Fair Chase & Technology Continued

On this episode of the Nine Finger Chronicles, Dan continues his fair chase and technology conversation with good friend Bob Polanic. The last time we covered this topic the conversation had more of an anti cell camera, anti technology feel to it. Coming from a more pro technology point of view, Bob feels that the introduction of products like cellular trail cameras don't necessarily lead to higher harvest rates. This is another interesting episode that is a different point of view from someone in our hunting community. A lot to think about.

It's also important that we as members of this hunting community open our ears and listen to each other even if we may disagree. Because at the end of the day, being divisive is the worst thing that can happen to this fragile way of life. Enjoy!

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All right, ladies and gentlemen, it's the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast. I'm your host, Dan Johnson, and today we're going to continue a conversation that we had a couple weeks ago about Fair chase, about technology, about cell cameras. And today though, our guest is a little bit more pro technology, a little bit more pro cell camera, and he explains, he lays it all out where he's coming from his point of view.

And without getting in too much detail, I think I we're just gonna keep this intro short. And get right into the podcast. But it is a really good, thought out episode from someone who is on the opposite side of what we've already discussed. I like having both sides of the story.

Come on pitch their case because really any [00:02:00] conversation in this hunting community, there needs to be, we need to hear both sides. Oftentimes guys will come in and they'll go, I hate this. And then another person will go, I hate this. And then there's this division, there's a split in the community and we don't ever come together, which we need to because this is what some of the anti-hunting I guess people, organizations want.

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Let's check out today's I guess I'm gonna call it [00:08:00] a fair chase and technology conversation continued. Enjoy 3, 2, 1. All right on the phone with me today, a returning guest and champion of his own life. Mr. Bob Lanich. How are we doing, buddy? 

[00:08:19] Bob Polanic: I'm doing good, Dan. It's it's been a 

[00:08:21] Dan Johnson: minute. Yeah, I feel and I'm gonna take responsibility for this because I feel like we were communicating a lot right up until the season started and then the season st started and then we kinda lost touch with each other.

And then I always, I was like, God, I wonder what he's doing cuz he's in Iowa, right? Or he is in, he's in Nebraska and things like that. So on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the greatest season you've ever had, one being the shittiest season you've ever had, where did this year rank for you? 

[00:08:56] Bob Polanic: Oh probably an eight, maybe a nine.

I probably, I [00:09:00] think I've had one or two seasons. Better than this one. But as far as harvesting harvesting bucks or deer or whatever it was good. Yeah, I killed killed a buck in Nebraska and won in Iowa, first Iowa buck, so that was good to get the monkey off the back. But yeah, I didn't have like great, really great rut hunting and encounters yeah.

Yeah. 

[00:09:22] Dan Johnson: Still got it done though. Okay. But leading up, so I lost communication with you about, I wanna say like September, mid-September when we both, we, like I went out west, you went out west you, did you or your wife do the elk hunt this year?

[00:09:41] Bob Polanic: My wife did. I wasn't able to get a tag. Okay. We, yeah, we spent, 

[00:09:46] Dan Johnson: go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, so y you're, you were calling for your wife this year for elk. Yeah, very much yeah. And how'd that turn out? Yeah, 

[00:09:56] Bob Polanic: It was a really good hunt. I think we hunted for nine days. Had a [00:10:00] lot of really good encounters with bulls.

The first, I think the first few days of our hunt, it was warmer. It was probably like a high of 75, maybe even 80. And then a big weather front came in. And hunting really turned on. We had several encounters, but I, if I would've had a bow, if I would've had my bow with me, I probably, I think I could have shot two cows and two bull.

but just because of the way the, collar shooter setup was Yeah. She didn't have those same opportunities. And then that's just how it goes sometimes. But yeah, she put some good stalk on on a couple cows. She got real close to shooting a bull. It's just, that's just hard, we're hunting dark timber.

Yeah. And her ethical range is probably only 40 yards. They wear I'll shoot one out to 60 probably, gotcha. But she knows, sh you know she's pretty tough. She draws 55 pounds and she's a d she's a damn good shot. I got no problems with her shooting a elk at 40.

I say, I got no problems with it. 

[00:10:54] Dan Johnson: It's her choice . All right. So no, no connection out in the elk woods out west. What state did you [00:11:00] go to? Went to Idaho. Idaho, okay. And then, so this year on your plate, obviously you live in Michigan, so you're gonna do a little hunting in Michigan, but Iowa, you drew an Iowa tag and you drew a it's, you didn't draw it, you got a Nebraska tag.

So leading up to the season, you were sending me some pictures of some pretty good deer. One in particular in Iowa that was a mega giant. But outside, outside of that let's talk about Nebraska first. Cuz I think you guys headed there first? 

[00:11:31] Bob Polanic: Yeah, we did. We did. Yeah. I hunted Nebraska with my wife.

I think, I don't know, November 2nd to the 10th or something like that. Good hunt. Sh I shot a buck, I shot a decent eight point, I think like third day. The weather was absolutely everywhere. The day we got out there, it was 80 degrees. Within 48 hours, I think it was 30. It warmed back up.

We had a morning. Where my truck said it was 71 degrees. By the time I got, by the time I [00:12:00] got into my tree that morning, I climbed from the time I was at the base of my tree till I got to the top of it, the wind completely shifted 180 degrees and I felt the temperature drop at least 25 degrees.

It was insane. So the just a big front coming through, the, you look at the hourly forecast and it says it's supposed to go from 70 to 45 over the course of three hours, and I think it did that and of course for three minutes. And so yeah, just some wild weather, but we had some really good encounters.

My wife, she hit a really big buck low and he was at 45 yards. She thought he was at 40. She didn't have time to range. And she just said she ended up taking hair off his. Off his belly. And we got pictures of him later that day and he was fine. Yeah, you couldn't even see a wound down him, yeah.

[00:12:53] Dan Johnson: And you connected on a good buck. Now did you go all the way back to Michigan and then come back to Iowa or did you just hop the river [00:13:00] and go right into Iowa? No, 

[00:13:02] Bob Polanic: I just hopped the river, went right into Iowa. My my, I had my wife fly home and that way I didn't have to drive back and yeah, that's a, yeah, so it was just a time saver there.

Iowa was really good. By the time we started hunting Iowa, I don't know, somewhere around like the 10th or 11th, but that cold front came through and it was bitterly cold for, I don't know, 7, 8, 9 days. I don't think it ever got warmer than 30 degrees for seven or eight days. 

[00:13:30] Dan Johnson: So you nailed it as far as weather was concerned.

[00:13:32] Bob Polanic: Yeah. And I. There was, yeah, there. So there's a buck out there. I think we actually did a podcast on him. His name was Trips. Yeah. Or we, na we named him Trips. He wasn't, he's not born that way. . But he was he's like a six year old deer. He had, I think he had six brow times.

