Hunting North to South

Show Notes

This week on the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast, we stretch beyond the limits of our own borders and talk to Andrew Muntz of Ohio. Andrew is one of the hosts of the Ohio Outdoors podcast, and he chats with John about a few differences between hunting in the north versus the south. Andrew lives and hunts in Ohio, but has also hunted deep traditional northern states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Another advantage Andrew brings to the conversation is that he was just down at John's place in Oklahoma hunting hogs about 2 months ago, so he is familiar with how hunting goes in the south as well.

The guys cover seval topics including land parcel size, season structures, hot and cold weather effects, and even talk about different hunting strategies like deer drives. In 2022 Andrew killed a nice buck hunting two different parcels of land that totalled only 8 acres! He also talks about how Ohio does not have a modern rifle season. If you want to gun hunt, you can choose between a shotgun, muzzleloader, or straight wall cartridge such as the 350 legend. Overall, it is a great conversation about how different regulations work and affect different states and varying population densities of both humans and wildlife. Check out this episode, and be sure to check out Andrew and Paul over on the 02 podcast also on the Sportsmens Empire Podcast Network!

Show Transcript

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John Hudspeth: dependable. Hey guys and gals. Welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast, brought to you by Arrowhead Land Company. Here you'll be educated, entertained, and equipped to get more out of your outdoor experience. So hold on tight because here we go.

What's up folks? Welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast. [00:01:00] And real quick, before we get into anything else, a quick little reminder if you are listening to this podcast on the day that it drops May 22nd, today is the last day to sign up for Oklahoma controlled hunts. So stop what you're doing, get online and go sign up because you can sign up for elk hunts, antelope hunts, Turkey hunts, and deer hunts.

And so I believe it's only five bucks to apply for as many as you want to. Do some research and sign up for those hunts because it is a fantastic opportunity on that same topic. But shifting gears just a little bit it is currently time to put in for Iowa, which I am actually putting in not just for a preference point.

I am actually putting in to draw an Iowa tag. So I've mentioned this. Gosh, I don't know how many times over the past two or three years, but it's finally time I'm actually doing it. I am putting in to draw an Iowa deer tag. So I've never really done or successfully [00:02:00] drawn a tag. I kind of did last year with the elk hunt, but gosh, I wanna say the help me put in forehead, like a 90% success rate was zero points and I had like three or four points.

And so I put in and drew technically, but like, it was basically guaranteed. So this is the first one that I'm putting in for and like, I don't know if I'm going to get it. The last numbers they put out for I think was 2021. And I wanna say with the number of points that I had going for the unit that I am going for, I wanna say it was like a.

75, 80% chance of drawing. But you know, if you put in some point creep, that's probably a little bit lower than that now. So there is a good chance I will draw, but it is definitely not guaranteed. So say a prayer for me. Cross your fingers, whatever you want to do. I would absolutely love to go hunt Iowa this fall.

So that's the hope. Yeah, it's preference point. Season's kind of winding down. A lot of the western states are already closed. I believe Montana and [00:03:00] Wyoming they do it during the summertime if you're just going for a preference point. If you want to actually hunt this year, I think that's already closed.

So yeah, if you have never put in for some draw hunts, it, it, it can be a little complicated. I get it. It can be a little intimidating, but you just need to take a couple hours where you can just sit down, research the different states, you know, figure out the odds, what your goals are. You know, are you going for an opportunity?

Are you going for a trophy? Are you wanting to hunt in the next three to five years? Are you wanting to wait 20 years? You just gotta kind of figure out that stuff and do a little research and, and start putting in. I know it's intimidating. I know it seems like it'll never come. You know, you hear about people waiting like 15 years to draw some crazy elk.

Tag. But there's no better time to start than today, so. Well, you should have started a couple months ago, but you get what I mean, so, so yeah. That's all the draw talk I have right now. I do want to touch, I had a pretty amazing weekend last [00:04:00] weekend, so I wanna tell y'all about it. So I talked about it last week, kind of my, my goals and what all I had going on.

I had had last weekend on the calendar for, gosh, probably almost two months of when I wanted to plant my spring plots. And so I was planning to actually plant some soybeans this year my first time in a long time trying to like really do a spring plot. And, and yeah, this was just the time that I had the, you know, everything was just lining up.

My wife had a girl's weekend, she was taking our daughter. So you know, I didn't have to worry about any family complications. It was timing out to where I had the weekend, you know, with work and everything. But the big kink was the weather. And I complained about it for like over two weeks because like every, I think Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, there was like a 40 to 60% chance of rain.

And like I j I just wanted to know if it was going to rain or not, because if it was going to rain, I was gonna [00:05:00] save myself some, some money and not buy all the seed and not, you know, take the time to drive to the ranch and everything like that. But it just, it just kept staying right around that middle ground.

So I went ahead, bought the seed and drove up there because I knew if it ended up not raining, I was gonna kick myself if I, you know, wasn't ready to go. So, so drove up Friday. I didn't get there in time to do any prep work or anything on Friday. Yeah, so, so woke up Saturday morning and I wouldn't say things went like super smooth, but they ended up somehow working out.

So, so just to give y'all a quick little rundown, well, it's gonna be a little bit longer rundown, but anyway, so I woke up and we have two properties. I've talked about that before. We have our, our property on the river where we grow our hay, and then we have our main ranch where we, you know, have all the cattle and everything.

So, so I woke up at the river property and the drill was there at the river property, but the tractor I needed to pull the drill was at the ranch. So, drove my pickup over to the ranch, drove [00:06:00] the tractor back to the river property, hooked up to the drill, and then realized that the drill had a flat tire and we had no air compressor there.

So luckily my brother's truck was there, cause my truck was then over at the ranch. So drove my brother's truck over to the ranch, got in the work truck, which has a air compressor, drove it back to the river property. Aired up the tire. And then luckily I checked to the the seed bins and everything, or not seed bins, what's the word I'm looking for?

This seed compartment, that's still not the right term, but anyway, where you put the seed in the drill and it had not been properly cleaned out from the previous year. So used the the air compressor to blow it out and everything opened, all the seed cups went ahead and rained a little bit just there in the grass to kind of, you know, empty everything out, got it fully ready to go, and then drove the tractor in the drill back over to the ranch.

So, During all this, it had been cloudy, it had sprinkled, you know, once or twice, but no, no actual rain or [00:07:00] anything. So I finally get it over to the ranch, and I have all the seed in my pickup, and I kid you not, I open the seed box, that's the word I was looking for at the seed box. Open the seed box, and I'm taping every other seed cup because it's set on seven and a half inch rows, and I want 'em a little wider.

And so I'm taping it up, getting ready to pour the seed in, and it starts raining. And not just a sprinkle, not, not raining super hard, but an actual rain. And so I just kinda, you know, I shut the seed box, I climb into the tractor. I had my sandwich there. So I sit down, eat my sandwich, I'm checking the radar.

