Nomadic Outdoorsman - The Whitetail Hunting Circuit

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks with Jimmy Shelhamer from Florida about his passion for mudding and traveling the country in search of mature whitetails.

Jimmy was born and raised in South Florida where he grew up hunting the Florida swamps and traveling to Georgia to hunt friend's property and hunting leases. When it wasn’t hunting season Jimmy was fishing or riding four wheelers in the mud. He moved to north central Florida to take a job with the only fire department hiring at that time and never left. When not in the woods Jimmy is taking care of our wagyu cattle on the family farm. Jimmy always wanted to film his hunts and have his own show but when life got in the way those dreams started to fade, that’s when he finally decided to go all in and create Country Traditions. He started posting to YouTube for his friends and family to follow along with his life and the rest is history! This episode is full of stories from chasing whitetail to watching rednecks do dumb stuff in the mud.

Dan Mathews: [00:00:00] All right guys. Welcome to today's show and joining me on the show today, I've got Jimmy Shell Hammer. Now, this is an awesome episode. We're gonna dive into all kinds of stuff from mudding and building out awesome rigs to go mudding in to hunting and what that looks like where he's at down in Florida.

It's gonna be a really great episode. But before we dive into that, I've gotta let you know I went out shed hunting on my own property the other day. I was really excited about it, right? I had a bunch of pictures of Deere showing up on camera that looked like they were freshly dropped, walk around my property, didn't find a single shed, but down the road on one of the other pro properties I've got access to, I.

Man, I'm gonna cruise over there. I keep getting an alert that my tact cam cell camera is like outta memory. So I was like, I gotta get over there. I kind of wanna walk and look for sheds while I'm over there. So I walk this bedding area that I thought was gonna be killer and it really did look amazing. You could see deer [00:01:00] beds everywhere.

I guarantee there's a shed in there and I just didn't find it. But then I was like, before I leave, it's about 40 acres of beans. I'm gonna rip around on the four-wheeler, not tear it up, drive up and down just looking for sheds. And when I did, there's a seasonal cattle pond, and if you go on my social media, I posted a video of it already, but there's like a seasonal pond that they had put in there at some point, probably for when they ran cattle.

And right in the middle of it, I just was driving by it, look over and it's, it was like aside from a ray of sunshine coming through the clouds, it was just so awesome to see it. Bright white out there. It wasn't the biggest one. It had been chewed up. It was a year old. It doesn't matter. None of that matters to me.

The fact that I found my first shed in Missouri while shed hunting, I'm pretty pumped about it. And I'm hooked. I've already been messaging with my co-host from the Western Ricky Bryan, and he's dude, [00:02:00] I'm so pumped for you, man. That's amazing. And we're planning a trip to head down to Colorado, so we're gonna be doing some shed hunting this spring.

Anyways, enough about that. Let's jump into the episode with Jimmy. I'm pretty excited,

Jimmy Shelhamer: like he was doing things that were just badass.

Dan Mathews: That was one of the coolest moments of my life. I was really

Jimmy Shelhamer: scared, but knowing that Dan had the gun, I did have the rifle, like we would be okay.

Dan Mathews: All right guys. Welcome to you today's show. And joining me on the show today is Jimmy Shell hammer. It is not Taylor. Now, I gotta tell you guys, when we popped up on Zoom, his wife's picture came up. I'm like, wow, I've never seen someone named Jimmy that looked like that. But then he ended up coming on screen, so I'm excited for this one.

He's out of Florida. Jimmy, what's going on man?

Jimmy Shelhamer: What's going on, man? Yeah, no, today, at this day and age though, you never know. Doesn't how I identify, right? That could have been me, . It

Dan Mathews: [00:03:00] definitely could have been my I have to tell people all the time cuz my wife goes by Sam, and so I'm like, okay. Oh yeah, me and Sam.

And sometimes I get a funny look. I used to have a really bad lisp and so then when I would do that, they'd really look at me funny I'm like no. My wife Samantha. Samantha not yeah. They weren't sure. Yeah, not Samuel. Jimmy is he's from Florida. He runs the country Traditions YouTube channel.

He is an all around outdoorsman. Not just hunting or fishing. But you said currently you're at a big side-by-side event,

Jimmy Shelhamer: right? Yeah, we're getting ready for it. So that'll be this weekend. In Florida. The southeast, I know y'all out there in the Midwest. They, you all do the mud too, but I grew up mudding, right?

That's luckily hunting season only lasts for so long. I say luckily, I don't ever want it to end, but we gotta find something to do in the meantime, being in Florida, there's a ton of mud, right? Yeah. And on top of that, specifically where I'm at now, central Florida I am about an hour, maybe a little more to each [00:04:00] coast.