They were all anywhere from six to 12 inches long and just really heavy, really tall. Yeah. My buddy ended up, the first three days that my buddy hunted, there was three of us out there. [00:14:00] Myself, my buddy Mike, my buddy Jay was his first year out there. And him and I did a scouting trip back in I think early August.

But he was hunting this area probably about a mile from where I thought trip's core area was. And lo and behold, the very first morning he laid eyes on trips for two hours straight. Just watching him dog doze. Yeah. Run back and forth. Didn't see him breed, but just just nonstop running action.

Yeah. And he saw him fight off four or five different other bucks. And so he had a, he had an incredible first 2, 3, 4 days of hunting. He never caught up with trips, and we never saw trips again. But we all saw tons of mature deer and just a boatload of deer and Yeah, with the weather, it was fantastic hunting.

Yeah. 

[00:14:46] Dan Johnson: And then you connected in Iowa too, right? 

[00:14:50] Bob Polanic: I did. I did. Yeah. Right place, right time. I I had been staying off this pocket of timber for my buddy my buddy Mike that I've hunted [00:15:00] outta state with, I don't know, four or five years now. And he was being pretty lackadaisical about hunting it.

He had slept in a couple mornings, He had bailed out one night early. So I was like I'm not gonna hold off on this block and timber for you to just continue to sleep in and whatnot, so I I moved in, I grabbed a tree stand and there's about a inch of snow on the ground. I just saw a couple runs and I just set up in between them.

And it was probably about one 30 in the afternoon. Got up my tree, pulled my bow up, knocked an arrow, and I had a bag. I had my release in my left pocket and I had a bag of milkweed in my right pocket, and it's all hill country. And I had not used, I've never used milkweed before, but I've heard all about it.

So I started throwing milkweed out, and I'm looking at it off to my right and I'm like, yeah, that is pretty cool how it all, swirls and does whatever. Yeah. I'm been hu at this point I've been hunting for 10 days straight. So I'm just just there. Yeah. I'm still like engaged, but I'm just, anything's a [00:16:00] distraction at this point.

And I look over to my left and there's a shooter coming at me at 60 yards and I was like, oh oh shit, I don't have my release on . So I grab my release, I get my release on as good as I can. I turn, I grab my bow and clip on at the same time. And as I turn, as I pull my bow off the bow hanger, I draw and he stops right at 10 yards.

He's quartering at me and I just sent it right into his front shoulder and it exited out his opposite like armpit basically. And yeah, he was dead running. So yeah, that was pretty cool. Nice. That was cool. Nice. Yeah, that was my first Iowa buck. That's I had hunted, that was my third year hunting Iowa.

And I've been holding out and I was ready to shoot even like a one 20 class or something like that. But he scored. , here's a big, here's a big mainframe eight with a split g2. I think he had eight or nine inch brow times. He scored 1 39, so Iowa didn't gimme the one 40 mark, but , 

[00:16:59] Dan Johnson: that's all right.

[00:17:00] That's all right, man. Stair step it up. Yeah, exactly. But the cool thing was, is that on that property you had the, you guys were chasing like a Boer for sure. Couple, yeah, a couple. A couple. Yeah. Couple big deer and and it sounds like that Nebraska farm, we've talked about that Nebraska farm for God, I don't even know how many years now.

And it sounds like you guys are really starting to figure out, figure it out, when to go, where to be, and putting yourself in the right position. And it sounds like you guys are just gonna start snowballing success here, not only on the Nebraska farm, but the Iowa Farm too. , 

[00:17:31] Bob Polanic: hopefully. Yeah. That Nebraska farm.

I think e h D kind of hit that area pretty bad two years ago. Yeah. Just a real big drop in deer population. Used to be not every hunt what 20, 30, 40 deer, in a week of hunting you'd at least have three or four hunts where you'd see that many, that many deer in one day, and now you're lucky to see a dozen in a day.

But there's still some good, there's still some good mature bucks there. And it is strictly, it is just a, it's a rut spot. Around cameras there year [00:18:00] round and around cell cameras there, year round uhoh and, Oh, oh, and yeah, they don't mature bucks. Don't really move in there until the very end of October.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really not worth, it's, with Nebraska, you go out there September 1st and it's just There's no point not for that farm at least. Yeah, for 

[00:18:16] Dan Johnson: sure. Congratulations on a great year, man. It sounds like you connected and had a good time in both those states.

So now we're gonna do a little transition here. Little transition music. Do. All right. And now we're transitioning to the main topic. And , I don't know where this is gonna go, but I have, I had to get you on cuz you were very passionate in the response you had. Byron Horton one of the network providers here on the Whitetail experience, he has some views on cell cams and he has some views on what Fair cha this fair chase topic and, I had a good, I, it's always good to hear other people's opinions who may oppose that so that people.

Both sides of the story. They have both. And it [00:19:00] sounds to me like you disagree with the whole cell cams and live feeds are not fair chase argument. And so that's what I want to get in today. And actually you sent me a whole bunch of talking points that I looked over all valid and and so I want to have this conversation on this pro proce cam pro live feed.

Again, trying to define what fair chase is type of conversation. And I think it's just good to get this all off of our chest and just have these conversations. Cuz if you don't then it's just. . I disagree on this and I disagree. And it's, and it just gets down to politics again. And when you disagree just to disagree with someone without hearing their opinions, then it does nobody any good.

Bob, do you have a starter conversation or a starting starter topic that you want to touch [00:20:00] on that gets the ball rolling on this conversation? I 

[00:20:03] Bob Polanic: do. I have a whole page of notes. First of all, couple disclaimers. I've met Byron. I like Byron. I've listened to him on his podcast. He's a great dude.

I just have simply differing viewpoints. Yeah, that's all. Yeah I try to respect everyone's opinion. The other thing is I'm not sure that I think a live stream is fair, chase. I just think that. The reality of livestream is different than what you guys were talking about. Okay. I just am not, I'm not seeing the realistic application of it in the field being as useful as what you guys were discussing, even what Mark Kenyon was talking about.

And I'm coming at from a place of strictly bow hunting. Okay. I'm not talking about cell cams in live stream and ever having a rifle in my hand. I don't, I typically don't rifle hunt because in in the state of Michigan, we have this beautiful thing called steelhead. So I don't have to [00:21:00] bother myself with rifle hunting during steelhead season, which is typically starts out in November.

[00:21:06] Dan Johnson: Okay. But anyway, but wait a second. All right. So if we're gonna put the parameters of bow hunting on this conversation, I do have to talk to you about the rifle aspect of it though. Okay. Because there is, and probably will be, People who, you know, Hey, I'm sitting on my couch oh my God, there's a, I'm gonna live stream this food plot.

Oh my God, there's a deer shows up. I'm gonna grab my rifle, completely legal to do this. I hop over a hill and he's standing there. I pop him and I shoot him and he is dead. And yeah. And so when you're able to go at a longer distance like that, or able to use the technology, like the example given, does that muddy the waters for you at all?