It looks like it's just kind of a passing thing. And sure enough, it stops pretty quick. And so I'm looking around and I'm, I'm pretty sure it's not too wet, as long as we don't get any more rain. And so get back out fill the seed box. I put enough in there for two acres cuz I, I've never planted soybeans with this drill and so I'm basically just kind of have having to guess on my settings.

And so I put enough for two [00:08:00] acres in the drill or what I'm hoping is two acres. Load the rest of the seed on top. Strap it down and take off to the first plot. So get to my first plot, which is two acres, and again, I'm just kind of, you know, guessing on the seed rate. And so, you know, I do a strip or two and, you know, check the seed box, it looks pretty good.

Do a couple more strips, check it, it's good. And by God's amazing grace, I somehow guessed the seed rate, like exactly right, and I'm talking exactly. I, I had bought an extra bag just in case I was shooting for 50 pounds to the acre and I I put two and a half bags in, you know, just in case. And I ended up planting that two acres and having just a little bit extra seed in the drill.

So I'm like, man, I am set. So drive back to the next plot in in the back. It's more like a three acre plot. Pour the rest of the seed in there, you know, I'm still checking it every now and again, just to make sure. But once again, like it just times out perfectly. [00:09:00] And I mentioned that I had bought, you know, an extra bag just in case while I get done planting my second plot.

And I still have some seed left over, which I should. And so I actually have a third plot that I wasn't planning on planting. It's just my little one in the saddle that I talked about or talked about all the time, one of my favorite spots to hunt. And I'm like, well, you know, I don't want this seed to go to waste and so I might as well go plant it.

And so I ended up planting my third plot and yeah, it's about an acre in size. The seed worked out just perfectly. I had just a tiny little bit left over. And so at the very end, I basically just opened the seed cups up and, you know, made one quick pass to empty the drill just to make sure it's, you know, completely empty.

So, so all that to say, Somehow guessed it exactly right. And ended up getting, not two, but three of my food plots planted in soybeans. So get back to the house and, you know, they'd been called for rain at like three or four o'clock, something like that. Check the radar, and there's no rain in the forecast [00:10:00] until like midnight and it's like 2 30, 3 o'clock or something like this.

So I'm thinking to myself, you know, I, I didn't spray these plots. My plan was just go ahead and plant them, get the seed in the ground, the soybeans were round up ready, and I'd come back later and spray the plots. Well, you know, the seeds in the ground, I used a no-till drill. I didn't have to broadcast or anything.

It's covered in soil. And I'm thinking to myself, I could go ahead and spray these plots like I have the time. And so I jump back in the truck, drive back over to the river property and get the sprayer, pull it back, and I'm filling the sprayer while simultaneously making up my own little food ration to put in my protein feeders.

Cause that was another goal for the weekend. And so we have it's, it's a seed box. That's what it's called. And it's made exactly for what you think it's made for transporting seed. So it's a big plastic box that has like a trap door on the bottom. So while the sprayer's filling, I'm over there in the skid steer, mixing up all the ingredients we have for feeding our calves.

And so ended up we had [00:11:00] soybean holes, cracked corn and D d G. So I did mostly cracked corn, just kind of for the attraction. Put some DDG in there for the protein and everything. And then mixed in a little bit of seed of the soybean holes just in case the DDG was a little hot. And so anyway, mixed it up, filled the seed box.

The sprayer was filled by then and so I take off again. And a long story short, I ended up getting three plots for a total of six acres seeded. Sprayed and two of my protein feeders filled in one day. Like I said, it wasn't exactly easy. You know, I had all, I was making all kinds of trips back and forth.

I was filling tires. I had to do some calibrations on the sprayer. It was all rusted over, so I was like getting wrenches and like having to use a hammer to turn 'em and everything like that. But when all was said and done, at the end of the day, I felt so stinking accomplished. I have not had [00:12:00] a day, and again, it wasn't a smooth day.

Like I'm, I'm, it's, it's almost hard for me to say it was a good day because it was very tough. But I got everything done that I was hoping to get done. I think I ended up working a solid 10 and a half hours straight. Like I said, I just scarfed down a sandwich that I had brought from home. I had a cooler with some water bottles in there, so I did not stop at all for 10 and a half hours, but I got everything done and it feels so good.

So, Hopefully, hopefully these plots are gonna work out. I do not have a green thumb. Nobody in my family does but I'm feeling pretty good about these plots. Again, let's say, you know, if you were going to broadcast then I would not broadcast and then spray. I would definitely spray and then broadcast.

But using the no-till drill, all that seed is safely in the ground, covered in dirt packed in and everything like that. So I, I just use glyphosate. Oh, man. Butchered that glyphosate to, you know, kill all the existing vegetation. [00:13:00] It's a foliar chemical that I used, and so it just, you know, it kills by getting on the leaves and the leaves take it down and everything, so it's not gonna, you know, remain in the soil, anything like that.

So, should be good to go there and, Yeah, that was my weekend feeling pretty amazed. I was trying to figure out another weekend I could pencil in to get up there and spray and, and check on things and fill the feeders if I didn't get it done and everything. But I just don't have to worry about that now.

So yeah, headed into summer, feeling very, very confident. The only big project this spring that I didn't get done that I really, really wanted to was I did not get anything burned. I was hoping to burn the canyon. I had my fire line dozed set, ready to go. It just never worked out with the weather and my schedule.

It seemed like every week for like two months, all spring it would rain every like Thursday and Friday. And so just, you know, when I could get there on the weekend to do it, it [00:14:00] was always too wet. And then before I know it, we had this early spring and it was all green and now it's hot and and I just, I did not get it done.

So that's unfortunate. But, you know, I had some solid food plots last fall that carried me through the winter. Now I got my spring plots planted. So I feel like I'm sitting pretty, pretty, so, so very, very excited about this upcoming fall, I should say this hunting season. Really ready to see what happens.

I've done a ton of work this spring and fall, and I'm really, really hoping that it pays off. Yeah, I think I just said this fall again. Really did a lot of work this winter and spring and then hopefully it will pay off this fall. So, so yeah, that's what I've been up to. Enough of that. This week we have a really, really cool podcast.

My Sportsman's Empire brother Andrew Munz, is coming on the show. And we have a really cool conversation about basically just north versus south, what it's like to hunt up north versus down here in [00:15:00] Oklahoma. And it's a really, really cool conversation, I think. And part of the reason I wanted Andrew to have this conversation with me is because one, he's from Ohio, so he hunts Ohio.

He also in the last couple years, has hunted Michigan and Pennsylvania two very, you know tradition rich northern states. And also he was just down at our place in Oklahoma hunting hogs like. Two months ago. So he's got to experience a little bit of everything. You know, he's, he's seen my exactly where I hunt.

You know, he's seen my stands, he's seen our property, the terrain. He's, you know, seen all my mounts in the house and everything. So he's pretty familiar with things down here. Obviously very familiar with things up there. So we just have a really co really cool conversation about kind of north versus south different regulations, different traditions.