So I have ample opportunity to fish, so it's just, I literally never know what's going on from weekend to weekend. Who knows? I just got off the phone with my cousin before we hopped on here. He wants me to go do a thermal hog hunt with him. , it's like, all right, we'll see.

Whatever I can do, I'll be out doing. Like you said, mudding, that's that's another that's another fun adventure. And if y'all thought hunting was expensive, don't get into that. . We,

Dan Mathews: I was at I was at Shields, like a big outdoor store. I don't know if you guys have Sheels down there. I've heard 'em.

We

Jimmy Shelhamer: don't have 'em, but yeah, no, what you're talking

Dan Mathews: about. I was out in Colorado in this probably college age. Cashier looks at me and as I walk up to the counter, she's Hey, do you think hunting or golfing is more expensive? And I was like, hunting, no question. And this is after I had just bought a four-wheeler for this trip.

I, I was in there just buying a bunch of random stuff. You go into a hunting store or you go into any store of interest and you go there for one thing and you [00:05:00] walk out with 15 that you absolutely need that you didn't know for sure. Needed for sure. And . She just started laughing.

She's really? I think it's probably golf. And I'm like, no, you're definitely wrong, . And then we looked it up and it's like more than double people spend more than double on hunting what they do on Oh yeah, on that for sure. But I would imagine per person, the motor sports, that's just, that probably blows everything outta the water.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Honestly. Sky is the limit. Depends on what you're wanting to do. You can go completely wild with it. You can be mild, obviously. We have a thing that's called the bounty holes. And the bounty hole is they go and just get an excavator and dig a big pit. And these guys spend a hundred plus K on their machines just to go see who can go the farthest and that's it.

You might win five grand. So it's but whatever. So we and I'll segue to that with the actual brand going into the mud hole. We get a lot of interac. With our followers, right? Yeah. The hunting side, you don't, it's a more of a solo type thing, right? But out there we get to interact [00:06:00] with 'em all.

And I tell people all the time, they see us going down the road with this big, huge side-by-side. And, everyone's why do you do it? Our slogan for the brand is cause we can, that's, and back when I was in my late teens, early twenties I lived in South Florida and that's where the mudding started actually in Florida, was more down south, I would say.

And it's creeped all the way up to north Florida, Georgia. Louisiana's huge for it, but I had a good friend and that's where I got more into the actual mechanicing side of doing everything, whether it was big trucks or four-wheelers and all that stuff. So his truck had cowe can.

and that was, we were known as that kind of cause we can crew. And when I got hired with the fire department, I moved up here in North Florida and that was, shit, it's been 15 years now. And I had been here probably three years and he got killed in a tar crash. Oh my god. And I mean it's just, he was one of my best friends.

But it's cool to full circle, bring it around and be able to, and when we started the brand, I was like, [00:07:00] you know what, I want a slogan. And that just came to me. And I that's what it is. And that's why it is, and in the outdoors anything we do, especially, you're in more of a public scene, not that I'm doing YouTube.

People come at you all the time. All the time. And in other, the nicest way to say, why are you doing this? Are because we can, that's it. That's just, that can end all the arguments. . Yeah. No, that's

Dan Mathews: an awesome slogan. I love that. What I mean, mudding. It's such an interesting thing.

Anytime you get a motor underneath some dude or between his legs, they're gonna do something crazy, right? Oh yeah. I feel as guys, we just picked the weirdest stuff to get into. Like how do you think mudding started? You think some guy got stuck in his truck and another dude was like, Hey man, my truck's not getting stuck.

And then he got stuck and they both said, screw it. We're gonna build something that won't get stuck.

Jimmy Shelhamer: It's testosterone. In competition. That's what it was. , that's all it

Dan Mathews: is. Maybe a little alcohol.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Listen, when I'm out there, [00:08:00] I used to be that, early mid twenties idiot, right?

Which I'm just an older idiot now. Those guys, they've been drinking all day. They see the camera come out when we're recording , instant idiots like right away. And I love it cuz I don't have to break all my stuff. I let them go wild with it, and it's yep. I look at my wife and I'm like, man, that used to be me.

But then who? It depends later on that afternoon I'm might be in there too. So yeah,

Dan Mathews: alcohol, big groups and cameras are just not a good mix for a guy trying to prove himself to everybody else. . It's a good mix for entertainment. It's not a good mix for the

Jimmy Shelhamer: wallet. No, for sure. For sure. And like you said, I mean everybody looks at other things like, so for instance, I am not a tattoo guy.