[00:21:55] Bob Polanic: Yeah, I'll play with your scenario. So I don't live on I don't live [00:22:00] in a place where I can just go from the couch to up over a hill. Yeah. And shoot a deer. I'd have to drive to it. And it be, it'd be a half hour drive. And I think that's private. . A lot of hunters don't live on their hunting property.

I gotta imagine. I don't know that statistic. Now I think that technology actually already exists. I know it does. With Exodus cameras, they have an on-demand feature and you can once, if you put you to the cell cam on an on demand, you can take a photo whenever you want. Yeah. That's been around for at least two years.

Yeah. So that's not really any different in my opinion. If you're going to sit there and watch, I would assume a live feed would,

it depends on the technology. Does a live feed turn on when the camera is triggered, or is it just always continuously streaming? If it's always continuously 

[00:22:51] Dan Johnson: stream, you can go onto the app. You can go onto the. You can hit a button and it will it's basically FaceTiming the woods for you. Okay.

You [00:23:00] get to see through the video, live video of whatever the camera is pointing at. 

[00:23:07] Bob Polanic: Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I'm not big into to that aspect of it with, especially with a rifle. As a bow hunter, I can li, I could live stream deer all the time, and for me to still get within 30 yards of 'em and them not detect me from the ground I just don't see that being realistic.

I'm not that good of a hunter. I'm not that stealthy. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. It'd be hard to sneak up to a buck even. It doesn't matter if you glass 'em or if you FaceTime 'em or whatever. You still as a bow hunter, you still have to get within probably 40 yards of that deer. Okay. Good luck.

Good luck. I'm not, yeah, I can shoot deer from the ground, but I haven't had a lot of success with that. Yeah. Or jumping in, and I heard some of your guys' arguments and I don't wanna jump ahead too far, but knowing their betting areas and their pockets and stuff like that, but to go back to live streaming, from the couch.

Yeah. It's very beneficial for a rifle hunter. [00:24:00] I don't see it being a great asset for a bow hunter. And also you're using a lot of your own time to just sit there and watch a screen, which I don't know if you're, if that's what you want to do as a hunter and it's illegal, do it right? Yeah.

That's your choice. 

[00:24:19] Dan Johnson: And so from this point, we could take it a thousand different ways, right? And just because we have the technology of. live streaming. The, from an ethics standpoint, because a lot of the times, and we've had this conversation before technology advances faster than ethics do, and yeah.

Do you think that what we've discussed is ethical if a guy has the ability to do that with a gun, or let's say he knows his property good enough and let's just say he has pattern to this deer through trail camera data. He gets a trail cam a [00:25:00] cell, instant cell cam pick, which allows him to then drive 30 minutes, pop into the woods, sit on the opposite side of the farm where this deer is coming through and then get up in a tree before he gets there and shoot him.

Is that ethical? It's legal, but is it ethical? 

[00:25:19] Bob Polanic: I'm just gonna give you a sit, a real life situation that happened to me in 2021. I have a, my, I call it my work property. That's, I do wastewater treatment for a living. This wastewater treatment plant that my company operates, it's on 50 acres of timber, but like the facility only takes up like an acre.

And it's surrounded by 50 acres of pretty decent hunting property in Michigan. And it's open to the public, but it's gated off and it's blocked, one side's blocked by highway, one side's blocked by un huntable school property. So it's a very unique access situation. Anyway, I had cell cams.

2021 was the first year I really ran cell camps. I had a food plot strip I put in, [00:26:00] and I had a community scrape that I had a cell cam on. I think it was like October 18th at noon. I got a picture of the top buck on that property. I had no intentions of hunting that evening, but I had all my stuff with me in my car cuz it's bow season, right?

So I jumped in a tree that night. I had a tree stand already set up, probably about 80 yards from that scrape from where that I got that picture. Lo and behold, half hour before it got dark out, that buck comes out at 25 yards, hits that food plot. I shot him. Yeah, nice. 10 point. Probably the biggest Michigan buck I've shot would've never hunted that night.

It was like 60 degrees. Yeah. Not a cold front, just a typical day. I had concerns pre-season about that situation. Let me tell you what, that butt coming out, hearing him get up out of his bed, stepping right out on that [00:27:00] food plot he, I didn't have a shot at him for five minutes cuz he was behind.

A couple different trees and then putting a shot on 'em and recovering 'em with my wife. I don't re ever recall feeling like that was an unethical 

[00:27:12] Dan Johnson: situation. Okay, 

[00:27:14] Bob Polanic: gotcha. I don't feel, I didn't really feel dirty about it. And then I'll just give another scenario one second 

[00:27:21] Dan Johnson: on that, the opposite.

One second. Go ahead. On that scenario, go ahead. Were you like, when you got that picture of that number one buck on that property and you said, holy cow, I have the ability to go hunt this deer now, did you get hyped up about that hunt that night? Yeah. Okay. And so the excitement level was there because you knew a deer was there and so maybe as opposed to, let's say like a rut hunt where you lose track of a deer, you're going in blind to a spot, and you're like, I can see from an excitement level that just being like, oh dude it's on tonight.

He's close. 

[00:27:59] Bob Polanic: Edge of your seat. [00:28:00] Yeah, you're on the edge of your seat because, he is there and I don't know how, I didn't know how far he moved through. I didn't know. He, I was like, what is this buck doing at noon on a 60 degree day while it's sunny out, no weather pattern to to speak of.

And it was, I think it was October 18th, so it's not like it was, and he didn't even really hit the scrape. He just walked through. So I didn't know if he even beded down nearby. I didn't know if he just kept walking. He hadn't even been around for Yeah. Probably two or three weeks yeah. 

[00:28:27] Dan Johnson: Yeah. All right.

So what was the, another ex? Yeah go for the the next example. 

[00:28:32] Bob Polanic: So later that year out in Nebraska, I was after a really big 10 point, and I don't know, it was like November 11th or something like that. And at one, like noon, one, two o'clock, something like that. I got a picture of him.

Heading north. He was on the north side of the farm and he was heading north. And I had, because of the wind, I had already predetermined that I was gonna hunt a southern stand [00:29:00] where I had an encounter with him two days before. Because of that trail camp picture, I went to the north side of the farm.

Okay. My wife, I never found, I never ran into him. My wife was tagged out. She came, she drove into the farm to pick me up and she got there like an hour before it got dark out and that buck was walking in front of where I would've been sitting had I stuck to my original plan and not gotten SL cam picture.

I gotcha. So that cell, so a cell cam led me away from an opportunity, I'm not gonna say it led me away from killing that deer, cuz who knows? I don't know if I would've shot opportunity, but. to where she drove by to pick me up is, it's 20 yards from a tree stand and yeah, there's a little opening there.

So there's, it's hard to quantify how often a cell cam photo leads you away from an opportunity at a buck. We can always quantify right. Silk cam [00:30:00] photo leading to a kill, but you can't always quantify it leading to a missed opportunity. Yeah, that's a great point. That was one of my, that was one of my, one of my arguments when I was listening to you and Byron is eh, it's not as cut and dry as you guys are making it out to be.

