeah. What do you think, what were the factors that made those, the good movement for you? Because you said the cold fronted order, you shot it in t shirt.

Yeah, I think it was we We adjusted so we hunted our spots day one and we did see bear and look looking back on it I [00:10:00] was making a mountain out of a molehill because we had a great day. We saw a bear I just got so nervous because some of them I knew got chased by people because it was multiple people Some were archery hunting there was people walking with dogs and we were afraid that where they were going that what we found a fresh Tree stand we thought are these people setting up for Muzzleloader on Thursday.

We didn't know what kind of pressure we were gonna get. And all the bear, into the cattails, into the swamps. And I have in my mind at home you get the pressure, they're gonna hole up, are we gonna see him later in the week? I overthought everything. So Tuesday, we hunted in the morning, and then we got down and, Mark, who I was hunting with we scouted together and that was the first time we actually got to scout together down there.

Every other time it was like he went down one time, I went down one time, but we looked at a couple different areas a little bit closer. Yeah. And That helped helped me in my mindset fine tune stand location. The place that I went to on Thursday, [00:11:00] there was there was cattail swamps on either side, but there was this pretty decent sized point, the widest part was probably 150 yards at the widest point, but it goes out and then necks down farther into the swamp.

Okay. And On either inside corner of this point, there was different swamps, right? So I, we had made a decision that I was going to sit on the one inside corner, and my buddy Jason, who shot the bear, he was going to sit at this other inside corner. We actually put a camera there and started getting bear on it.

And... You know that we made one little movement to a different area, but it was zero pressure. We had no people. We saw no people and looking at that part of the swamp from 100 yards difference. Was incredible because he saw four bear he shot There was two bear that came in when he shot his he said they're about the both the same size He just picked one and shot it [00:12:00] as he's sitting there excited He saw a third bear come in and then he called me and I'm on the phone with him and he goes comes a fourth One I'm like you're kidding me.

So I ended up picking up and moving over to where he was sitting on this inside corner. But I think it was just the, it made me realize I need to be more thorough with my scouting, but we did some scouting that week and adjusted and just moved to a spot where it's set up really well. There was a cattail marsh that came to a hard corner.

There was a hardwood point, and then there was this grassy marsh area, and they were just making this round on the edge of the cattails, and it was a good spot, and made an adjustment, and that's where I sat and killed the bear. Nice. Yeah, it was yeah, oh, too much overthinking. Yeah, but it's such a cool thing, and you guys killed two or three?

We killed two Jason and I killed the same day, he shot his in the morning. And then I moved over and set up at a tree that was like 60 yards from where his was. I shot my buck out of that tree. Nice. [00:13:00] And then we got the buck and the bear out. And then I went back in and shot my bear that evening.

Mark, so that was two. Mark went, Mark could've shot. So Mark is one of those guys who's shot like a pile of bear. , like he shot six in Pennsylvania, so he was waiting two with a crossbow. Okay. So he wanted to shoot a big one. Yeah. He actually on first. Are there big ones in New Jersey? Oh yes.

Yeah. Oh yes. There was a couple that I know bear are hard to judge, but. I'm pretty confident that there was one that was probably north of four or five hundred. It was a pretty big bear. He passed one the first morning, like seven o'clock the first morning. He's guessing it was around a two hundred pound bear.

It was fifteen yards and he left it go. He's first fifteen minutes and there's a bear. And he left it go. He's I probably should have shot it. So there you have it folks. New Jersey's good for something. Some bear hunting. So in four days, four, I think it was... Four days of hunting between four of us.

Some of these are the [00:14:00] same bear, but we saw 31 bear. I know some of them were the same. It was 31 individual bear sightings. Yeah, so that was a that's a lot of bears It was and I tell you what, I can't wait to go back. Yeah, that's cool You don't like you can't they're not easy to figure out around here like that Like they don't do the same thing every day.

I've heard people talk about it that they are but I've never seen it I think there are places that you could you know, especially if you're like a mile away from a bird feeder, you might be able to get them on a bird feeder pattern or something. I don't know. But the closest I think I've ever come is if we go back in here, that thing I told you about, they might be.

They seem to be holding up in that, like I heard them breaking around in there and they think they didn't come out. So they're probably hanging out in there, but there you go, munching on gut piles and stuff. You're going to have some time to go in bear season? I have the opening bear weekend off.

You do? Nice. [00:15:00] Nice. I don't know. I think, I don't know if my wife works or not, but I probably can probably be able to sneak out for an afternoon or something. Yeah, and Forrest this area is is open for that extended. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I was thinking that too if I would have some time opening week of rifle season deer, like, where do I want to go?

Yeah. For that very reason, because I can't shoot a buck now. Oh, that's true. I got a place for you to go. Good, we'll talk later. Yeah. I got, actually, I got a couple places for you to go, but, I don't remember, what did I call you for that day we talked? You'd shot shot me a text. We hadn't talked for a while and you shot me a text, said, Hey, you doing anything today?

And I'm like, actually, as you mention it, I'm driving to go hunting. I think we just wanted to catch up and talk about the beginning of the seasons and we ended up talking for, I don't know, an hour or so while you were on your... It was like an hour and a half. Yeah. Where I was hunting, it was a two hour drive to [00:16:00] get there.

Yeah, and Yeah we talked about hunting, we talked about life, we talked about a lot of good things and then you're like, Oh, I'm almost here. So just about to, we'll head out to the stand. I don't remember if I was hunting that evening or not, but that it was pretty warm that evening. It was hot.

It was like almost 80 degrees, I think. Yeah, it was, or at least here, it was definitely low seventies. And I remember Saturday when I brought the deer down, it was 80 degrees. Yeah. Yeah. And

We, wish each other luck and it was, I think that we were getting excited cause there was a front coming in like the next week. Monday was looking real good that week. Yeah, cause it was like, that was like leading into Halloween or whatever, like the 31st. And so it was a Friday I think, right?

It was Friday, yeah. I cut out of work early and decided I Yeah, so it was Friday the 26th. Maybe it was the 27th. Yeah, because that Monday was the 30th, I think. Okay, so it was the [00:17:00] 27th. Whatever. It's one way or the other. There was a cold front coming. We were excited about the cold front to hunt around local, whatever.