We talk about deer drives man, like, you know, their, their gun seasons, how they can't use rifles, and so they're stuck with straight wall and muzzle loader and stuff like that. [00:16:00] So, again, just a really real cool, really, really cool conversation. So, so that's what we have in store this week. I hope you guys enjoy it.

We're gonna hear a quick word from our partners, and then we're gonna get into my conversation with Andrew Munz of the O two podcast right after this. Arrowhead Land Company continues to change the game in Oklahoma real estate. They have added new agents and more listings across the state to further help you reach your goals of buying or selling land.

Their hardworking, goal-oriented mindset puts you and your needs first. No matter if you're looking for a prized hunting ranch, a family farm, or just a little piece to build your dream home on Arrowhead Land Company can help. There is truly no place like the great outdoors in Oklahoma. When you're out in the wild, you want your wireless devices to work unlike other carriers.

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Bravado Wireless, the power of connection. Hey everybody, welcome to today's show, and today we're talking to my old friend Andrew Munz. How you doing, Andrew? Good, John, how are you today? Not too bad. Not too bad. It's been man, summer is hitting down here. I didn't see the actual high today. I know when I got in my truck after work, it said 101.

Now I know it was not actually 101, but it, it's, it's getting hot down here,

Andrew Muntz: dude. If we see 101 like that once in the summer, that's, that's hot. Yeah.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Like I said, I think actual temperature is probably 90 or something like that, but you know, the metal, the metal adds a little bit, so Oh, right, right, right.

Yeah. But, but anyway, man. Well, I was about to jump in cuz I know you fairly well, but just in case somebody's listening to this and they don't know who you are, why don't you tell everybody a [00:18:00] little bit about yourself? All right, so

Andrew Muntz: the quick rundown is that my name's Andrew Muntz. I'm up in Ohio. I live right outside of, of Columbus, which is our capital and dead center of the state.

I am a co-host of the Ohio Outdoors Podcast on the Sportsman's Empire with Paul, he's our, our co-host. Paul is our Turkey minded person, our birdbrain friend that I, I, as I call him. And I tend to talk and be more interested about Whitetails, but we kinda, we run our show up here. We've been doing it for about a year and a half.

Not as quite as, as long as you, John, but you know, we, we both came from non-hunting families. There's been a lot of learning along the way. There's still a lot of learning going, but that's kind of been our, you know, I don't know. Our avenue into this is, is talking to people and learning new things, but.

We're getting there.

John Hudspeth: Good, good. Awesome. And yeah, like I said, part of the reason I wanted to have [00:19:00] you on was one, because you are from Ohio and you've also hunted some other states, and we'll get into that in a second. But also another kind of just kind of added bonus is that you have been down to our place in Oklahoma.

You came down, you know, I guess it's all, almost been two months ago now, I think, and hunted some hogs. And so you've kind of got to experience a little bit you know, seeing our place, seeing the setup and everything. And, and I kind of just wanna have a conversation about kind of a, a north verse south type conversation.

You know, how things are different what all ways. One thing I really wanna hit in, hit on maybe towards the end is just kind of the difference in the weather and how that might affect, you know, deer and deer movement and everything like that. But, but before we get to all that, I wanna back up just a little bit.

So real quick, you said you're from Ohio but what other states have you hunted up there?

Andrew Muntz: So over the last few years, I've, I've spent some time in Pennsylvania, and then last year I went up to Michigan. I haven't really done any other states hunting wise that I can think of. When I came down to visit you, I [00:20:00] stopped in Missouri for coyotes with those guys, but most of the time it's been Pennsylvania, Ohio, and then Michigan, so.

John Hudspeth: Gotcha, gotcha. All right. And w we kind of did this exercise when you were down, but I'm gonna recap it kind of for the listeners. So I, you know, we were sitting down at the table, I think eating lunch or something, and I was like, I wanna tell you what I think of when I think of hunting states like Ohio and just kind of the northeast in general.

So I made my list here. So I, I think of high human population small acreage tracks, large body deer and then kind of Ohio specific, I think of, I mean, the potential to kill a world-class buck. I mean, there's some huge bucks coming up Ohio. And then also kind of with Ohio, I think of a lot of out-of-state hunters.

Just from listening to podcast over the years it seems like anytime you hear somebody who's from like New York or you know, any of the New England states, they all like dream of going to Ohio. Cause it's kinda like the first big bus, big buck state that they [00:21:00] can get to from the Northeast. So I'm just kinda asking you like, when you hear that list, am I spot on?

Am I missing a few things? Kinda gimme your thoughts on all that stuff.

Andrew Muntz: I think you're very, very close, right? I think a lot of, of what you described is, is very accurate and I, I will focus more on Ohio. My time in Pennsylvania, that's Big Woods. And I'll let you call Mitchell about that because he can give you some more, more rundown and, and I haven't quite figured that out yet.

Mm-hmm. The big woods stuff over there is different, but. I'm gonna speak in some big generalities when it comes to Ohio. So, you know, we're kind of that little heart-shaped state. It's not very little actually. Well, maybe not compared to Texas or Oklahoma, but it's a little, but if you, if you look at the state, it's cut in half basically by internet Interstate 71.

All right. So that goes from Cleveland down to Cincinnati and basically cuts the state and east and west. The west side of the state is very heavily ag [00:22:00] based. And again, generalities, but lots of row crops and a corn, soybean, some livestock, not anywhere close to the livestock you guys had. But then it's mostly farming and agriculture.

Mm-hmm. On the eastern side of the state, it is more the foothills, Appalachia. And you start getting much more rolling terrain. There's still a good amount of agriculture but the more you go east, the more you get into larger stan of hardwoods and that kind of stuff. It's an interesting how the, again, generally in, in generalities, but I 71, the way it cuts a state almost fi follows a, a glacial, I don't know, a glacial till line or whatever, but like how the glacier's set up.

So the eastern part of the state, like the soil pH tends to be lower. You can get down to the sixes and that kind of stuff. On the western side of the state, it's higher. I mean, you can get up into the eights.[00:23:00] And, and so that can affect the food sources that we have how crops are grown. And obviously food is a major component of the deer.

But I think overall, as a kid growing up, I used to think Ohio, well I still think Ohio's the greatest state ever, but it's not just cuz of the Buckeyes. And I know there's a lot of, probably a lot of Buckeye haters down your way, but that's okay. But we really have a, a cool mix. So we've got that eastern side with the bigger woods.

You got the western side with the agriculture, we've got lots of creeks and streams. We've got Lake Erie for walleye fishing which is outstanding perch. So we've kind of got a, a little bit of all kinds of things happening, but from a deer's perspective, that is kind of the geography of the state.

And then from there you can kind of break it down to, you know, what your opportunities are and what you see in, in some of these different pockets. So, I don't know. Did I answer your question? And like, I know if you wanna hone in on certain, certain components of that.

John Hudspeth: No, that's good. You know, Oklahoma's very similar.