[00:30:14] Dan Johnson: Yeah. And I agree with what you're saying because I don't know how many times in my life I've been in the right, in what I felt has been the right spot. And just to take the cell camera out of this, before I was using cell cameras, how many times I've seen a let's just say a big buck headed right towards me and I'm, I go, it's on.

And he does something and takes a left turn and drops down a ridge, crosses a field and doesn't ever come by me. And yeah, we have to understand that deer are still in control of their own movement, and it's not like a video game where if you get this picture, they're, it's guaranteed to come by at this point.

So yeah I completely get that. And so you've just provided two examples. One, one that is positive and then one that is negative. [00:31:00] So it's great that, it's great that you've provided the possibility of the of the positive, the positive thing happening, but then also the real, the realistic outcome.

Of, just because you get a self cam pick doesn't mean you're gonna get, have contact with that. And I think what will happen is the more these scenarios play out, positive or negative, we'll start to see trends. And everybody will, if you're a numbers guy you will see the numbers in favor or against whatever, whatever it is that you accomplished, right?

Because some guys could say, dude, it's helped me 90% of the time. So they're gonna say, dude, cell cams helped me 90% of the time. Or it could be like, Hey dude, I've gotten it. I made the decision. He showed up somewhere else, maybe on a different cell cam. And so it was a negative interaction. Yeah, it it's, it.

I don't, e i, it's just it can [00:32:00] happen both ways, is what I'm getting 

[00:32:01] Bob Polanic: at. Yeah. A comment was made about drones, right? Drones used to be legal just five years ago, or four, whatever it was, and they made 'em illegal. I don't, if it becomes that easy for a hunter, and I'm just gonna specifically say a rifle hunter to start killing any deer, let alone big bucks because of live streaming.

Yeah. I would assume that's, they're gonna, they're going, the states, whoever game horns, dna, they're gonna set rules against the live stream. Yeah. Just like they do with drones. So I don't know. I would like to think that. So yeah whatever would make it I guess more fair to the animal is probably what the authorities will abide by.

And I do have a, I have a note here. My first note was about those two cell camp stories from 21. My next note is what is fair chase? Yeah. And there is no definition bun and Crockett says, oh no, improper unfair advantage. There's things that say there's the Wikipedia like free [00:33:00] ranging, fair chance to escape.

Yeah. The no improper or unfair advantage, who's, that's an opinion, right? Is a bo today an unfair advantage compared to a BO 30 years ago? Yeah. A compound, is a crossbow, an unfair advantage to a compound bow. I don't know. Yeah.

There's another point that I have written down. Fair chase. Are people worried about fair chase as being fair to the animal or are you worried about being, having a fair opportunity versus another 

[00:33:29] Dan Johnson: hunter? Yeah. Yeah. Two, two completely different things, right? Yeah. Yeah, man. And so a fair chase also has to do and we covered this as well is fair chase is also rules and regulations based, right?

So in certain states you can bait in other states, that's not considered fair. Chase. Like in Iowa, you cannot bait, and if you did, you would be breaking a game law, which in my opinion, if you break a game law, you are not [00:34:00] adhering to fair chase. And so that's where it gets, it gets muddy, right?

Cuz yeah. Yeah. I forget Nebraska. No, Nebraska, you can't bait let's say Michi, but Michigan, you can't either. Anymore, 

[00:34:13] Bob Polanic: I think you can bait in Nebraska. Oh, you can? I should probably check that out. . 

[00:34:18] Dan Johnson: I don't know if you can have a bait, you can have, I think the law in Nebraska is you can have bait or mineral, but you cannot hunt within 200 yards of it 

[00:34:30] Bob Polanic: stub.

Yeah, for sure. Then Michigan, you used to be able to vape, but they made it illegal to try to combat the spread of C W D. Right, so it's not really, it has nothing to do with really fair chase that has to do with herd health. 

[00:34:42] Dan Johnson: Basically. Yeah. You have the definition of fair chase is muddy as well.

, we've talked about, we've talked about weapons, we've talked about ozone. We've talked, e everything that a hunter e everything that a hunter buys. is meant to [00:35:00] dup or fool or kill an animal. And in, in a way it's all technology driven, just a cell cam is. But the cell cam is technology, right? It is. It's boards and circuitry and cell data and trans, transferring data from one place to another. When camo, we don't think of camo in a compound bow or a rifle really as technology because it's, they've been around for so long, like the compound bow, yes, it's evolved, but it's not anything brand new.

It's been around for 30 some years now. And and so I think that's where anything new, at some point, Yeah, I remember talking to a guy, man on a real, real early episode where he was a, he was a [00:36:00] bow hunter, t trad bow guy. And then this was like, I don't even know when when the compound bow was introduced, but there was a huge uproar in the hunting in the hunting community and the archery community about this shouldn't be legal because they were throwing arrows so hard, at the target.

And now yeah, those, that bow compared to a 2023 flagship bow from the top bow manufacturer is co just imagine shooting that first ever compound bow. I bet you guys would feel unsafe shooting it . You know what I mean? Oh yeah. Compared to the tech. Yeah. The advancements in today's compound bows.

Again I just until a state agency or an organization comes up with what is fair chase. And it won't, they won't because it will deter people from whatever, right? If they say guess what? Just imagine the uproar. If an organization came [00:37:00] out or a state agency came out and said, Hey, I just wanna let you know that any rifle shot passed 150, 200 yards.

It's not fair chase, right? Because the deer can't use its senses to defend itself. Just imagine the chaos that would break loose in the hunting community, right? No doubt about that. There would be riot. There would probably be riots. There'd be Second Amendment talk. There'd be like all it would just get crazy real fast.

And so I don't see there ever being a clear black and white definition of what is fair chase. Happening. Yeah. 

[00:37:34] Bob Polanic: It's an interesting topic because I think when you boil it down, it's just you're talking about an unfair advantage that humans have over a deer. Yeah. Now a compound bow today, the technological advancements I don't look at that as an unfair advantage.

I think I look at that as a more ethical weapon. That's a, you have a quicker, cleaner kill than what we had in the past. Another point for technology and an unfair [00:38:00] advantage, what about weather forecast? Humans get to forecast. We get to know what the weather's gonna do.

A day, two days, three days by the hour, when the wind, what 

[00:38:09] Dan Johnson: way? The wind direction. Yeah. Wind direction. Yeah. Huge. I mean that, that'll alone get you damage over a deer. 

[00:38:14] Bob Polanic: Yeah. That alone gets you close. You know what deer's gonna get up and move. So I think if we can't settle on. What is fair Chase?

Cause it's not defined then. Yeah. You have to go to ethics. Yeah. And what I mean, an ethics is going to vary for each hunter. So Yeah. I have a whole bunch of different notes on this. Like opinion, a lot of it's opinion too, right? Yeah. None of it's exactly. Fact. So I think kind of part of it, what it boils down to is if you don't want to hunt with that piece of technology, then just don't do it.