And we talked about Everything under the sun on your way out there and like two hours later, you're like, I just shot a hammer eight pointer. And I remember being like so pumped for you, but I didn't hear the story yet. So that's what we're here for because I said, just save it in case you need.

Just save it. We'll do it. I'm not going to lie. This is really, it's just fun, but this is really strange because I'm not used to being the subject. So it's different, but no, it was it was pretty cool. So the place that I hunted I had talked to you about it earlier in the year, like Now, this is up at your cabin yet?

No, this is, so this is actually a property I got permission on last season. Okay. This is one of my farmers that I work with. Benefits of benefits of the job here. Exactly. Perks. Perks one, one of the first times that it worked in this manner. Yeah. But no, they, [00:18:00] the first year I worked with this grower, uh, was driving me around in the area, showing me his farms, like the first time we were, he ever, hired me and he drove, like up this mountain road from this one farm that he had going back ways to go to another farm and on the way He goes. Oh, yeah, my dad owns that place and I'm looking at it. I'm like, what does he own that for? He bought it cheap. I was like, oh, okay, and It's 30 acres of mountain land or something like that.

He's yeah, we see a lot of bear there. That perked my ears Oh, yeah bears. Yeah, tell me more. Yeah, exactly and I said Does anybody hunt it? Sometimes the Amish men come up from Chester County and they come he goes, but I don't know he goes I said can I check it out for bear hunting?

Yeah, shoot some deer while you're at it So I hung cameras there last year for bear, but in the process I noticed there was good deer so fast forward to this year I have a tag in my hand and there was pretty good buck on the camera. So I [00:19:00] This was the first hunt that I did that was not at my house this year.

My wife had it planned out. The kids were with her all weekend. She said, you got the weekend to hunt. Okay, I'll take advantage of that even though it was 70 some degrees. Yeah. This spot, my buddy Mike and I hunt. And, Mike has hunted with me now for somewhere between 5 and 10 years. And he's at that point where he's starting to Not have me take him like he's learning stuff.

He's doing stuff on his own and when we got this place he started like He got some of his own cameras and was running his own cameras. I ran some of mine last year, and I had I had a cell camera at this one spot, but he did all the cameras, and I scouted it on foot a couple times, but he did some on his own, and he was running his cameras, and I said, I'm gonna let you decide everything you want to do here.

You tell me, and he said, okay, and we got it before season. He wanted two locations, he had cameras he wanted to [00:20:00] ping. Hang ons, so we hung them and like the end of September those spots really dipped off. Yeah, so He had he'd hunted a couple times and was seeing deer but not seeing what he wanted I said look I said you need to stop relying on those cell cameras I said go pull some of those other cards And then he pulled them the week before I shot my buck and he pulled them and said, Yeah, you know where you hung the cell camera last year?

I'm like, yeah, I hung it. I remember he goes there was a lot of good buck coming past there. He goes, but we don't have a stand there I said that doesn't matter. I said I could make that work So I decided that day that The property is like a north facing slope and it was I forget what the wind direction was even calling for that day But it wasn't overly windy and even though it was hot the air was pulling down The thermal was pulling down the hill a lot in the shade.

Oh, yeah, that's true. You're on the north side. Yeah, and I didn't know what to think like when I was working my way in I knew where I wanted to hunt, but I wasn't sure if I could [00:21:00] sit where I wanted, just because of that. But the whole time I'm walking out the ridge, and I'm checking the wind, it just kept pulling down, or it was pulling the direction that I wanted it to go.

I thought I'm just gonna try this, north Facing Slope, there's towards the bottom of the property, there's a pretty dominant logging road. And when I had scouted it before the ridge above it you can see from all those points and those benches down onto that road. Yeah. And I'd seen a lot of deer beds and rubs and stuff, and I thought, I can't walk that road because if anything's bedded there, it's gonna see me.

I dropped down below that road on a... a side hill basically and I just walked the side hill out real slow that afternoon and I had a pin I knew roughly where I never walked that part of the property that way before I knew where I was but I to go where I'm gonna had a pin to where I wanted to go and I got up I walked perpendicular straight up the hill to the logging road okay I looked at it where I wanted to sit and [00:22:00] I picked a tree it was, there was a very small hollow that went up the side hill here and there was a bunch of logging roads and like switchbacks that intersected right at this hollow.

Okay. And the deer just naturally used a lot of those. Sure. There was trails and stuff that like, but that was where a lot of stuff had congregated. So I picked a tree at the bottom side of the one logging road and it worked perfect because it was a hemlock tree and halfway up it was, Knocked off dead.

Oh, so I climbed up and I was basically like I had my platform. I took my saddle. I had my platform Above that so I could shoot over top of it, but I'd cover in the front Yeah, so I got set up and took me a while to get set up. I'm still not used to salad This is the first year. I really did any of it.

Okay, so I did a little bit in the past, but This was the most I did. But anyway, I'm still getting, figuring out how I want to get my set. But I got situated, and I didn't see any deer that night, except for the buck that I shot. But I was I [00:23:00] was in the tree, and I wanted to ask you, do you ever bring rattling antlers with you?

Neither do I, but for some reason... I, Before I left my house, I have a, they're real antlers on paracord. I had them hanging up on my, above my workbench for whatever reason. I looked at them. I thought, this property is not real pressured. I'm going to bring those with. I think that's a good situation to do it in.

Cause that's the only reason I don't bring them. I'm like every buck I've seen that I rattled at, went the other way. So I don't bring them just for really, for that reason, I've never. I had never rattled in a buck. I've never I rattled in one buck I would have shot. It was probably a nice three year old eight pointer.

He came in within five minutes after I rattled, and he took a, he went around a dam breast and walked through boulders of rocks to get downwind. [00:24:00] Yeah. And he stood there for 45 minutes and, or not 45 minutes, five, four to five minutes. And then he finally got, had enough and sort it out and I never got a shot at him.

That was the only good buck I ever rattled in. Everything else in my life was just, you're half old. Yeah I've done that a lot of times on the farm, rattled stuff like that in. Yeah. I mean I have great success with grunt call. Including blind, like I blind grunt. If I'm sitting between doe bedding areas and it's thick, I blind grind every now and then.