I have no tattoos, but I always see how much they cost. I got a lot, a lot of firefighters get 'em. Yeah. And it's man, I think to myself, how do you spend that much? But then I realize shit, if they knew what , I spent that much on tires last week, . Yeah. But I will say in the, on the hunting side, the older I get, the more I already have everything.[00:09:00]

And I tell people that honey is very tough to get into. More so I guess having the knowledge and the ability to go out and the place to go hunt and all that. Even with public land, it's still difficult, it's expensive for sure. Can can you do it cheap? Yeah. But I'm a big fan of, being frugal, but also you get what you pay for.

Yeah. So that's the gap there. And it's the same with the mudding scene. Like I one of my videos that's doing real well, I bought two, four-wheelers from a guy. It was a barn fine, and I took both these things up for 2,500 bucks and they're just sitting his barn and went and picked him up, got him running, and now I have, I, so the other video I did the other day, I'm going through this one hole and there's a guy in front of me that's got about 20 grand in his four-wheeler.

This one's got about two in it now. He went through it way than I did, maybe. , but I'm still was out there having a good time. Yeah. And that's that's the thing we can get in the outdoors, like I said, it just depends on what you wanna spend, but we can all still go out and have the same experience maybe, and [00:10:00] you just grow into it, but I would say that with hunting as well. Yeah, that

Dan Mathews: makes sense. I feel like I'm always torn when it comes to hunting because I'm a gear junkie. Like when new things come out, I'm like, man, that's cool. I want that. For sure. But also, I really respect the guys who are out there wearing the same camo that their grandpa wore shooting an old, like 1970s rifle, hardly any magnification on the scope and they just get it done.

I'm like, for sure. That's pretty cool. But also when you can poke seven, 800 yards out with a rifle, you're more comfortable in new clothes. Like the technology that they're coming out with all around the hunting industry is just unbelievable right now. For sure. Oh yeah. And

Jimmy Shelhamer: I'm old enough to know or to remember, when cell cams used to be an actual camera that you had to take the role and go get it developed.

Yeah. Which is crazy to think now. And now you know, the cell literally cell cams are like an addiction, it's like that auto subscription's [00:11:00] coming up and I'm like, Nope, I don't need it. But it's like I'm gonna miss the, those, you know, messages on my phone. Yeah. I'm like, oh, what's there?

Like you said, it's it's definitely made, I don't know, it makes hunting definitely easier. But hunting's not easy. Like I tell guys like, you could be as prepared as you want, man. There's a lot of luck. Nobody wants to talk about it. You know how many times I've been lucky, but, my grandfather's sad.

I'd rather be lucky than good. Anytime. Yeah. . So yeah, if

Dan Mathews: you have constant luck, man, that there's nothing that beats that. No. The camera is I try to tell people all the time Nothing is gonna equip you to kill an animal or get you an opportunity better than putting in the work and scouting. And yeah, you can scout with a camera, but I noticed firsthand, I think it was like four or five days ago we just moved out to a new property. It's a mile away from my main hunting property. I've got cell cameras all over the place and my buddy was showing up here to help me with some dirt work. And he's dude, did you see the picture of that coyote this morning?

And I go, [00:12:00] yeah, we had just got another picture of a coyote and we're a mile away. So I'm like, dude, let's shoot over there real quick. We know it's out in the field. We'll go set up the call quick and try to call it. And we did. And I'm thinking, this coyote's close, like it can hear the call. It's gonna come in, we're gonna shoot it.

We get out there, get set up. He forgot something in the truck, so he ran back like 200 yards to the truck quick. . And when he did, I get another notification on my phone and it's the coyote just booking it the other direction, . And I'm like, dang man. Like even with the technology, we know the animal's there, it's not a sure thing.

And so relying on that, I would never suggest or recommend relying on that fully. Oh man, this is really funny. I'm looking out the window right now as we're talking. And there is a coyote right now. There you

Jimmy Shelhamer: go. . Oh, it's the

Dan Mathews: white one. We just had an opportunity at that coyote this morning.

Jimmy Shelhamer: But you can pause it if you wanna shoot him out the window.

It's fine. I want to

Dan Mathews: [00:13:00] so bad, but I'm just gonna, oh, I'm torn. Okay, we're gonna keep going. I'm gonna ignore, there's nothing way it always

Jimmy Shelhamer: goes. I just need to close the

Dan Mathews: window cuz that is, that's awesome that I just saw it as we're talking about coyo hunting. So anyways, fine. It doesn't always work, man.