Yeah. If you want to Byron's point about your kids in teaching them about deer, I don't have kids, but if you don't want your kids to learn about hunting through the technology of cell [00:39:00] cams and livestream, then don't. Yeah. Then don't you control what they learn. Teach them about the deer tracks in the Muddy Creek.

Yeah, it's, you don't, what until they're 16, 18, whatever, you drive what the information that they 

[00:39:15] Dan Johnson: consume. And that's a great point because I feel that method of just in life in general, right? If there's somebody go going over, honestly, my look at at life is there's someone over here doing something.

I may disagree with their lifestyle, with their decisions that they make, how they approach their life, but at the end of the day, I don't give a shit, right? I don't care what this person is doing. I don't care what my neighbor is doing. If it starts to affect my children, then there might be a little bit of an issue.

But I'm in control of that. I'm in control of my children, right? I'm, I don't want people to preach to my children about certain things. . That's my job.[00:40:00] But you, in your house, you do what you wanna do out in the woods. If it's legal, you do what you're, you wanna do. I just don't, I don't think it's right for people to follow a law.

Do, do something that is legal and then have someone else come up and go Uhuh. I don't think that's the right thing to do when it's just Hey, man it's legal. People don't have the same time as you. People don't have, people don't like everybody's different, right? And so what?

And so if it bothers you, just ignore it, right? And so you can do or say whatever you want because that's, that is the. , that's the American way, right? Freedom of speech. You can, dude, you can say and do whatever you want, but also the other people can say and do whatever they want. And yeah, I just I am not the type of person who likes to be preached to.

I'm not the type of person who likes to be told what to do. And I follow [00:41:00] all wild game laws, but if I'm doing something and another person says for example, I'll just say if a trad guy came up to me and goes, really? You're disgracing bow hunting because you use a compound bow, I'd just be like, dude, I got some balls you can put in your mouth.

Right? . So two of them. Yeah, two of 'em, right? And that would probably be my answer to 'em. And so I just, I don't like it when people preach. Especially when it, yeah. When it, in a way I can understand where they're coming from, but don't for one second think that. , you're also being a bit divisive in yeah.

In what it is you're trying to accomplish here. You can voice your opinion, that's fine, but in a way, what you're doing, and this is what happens when you, you do something like this. If I if I had a conversation, if we were having this conversation, and if it was less open-ended and more Bob, I disagree with you.

What you're doing is wrong, then what we have is the people who agree with [00:42:00] you and who disagree with me, we are, we're just getting further apart instead of becoming a community that communicates with each other and it's, again, hunters hating hunters, right? In my opinion the hunting community is its own worst enemy when it comes to topics like this.

And so what we have is we have all this shit talking that happens. , right? Unless you're straight up lying to somebody. If you're going, Hey, I couldn't have, I don't know. If you're lying to someone in your message, then you should be called out for it. If you're doing something that breaks the law, then you should be called out for it.

But if you are doing it and it's legal and it's ethical, and again, that's a, that ethical is a, is an opinionated, muddy water gray area in some aspects then you should be called out. But if not, man, just go, just let 'em, let that person live their own life. 

Absolutely. 

[00:42:57] Bob Polanic: Yeah. I, and I've got a, the main note [00:43:00] I have at the top of my page of notes is why care about how other people hunt?

[00:43:06] Dan Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if that person here's where I feel I, a person should care. I like Bob. You don't really document your hunts. You don't have, you're not making any money off the hunting industry from doing this. You're going out, you're having your hunt or a guy down the street.

You're doing what you want to do. It's all legal. No problem. Here's where I have a little bit of an issue is when we have people who are I'm gonna just use the shitty word of influencer and that can mean someone just on social media, that can mean. In a way myself from doing this podcast and getting paid to promote products.

When you have someone who is similar to a television show host or a influencer or a podcast host spewing something that [00:44:00] is I would say unrealistic or, or they say a message without giving the full detail of whatever it is. Hey man, this is what you need to do to be like me. Number one, we hunt in two different states.

Is there a, let me just ask you this, is there a difference between Michigan and Iowa? Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. So how can I shouldn't be doing that. I shouldn't, like I, I should be saying, here's my story, take what you want out of it, but I shouldn't be propping that up to people who are.

Maybe uneducated about the whole thing. Most people I would assume have the ability to weed out bullshit information, but at the same time, so that's basically just a rant of me saying, Hey, listen like everybody should go enjoy their own hunt, share your stories, talk about the tactics and the tips and things like that.

But just also know that there is a responsibility to be truthful about how you [00:45:00] do it when you do it, and not to prop it up on revenue. 

[00:45:05] Bob Polanic: Yeah. You're hitting on a topic that I would love to dive a bit further into. A, another argument I've heard about this, cell cams and technology and whatever it might be.

is we're getting away from the traditions of hunting and why we hunt and this and that. And I hear it from influencers, I hear it from social media. Mark Kenyon just had a big, long thing on live streaming, and I, again, I respect Mark. I know Mark on a personal level. My wife went to high school with him.

So nothing bad about Mark, but in my eyes as not being part of that community that gets paid, I don't get paid because I deer hunt or I post photos of dead animals. So if we're worried about cell cams and live streaming, worrying, like ruining the, or getting, moving us in a direction away from their traditions of hunting and why [00:46:00] we hunt, then let's get off social media.

Let's stop using a natural resource, an animal. for income, for revenue, it's all the same. It's all in the same pot one way or another. Yeah. So now with that said, it's very important to say there's a ton of great things that come out of social media influencers such as yourself, such as Mark, such as buyer end, you name 'em, tons of information shared.

So I don't wanna get accused of bashing these dudes, but it's just what? I get what they're saying, but it's like, where's the line the way we hunt right now? Exactly. The deer hunting was never meant to be shared instantly on social media. In my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's, it is just it's a weird place that we're in right now.

Yeah. And it with with the industry and technology. 

[00:46:45] Dan Johnson: Yeah. And a lot of it has to do with, oh man, I just lost a really good point. But anyway it, the whole social media thing, again, social media is a technology that has been brought into. [00:47:00] Everybody's life and every aspect of everybody's life is shared.

Most of it positive, but some of it can be negative. No one ever shares more people share, Hey, I shot this deer, congratulations to me. But not there's way less people who shared, oh dude, I just shank a shot or hit him in his ass. And like a lot of people just don't share that type of, that reality.

But yeah. From, if you are, if you're saying one thing, but also living, make so here's the comment I was gonna make. If you're like, if you're taking away from, if you're making a living from the natural resource and you're not giving back to it in some way, shape or form, I have a big, I have a big problem with that, right?

And so a lot of people aren't, and that's where I get that's where I get fired up, is when people just, they're, they make their money off deer hunting, but then they don't. I'm not saying that anybody that we've talked about today has done that, but there are people who do that. They [00:48:00] make their money in the hunting industry.

They make their money by killing a natural resource, but then they do nothing to give back to it. And I had a really good conversation with Paul Campbell, and we were talking about the differences between whitetail hunting and Turkey hunting. And he's one reason that I, he feels that Turkey hunters are more passionate about about their natural resource and tend to give back more is because for some people in the United States, the Wild Turkey is.