We got I [00:24:00] 35 that cuts us in half. Eastern side gets a lot more rain, a lot more lush Western side starts getting pretty dry, so, so I definitely relate to that. One thing you told me, you don't have to gimme the exact acreages, but the, you know, you, you told me the two pieces that you hunt on and, and the acreage size of them, and they're what most people around here would call pretty small.

And so talk about the challenge that that comes with that. I mean, just, you know, I'm like, I'm assuming there's other hunters around you also hunting small tracks like that. And you know, like, yeah, down here, I think we just have larger tracks in general, and I think people, maybe it's cuz we're not as nice, I don't know.

But I think you also don't have quite as many people hunting each track. So I think our pressure is just more spread out compared to y'all. So yeah, talk about that a little bit. When, when we

Andrew Muntz: were down there and you were saying, oh yeah, if you don't hunt a thousand acres, you're, you know, you're not, you're not hunting.

And I'm like, bud, like I've killed, I've killed a [00:25:00] lot of deer. The last few years on combined. Eight and a half acres. Mm-hmm. All right. So I'm not quite Taylor Chamberlain like hunting in the, in suburbia. Mm-hmm. Although there is opportunity for that if you can find the right spot. But here's the deal with Ohio in the southeast corner of the state we've got our Wayne National Forest, you've got Shawnee State Forest.

The state has a few other tracks of public land. But that's about it when it comes to public land. So because of the heavy agriculture our as far as population goes and you know, population density, a lot of that is gonna be very centric around the big cities, which is not uncommon any state.

But you gotta think Cincinnati down South, Columbus in the middle, Cleveland up north, you got Toledo in the Northwest. Youngstown. Besides that, it gets pretty rural. There's a couple other little cities and stuff like that, but I think [00:26:00] if you look, we've got two or two and a half percent of the land is actually public and Huntable in Ohio, so it's very low.

You know, we're in that bottom, bottom. I don't know, probably five or 10 states when it comes to public land. So there's not a ton of that. So you gotta know people. Mm-hmm. Now I was talking to Tyler and Casey yesterday from The Element, and they were kind of explaining the ins and outs of Lisas down that way.

And I've heard, I think you were talking about it. I've heard Josh Rayley talk about it. We have leases up here, but I don't think it's quite the same as you guys. Most of the leases I know that people have are, I'm gonna pay you x number of dollars to be able to hunt your land for the year. Okay. And then it's not this like, we can come the weekend or, or, you know, pay for a weekend type of thing or, or whatever.

It's, and at this point, a lot of it, I should be careful. How would I say it is just kind of like, you know, you know, somebody, you're like, Hey, can I pay your top [00:27:00] property taxes this year? And, you know, let me hunt your land. They're like, okay. There's a lot, a lot of you have to know people and you know, it's just trying to figure out who's hunting friendly, who doesn't hunt their property already, who you know, just let you in to do that.

It's no different than any other state knocking on doors. It's tough. It's not my, my favorite thing to do. A couple of the places I've gotten access to are, you know, a friend from the gym. A couple of my customers, you know, an old professor from school knowing some of the farmers, that kind of stuff will help.

But like I was saying, the buck I shot this year was on a three and a half acre parcel. Hmm. And it was my first archery buck, so I was really proud of it. I'm not, I mean, it's not, he's not massive by any means, but man, I was proud of it. And it's just a little bit of a different technique because. That three and a half acres [00:28:00] butts up to 80 acres, which is decent land, mostly row crops, but it's kind of getting them to catch 'em to come through and timing it upright, you know that area is, you know, I have cameras out there every year and there's one or two days a year that the, those deer will come through daylight and you just gotta be there at the right time.

This year I got lucky and made it happen. So one of the other things I'll say about Ohio, similar to you, is that we are a bait state at this point. We still, we are allowed to bait on, on private land, not public land, private land, but so you do have those challenges as well when it comes to, you know, pulling 'em off of other people's property or just trying to make 'em happy, right.

I guess the only other thing I would say, man, is we have some monsters in the cities and it never fails. Every year I'll get pictures, videos, people sending me things, you know, eating somebody's arbor IES or running down the street, and he is just monster racks and [00:29:00] it's driving down the side of the highway in the middle of Columbus.

And I'm sure they're, that happens a lot of places, but there, there are world class deer that live in the city, so,

John Hudspeth: mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's getting more and more common just about everywhere. So but,

Andrew Muntz: you know, the size, the size of the deer, we, I think we have good deer. We, when we talk to our biologists for the state, we have a lot of deer.

Mm-hmm. And how they manage the herd in general, it's very unique. The state itself, we do not have wus or, you know, unit any units. Everything is run by the county. So each county has its own bag limit. We have a statewide bag limit, but. Do you want me to go into all that kind of Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. All right. So I'm gonna try to show you the map a little bit, but you can see we've got there's three different colors we're at. The big cities are the red ones, and that's where you can take up to four deer in that county. The state [00:30:00] itself is a one buck state but overall you can take six within the state.

Each county has its own bag limits. So you can take four in this county, two in that county, and you're done. Or one 11, you know, six all the way across or whatever combination up to six total. But our biologist will tell you, you know, basically we have a lot of deer. Last year we got hit pretty good with E H D in the southwest part of the state, so I'll be interested to see how, how they changed the bag limits down in that part, but, Overall, we just have a lot.

And he'll tell you, you know, the way they measure antler base on one and a half year old deer, you know, the, the more deer you have, the smaller those antler bases are because food is scarce, more scarce for 'em and that kind of stuff. So we, they, they tend to have a, you know, compared to some of the other states, I think we have a lot.

C w D has come around in, in one little pocket, [00:31:00] so they've been trying to knock some of the numbers down there. But man, it never fails. You get some of these private land deer that, especially in the western part of the state, if you get it out that way, it's so heavy. Ag, any wooded area is just gonna have something.

Mm-hmm. Some jewel in the, you know, diamond in the rough out there that's just been eating corn all, all, all summer long. And they pop up, man, they pop up all the time, so, mm-hmm.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. I don't know if you. No, that's great. That's, that's great. That's what I was looking for. I don't know if you were were in there or not when y'all were down.

I was talking to Nick out in the living room at the house, and I had all my, my mounts in there and he pointed at my very biggest buck biggest antler, biggest body. I, I didn't have any history with the deer, but I mean at least five and a half, probably six or seven and a half years old. And he's like, man, if you cut the antlers off that thing and just look at the body, he said, that would be [00:32:00] about a two year old in Michigan.

He's like, the deer up where I am are just bigger. And, and I think especially on our place in particular we're, you know, we're in a pretty lush area. Like I would say our deer body size are probably bigger than like the state average. Just kind of, you know, we're in the southeastern part, we get probably the most rain in the state.

We do have some ag around. Deer can get old. But man, when he said that's like the body of a two-year-old, that kind of blew me away. So are y'all also kind of in that big bodied, you know, I'm, I'm just guessing, especially western part of the state, you're talking about all the ag. Are y'all in that big body area?