Like the trail cameras now there's a lot of, there's a lot of people raising debate right now cuz there's livestream cameras. That Okay. Are like the new and improved cell camera, right? Yeah, you can, yeah. Basically log in even if nothing's in front of it, tripping it, you can just log in, turns on and watch what's on it all the time.

Okay. I think that'd be pretty cool also. I just need some of those for security cameras around the property. Yeah, there you go. That too. Yeah, it'd be pretty cool to have that type of thing. Before we jump into more of the hunting and we'll bounce back and forth between a lot of different things. I gotta hear about your setups, cuz you had mentioned buying two, four-wheelers for 2,500 bucks.

I'm a bargain kind of guy. I like to trade and swap . Yeah. What's your like go-to setup if you had to go out and just get through [00:14:00] the thickest, nastiest stuff right now? What are you rocking?

Jimmy Shelhamer: Oh man. I'll tell you what, it's tough. When I was in the mudding world, I moved up here, right? Four-wheelers were the only thing that existed side by sides.

Hadn't really come on scene yet. Yep. And when I got back into it, Three years ago, I'd say roughly, I don't know, I just took a break, I guess having a wife and kid and all that stuff. But it was only four-wheelers and Hondas. Hondas are where it's at, man. Like Hondas are you can't kill 'em, right?

Everybody knows how reliable, but in Florida we've got a ton water and it does not take much to waterproof a Honda. They will run through anything and that's, that's doing the mud and stuff, just like hunting, right? Depends on what you're going for, yeah. Do you wanna reach out and touch one?

Do you wanna get close? It's the same thing. If I'm, if I know I'm gonna be in a real muddy area, it's not wet like a canam renegade thousand cc. That's unbelievable power, yeah. And the axle upgrades and the exhaust and all the tire options and you know that I'll probably start doing a whole [00:15:00] series on that, just looking at the tires and like, how much benefit do the tires really make?

Are you gonna break more axles and all that? Is it even worth it? , right? Yeah. But the, now that the side by sides are getting, they're super popular. I don't know about out there where y'all are, but it's ridiculous. When I go out to the mud hole, I always wanna, you see these guys, these big four with this Man, I wish I was that guy.

Finally I am that guy. And as big as mine is, it's still not the biggest, and the side by side's fun because a for cruising around, right? I can bring a cooler with me everywhere I go. Yep. I can. There's a four wheeler struggle and struggling. I just come in there and two wheel drive and we'll go through it, but at the same time, that's not as fun.

Yeah. So I'm torn between those two things. I want to go run that hole both ways. There's nothing like being on the four-wheeler so Now I don't wanna sound whiny, but cuz I know where you're at right now, it's 82 right now here. But this weekend to be a little cold front come through and I [00:16:00] think the high is only 58.

So I'm crying about that, but I do have my insulated waivers, right? But the cool thing and again, this is where I think when I came up with the name Country Traditions, it was just, I don't know, it just, it sounded cool and I like it. It works because everything we do is just country and it all segues together that side by side.

So we have property in South Florida. It is on a 64,000 acre management area. Back in the late seventies, somehow my grandfather was that kind of wheeler dealer in a little town down there. Him and a couple of his buddies bought property in this management area from the state. So we actually owned 10 acres in the very back of this management area.

There's probably six or seven camps. Now my whole life we grew up running swamp buggies. And at first it started with you take a truck, you rip the cab off, you weld up a deck, and that's what you run. Now they get crazy straight frame. They put military two and a half ton running gear, blown engine, I mean blown big blocks.

Just stupid. Again, it's one of those things where [00:17:00] you can spend 10 grand or a hundred. Yep. They do the same thing, but whatever. But when I got back into these side by, muddying and I got the side by side, one of my determining factors to spend the money on one, that management area now allows them out there.

So before you couldn't have anything. It had to have a steering wheel, that's their thing. Okay. So handle the bars on the four wheeler, they didn't have to worry about it cuz guys get out there and tear everything up and I get that. But now you're allowed to have that. So when I built this thing, that's why I said, you know what, I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna build it up, make it huge cuz I don't want to get my ass wet when I'm riding out there to camp. And it is, it's deep. If you hop on the channel and watch some of the videos going out to our camp, it's 10 miles from when I unload the trailer to get to our camp. And it's, obviously as off-grid as it gets, but.

We've got a big diesel generator that runs the whole camp and that's probably the first time I ever sat in a tree stand, was out there when I was, I don't even remember. I was so young and my grandfather was the hunter and my dad really wasn't. And he met my [00:18:00] mom and got into hunting. And so again, it's cool because I can segue all that together.