I still think this is my favorite cult. Yeah, it works. It works. That's been my best one. Yeah. But, for whatever reason, I looked at those, I thought, I'm gonna bring those with, because this property, again it's weird because there's hunting pressure around it, and the guy that owns this land... Has a lot of people that hunt his properties.

The guy owns a lot of ground, but they all hunt the farm country ground. And, since I've been there, there hasn't been people there that I've seen. I thought, eh, what the heck, I'll bring them with, and I had them in my backpack. [00:25:00] And, I had rattled one time about, I don't know, 5, 5. 15, and I was just getting them and just tickling them a little bit and nothing.

And, got towards 6 o'clock, and I thought, this is the time, a lot of the time, when I see the deer. cameras or the hunting observations we have had, they work out the ridge. It seems like they go one direction on the ridge in the morning and they come back that way in the evening. Okay. And a lot of time they work the top of the ridge.

We get them coming, but they'll work the top of the ridge and then sometimes they'll trickle down the side hill and come down to where I'm at. So I thought who knows, maybe I can get a buck. Let's work in the ridge to work his way down. So it was about six o'clock, um, I grabbed the rattling antlers.

It's just the same thing. I just started just press, just like young ones pressing a little bit. Yeah. I didn't really... Bash into it hard. I just started tickling and twisting the tines together and I didn't rattle I know I didn't rattle more than 15 seconds, [00:26:00] but I think it was more like 10 seconds And I heard this I'm thinking that's a buck.

Yeah, so I mean I Ri immediately put the oc the the binoculars, the an put the antlers back in my backpack. And I'm like, fumbling. 'cause it's on the front side of the tree. And at the same time I'm looking up the ridge and I see it's a buck. I figured it had to be if it's running right. So I flipped around the other side of the tree and grabbed my binoculars.

And when I looked at 'em, I. Oh, I'm shooting this deer. There's not it's not even a question like I didn't know which buck it was. I'm We had a bunch of buck that looked the same, but I just knew this is a good buck All right So right then went into kill mode pick my bow up and grab my release And he gets down right at the one intersection of the trails And he's at that point he stops and he's facing me and he's probably like 20 to 25 yards, but he's ears pinned, look and look.

And then he starts trotting down and he [00:27:00] runs across the road. Now he's 15 yards. Now he slows down and he starts doing the walk. And I, he's getting to a point where he's almost under me. And I draw back. And I'm looking for him to give me enough broadside that I can shoot and I'm also trying to weave it because there was some like light branches and just twigs.

Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out the right spot and he finally gets to a point where he turns pretty well and it was pretty quiet that night and I'm not opposed to stopping deer but I don't always like the meh. Yep. And when it was that close a lot of time I just. Something like that. Just to get him to like slow down or pause.

Yeah. What's that? He was not, he was just jacked up. He was looking for this, so I had, I was, doing all that. He wouldn't stop, I just out of desperation because he was almost to a point where he was going to be had too much brush. I couldn't shoot I just stopped him. Then of course he stopped and when he stopped he he was like taking a step forward [00:28:00] and then he came back You know had his legs standing there and he was quartered towards me, which I don't like taking that shot But he was literally at this point.

He was 12 yards Yeah, and I was looking at I was like I could definitely get both of his lungs. So I just Put my pin on him and just said pull that bow went off. And I didn't see the arrow hit nothing, but he wheeled around, ran 15 yards back onto the logging road, stopped and was looking back what the heck just happened?

It's Oh geez, quick grabbed another arrow. I was drawing back, getting ready to shoot him again. And he just took off and he went. Up the side hill. This is like a side hill up here Yeah, straight up the side hill on a logging road, but he just kept going and going I'm, like I have never seen a fatally wounded deer do this before.

I mean i've heard it. I've just never seen it. Yeah, and I'm looking him up and out because I can hear him coughing. I remember you, we talked on the phone. You called me and you were like I'm real worried. [00:29:00] I don't know. He went straight up a hill. Yeah, I was. It was, and it was one of those things.

Like I talked to you that night and a couple other people because like you get so worked up. Oh, it's like I needed people to talk since today. I know the feeling you just do. And I just wanted people to just tell me what to do, even though. In the back of my mind, I knew what to do, but yeah, that's part of why we have buddies in hunting, right?

You know the shot you made and what to do with it but like when you're in that moment, it's the same thing like when people are in the hospital and Like i'm a nurse, but if my family's in the hospital, I feel differently than you know It's the same idea you want your buddies to be like, yeah, you need to do this.

It's just validation but yeah, I know the feeling But so what was the recovery like? I don't, did it take you, did you go right after it? What was the... Recovery was actually easy, but as this deer was going up the hill, I kept thinking he was dead, just walking on his feet, but, cause he, he made it [00:30:00] up to the edge of the ridge, and just before he got to the bench, he stopped and was swaying, he was coughing, I could actually see blood coming out of his mouth.

Oh, you did tell me that. And then he got up to the ridge and laid down. Okay. And I thought he's gonna die there. Yeah. And then he got up and he walked farther. And when he started walking again, I lost him behind a big cluster of trees. And he, I never saw him come out the other side. I thought one of two things happened.

Either A, He laid down behind those trees, and I just didn't see it, or B, he turned and walked straight away from me. The fact that he laid down, and within two minutes he got back up again, I just kept thinking, I was doing the whole second guessing. Did I hit him where I think I hit him? I've kept thinking, was it quartering?

It was quartered towards me. Did I actually hit him back? So was it a... a full frontal shot or just a quarter. It was quartered. If I would have hit, I hit him right where I was aiming. I should have aimed a little bit more forward to get both lungs, but I still think I got the front lung.

I got his liver, the diaphragm and it went through [00:31:00] the front of his chest. Usually if he gets diaphragm it's a kill because you just collapse both, end up collapsing both lungs and puncture a hole in that. And that's what ended up happening. But I just, again, overly nervous. So when he went behind that, I back, I just got out of my tree and went back to the truck.

And that was when I called you. Yeah. I was talking to you about it. And You were like, Oh, I'm thinking an hour to 90 minutes. You're fine. And I'm like, yeah, I think you're right. But I just keep going, what if? And I ended up talking to a couple other people. I talked to my uncle and I talked to Otto, who's my good friend.