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, and I would, you know, as far as I'm gonna jinx us here, but we get a good amount of rain. It's been a long, long, it's been a few years since I would consider we've had a drought. So my line of work, I work with lawn care companies and sports fields and that kind of stuff, managing grass. And you know, there's, it seems like there's about a two week window [00:33:00] in the, in the year that we really need irrigation to keep the grass green.

So to me that's not much. Right. So those, those deer. Spring we had a really mild winter here this year. So they, they probably came out in pretty good shape. I've, you know, from what I've seen, it looks like they're, you know, as healthy as can be coming out, but then they, they seem to always have lots of food sources.

Western part of the state. It's heavy egg, more east you go, you getting into those hardwoods with, you know, the acorn, acorns and I now, I'm, I started listening to some of those guys talking, I don't wanna say acorn, but it's acorn and, and all the other brows and, and, and, and woody food sources. So I would say our bodies are good.

I've never weighed one, but a good size buck you're getting in there, you know, couple hundred pounds plus. And the dose, you know, they're, they're, they're decent size two and obviously not as big as a buck, but. Yeah, I think when I've seen the deer down your way, they, [00:34:00] or, you know, in comparison, a couple times I've been to Texas, they look way smaller mm-hmm.

Than anything we have running around. So, but, and it's food source and, and like I said, in the cities, man had all kinds of landscaping to eat and Yeah. You just don't seem to have, because we don't, we haven't had a really extended period of drought or anything like that. It's been good. Now the biologist may tell you that we don't have enough food and that's why the antler base is small, because herd's so big.

But compared to the Oklahoma deer, Texas deer that I saw, I would say that yeah, we definitely have size on it. So, because where we are at, where we're at realistically isn't that much different geographically from Nick. His winners are probably a little harder, but, and he's in what, Southwest Michigan?

Mm-hmm.

John Hudspeth: So. But, Hmm. Yeah, one thing about ag ground that I, I just kind of never really had a opportunity to learn about, cause I have never really been in it. But so I went and visited my sister actually right after y'all were there, [00:35:00] and went Turkey hunting and they're, you know, in the heart of ag country there in Nebraska.

And yeah, I was there I guess late April, early May, somewhere in there. And I, I was floored at the lack of food actually. You know, everywhere around it's corn and soybean fields, but they had harvested those fields. Nobody around there did any cover crops or anything like that. I think they did have, you know, a kind of a hard winter, you know, snow pack and everything.

And it like, Compared to when I was there last September to actually deer hunt. I was like, oh my gosh. Like these deer have to be huge. They have so much to eat, but it, man, it just kinda depends on the time of the year. And you know, I walked through some, some wood lots and stuff. I found, gosh, how many, I think I ended up finding three deadhead cuz they had been hit by e h D cause they had a dry summer last year.

And so, yeah, I was shocked that even in what you would consider, consider, you know, ag ground there are times of the year where there's not much for those deer to eat. And so anyway, just had to [00:36:00] throw that in there. Keep, keep talking about ag ground.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. If I had to, if I had to say, you know, the problem with egg ground, I think Paul would echo this from the Turkey side of things.

It's the habitat and every time I turn around you just see the fence lines getting pulled out and trying to make these bigger farms. And I, I don't fault the farmers because they gotta do their job. But the habitat side of things is, it's. It's just a little bit disturbing. And you know what? The industry and stuff too.

We, we've got warehouses and stuff going up and every time I turn around, another thing goes down. The flip side of that for me is that when I sell grass seeded, I'm like, oh, there's grass seed hasco there. But you know, it's one of those really double-edged swords because you know that the habitat there, you know, pushing 'em out or pushing 'em places where they, they don't need to be, or, I don't know that, that to me, I would say would be the biggest detriment to the herd.

Mm-hmm. In general. But

John Hudspeth: yeah. Yeah. I guess just in our area there, you know, there is some ag but around that ag you usually still have, [00:37:00] you know, woody vegetation or pasture ground or, you know, something, something that's left for them to eat. But,

Andrew Muntz: Well, and one thing, one thing we don't have that you do as hogs and that, I'm thankful for that.

I mean, it was a lot of fun to come down and shoot at your hogs, but you know, they don't really have a, a whole lot that they're fighting with on that end. Predator wise, we have. A good coyote population and bobcats are, we'll call 'em reemerging. They were basically extricated from the state at one point southeast Ohio, like the OU Ohio University down in Athens.

They're the bobcats. And so that's kind of like where we, they're, they're starting to push up though. And where I'm at, I had never seen one in my life. And then a couple years ago, I was sitting in a tree stand and had a little one walk underneath me and I had this man. I looked at it and looked, I'm like, what is that?

Because it wasn't that big. And we don't have a season for 'em. I [00:38:00] think that might be on the horizon. I I, they're not endangered here, but maybe threatened or protected. I don't know how that they, they word it, but now I see, I see 'em more often and I've started doing some of the thermal night hunting and.

Every time I'm out there, it seems like there's Bobcat walking through and they're seem to be getting bigger too. So I've got friends that've got, you know, turkeys and other livestock and you know, they've got bobcats in their coops all the time. So we're starting to see more of that. I don't know how that would affect the population, but the deer have it pretty easy.

I would say we're all on the predator side of things, so we maybe a handful of bears in southeast Ohio, but not, not like some other places.

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Bravado, wireless, the power of connection. All right, well, I wanna shift gears just a little bit here and kind of get into more the like season structure type stuff. So you know, a, a battle that we're, we've been fighting here recently. There's been a lot of legislation in Oklahoma talking about changing seasons introducing air bows.

You know, changing the buck limit, all kinds of stuff like that. So I'm just kinda curious from, from where y'all are at I just wanna hear a little bit about your season structure. You know, how long's your archery season, when's your gun season? And then another weird thing that, you know, what type of gun season do y'all have?

You know, down here, like the, the phrase gun season honestly doesn't really exist down here. It's like you have bow season, you have rifle season but I [00:40:00] know, I'm pretty sure at least in Ohio, there's places you can't use traditional rifles. So yeah, big, big swipe. Just touch on all that a little bit.

Andrew Muntz: All right, here we go. So I think Ohio's pretty liberal as far as how they have things structured. It's pretty open. We do have crossbows, we do have, but baiting on, on private land. Our archery season always starts the last Saturday of September. Excuse me. So. That is kind of middle of the road. I think like Pennsylvania, they start October 1st.

And then our, so our archery, which includes cross bows, we haven't, I haven't heard anything on the air bow side of things. We'll run until February 5th, so literally, you know, September, October, November, December, January, February, you're like five month season. There it's pretty good. And if you really want to get out late season with your bow, you're more than welcome to.

We have our [00:41:00] gun season that is normally the week after Thanksgiving. It is one week and they do throw in a bonus gun weekend. So usually a couple weekends after that, they'll give you a Saturday, Sunday to go back out and, For a long, long time, it was only shotguns in Ohio, and a few years ago they instituted the straight walled cartridge rifle.