Yeah, I'm gonna be out there tearing that thing up, but I'm gonna make sure it's running by hunting season cuz I'm gonna be down there opening weekend, which is in August and it's the hottest, most miserable mosquitoes, but it's more nostalgia. Yeah. Than so yeah. I know I got off topic a little bit, but both man, like I gotta the Kawasaki Prairie V Twin is what I got sitting in the barn right now.

I took the tires off the side by side that came with it cuz they were 30 inch they're called crypted. So real big tread. It's got 40 inch tractor tires on it now. So I needed something to do with those tires. So they're on the one I rebuilt. . And like I said, I go out there and I just have fun.

The thing costs less than my tires on the side by side, so , it's a little easier to go beat on it and not worry about it,

Dan Mathews: Yeah. So that's awesome. I've always enjoyed like the motor sports side of things, but, and my wife, she actually grew up dirt bike riding, and so we've got little dirt bikes for our kids.

[00:19:00] My kids are five and six, and so they've got like the little electric ones right now. But we keep looking at all these different toys and tools that we can get for the property. For sure. It's just so cool honestly, where I'm at most, I would say 95% of the hunting situations I put myself in, I don't need anything.

I need just a very basic four-wheeler and I can get around. . Yeah. I was talking to a buddy who he went up to, I think it was Northern Canada this last year. got into this super remote bear camp and he's just to get to my tree stand, or the spot that they had the bait at for the bears, he's we had to drive like 45 minutes on the four wheeler and we had to drive through this lake.

He's it was this finger of a lake that kicked off and like we're fully on top of the four wheeler, like feet on the seats going through because of how nasty it is. I'm like, see, that alone is worth the adventure for, or it's worth the price of mission for me. Just [00:20:00] getting out there, even if you don't have an opportunity just to be like, dude, we went this far back in after a bear.

That would be

Jimmy Shelhamer: fun. I'll tell you what, like it's not always the harvest, it's the adventure. It's getting there. Yeah. Hunting's brought me all over the country, and then when I talk to people, they're like, oh yeah, I've never left, the town we're in and it's I just didn't realize people didn't do that , I grew up hunting in Georgia mainly that place down south, like I said.

But then Georgia, I'd funded in Kenya. We have a lease in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois now. So we did this big kind of loop and then I come back here and, Florida doesn't, isn't known for its larger deer. That's why we always went other places and there's much more opportunity. But I really, like I said, that place down south, it was just, I was young and really wasn't into hunting then.

I was, but that was fun, right? Going out on the swamp buggies and getting out there and you're in the middle of the woods and how cool is this? But I never shot anything out there, I shot a bunch of hogs down south, but all my [00:21:00] deer were in. So we have friends that have 500 acres in Georgia.

It's two and a half hours from me right now. So why hunt here? I could just shoot up there. So when I came back this year, I had made a goal, , I'm in Florida. Why not try to kill a good Florida deer? And that's, this year has been, this whole hunting season has been a pretty unique hunting season for me too.

Just the filming aspect makes it tougher for sure. . And, like I said, so what was it, four years ago now? I had a Yamaha Rhino side by side and hurricane went through a bunch of trees down and I was being dumb. And I came around the corner and there was some dirt. I saw the dirt and I had to spin the tires.

What had happened was it broke axle in, it pulled me sideways and I went right into the tree, broke my hand, right? And it was right before we were heading out west and I was like, shit, what am I gonna do? So I started looking into the crossbows, cuz what, what else am I gonna do? And they had just lifted all the per the handicap bands and stuff for Illinois, Missouri, Illinois.

So [00:22:00] I, or Kansas, I could use 'em anywhere. And I haven't picked up a compound bow since. Dang, there's so about that crossbow, and that's the thing, like when I was younger, it's that stigma like, oh, you're not a real hunter crossbows. You hear it all the time, I'm sure. Yeah. I love the crossbo and now that's, like I said, I haven't even shot a rifle in five years.

I've only crossbow hunted the past five years, dang. That's wild. So it's been fun. And I'll tell you what, it's helped too, just in the filming aspect, and I said the deer I shot in Kansas, I even said on that video, I give these guys that are self filming with compounds a lot of respect, cuz it is tough.

That's an extra movement that I don't have to do and just, there's a lot to it, but look, at the end of the day, it's all about getting out in the woods.

Dan Mathews: It is. It really is. People like to get into the weeds about stupid stuff, like what equipment you use. I. , you can go as primitive as you want.

Like at the end of the day, you could be a guy that's dude, you're not a real hunter unless you kill it with a knife while you're naked with a buck skin that you made from the last year that you killed the same way. [00:23:00] Exactly. Exactly. , who cares? Just let people enjoy it how they want.