A conservation success story where they were introduced a long time ago into all these different states and they had thriving populations. And people who didn't hunt, got to hunt. They gave all this time and energy into reintroducing turkeys into this new, into these environments, and they don't ever wanna see that happen again.

I don't feel like deer hunters have had to face that [00:49:00] type of adversity directs, that kind of huge population crashes. Now, one could argue in a specific part of a region A C W D or e h D would hit and that, but they've been rebounded. Like they rebound. But just imagine if all of a sudden the uproar of, if we had to close a season cuz there's not enough deer.

Holy cow. Shit would hit the fan right then . One point that I want to moving forward here is the argument. Me and Byron got into a topic about hunting, like whitetail hunting, becoming a rich man's sport, and having disposable, like people with more disposable income have the ability to go out and spend, obviously and really what it comes down to is spend more of their income on deer hunting.

So let's just say I, and this is, I'm [00:50:00] gonna use the only. Example, I know how an attorney a doctor a NASCAR driver, a country music sensation, they all have a lot of money, all right? They make more money and they want to spend that money on deer hunting as opposed to a guy who goes to, a shit.

I don't even know. I think a garbage guys in our city make decent money, but someone who is in, I don't know, a factory job works in nine, like Yep. Shift work type things, and it and so they don't make as much money and and so they have less money, maybe the same percentage, but less overall dollar to spend on hunting.

And it sounds to me like you have your your opinion on this. 

[00:50:48] Bob Polanic: I do. I have a note. It just says, I. . It's just, it's more of a thought, just to make sure I brought it up. I wa I wasn't going to cause it came to be a sensitive subject. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. If you got, [00:51:00] if you have, if you have disposable income, I don't know if this was relating more to, I remember you and Byron talking about it.

And he's talked about one of his neighbors had a farm hand or a, an, a 

[00:51:14] Dan Johnson: outfit. An like an outfitter. An outfitter that now because he has cell cams, he doesn't need to pay some kid or somebody to go check all of his trail cameras for him, so because they check themselves.

So he was able, yeah. There, there was, yeah. To get rid of something. And he was able to buy more land or lease more land, displacing more hunters because cell cams cover more ground and thus he's able to take on more clients. 

[00:51:44] Bob Polanic: And I don't want this to sound dumb, but isn't that America isn't that like the, what we're based off of, we're based off the opportunity and isn't America like one of the best countries in the world to hunt?

You go to Europe and it's I think it is like a, it [00:52:00] truly is like you have to be part of a club. Yeah. There isn't public land over there. I think what it's all, it's Australia, Canada and the US that have all the public land set up, right? Yeah. I'm not a hundred percent sure on that, but so yeah, we have this great resource because of how our country has protected and made public land available.

And that ties into if I have more money than you I shouldn't be, I shouldn't suffer any penalties that I can afford. More land or more cameras or a better bow or whatever it might be. Yeah. And then, it's the, it's the, like the adage of you want more money, work more, work harder.

I I don't know, it's America, so especially right now, it's a different topic, but right now where there's two jobs available for every one person that's unemployed, it's, yeah. It's the labor market right now is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I got Guy I'm in management and we have guys leaving all the time for higher paying jobs.

Yeah. It's a [00:53:00] weird, McDonald's is paying 20 bucks an hour. It's a weird I don't know. The money aspect, the money part of it, just, it's not really I don't know. Probably didn't do a good job of talking on that one. It 

[00:53:08] Dan Johnson: you just don't feel, you don't feel that. So here, let me just I'll say my piece on.

In Iowa, we have less than 2% public lands. There are counties in Iowa that, that have zero places to hunt that are public, maybe a boat ramp or along a river. That might be core engineering ground. , but majority of, I think, I'm trying to think the county that my dad grew up in, I don't think has any public land, but he was on the north side of the county of that county.

It was basically, it is all agriculture. It is all farm ground up there. So anyway here's, so now we have X amount of people in Iowa that are, that can only hunt Public [00:54:00] ground now, and I've been a part of this. I've seen it firsthand, the evolution of Iowa especially the southern, south of interstate 80 outfitters creep in non-resident landowners ke creep in.

And now what we have is we have a displacement of hunters. And these hunters first go to public land. They've realized that it is now there's a lot of other hunters opened up to this public, like public land. And so I can understand where Byron's going from because I've been displaced myself on several properties.

I've had to go find new properties to hunt. I've had to go, I used to be 100%. P private ground. Now I'm probably 80 to 90% public ground. So the, even though I have had the opportunity to go in and hunt private [00:55:00] ground, which really in some areas that's all there is, or you can, or you knock on doors, you get permission.

And so one thing that I've I feel like this technology does, is exactly what they say where there's an opportunity for a guy to put a cell cam on his property, on, on a property. He gets pictures of big deer. He's not a deer hunter, an outfitter that comes in and goes, Hey man, I'll pay, I will pay you money to hunt this property.

That guy goes, absolutely two guys who are already hunting maybe usually in Iowa, I would say there's a bow hunter or two, and then a shotgun crew. That comes through there every year, all of those people are displaced. So now when that happens, we have an area that is still hunted, but it's not as evenly distributed anymore.

And so now the I like the concentration [00:56:00] of people listening to, or the concentration of people hunting in a certain area just gets up and public land gets stacked. And I, trust me, I hunt public in Iowa and I can tell you right now that during the rut there are multiple cars in a lot of these parking lots in order to get, in order to get in a good spot.

[00:56:24] Bob Polanic: That's a really good point. I guess I didn't think about it that way. I personally don't lease anything. I don't. I don't hunt public either. Yeah. Everything I hunt in Iowa or Nebraska is all permission. Yeah. It's all private ground. It's all knocked on doors. Got it. But 

[00:56:41] Dan Johnson: I don't know.

There, there's just so many layers. There's so many layers and, Justin we're 

[00:56:46] Bob Polanic: gonna have to get, I think hunters are gonna have to continue to get, if they get pushed out of a private piece, they're gonna have to continue to get resourceful. And then, they say hunter numbers are dwindling.

So if that is [00:57:00] true, is as time goes on as they're gonna, is it gonna be, is it gonna balance? 

[00:57:06] Dan Johnson: In order to in order to play this game, I don't ever see anybody going I'm just gonna start paying to hunt. Most people I feel are going to be like, Hey, I am going to stop hunting. All right, so now what we have here is on this sheet that you sent me is we have a list of pros and cons.

And so let's just go through the pros first of, is it how do you have this, is this pros of cell cams or 

[00:57:41] Bob Polanic: Yeah. It's pros of cell cams. It's not really pros of livestream, but it's pros of cell cams. Alright. The first one is it's easier to identify the mature buck in your area and the oldest deer in your area.