So what is that, like three 50 bushmaster or three 50? Is it three 50 legend? Three 50 legend? Yeah. I don't have one. I haven't, I haven't gotten into that. I, I do still have a 12 gauge and that's how I started was, was with a gun. And so that's like seven days now. They, and I like that. I think that's good.

It's not one of these like, you know, forever long seasons and it become, it makes it special.[00:42:00] People plan vacations and time off around that. We don't, I don't know that we necessarily have the traditional deer camps that you might have in some other areas like Michigan or Pennsylvania and some of that, but that week is pretty important to people in Ohio.

So The, you get you get your, and you can also use a muzzle loader during that week too, but no rifles. There is no ri, no rifles outside the straight wall cartridge. Rifle. Got that one week. It's, it's past the rut. So you, or mostly past the rut. So you know, you don't lose a lot of the, you don't have that interruption.

I know in some states it's like we gotta get out early November because by November 15th there are, you know, the orange army's out there, we don't really have that. You get bow hunters get the entire, basically the entire month of November to do their thing. Then after the first, the year, so this, this year it was January 7th to January 10th.

So for four days it's usually a Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday they open up a [00:43:00] muzzle loader only season. And That's a lot of fun. It's something different. It gives you another opportunity to get out with a BoomStick and, and go after 'em. So in my experience, you know, a lot of times the way the gun season has been, you know, you utilized for me or people I know, you know, guys might take that week of gun season, do traditional hunting, go out to a stand, try to fill a tag or two.

But on the weekends of the gun seasons is when the deer drives happen, and that's when we get the big groups together. We push those little pockets of woods. Make it, it may be not a traditional deer camp, but it has got that atmosphere. And if the weather's good, you get some real old timers out there and post em up.

And so that, that's special I think. And then, you know, if you do it right and you got a good, energetic, energetic group of guys, you could do it the week of gun season. You could do it that bonus weekend and then do it in muzz loader too. We'll talk about [00:44:00] the weather, but some, sometimes Ohio's bipolar weather, you never know what you're gonna get.

And there's, yeah, sometimes those, those muzzle loader drives can be quite the arctic experience. So, but overall, I mean that's, that's the setup on the season structure. We do have youth gun season in there too, but I'm trying to think if there's anything you're allowed to use archery equipment during the gun week.

John Hudspeth: I was gonna ask about that. Cause I know a lot of states shut it off, but

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, I think really the only thing you're not allowed to hunt during. I should, I got the book here. I should look, figure this out. I don't think you're allowed to hunt coyotes at night during deer gun season. Mm-hmm. That would be the, like one restriction.

Yeah. And actually I feel like groundhogs around that too, but whatever. Don't quote me

John Hudspeth: on that one. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's, that's how Oklahoma is too. Like, a lot of times they shut off the, [00:45:00] the coyotes and then even hogs, I think you, I better not quote this either, but I'm, I'm pretty sure you can hunt hogs at night, during deer season, but you have to like physically call the game warden and tell him that you're going to be out there.

So most people just don't mess with it. So you mentioned deer drives. That's a, a big difference between north and south. Like I, I've never done one, to be completely honest. Like, when I see or hear of people doing it, it kind of scares me. Like, I can't imagine, you know, just so many people out there.

I guess, you know, if you don't have the rifle that, you know, it changes things a little bit. But but yeah, that's definitely one thing that we do not do down here is deer drives. And I'm sure a lot of it is just private land, people being a little stingier, you know, I'm, I'm not gonna invite 10 people to come walk around on my property and, and hunt and stuff.

So I've, I've always been curious, but I've, I've never done it.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, I think because of the far man, so, [00:46:00] oh man, let's see. I, i careful how I say this, but in you know, when they come up, when they come up with the bag limits for the counties and stuff, a lot of it is based on surveys. As you can imagine.

The farmers will always tell you, there's too many deer. The hunters will tell you there's not enough deer, and that's somehow they come up with this number that we, we abide by. But like the deer drives that I'm part of, a lot of times it's, it's on large farms. And so to them, the farmers are like, we're.

Helping to save our crops. And a lot of times it's not so much the, this is my dear, your dear, whatever. It's, it's a group effort. It's will really well drawn out. If there's new people that are on it, they're usually side by side with somebody who's been there for a long time. You know, there's the maps and everybody basically, it's like a war zone, war room.

You know, you put putting people where you're gonna be. Like I mentioned, we don't have the rifles. We've got shotguns and the straight wall cartridges. And the muzzle loaders. So the [00:47:00] distance that those can travel, yes, you still have to be very safe, but it is, we're not talking a mile distance Ohio being pretty flat, at least on the, the western portion.

You know, that is, that's the reason for no, for no rifles. Mm-hmm. Now, the one thing I do question is that you're still allowed to hunt coyotes at night with a rifle, but. We're not gonna go down to that rabbit hole. And I'm sure there's, there's good reason for it. But so the deer drive, I think it, it's, it's an interesting thing.

You gotta have the right setup. You gotta have a, a good amount of land. And you know, some smart people with you. I did, when I went over to Pennsylvania last year with Mitch, a lot of those guys did there, they did big drives through the woods. Now the woods are, now, they're allowed to use rifles. But you've got, I mean, you're, you're in the mountains basically.

They're not mountains like the Rockies, but you definitely have a lot of top topography change. But it's still the same idea that you've got people with maps and you're like, setting them up, all right, this is where they're gonna be and they're [00:48:00] gonna be, and we're gonna push through here. They're talking, communicating the whole time down the line.

So it's. If it's done right, it can be. I, in my opinion, it's very safe. There's always an element no matter what happens of risk, but, you know, it's, it's, it's fun. It's a lot of fun. And you, you know what the one thing is that some of the deer drives I've been on, you're gonna see deer. That's, that was where I got my first buck.

That's where I got my first deer ever, was on a deer drive because you know, they get pushed out and there's years that, which is really, really weird. There was one, we had a big field. They pushed, well, we walked in on it the one year and there was three or four shooter bucks in there. I mean, they were good size deer just out there browsing.

And this would've been, you know, the second weekend in December or something like that. The next year we went out, we, all we pushed was coyotes. They kicked six coyotes out that weekend. And no deer. So you always see something's just a matter of if it's [00:49:00] what you really wanna see her. Yeah.

John Hudspeth: One last question on the Deer Drive.

Do you guys, like, do y'all practice running shots? Because I assume several of the shots, the deers at least, you know, walking, jogging, or running, do y'all practice that or is it just kind of you learn throughout the years? Or do you not take running shots? How I, that's one thing I've always been curious about.

Andrew Muntz: We don't practice, well, I don't practice running shots. I try not to shoot at running deer. Mm-hmm. Have I shot at running Deer? Yes. Have I, I'm trying to think if I, yeah, I did. The buck I got, he was, he was puffing man. I probably got really lucky on that, but it's knowing where you're, where you're shooting always and what's behind you.