I'm not the guy that's dude I won't shoot a crossbow. I won't do this. Some of the technology they're coming out with in, in the archery world is insane. There's a new, there's a new bow, it's called an air bow, and it's basically an airgun, it's a bolt, right? I just said, yeah. You slide the shaft of the arrow over the bo over the barrel, so it's a fully floated barrel.

They're shooting like 450 feet per second. I watched the guy pop a balloon at 200 yards with this thing, and I'm like, That's freaking awesome, man. .

Jimmy Shelhamer: Yeah. Sweet. Why not? Yeah you're making me wanna go buy one .

Dan Mathews: Yeah. You tell a redneck to just invent something fun, that can shoot an arrow out of it and they're gonna do it.

For sure. For sure. And that's where I'm like, as long as it's legal. Like the whole, even the ethical debate, there's some people who are like, oh, but it's not ethical. And I'm like, but that's up to you. That's up to the individual hunter. 99% of the time you could debate it one way or the other.

And so that's pretty [00:24:00] cool though, that you got into crossbow honey.

Jimmy Shelhamer: And honestly, crossbows I think are more ethical than a compound bow. I've not lost a deer yet with my crossbow. Yeah. And it's a better penetration. It gives you a little bit more confidence when you're shooting. For me, I'm so busy with everything.

I can't shoot my bow year round. It just doesn't happen as much as I want to. And I enjoy shooting my compound. I just don. and two weeks before we're going, it's shit, I gotta pull it outta the case and start shooting it. Now I don't have to, I go out there and shoot four or five times with that compound just to, or the crossbow just to feel, trigger squeeze and all that and get back used to it.

You gotta remember too, when you're in the tree, you're dealing with something vertical and then the crossbow is horizontal. It actually adds this whole thing. So if you're not used to it, you hit the tree with the limb and it's just but when it comes to all that if you're out there hunting, that's all that matters.

There's so many people that that are against us. You can't in fight. There shouldn't be any of that. It's a community. You should all support each other no matter what you're doing. Like you said, as long as legal and ethical, who cares? There's plenty of other people that are trying to take our hunting rights away, our gun rights, reduce the amount of [00:25:00] blame we can hunt on.

Why are we sitting there calling each other out for the stupidest. , oh, yeah.

Dan Mathews: I always tell people like, reserve that stuff for your buddies. You should give your buddies the most crap out of anybody. For sure. . It doesn't matter what they do, if it's the same exact camo pattern, but a different brand, give 'em crap for it.

I'm fine with that. Yeah. Don't do it online where everybody else is gonna see it and, don't do it to total strangers because you have no idea if that guy just got into hunting and he's questioning it. You could have just, you could have just kept three different people from getting into the sport because you're an idiot and you had to voice your opinion.

So I like to give my buddies crap about anything and everything. If it's the same shotgun that I use, I'll give him crap about it. Just because it's fun.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Yeah. Oh, I get it. One of my buddies, he's a antler, he's an inch hunter, right? Yeah. That one's a three and a half year old and you give him another year, he'll probably do this and that, and, and I, and that's fine, but if that deer looks good to me and he walks by, I'm gonna shoot his ass.

So be prepared. And he understands that, , and I get the whole managing [00:26:00] deer and all that stuff, but my thing is, like you said, who knows? So this would be a perfect example, right? I've been with the fire department for 15 years and it was one of those things where I always wanted to like, I always wanted to film my hunts just to do it cuz I grew up watching these shows and I, so I shot a deer actually that year, , that was the first year I brought my wife with me to have her record.

I just got all the equipment and 10 points she forgot to hit record. So that's the closest I came to a divorce. Probably the most she's ever seen me upset. And so we were sitting in the tree and I was trying to shoot a dough cause we have a dough tag too. And I had, it was a nice about 140 inch eight comes in and he was dogging a dough.

The coolest vocalizations I've ever seen. Just this slow grunt into this rolling grunt. And , it was a 20 minute video and at the end, the first time I'd ever seen it, he actually, you can't see the dose. She's off camera and about 40 yards and he just, out of [00:27:00] nowhere, just charges at her and roar screams, just br and Taylor was actually filming and you could see the camera shake.

I mean it scared the hell at her. And I had never seen it. That video out of, I, I put on YouTube because I had a channel just cuz I had friends that lived in other states and I was like, when am I gonna do with this video? When it's done right. Yeah. So out of nowhere we were sitting on the couch one day, it was like a year after, it was almost next hunting season.

And we were getting notifications and it was, our inbox was full on YouTube and that video, it had 250,000 views. And I was like, what is this? So a whole nother year went by cuz I was, I, we had too much going on and I really didn't wanna do YouTube. And same thing happened the next year. So I was like maybe I'll look into it.