Has, is, has a tracking dog, has a lot of experience too. And he was on the extreme end of things. And he's go back at nine o'clock. I shot him at six. Go back at nine o'clock. And I was thinking that sounds a little bit long. And then in the meantime, ended up. My buddy that I hunt with he was at a football game and he's like just go back to my house He said I'll meet you there.

Then we'll both go look for the deer. All right, that sounds good till we got there. It was like eight thirty nine o'clock. So it really was three hours, [00:32:00] but The recovery was I just went up the side hill the last place We had blood and I said to him we got three quarters of the way up the hill I said I want you to stand here and just listen Because if I crest this hill and he gets up and runs, you'll be able to hear where he goes better than I will.

He did that, and I crested the ridge, and when I got up, I shined my light to where he was bedded, and then I... Pan my light over three feet and there he laid. He only late went five yards and laid down. What a relief. So he was definitely dead. Yeah. There's a couple, so you could go on extremes for that, right?

Cause maybe you only hit one long or not saying that you did, but if in theory that could be a one long shot he was. What do you say? 12 yards. 12 yards. Yeah. So like your angle could have been steep. One long shots suck because they can go a long time on one long, especially if you don't hit a diaphragm.

So one long shots where they die instantly and one long shots. Exactly. So what the, what [00:33:00] ends up being the difference is the part of the lung that you hit, obviously. Whereas if you take out like a lot of major blood vessels when you hit that one lung Well, that's what's gonna kill him So if you hit one lung, it's like the base of the lung and you just hit a lobe and then that's it like You're talking but if you let that deer go for three hours, he's gonna die because He'll just he'll bleed out in his chest cavity and not know it.

But if you bump a deer with one lung like that, they'll go forever. And then they'll just close up that hole. And then you're out of luck, cause they can go a long time on one lung. Sometimes they might not even die. That's pretty uncommon. Usually they, yeah, it's definitely a rarity.

Yeah. Usually they die if you hit them in one lung, but it's possible that they could live. So I think what you did was right. But it was extreme. Yeah, it was extreme. But I think like the good thing is about people are like, it's so hard to wait. That's the hardest time to ever be patient in the woods is [00:34:00] when you shot at a deer.

. Whether you wanna check the arrow, see if there's blood. It was a hair. Did I miss? What was it? And I think what you did was good because you took into account like it was extreme. A lot of people think an hour is extreme, but sometimes a double lung hit, deer can take an hour to lay down and die.

Depending on, again, depending on, what other major blood vessels you caught in that, it might take a while. Judging where the deer died, how stiff he was and everything else, I think he was dead within an hour of me shooting him. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He probably was dead in 20 minutes. He probably was.

Yeah. But... The real deal is there's no reason to have anxiety about waiting an hour, like your meat ain't going bad in an hour. If you're worried about the meat, it ain't going bad in an hour. Think, we were talking about this think about the guys that hunt in the West. They take that animal out of the skin.

As soon as whenever they get to it, probably an hour [00:35:00] or longer, depending on how long it was, they get it out of the skin and then it's in their camp for five days and however they take care of it. Maybe they got a cooler or, maybe they brought plastic bags and are putting it in creeks at night or something like that.

But as long as you keep it in the shade, it's not going to go bad. Keeping it dry and just keeping it like getting that. That animal temperature down to whatever the air temperature is you know whether that is like if you quarter your animal out if that's like making slits down to the bone Because the bone will hold heat like things like that that's important but like ultimately when you're going after a deer your best results with a bow are to at least Bare minimum always wait an hour unless you saw it fall over if you heart shoot that deer It runs 40 yards and it tips over like you're good.

Yeah, like you can go get that exactly But if you don't see it, you should wait at least an hour and then you need to think about your shot So like we were talking I hit a 10 pointer [00:36:00] Two week a week ago. Yeah a week ago and I thought that I liver shot him And we waited five hours to start the track and probably bumped him.

I think we wind bumped him when we went back in to start looking. But he still had, blood, but the blood was like getting more sparse. So that's why we got a dog or whatever. And ended up not finding what dog and ended up going just doing investigating. And I found him, he, but he was very alive, he he.

Ran across a boulder field and then scaled a side hill like no problem. Like he's not hurt. Yeah Did you go over and see it was him with by the bed like? So I found a bed with blood in it tracked it down a hill lost blood. I was with one of my buddies and We dropped down to where the big buck always goes into this area.

We dropped down we Swept two benches didn't find anything. We come up to a third one, which is not really a bench it's more like a [00:37:00] bigger flat below like a cliff and He's like I'm just gonna circle out to the end of this and if he's down there I'll holler or whatever and just make sure he's not laying over there.

He walked down And he texts me, I just kicked up a bunch of deer and then two minutes after I get the text, he's I got him. I got him. And I'm like, what? And I like start running through the woods. I can't believe you got him. And I hear something running and I like look to my right and there goes my buck just flying across these boulders.

Now he said it was bedded in rock. Like it was bedded in a big. Patch of boulders. I've seen him do that. And he said when it stood up it like was staggering He's like it looks really hurt and I'm like, look hurt when I saw him He was leaping 12 feet across those rocks. It was definitely the deer I hit.

He has a defined He's got a four on his right side. That's really long Okay, so I recognized like I saw him right away and I was like it was definitely deer I hit [00:38:00] And there was little spots of blood every now and then. Okay. So I must, I think what I think what I thought I hit liver. Cause I hit him, I grunted him in and he came he was like, where, what is in my, where is it?

Yeah. And he was like doing one of the looks around and, um, he was coming so fast and I remember drawing my bow while he was behind Laurel's. And I think I told you this story in the morning was like, it was a messed up day. But anyway He came onto this trail and when he came I realized my face masks in my way I'm pulling that down getting I'm like, oh, he's in my 20 lane.

I pulled my face mask down and by the time I got Resituated I thought he was at 20 yards, but he was more like 28 yards Oh, like he had taken two or three steps and I didn't really realize it because I'm you know, you're all It's a huge moment truth and he was still walking slow at 20 yards that wouldn't really matter and I didn't I forgot to stop [00:39:00] him when I probably should have because He was walking slow, but maybe fast, especially at 30 yards.