And I believe that is one of the main pillars of herd management is,[00:58:00] if you're worried about, if you're trying to follow quality deer management, you wanna shoot, you wanna kill your highest age class, right? Whether it's trail cameras or cell cameras, either one they're a giant, they're an awesome tool for that.

[00:58:14] Dan Johnson: So one is basically being able to identify specific deer. And you could elaborate that into herd health. You could elaborate that into different species like Turkey reproduction faw, fawn success rate total herd numbers sex ratios if you wanted to.

As far as just monitoring deer in general, it's a huge pro. It 

[00:58:37] Bob Polanic: is, yeah. It also during hunting season or even during any part of the year, it can keep you off of your hunting property because you don't need to be there. Which when you are on a piece of hunting property and you bump deer, that is stress on a deer herd.

Yes. And stress on a deer herd. Is [00:59:00] not healthy for them. Yeah. Whether it be the, wintertime, you bump 'em, it's deep snow, whatever it might be, there's not a lot of food for 'em. Even hunting season, if you're going in and checking cameras, you might bump 'em off your property. And maybe they get hit by a car.

Maybe they, another hunter has an opportunity to 

[00:59:16] Dan Johnson: harvest. So we could say, we could call that pressure management. 

[00:59:22] Bob Polanic: Yeah. Yeah. You could re reduction of stress on a deer herd. There you go. I know a lot of biologists talk about if you remove stress from a deer herd watch their antlers get bigger.

You know what I mean? 

[00:59:33] Dan Johnson: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. 

[00:59:34] Bob Polanic: I think the biggest one I really, the biggest advantage, the biggest pro is guys that have, or not guys, but guys or gals, hunters that have a family Yeah. That have kids. I got a buddy, I got a buddy I was talking to about this exact topic. And he was like, dude, he's I've got a 10 month old and a three year old and a wife that's a little bit more demanding on my time than I would desire[01:00:00] 

And it, so for, and he's got a family property. It's 200 acres in northern Michigan. It's two hours from his house. So he is to he's he only gets to go up there maybe three, four days a year. And he bases it around the rut. And it's for him to have that knowledge and that time that time management and be efficient, like he can have a better opportunity for a successful hunt up on that property.

Yeah. So I, I think that's the biggest advantage for all hunters. It's just not spending un, I don't wanna say unnecessary time away from home, but you're getting quality time. in the deer woods, therefore you can have some quality time at home. Yeah. How about that? Yeah. How's 

[01:00:40] Dan Johnson: that

Yeah. And so one could argue that cell cams will make your wife happier. There. You go there and that's really what guy go, what guys want. But yes, I will attest to that, that the ability to have my cameras, my the ability to have my picture sent to my phone[01:01:00] the efficiency benefit. We, me and Byron, or, we talked about that, the efficiency of this, it allows me to do what I want without having to leave the house.

Go. Cuz I, I live an hour away in order to check all my trail cameras and then drive an hour back home. It would be a six, seven hour event. All right. And then I have another property that is longer, more, further away than that yet. And that. is still so that would be more time on that smaller property.

But a drive a mult, two, so we're looking at five total hours of driving in a single day, maybe six, depending on how you break it down to, and then go out and check trail cameras. So that's gonna be, whatever more, more than likely it would be an overnight event. And so what cell cams for me really do when it comes to this topic, is it allows me to just watch my cell [01:02:00] cam pictures come in, and the pictures and the deer and that, but also know, hey, I don't need to go out and check these cameras for another 30 days, 40 days, I can watch that battery life creep down because the app is telling me that.

And so I can plan accordingly. I can tell my wife, Hey, listen, I'm going to go. Check my trail cameras in five weeks because that's typically how much time I have left on my batteries before they die. Yep. And so it just makes me, it would make me more efficient and it allows me to spend less time checking trail cameras and more time doing other things, building those brownie points for the upcoming season.

Yeah. 

[01:02:45] Bob Polanic: Or maybe it would give you more time to put food plots in the ground Yeah. That provide nutrition for the deer all winter long when there's nothing else for them to eat. Yeah. There's all sorts of different things that you can use that time for. Absolutely. Another one of the last pros I [01:03:00] have for it oh, I gotta pull my notes back up.

Is oh this, and this is a real world example that happened to me this year. My wife shot a buck, hit it low. Took hair off the belly, but we did have blood. And because it happened so fast, she wasn't exactly sure if it was just a low fatal hit or a low non-fatal hit. So she shot at 4:00 PM, I don't know, call it November 6th, something like that.

We waited till the next day. We went in the, after the morning hunt, we tracked, we were, we got on his blood, probably trailed him for 300 yards through the timber. I have no idea how many deer we spooked, but obviously laying scent everywhere, obviously disrupting the farm blood trail went right by where the blood trail ended.

It went by a regular trail camera, checked the trail camera, saw that he was perfectly fine at 7:00 PM from that night when he got shot at 4:00 PM had that been a cell cam, I [01:04:00] probably would've started there. And not disrupted the whole woods. And I also would've felt more comfortable about not really worrying about that deer being fatally wounded.

So there's another advantage to 

[01:04:11] Dan Johnson: it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that would, that could potentially help in an ethical deer recovery. Yes. Yep. Yep. Okay. 

[01:04:20] Bob Polanic: Let's see. I've got 

[01:04:21] Dan Johnson: one major con Yeah. Let's hear. Yeah, let's hear these cons. 

[01:04:26] Bob Polanic: The biggest one is lack of developing woodsmanship actual deer hunting skill, right?

Yeah. 

[01:04:33] Dan Johnson: And so this, you listen this argument, what you're go about to say is some, how certain people weigh different topics have like more, less, more or less heavy, they weigh them different. And so what you're about to say may be a simple con to you, but to some people this is a big deal. Like some of the people I've talked to.

like they feel like this cell camera [01:05:00] has taken away the need to be a woodsman out of the equation. And you can still go and kill a deer without knowing anything about how to hunt, really. And so finish your thought on this though. 

[01:05:13] Bob Polanic: I don't, yeah, I don't think I don't think you'll ever be as good a hunter.

If you lean on cell cams, you're not gonna be as good at hunting as if you developed your own woodsmanship skills, your own hunting skills. Case in point, Andy May. Yeah. You listen to what that dude talks about with how trails come together and, oh, what's the most efficient place for a buck to go to pick up, three different, he can set check three different spots by standing in one place.

Hearing him talk about that stuff. You don't get that, you don't get that information. You don't get that skill through any sort of cell cam. No. That's real in the that's real world hunting experience, scouting experience. And that's the biggest drawback to cell cams. Yeah.

You [01:06:00] listen to Annie May, who I regard is probably one of the best just DIY bell hunters that I've ever heard of. I listen to everything that he talks about. Some of it doesn't apply to what I do cause I don't hunt in the same areas as him. Northern Michigan's never gonna hunt like Iowa or Kentucky and some of the places like that.

But if I'm going to Iowa, I'll listen to his Iowa strategies. But anyway oh, shoot. I lost my train of thought. 

[01:06:24] Dan Johnson: Khan. So Woodsman. 