So same thing, too busy. So I finally said, look, I'm ready for a change, and if this can be the segue into that and something that leads me into another adventure, whatever. And I said, screw it. I'm gonna start actually doing YouTube. Yeah, it's been one year, and and it's funny that as I [00:28:00] tell that story about that deer, I actually saw that same thing in Illinois again.

This d he came in dogging this dough and just going back and forth. Of course, he didn't come in for the shot. My mom ended up shooting him two days later. But that dough was underneath my stand, and she just stood there for 10 minutes. Stone statue. And he's just back and forth.

And finally he did that same thing. He charged at her and roared at her. And so I guess what they were, same situation. They were just pissed at that door standing there not moving. So he was like pretty much yelling at her like, come on, do something . So it's like

Dan Mathews: a bluff charge or something.

Yeah. And

Jimmy Shelhamer: It's, that's why I love hunting the Midwest, Illinois, we've been there five years. I've never shot a deer in Illinois. That's that's that's my nemesis is Illinois. But just what in the deer woods, especially in November, just being out there and now I get to capture that on camera and hopefully share that with other people and they can be interested, and again, that video did great, but it got all the experts telling me, , now I'm wrong.

And what, it's listen, I don't care what your opinion is, just, here it is. Enjoy it.

Dan Mathews: [00:29:00] So I like you said, all the experts yeah, I could feel that one. People do, they just always have to have an opinion about everything. And I'm pretty sure there's there's a good amount of people on there that view things the same way that you do, but as soon as you voice it, then they have to have a different opinion.

It's at some point it's just whatever. There, there's nothing you can do to appease them. Sometimes I wanna be like, why don't do you make videos? Why don't you make videos? If everyone else is doing it wrong, you should just do this. Yeah. You're

Jimmy Shelhamer: better at it. Why don't you show us?

Dan Mathews: Exactly.

Yeah. You know exactly what to do. That'll please everybody. So you've got leases in a bunch of different places. Yeah. You said you're you bounce around. Do your circuit is it all for whitetail or are you hunting other

Jimmy Shelhamer: things? So we used to have a place in Colorado. Oh, it's the boss

But we used to have a place in Colorado we'd go out to, and I shot a good elk out there. It wasn't them gigantic ones but it was, I was in high school then a couple mule deer. [00:30:00] And we lost that property and it was, . It was a pain getting out there. It got so expensive and it's just outrageous, yeah. And then I got more into the whitetail stuff, when I was younger it was, I've always deer hunted. I didn't Turkey hunt at first, which I was an idiot. I don't know why, cuz I love Turkey hunting now. Something about the chase. I don't like sitting in a ground blind. I'm a running gun guy.

I like to be on a big piece and be able to go find him. But but I always I wanna say in my early twenties I was almost just too trigger happy. Like I was a meat hunter. That first dope popped out. She was done. Yeah. And then it wasn't until I started saying I wanna start shooting some bucks now let's let's get into true hunting, I guess maybe.

I was almost took it for granted cuz I just grew up hunting. It's not like I ever, I just, I don't know. It was just, we did it for the f the venison and everything. And then I started saying shit, I wanna start born hunting. Don't get me wrong. I want that venison too.

That's, I should have dough first all the time anyway now. But cuz you know, we still need that herd management. But when I started actually not shooting the first [00:31:00] thing that walked out, all of a sudden you start seeing the bucks and better of deer and then you start patterning and then I went down that rabbit hole, and I shot my first eight point good eight.

My, my first year was a five point at a broken off side, that was cool. Yeah. But shot it with my dad, and that was in Georgia. We had a lease, but then I started hunting our friend's property more and I was really the only one that hunted it. So I had free reign of it. And it was it's like a family compound and the center of, it's all their houses.

So there's like this, just a ring almost of woods. There's a creek that ran down the middle of it. And that's where I'd go down in the, the nastiest part of the creek and started shooting better deer, shot a good eight point from my first one. And then we just got an opportunity to go out west.

and it's just a family friend of my dad's. He's known forever. And he knew some guys that essentially their business was, instead of flipping houses, they flipped hunting properties. So this guy was working for them and they had a piece, and I can't remember, I can't remember what the hell [00:32:00] they called it, but it was about 600 acres.

They built this million dollar metal building. The one we all dream of that has the, yeah the back of it has the walking coolers and that's where like gear lockers for all your camo and everything. Bill Jordan did a couple real tree Monster Buck episodes out there and stuff, and he's Hey, I got this property that they were gonna buy and they didn't buy it, so they were gonna sell it to my dad's buddy.