So I ended up hitting him low. And to me, it looked like I was three or four inches above the white. So that would be a lip bottom of the liver show. I think in reality, like I think if I, in my mind, that's what I saw, but your mind plays a lot of tricks on you. Moment in time. So I think he didn't drop he didn't duck the string at all because he was so pissed off Like he didn't even run like when I hit him like I remember hearing a pop and I was like, oh I got his diaphragm Maybe I got his diaphragm because he was maybe quartered away a little bit But I think what ended up happening is I probably heard at the bottom of his ribs cracking and then I think I went through His brisket.

I don't think I even I don't even think I breached his body cavity. There was a little [00:40:00] muscle on the arrow. And then when I, when you look at it again and there is a bit of fat on it. Like the back end of it has a good amount of fat on it, but the tracker thought it was good blood.

He was fairly confident it was liver. I don't know. That's tough. It is. He didn't, if it was liver, he was alive 30 hours later, equivalent to when we found him, it was 30 hours. And that's not common? Is it possible? Yeah, it's probably possible, but I often wonder too when you say it's possible, you probably didn't hit where you thought you hit, like you're already saying.

You know what I mean? Yeah, so we'll see. Maybe I'll get pictures of him. I haven't hunted him again. Okay. Not that I don't want to, I just, I don't really know. I Boogered him up good, man. We caught up to him twice, like he's going to be pretty smart. I think the bed that we found him in is where I suspect that he doesn't bed right now.

I think he beds close to where I hunt him [00:41:00] or where we tend to hunt the big one every year. I think where he was bedded was where he tends to bed during the summer and during the early, like early half of the season. So I don't know but it's hard to say the one thing I've learned with a lot of game is they take you To the places they feel the most safe.

Yeah, and that was evident with stuff already this year I didn't even tell you that story and it's probably not worth not enough time But the bear that Jason shot in Jersey that was quite the blood trail, but the place where they found it was in a tunnel of Briarbrush. And you literally could not walk through it.

You had to army crawl through it. And they found blood going into it and they army crawled into the spot and literally did one of these and, whoop, there's a bear laying there dead for me to UOA sign a deal. The only time to ever get the animal to avoid going to where it's safe is to either shoot it through both lungs or heart shoot it because then most of the time you're gonna Either A, like you did, watch it lay down [00:42:00] once or twice or B, it's just going to tip over.

And the biggest thing for me, I think I know this, but it really reiterated it was like, when you're excited, like talking to people who Have this have experience and can make sense of it to you because I was like when I When I shot I called my uncle my buddy right away we're actually hunting together and they're the people that I call first for everything right and I'm telling him about the whole thing and I said, I think I gotta back out, I just gotta back out.

And one of them, I can't remember which one was it that said if you get down and go over to your arrow, are you gonna be at a spot where he can see you? Yeah. I'm like, no. He's then just sneak over real slow, get your arrow and see what it looks like. Cause I can see it from the tree in my binoculars.

He's just go over and get your arrow and look at it. He goes, if he can't see you and you walk quiet, you'll be fine. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of that. I went over and looked at the arrow. That didn't really help my confidence. . But it was like, just little things like that. And then, I [00:43:00] talked to you and you gave me a lot of thoughts, like Yep.

Aaron's right. Aaron's right. I talked to Otto and after we found the deer, I, sent my pictures out to everybody and I remember I was talking to Otto. . And he he just said, you did everything right. And I said, thank you. I said, and I said to him, I said. I know what I'm doing, but boy, does it really help to have people with more experience tell me that, yeah and there's always a time where they're wrong, but it is, it's so helpful to have that I have my my best friend, I grew up with him. You do work on it? Yeah. I'm good, yeah. So he's always I text him first most of the time, or I'll call him first. And Most of the time I'm like, Oh, I don't know dude.

And he's you're fine. I know how you shoot, and he did that with this deer. I think he was trying to be nice this time, but like I made a frontal shot

Two years in 21. I made a frontal shot. Okay, and I was like, oh, I shouldn't have taken that shot It was the only shot I was gonna get because that deer like there was a [00:44:00] seven pointer in front of him and that deer Kept trying to come out around me to get he knew I was there, but he just couldn't Like he looked at me a few times, but he just couldn't put it together.

And he kept trying to go out to the edge, like to my side to catch my wind. And finally he like got the balls to go around the edge of me. And he busted me in that 10 pointer jumped out onto the trail. And all I could see was his chest and he was about to run. So I was like, now or never. Were you in a tree?

I was in a tree. Okay. I was low. I was only like 12 feet up and he was 12 or 13 yards. And I just, I picked that hole, I guess I hit him basically in the hole on the left side. Yeah. And it came out his right groin, like my, my, and I don't know if I hit the heart or not. Cause we did the gutless method and I never pulled it out to look, but there was blood everywhere.

The trail was not great initially.[00:45:00] But about 30 yards in, like just opened up, followed it. And he went 40 yards maybe. Oh, geez. If you can get in that hole, it's a great shot. The problem is on a white tail, it's really small. I would never take that shot. A, I would never ever take that shot 10 yards or less.

So he was getting close to that because then if you're doing that, like your angles almost straight down. So what happens is right, so what happens is you just end up. Scraping his whole brisket at that steep of an angle or you'll hit him in the head You know what? If something goes wrong in there The other thing that happens with a frontal shot is it'll go in one part of this It'll go in between the shoulder and the writ and the chest cavity, but never go into the chest cavity So then it just they just got narrow in their side for the rest of their life or something like that Which kind of sucks so if you're gonna take that shot you need to Absolutely.

Like I'll, I put my target in a frontal and I'll shoot it out of a saddle and then I look at those angles [00:46:00] and I'll shoot it closer and further away and see like how flat it is or if I'm 18 feet up, I might not take that shot at any range because my ankle is probably going to be steep.

It just depends, but. They're lethal shots. If you can take them, it's a very lethal shot. It's just it's a lower percentage shot. Like it's a lower, it's a high risk, high reward type of shot. I think the thing that probably, no, this is funny, but I think the thing that probably helped me the most learning how to shoot that way is I've shot a lot of deer in the.

Front with a rifle. Me too. I should say a lot, but I've shot a couple. I think I shot I don't know five or six deer in the chest like that So my favorite part about those is if you hit him between the front shoulders like that in the clavicle Space like that. It is like the cleanest deer to butcher.