But a lot of times when they kick 'em out of the woods, the deer don't always know what's going on, going on. So they'll, they'll go hoofing out into the middle of the field and then stop. Hmm. So, and look, look back. I mean, you, you've probably seen that too, but, That what I is, where I would say inevitably they [00:50:00] meet their fate.

There's times where if you have you know, some of the properties I remember, you know, or that we've done, and I I, I haven't hunted Ohio's gun season in a while because I've been in Pennsylvania or elsewhere. But the, you know, they know where the pinch points are. Just like anything else. The deer have their safe spaces.

So what do you do? You put a put post a, a sitter up there and the biggest deer I ever saw get shot on the deer drive. I think he was a 17 point giant man. And he ran right to that guy in the sit sitter position because he was in his outlet, right? Mm-hmm. And he knew where he was going. The one guy, there's this little, we call it the island, sit right in the middle and it's just this little scrub brush.

I don't know if it's too wet to plow under or whatever, but he. He always go sit out there and he would knock him down. He'd take one or two every, every time, just run because they run right to him. And it was like, it was, it was just perfect. So. Mm-hmm. A lot of running [00:51:00] shots. I wouldn't say a lot, but it does happen.

And I've seen it. I've seen guys shoot 'em. As you can imagine, most often there's misses. But it's just knowing where you're shooting at. Yeah.

John Hudspeth: That's one thing. The hogs are a lot of,

Andrew Muntz: lot of communication going on. Like if, if there's, if you've got one running across, that whole line is yelling, you know, way, way, you know, whatever.

There's. Make sure everybody's aware of what's in the background or wait till it gets to this point, whatever. Hmm.

John Hudspeth: Gotcha. I was gonna say that's one thing that hogs are good for. I feel like I'm well trained to take a running shot, so maybe someday I'll come up there and do a deer drive. We'll see.

We'll see. There you go. Come on man. One more big thing I wanted to kind of touch on and I, this is not going to be a very informative segment. I don't think it's gonna be a lot of opinion, but this is just something that I've always kind of wondered. And so I'd like to pick your brain cuz you're kind of on the other side of it.

And I, I wanna talk about how temperature affects deer and [00:52:00] deer behavior. And I'm gonna try to explain this as clearly as possible. But you know, down here, so we have an October one opener. Every year it's the same day. And it's usually still extremely warm. And you just don't see a lot of deer movement because it's so hot.

And, you know, you hear some of the, the big killers out there, you know, Tony Peterson, Andy Maye, Dan Johnson maybe not that last one, but you know, some of the big names they love like opening day. It's like their thing. And you know, they're scouting all summer and they're trying to get it done like the first day or two.

And I just feel like you don't really see that happening down here. And I don't think it's because people aren't scouting, you know, everybody's running cameras and stuff. I think it's just, it's so warm that the deers aren't moving in daylight yet. And so I guess where I'm going with this is like, you know, y'all's summer is not as hot as ours, but to y'all's deer, is it still hot, I guess is what I'm getting at.

So like if it's 85 to 90 here, It's too warm. But [00:53:00] if it goes down, you know, if we get a, a front and it goes down to 75, like we might get some movement. But for y'all, like if your average temperature is, I don't know, 75, 80 and then it goes down to 65, is that the same thing or am I way off on that?

Andrew Muntz: I don't think it's, I think it's, you know, geographically you're probably fairly accurate, you know getting into the weather thing, you're right.

It is a lot of opinion and I think you know, people up here, our, our, our season, it does, you start that first week and you're sweating in the tree and the mosquitoes and everything else. And sometimes that first week in November it's 30 degrees. And then there's times where the first weekend in November, it's 75 degrees.

This last year it was warm. So I think a lot of people would say, oh, I'm not gonna go sit out 75. Like, the deer aren't gonna move. And I don't necessarily agree with that. I think people just aren't sitting out. And maybe the trail cameras can be the X factor on that, but I think they kinda lie to you sometimes [00:54:00] too.

But I think for, for me personally, if I had to tell you, I don't think it really matters for me, one thing that matters is when they take the crops off. Mm-hmm. So a lot of times I, if I have corn in n next to my one property, I swear I don't see deer until that corn comes off. Like they are hidden in there and they're not coming out.

Not in the daylight. There's other times where I see the biggest deer of the year is the back half of November, and that's, I do have the trail cameras on on that. That's when I killed mine this year was November 23rd, I think. And I hadn't really had a daylight buck on that property at all, but the previous year, It was like November 22nd or 24th, it was like right in that window that they, they were moving through that area.

So I don't know if it's the, the do get on, you know, every year they hit their, their estrous or [00:55:00] whatever at the right, at the same time. And so like, whatever dos are in that area, just same thing every year. Call brings the bucks in. I don't know. Weather-wise though, you know, for me, I, I do like barometric pressure.

I do buy into that a little bit. But most of the time, you know, I've sat out in the rain, I've sat in the snow, I've sat in the heat, I've sat in the cold. I can't tell you what if, if any of that really affects it. When I, what I'll tell you is I think Ohio is so weird and I, I perhaps there's a lot of states like this.

We say, like everybody says, right, wait five minutes, the weather will change and everything. But you know, like I, last year was stupid warm during the rot that first week of November. There's other years where it, it can be snowing and there's other years where it rains the entire month of November. There's years where we've been hunting on those deer drives in short sleeves.

So in the second week of December, and there's years where, [00:56:00] remember one year, this is bad, but I was out kneeling in the field. I think it was during muzzle loader, and I think the, the high that morning was like seven, or that day was like seven. And we were doing a drive, so you're gonna push things out.

But I, like, I was kneeling and then I went to stand up and my leg had like, fallen asleep cold, and I just fell over in the field. So, which is probably not super safe. But those are the things, man, it can just be a gamut of, of whatever. And I, I don't know. I don't know. I, you can kill deer anytime they're gonna move, when it's time to move and, and, and whatever.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. I think it was 2021 when we had our huge arctic blast thing down here and everybody's pipes were freezing and stuff like that. And I think it hit at my house. I wanna say it hit negative three, and that is the coldest I can ever [00:57:00] remember it being down here. Like, I, I've never, I don't think before that I'd ever seen negatives.

Usually like a really cold, a really, really cold day would be like getting into the teens. Like you're talking real cold usually. It seems like these last two or three years we've had some, some lower temperatures, but like single, I mean, even single digits is almost unheard of down here. You know, your normal cold front, it's gonna be, you know, low thirties, upper twenties.

And that's, you know, like at night. That's not during the day. You know, usually in the daytime you're gonna get more closer to mid thirties, 40, somewhere in that. So but I, I think that me personally, I've seen when it gets super cold like that, you know, those high teens, low twenties, typically it's only gonna be there for a day or two and.