[01:06:27] Bob Polanic: Yep. 

[01:06:29] Dan Johnson: still ? Yep. Okay. I lost it. No, but I think we understand the point that you're getting at here is a cell cam cannot replace observation, slowing down.

Yep. Observing an absorbing how deer moved through the terrain. Any terrain. Yeah. 

[01:06:49] Bob Polanic: I got my thought back. Yeah. So I listened to Annie may talk about it, and he's, the way he got so good at hunting is he spent every waking moment when he was younger, scouting, hunting, just [01:07:00] consuming all things deer hunting.

Yeah. And that now he doesn't have to spend as much time doing it, it's just he has that base knowledge. He has that foundation. And it clicked with me because I spent my younger years steelhead fishing. Yeah. Every waking moment I was cut in class. I was skipping high school, skipping college.

And I was going steelhead fishing. And now today, steeled fishing is something that's very easy for me and I'm very successful at. And I listen to guys that are getting into it that talk about, catching a steelheads, like catching a unicorn. And I'm like, yeah, it's not that hard man, . But it's, I have that base knowledge, I have that foundation and it, I relate it to what Andy May was talking about and it's shit I mean it's k for me, it's like I'm start right now.

I'm starting where he was maybe when he was 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, something like that. I'm starting that as a 35 year old if it's so I can't expect, you can't expect to be on the same level as someone else when they have that [01:08:00] type of knowledge, those years of knowledge and information. Yeah. And that's something you're never gonna get with cell cam.

Now you can use that cell cam data but you're just it's not the same as real boots on the ground in March in. April, shed hunting, all that type of 

[01:08:16] Dan Johnson: stuff. Stuff how terrain, you know, like how terrain affects wind, how, how thermals affect scent cones, how all that kind of, all that stuff.

So yeah, I, I'm gonna agree with you there. I agree that there is a bit of, now I feel that a guy with Woodsmanship and how to a guy who also knows how to prop properly use a cell cam, it just makes them that much more deadlier. Oh, 

[01:08:41] Bob Polanic: for, totally agree. Yeah. Totally agree. 

[01:08:43] Dan Johnson: Yeah. Any, 

[01:08:45] Bob Polanic: and honestly, if, yeah, if you don't if you're getting into hunting and you don't want to develop your woodman woodsmanship and you still wanna be successful, then yeah, I guess trail cameras, cell cams, whatever it might be, it's a great tool to lean on.

as our [01:09:00] podcast and YouTube videos and all the other information that's at our fingertips. Yeah. But if you wanna run 'em, but you still wanna develop that, those skills, you still have that opportunity. You still have that choice. You can make that decision to immerse yourself and dive into it and learn and teach and consume everything that the woods has to offer year round.

There. There's no, just because it's easy to use a cell cam doesn't mean you don't have to do that. Yeah. It's same thing that we were talking about with kids. Yeah. You don't want your kids to treat hunting as a video game and cell cam then don't have him don't give him access to 

[01:09:38] Dan Johnson: it. Yeah. Yep. Good point. Great point. I'm not 

[01:09:41] Bob Polanic: a dad. I'm not a dad though, 

[01:09:43] Dan Johnson: not a parent. Yeah. Hey, by the way, disclaimer. Oh, by the way, do you have a dog? 

[01:09:47] Bob Polanic: I do not, I have no pets. Oh, no responsibilities, no 

[01:09:50] Dan Johnson: ties, dude. That's awesome dude. Cuz I, we just got a dog and I hate its guts. I hate it dude. I hate it.

Like I want it to run away. I, all it [01:10:00] does is shit all over the place is a puppy. It's a puppy. Yeah. I the amount of money that I spent on this dog for my wife and daughter, cuz my sons don't care the amount of time that I've, that our money that I spent on this, I would assume that this dog would be doing my taxes for me.

And so with it just basically chewing on everything, and I know it's a puppy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like my, our family had no business getting this. We're so busy. And so now , like this dog just kinda runs wild in her house. I'll step on a, I'll step on some pee or there'll be a turd laying in on the carpet somewhere and I'll just be like, oh my God.

[01:10:41] Bob Polanic: What what 

[01:10:42] Dan Johnson: breed is it? It's a cockapoo. I don't know what a poo is. It's half poodle, half cocker spaniel. Oh, okay. Yeah. I gotcha. And so it has no value. If I can't go out, I could probably try to teach it, but it's not gonna be a shed hunting dog. It's not gonna go retrieve [01:11:00] pheasants for me.

It's just a pillow dog. It just lays on, lays down and you play catch with it. And so my wife's whole thought process on this was, it's gonna be a good opportunity for the kids to learn responsibility. I'm like, if they haven't res like learned responsibility by now, I'm sorry a dog is not gonna help 'em out.

So anyway. Screw that dog is what I'm getting at . 

[01:11:26] Bob Polanic: Yeah. Give it time. Yeah, give it time. You'll see the, you'll see the rewards. Yeah. They're cute. They're cute dogs. Yeah. I do love dogs. I just don't when we wanna leave, when my wife and I wanna leave for two or three weeks at a time. Yeah. It's not, we just don't feel like it's the right thing to 

[01:11:41] Dan Johnson: do.

Yep. I feel ya. I feel ya. Man, we covered a lot in today's episode. Thanks for taking time outta your day to hop on and bs with us a little bit. Yeah. And get the opposing view in a way of what it is that we talked about on the first round of this. And [01:12:00] man, we'll have to, we'll have to actually get on here pretty soon and talk more deer.

[01:12:05] Bob Polanic: Absolutely. And it's not, it's not necessarily always an opposing view, it's just a different angle. Yeah. On, yeah, on it. It's not, I don't think sekis make deer hunting of really any easier. Maybe I'm just not a, I'm definitely not a great hunter. I'm average at best, but bow hunting could be just a touch easier and I'd be okay with that.

[01:12:28] Dan Johnson: , 

I feel ya. I can understand that. All right, Bob, man, appreciate your time. All 

[01:12:33] Bob Polanic: right. Thank you Dan. 

[01:12:35] Dan Johnson: And there you have it. Huge shout out to Tethered was Punts, Dan and Vortex. Also, be sure to check out fish and wildlife.org. Huge shout out to Bob for taking time outta his day. He's passionate about what he does, and dude, you gotta have both sides of the story whether you agree or disagree.

We have to learn how to communicate with each other, and that is the most important thing. And huge shout out to Bob for taking time outta his day. Huge shout out to [01:13:00] each and every one of you, man. 2023 is gonna be a good year. Let it be a good year. Make it be a good year. Do your scouting right now.

The time is now to get out. And look for all the I'm gonna do a podcast on this here pretty soon. It's gonna be a very quick one. Because although the te the information's already out there, it's also good to have a reminder that this time of year while the vegetation is off and the hunting seasons are done, is the best time to get in the woods and do your scouting.

So that's it. Good vibes in, good vibes out. And if you're gonna be in a tree, wear your damn safety harness. We'll talk to you next week.

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