Oh, yeah, there's zero wasted meat on those deer. That's fantastic Yeah, it is great Yeah, and especially if you do When you do the gutless method with [00:47:00] it, there's no, no mess like at all. So it's nice. We, I do that for most of my public land. Okay. Public land. I have a quarter. I'm still a meathead and we drag everything out.

I have a quarter mile rule. If I get a if I'm on private, if I'm on the farm, I always drag it out. Cause I can drive to wherever it is. Most of the time when you're on a private land, you don't have to drag it more than 20 yards until you get to somewhere where you can drive or something. Yeah, exactly.

ATVs, man. Exactly. But on, on public, I don't, this year we packed Jared's deer out. That wasn't too bad of a pack out. It was like about a little over a mile not too far. So when you pack them out, do you have the same pack with you? I do. You can pack out right then and there. Yeah.

Sometimes I'm like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't do that. And maybe I should this year. I got, I forgot usually I put like a plastic bag between my bag and the, and my bag got all, I forgot the bags in my bag was all bloody. Disgusting. The peroxide worked pretty good on that. Good. It came out. But [00:48:00] yeah I usually, I like, I'm like a one in one out kind of guy, but I wasn't in good as shape this year as I was last.

I guess I was just doing like getting ready for Colorado and hunting elk. So I was like in real good shape last year and I'm not in bad shape. It was just. This year, I'm like, man, there's a lot of stuff to pack in this bag, so there was a couple of times where I like to put all my clothes in my backpack, probably overkill, but I just, I've lost a couple of pairs of pant, like drop things and I don't like to do that.

So I ended up putting everything in my pack, but it's a pain because you're packing, unpacking, repacking. And it's I think. I think it depends on how far I go, but I think it's worth it to just ride back to the truck and unload your stuff and, or get a, get the pack in the truck, and then, come back out.

Yeah, so far, I've been doing the whole kill kit back at the truck. If I kill something, I'll worry about it then, but some of the places you go, I know some of the places you [00:49:00] go, and yeah, it's, it'd be nice to just have it with you and do it right then and there. Yeah, if it's a mile, it's not bad, but when it's like...

Somewhere between three and five or, it depends on how steep it is. That sucks when you gotta go in and out. Last, just looking for that deer, I put on 20 miles on my bike and 18 walking. In a day? In two two days. I was gonna say, there's no way you did that in a day. The first was 15 miles biking and six miles walking.

Or no, 12 miles walking. And then the next day was Cause we also. I kept, I helped Troy pack his deer out. He got lucky. We had another guy helping us with that. So he He had four people to pack his deer out. We each had a hindquarter. Yeah, I didn't know I had a deer on my back. Yeah, exactly So that was like an extra bike in and out and then bike back in and whatever but

Yeah, the first day I [00:50:00] put on 15 miles on the bike and 12 miles And then five and six the next day. I was tired for a couple days after that. Yeah, you had to be. You probably slept good the next day. Yeah, not really. Ha. Yeah, hey, I'd tease you, it happened to me. But you know what, the stuff we were talking about between the learning experiences, the shot experiences, and stuff like that you brought something earlier, you were talking about how long to wait, like an hour's not long to wait, like a lot of that stuff, like we're talking because we've had the experiences and unfortunately, I've learned the hard way too many times, like when it goes wrong, so it's just easier to, yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Adam and I used to that was my only experience filming. We had a nine millimeter, like the nine millimeter Camcorder and we borrowed it from a friend and we were like, we're gonna be like Bill Jordan And yeah, I did it too. I was gonna be mr. Film. Yeah, [00:51:00] and Adam and I don't know why There was like two years where I didn't bow hunt.

I think I outgrew my bow or something I think I outgrew my bow. I had a real small bow and the draw length was like way too short. And I was like, I had one on layaway at the Sporting Goods Store for a year or two or whatever. When I was like, I think I was 14 or 15 years old, whatever. And I was like saving up for this new bow.

And Adam... Got a bow from his uncle and go film you hunt these, so we were hunting together all the time and we would drive the tractor cause he couldn't, if if his brother didn't want to wake up to drive us down to the. To the, he had, they have a couple of farms. His brother didn't want to drive us down to the farm.

He, we would fire up the John Deere and 14 year olds and the John Deere. And we would film, I have the VHS tape somewhere. But we would film some bucks and he the one day we went out, we all, we [00:52:00] had a bunch of these double sets and his dad would like weld all this angle iron together and just put plywood on it, and I had a couple of double sets.

And we went into this one set the one day and I know I couldn't tell you what the date, it would probably end of October. There were bucks, there were a lot of bucks that day. And he had this like 20 inch wide, eight point come in and he. He goes, how far is that? And I'm like, it looks like 20 yards. He shot like a mile over that thing's back.

He was like, I was so nervous, and it took off. And he like, looks over, he goes, here comes a little six pointer. I'm like, you gonna shoot it? And he was like, yeah, I'm gonna shoot it. And the deer was like, ended up being like five yards away. Now mind you, they, we You know, now it's cool to hunt low, lower find a tree with cover.

These trees were like giant Oak trees. Like you couldn't hold hands and put your arms around them [00:53:00] like big. And there were, we were in two of them and this, so we were like 20 feet up, probably 18 or 20 feet, maybe, maybe a little higher. And this the buck was only like five yards away and he shot it and It looked great.

Like I saw the arrow go in. It was right behind the shoulder, but that was a one long hit. And 20 minutes later, we're out of the tree. We're like 14, 15 years old. We're out of the tree and we're like, where's this deer? And there is blood everywhere. Sprayed on the trees. You look down the woods and it's just you can see blood for 60 yards.

We're like, ah, there's going to be no problem. He's going to be right over here. And we like started tracking this deer and a deer jumps up and we're like, ah, there's a doe. It was that buck, and we like follow this thing down the hill, up the other side around, I think we tracked it for a mile and a half, and then it stopped bleeding.

And his dad found it in a cornfield like three weeks later, complete different [00:54:00] direction. So it lived a while. Cause it was like. 800 yards from opposite the direction we were looking. But he ended up hitting it with the combine like a couple of weeks later, but um, and it was definitely the Bucky hit.