For me personally, what I've, I usually see deer activity actually go down instead of go up, even though it's so cold. Because I think the deer know that they can just hunker down, [00:58:00] conserve their energy and it's gonna warm back up and then they can kind of go back to feeding and I'm sure they move around a little bit and stuff.

But when, like with you guys up there, when y'all get so cold and it's sustained for so long do you think your deer just kind of basically are forced to get up when it's real cold and like, I mean they literally have to, to survive? I, I, you know, it's basically the opposite side of the heat thing.

Like here, I think when it gets real hot, the deer don't move. And, you know, I wasn't sure about there. And I'm wondering if it's the opposite, like when it gets super cold down there, do you think the deer are forced to move?

Andrew Muntz: That's a good question. I think one, so we, the coldest I've ever seen was this past, right before Christmas, we had that arctic blast and I remember seeing wind chills of negative 35 and I think the actual temperature was like negative 17.

That's really rare. We usually have some mornings that'll start in the negatives every year, but after that, oh, we only got cold a couple more times. I mean, real like subfreezing [00:59:00] cold, it was a very mild winter here. I would guess that based off what you're talking about, the one thing, the element you're for forgetting is the snow.

If we have snow, which is not, you know, normally, you know, I can't remember how many inches we average. I think it's in the thirties. We're not, we're not lake, you know, there's parts of Ohio that do get lake effect snow and they're, they basically have snow still at this point in the year. But. When you have the snow and the white backdrop, you see 'em, right?

And when you don't have snow, no offense, Ohio, but it's kind of a dreary, bleak brown, everything. Those deer are hard to see even down driving down the road. So if we've got the snow and you, you can, you know, they just stand out, they pop, you see 'em moving, they're brown, they're, you know, they're whatever.

So it's almost like this false perception. I, I think they're still moving even when it's not super cold. It's just that a lot of times it's a lot easier to just, you miss 'em. If you're hunting, obviously that's different, but like, [01:00:00] just in general observation of driving down the road. When I come home every night, I've got fields ne near me that I'm constantly scanning.

And I, man, if I have snow, it's like the kids pick 'em out. I can pick 'em out really easy. When it's brown out there and it's just crop stubble and mud obviously they blend right in so that it can be probably be a, a major factor in, in how you. The perception of their movement is based on the winter.

Hmm,

that

John Hudspeth: makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Mitch actually text texted me today. We were talking a little bit and I told him, I, I've never once hunted whitetails in the snow in my entire life. I found it elk, you know, out west and stuff, but I've, I've never hunted whitetails in the snow.

Andrew Muntz: I'll tell you what, man, it, it has its ups and downs, obviously. You see more, they, they stand out that like big time. And if it's not snowing at the time you shoot them, you get, probably get a really nice blood trail. Mm-hmm. However, if you shoot one [01:01:00] and it's snowing or snows on top of that blood trail, it's worthless.

So and that can happen. It happened to me a couple years ago where it wasn't even a lot of snow, but man, it had just snowed a half inch or something from the time I shot till the time I went to Tracker and. That was a dandy trying to find that deer. It, it turned into a grid search and I, I got her,

John Hudspeth: but, and I'm sure she's good.

She, she has snow on top of her too, I'm sure. So that makes it even harder to find. It was not,

Andrew Muntz: not as easy as, as I thought it was gonna, when I let that arrow go, man, I thought, oh, this is great, like, gonna have a beautiful blood trail and all this stuff. And then so I sat my 30 minutes or whatever and the next thing I know I was like, oh boy, this could be fun.

And it was getting dark, so that made even better.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. All right, well we're coming up on time here and I don't wanna keep you all night, but one last real quick thing. You mentioned you'd hunted Michigan and Pennsylvania and when I think, you know, hunting tradition, those are the two, you know, states that [01:02:00] really come to mind.

So, just real quick I know you, you haven't hunted 'em a ton, but just talk a little bit about what you've seen from the hunting tradition from those states.

Andrew Muntz: So my time in Pennsylvania, I've a couple different camps I've been to, but it it's a lot of what you think. And it's the same guys getting together every year going out in the woods, scouting a lot of public land and big woods.

You know, it's getting super excited for people when they, when they do get a buck. Pennsylvania, and I'm not, don't, there's no regulation check on this one because All right. Don't quote me on this because I'm not a hundred percent sure. They don't appear to pass out, do tags as much as like Ohio does.

You have to apply as an out-of-state, or you had to apply for 'em. It was kind of a cumbersome system, but they had do tags if you wanted to get doe over there and, and, and you timed it upright. Michigan, that was, that was fun. It was actually up in the up and Very [01:03:00] unique as far as the terrain and different things up there, way different than central Ohio.

So but the camp atmosphere, same thing. Great. You know, good times, new land. I mean, it's always fun to just explore new places and see new things and yeah. Mm-hmm.

John Hudspeth: Awesome. Awesome. Well, cool, Andrew, man thank you for coming on and having this chat with me. Before I let you go though, I wanna make sure I give you a chance to, to shout out all your stuff.

So yeah. Where can people find you? Well,

Andrew Muntz: Let's see, actually, and John, we didn't even talk about it. If anybody's still listening you can B2 dot podcast on Instagram. You'll get a feel for what hunting deer is like in Ohio as I was going out to make with the, I irony of it all as I was going out to make venison burgers tonight.

And I have a, a doe and her name, we've named her Dolly. Long Story. She shows up all the time. She's basically a pet ac of the people across the street, which I'm sure is not really legal. But here she is standing [01:04:00] next to my grill and yeah, but it's that easy. That's on. Yeah, it's that, it's that easy.

In Ohio V2 Pod podcast on Instagram, we're on. Go Wild is oh two podcast, the oh two podcast.com. I'm on there too. Personal stuff, but like I. Most of our content and everything there. And then obviously we're on the network with you on the Sportsman's Empire. So usually our shows drop on Wednesday and yeah, try to cover a little bit of everything,

John Hudspeth: so.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, man, I appreciate it. Thank you for this little north first South discussion and until next time, we'll see you next time. Oh man. Man, that was a double, that was bad. That was a bad way to end. Until next time, we're see you later. How about that? All right, sounds good. Thanks, John.

Man, time flies when you're having fun. We're coming up on an hour and 10 minutes here. My bad folks. Thank you Andrew, for coming on. I really enjoyed that conversation and I just thought it'd be a good one to have. We've been talking about [01:05:00] all this legislation and proposed changes and everything. So I just thought it'd be cool to kind of step out of the bounds of Oklahoma, talk about somebody from a different state, different part of the country, and just kind of what they're dealing with and how they handle things and season structures and all that good stuff.

So, so yeah, huge shout out to Andrew for coming on. Go check him and the other guys out at the oh two podcast on the Sportsmans Empire. And I think that is all I have for you guys today. So quick second reminder go sign up for Oklahoma controlled hunts if you haven't already. And I think that is going to do it for this week.

So thank you guys once again, so much for listening to this podcast. And until next week, I will see y'all right back here on the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast.[01:06:00]