I don't remember the moral of that story. We were talking about cameras, video. But the point of the story is just like that the hour wait is what you're talking about is you just never know, if we would have given that deer, he was bleeding profusely. If we would have let him lay down for an hour or two, an hour.

If we would have let him lay down for an hour without bumping him, he probably would have died right there. Now, we did. We did wait I remember we did at some point think we bumped him and waited another 20 minutes, but then you just keep bumping him. You gotta stop doing that when they're, one lung hits are like a thing.

If a deer is bleeding like that, he's gonna die. Oh, absolutely. And it's probably gonna be pretty quick, but you need to just let him do it. [00:55:00] Yeah, cause if they don't have the adrenaline jacked up to just keep going, they're just gonna lay down cause they don't know what happened. Exactly. And deer are full of it.

They are full of it. Especially when you chase them. Yeah. They have a super fight or flight response. You gotta keep grinding out because you still got a buck tag to fill. I still got a buck tag to fill. You're gonna do it because you always find a way. Yeah. I should get an award for how many bucks I've seen,

yeah, that's going the seeing them is no problem this year. I'm seeing a lot but sometimes killing them is Just one step above is a little tough. Yeah, not everybody gets to be a giant Lucky turd like me. Yeah, i'm not gonna be picky at this point like I'm I'm My standards are low.

Yeah, I just want to shoot it. I just want to shoot one. I like shooting with my bow better than my gun, but when it's gun season, I just pick the gun up because it's, I was going to say, did you ever take the bow in gun season? No, because I end up, so if I'm, I usually hunt on the farm with my gun.[00:56:00] I dabble in the public land thing for, with a gun, but I don't love to hunt, hunt the public around here, especially on the opener.

It's a little, okay. I've never done it around here. You know what? I can't say I've ever been out on the opener. I just know how many cars are in the parking lot on the opener. I'm like, oof, sounds like something I don't want to be at. Okay. But that was like deer camp growing up was the farm.

Like we they used to have all the pastors come out. Like it used to be like 15 or 20 of us. That's not that way anymore. It's their family and my dad and my brother. And and that's it. So we, it's like nostalgic camaraderie kind of thing. Go on the farm. And I've killed quite a few bucks on the farm with my rifle, but, um, yeah, I'll probably, I'll, I.

The spot that I sit on the farm, everybody's got like their designated rifle stands. It would not be like it's over a really thick Valley. I would [00:57:00] have one 15 yard shot into the woods and then the rest is on a field edge and in the rifle season, they don't really stop in the field. Like they'll they'll run and you get on them and then.

And when they stop, you shoot. Yep. Because otherwise you're not getting the shot. Either that or it's going to be running open field. Yeah. But I did, I've shot. It's cool because everybody's Ah, sitting in the same stand, it's But then there's like that thing where it's like, It's not the same stand I've hunted since I was 12.

I've sat in that stand, this year would be my 10th. 10th or 11th season sitting in that stand and I've shot like eight maybe eight bucks out of that stand Really? Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool Just because it's I know every tree in that little valley and you think about, Oh, I remember I shot through that little hole.

I took my wife there on one of her [00:58:00] first year hunts. She's gone, like actually hunted with me out of it a couple of times, but I don't remember that year. I don't think she was that year. She was just along the first year we got married. And I'd never really killed any big bucks till then. And this is by no means a big buck.

It was like a two and a half year old. Nine pointer and she's like you having a good time and she's yeah wish we were seeing deer I'm like any minute now My time is 8 8 8 30 and as soon as I said that I see a buck Running through the one field and the way it is like the woods It's like a T but the woods is in the way and I'm like looking out at this field and the deer is running across and I'm like there's a buck and We like look at binoculars.

Oh, it's a I was like, that's a good one and I don't know what happened, but it went to run down a power line cut and it turned around and it like Was gonna run back the field and hey, cuz it was far. It was like 135 yards I was like, hey and it [00:59:00] stopped and I had the like She's sitting here facing the deer and I have the gun like against the tree Boom, and she was like I remember the deers went up under him And he's running and he was going towards the other farm and I'm like, Oh no.

So I like rack another one. I'm like, Hey, and he stops again. And I shot him again. Really? Yeah. And I think I shot at him one more time because he kept going. I don't know how he kept going, blew both his shoulders out and hit him through the heart here. And then like up to, I'm like, I don't know how that deer kept going.

That's that is crazy that they do that. Yeah. But he died right on the, in the fence row. Split the farms, but I had I've had so many good hunts in that stand So it's neat you know the little nostalgia to go there and hunt So it's the same thing with it going to camp like when I go with my dad and some of those [01:00:00] guys there like they talk About some of the places that they go there's a few places that they talk about that there's so much history there and they talk, and I've hunted those places and I'm like, there's really nothing that spectacular about this spot, but it's like years ago it was, and there's something to them to do that and now me hunting there too I see it too I enjoy being a part of that.

Yeah, I shot my biggest buck out of that tree stand too. Yeah, it was pretty cool because Adam tagged out, uh, in bow season that year. And he was glassing, he likes to just go out and watch, and he was glassing like two miles down the road and he's man, there's an 11 pointer running around this field down here.

He's and then he is, I'm getting like a play by play. He's Oh, now the neighbor came out. He's shooting at it. Oh wait, he doesn't see it. He sees the other one. Oh, he just missed the other one. And he's boy, that would be neat if that deer crossed the line and then he's.

It's 10 or 15 minutes. He's man, I [01:01:00] haven't seen a buck like that all season. He's I don't know which direction he went. And next thing you know, this buck comes running out of the woods with these does, and he's running these does in circles. I'm like, Holy crap. And I'm like, and on the backside of this tree, there's all these vines that like hang down in my way.

And I was trying to get them through these vines. And he finally like stops and he does one of the things where he's quartered away and he like looks back in my direction and I shot right in front of his chest, like just, and I was like, how did I miss that shot? It's 70 yards, and he, I'm, I go to.

Put another shell in and my gun jams and I'm like, Oh Oh, come on. Knock the bullet out and I put one in and he chases, he's does down into the valley. And at that, where that is, I can't see into there cause it's so thick. And I'm like that was great. Giant buck running around in the field.

I'm pretty sure that's the one Adams. It didn't look like a, he, I think he knew that it was an 11 pointer and I was like, that didn't look [01:02:00] like an 11 pointer, but it was big, whatever it was, because I was not looking at the antlers at all. I knew I saw the three times that I was like legal.

And I'm there like, I have the gun on my lap and I'm like, all like kicking the, I'm so angry because that was a bad season. I had deer, I had a one 40 bust me with my bow and 120 inch eight pointer bust. I had, those are the stories for another time, but I don't have enough time for all the fails.

Yeah, this doe. So if I see the first doe come through and I'm like, Oh, second doe comes through and I'm like, Oh, and I waited a while. And I'm like that was hopeful. And then I hear. I'm like, get my gun up and I'm like, Oh boy. And the next doe comes through and I'm like, he's going to be next. And I'm like, wait for him to come out.

He's like paralleling this Valley and I'm like, Holy crap. [01:03:00] And I made a shot at like 75 yards and he runs like he's not hit. So I shoot again and he's running like he's not hit. And then he like stops and he's angling up the hill to break out in the field and I'm not going to get another shot.

So I shoot again. And I realized. Oh, he's down. Yeah, it was such a steep angle. I hit him behind the shoulder the first shot, and then I shot him a little bit lower behind the shoulder on the second shot while I was running through the woods, and then I hit him like... Back behind the last ribbon out through the front shoulder on the third shot.

So he wouldn't go on any more anymore. He was a pin cushion, all good shots. That's all it matters. That's all it matters. Yeah, he, so it's cool. And I said, I texted Adam and I was like, I got him. I got him right before when he was telling me, he saw this big book. I'm like, I don't care.

I'll take a 60 inch five pointer right now. And he's which one did you get? And I was like, what do you mean? He's not the 60 inch five pointer. And I was like, no, I got the [01:04:00] big one. And he was like, so the next thing, he's like flying through the trucks coming through the field, he saw, and he like jumps out of the truck.

He's it was pretty fun. There's for, I know everybody has their own thing, but to me, those deer hunting stories, the buck you shoot, the ones you missed, the ones that go like nothing, just. No, and I love to hear everybody else's story too getting to hear your story about the, about your buck this year is just it's so cool to hear those like I said the coolest thing for me was I never rattled one in that Yeah, he ran into the base of my tree. Yeah, that was so cool. Yeah, that is I've grunted a man I've snort wheezed them in but it was just neat to rattle one in. Yeah But did when cool things like that happen, it makes my standards drop pretty low well, it was a bonus that this was a Dandy, I mean he really wasn't he was I did pass up a real little deer this year.

I'll, it was early. I passed me like I left him go. I couldn't do it. I got pictures of him too. And I'm [01:05:00] like, boy, I'm glad I passed that deer. Really? He's on the fence legal. He would be legal, but just barely.

I have no problem with anybody shoots, but I've just, I've just made it such a thing in my head now. It just doesn't like the buck I shot in jersey. This is like a year and a half old six pointer. Yeah This is gonna sound terrible I thought i've got a tag why not and I thought if I put a gut pile out here Maybe that would help with my bear Like I would shoot him, But the other thing to say is maybe he made you a good shot for the buck that you did shoot Maybe yeah, I think shooting does is what I need to do next year You should just keep holding back, waiting for a buck, waiting for a buck.

I end up going, so what happens is I'll go the first day and I'm like, I'm way out and I'm like, I ain't shooting a doe way back here. I can shoot a doe closer to the truck. [01:06:00] And then I'll be like, besides, I know there's pictures, I know I'm a guy, and then, so I hunt, I hope, hunt the opener for a buck.

And I was gonna, I was planning to go down to Troy's house for that early season, but I didn't I didn't get to, I don't remember why, but we didn't get to do it. And so I'm like, oh, I'm gonna hunt a bunk this day. And then, you just it just progressively piles on itself. Oh, we'll go out here, we're gonna hunt this, it's great I'm not gonna shoot a doe here.

And then you just. When you get to the end of October, you're definitely not hunting for a doe. No try to shoot a doe that time of year. It gets a little hard. Yeah, it is. It's trying to shoot a doe now is not easy. No, it gets easier and rifle again. Like they're not easy to find a, because early October.

They're all eating acorns. You know exactly where they're going. Yeah, go to food. You'll kill a doe. Yep. Now... You go to food, what's going to be chasing them? All them year and a half old bucks that want to harass them. So they don't [01:07:00] go there, they hide. Yeah, and now, yeah, you don't... Yeah, I don't know. I think I really need to do that next year is shoot one or two.

I think it'll help with, I have really bad buck fever, man. And I, like I made bad decisions as you, my mask was in my way. I should have stopped that deer. I don't normally like to stop deer either, but in that scenario it's called for. Yeah. Because of how far he was, how fast he was moving, those kinds of things would have made it like I might have.

My biggest buck on the wall right now. Like he was by far bigger than anything I have So it's those kind of things like and I think the doe shooting would probably help And I think you know, maybe that little six pointer Helped you out, you know in the long run, maybe Who knows? I mean it definitely helped the fact that he was 12 yards I was thinking about too like I've dealt with buck fever a long time and I still do but like I've shot since I started having shooting troubles since [01:08:00] high school.

I shot, I switched to a hinge release hunting, hunting. I shot that for a long time. And that's what got me to shoot. Better and for in the first place and be more patient with my shot Yeah, and I'm back to shooting a trigger release, but just the process of shooting a surprise shot I've done that on target But I've in past few years every now and I'd still struggle on game like getting anxious and one one to get rid of that Arrow, but this year I did a really good job of practicing that shot sequence and then Using my thought process on game and like all the shots that I took this year We're relaxed, squeeze pull, boom, there the bow goes off and like to me when I release an arrow like that and the arrow goes where I want it to go, like, that's a win.

That's big to me. I agree, man. Hey, man, I appreciate you being [01:09:00] the host on this episode. It's been fun. This was fun. I never got to do this before. Yeah. It's cool. Maybe we'll have to make it a thing every now and then. I would absolutely. Hopefully we can do it do it again, but we'll flip rolls again and you kill a good one and we'll be back at it, but I'm going to pick your brain about this bear hunting spot.

You got my wheels turning. Sounds good. Thanks, buddy. All right, man.