Long story short, we ended up being able to, they were, they owned the piece and they leased the piece next to it. So they sold it to a guy and then they didn't need to lease anymore, so they just let us take it over. Dang. And it's worked. And we're actually Fort Scott, Kansas. Do you know where that's at?

Yeah. So that's that's where we're at right there. Shoot. And yeah, and the great thing is that property is, I'm gonna say it's 400 acres and it's three miles from the Kansas line, and you go three miles over two miles south. And that's our 200 acre Kansas piece. It's right on the line. I just, I was too cheap to, to draw for the [00:33:00] Kansas tag, but the past two years I finally have, because it's crazy expensive outta state.

I'm sure you've looked at it.

Dan Mathews: Oh, yeah. , the out-of-state prices are just going through the roof, man. I, there's places that I quit putting in for certain things because even just a preference point out in Colorado is a hundred dollars for a big horn, a hundred dollars for a mountain goat, a hundred dollars for a moose.

And I'm like, without even drawing, without even having the possibility of drawing. You're gonna be 1200 deep into those hunts. Wow. Before you could even possibly draw much less. It's gonna take 20 something years to even get it. Yeah. Especially as a non-resident. All right, guys. If you've been listening to the podcast, I'm sure you've heard me talk about the helicopter hog hunt that I did down in Texas.

Now, I went down there with rope Texan Outfitters and Landon and Brandon, the owners put us on the animals. We killed 150 pigs in 19 coyotes, just from the air. On top of that. We went out thermal hunting at night and got up close and personal [00:34:00] to more hogs. I didn't have to worry about bringing guns or ammunition because all of that was provided for me, and it is to this day, the most action-packed day of hunting I've ever had.

I stand by what I've said in the past, and that's that helicopter hog hunting is the funnest thing that you can do with pants on. In addition, they offer Sandhill crane hunts, and predator calling. So if you're looking for the most exciting hunt of your life in something that you're gonna want to come back and do year after year, go check out rogue texan.com and book your hunt today.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Yeah. That's the problem, hunting's getting, it's getting too expensive. You're gonna have to have quite a bit of money to be able to hunt, especially private land. Luckily for us, we have a good relationship with our landowner. She loves us. She's on our Facebook, she's, the hurricane was coming, that we just had, and she's messaged her.

Are you guys okay? Making sure, and she hasn't raised our rates in since we've had it in 10 years. That's cool. And just, which is awesome. And what's cool is it's me, my mom, my dad, [00:35:00] my uncle, my cousin and then my wife, she was coming out that was actually, that was probably one of my favorite hunts that I filmed was her.

It was her. So she came out and didn't film me shooting the 10 point . And so the next year she wanted to come out and see what hunting was all about, right? Her family doesn't hunt, but she knew what it was. She had no problem with it. I was like, listen, come out there and see what it was.

So the next year, , we went ahead and got her a spot on the lease. So I said, all right, we're gonna try to shoot a mature deer. Let's see. It was like the second day and this 10 point walks out and I was like, of course. Like I told her, I said, I just shot my first 10 point last year.

This is your first year hunting. But I got that on camera and that was a really cool hunt to be a part of. And the best part was she was five months pregnant. Dang. So she's got this big old belly, and everybody was like, you can't be climbing the tree. Stand with her five months pregnant.

But I'm like, look, whatever. I always use a lineman's ropes, we're harnessed from the time we step onto the sticks [00:36:00] to when we get back down, yeah. But it was cool, and it was a good and bad thing but at least now she understands why I do it. Maybe If I'm in Bass Pro, hey I need that.

She's yeah, you probably do. So that works out. There's way less arguments now cause she understands why I need that.

Dan Mathews: . See that's the key. I think for anybody who wants a better hunting budget, just go out on a hunt with your wife and make it really miserable and don't have enough gear or the right gear.

And the next time you go to Bass Pro, they're gonna be like, buy whatever you want. That's awesome. Have you found, when you're making your circuit, does it stack up for rut hunts all over the place? Or are you hunting a lot of places where you have to pick and choose what state you want to hunt during the It

Jimmy Shelhamer: just depends.

Yeah, honestly, so we've done it both ways where we'll drive straight to Kansas and Missouri. We've done it where we drive to Illinois first and we'll hang stands and everything, which we already have 'em now, but maybe I'll go there and I'll do a mock scrap or something, put a dripper on it and then come back and see, but honestly, everybody [00:37:00] talks about it, but. The rut happens no matter what, but the weather is what kills you every single time. And I tell people that like, look, this year, this was probably the worst year we've ever had. It was in the eighties, four or five days. We were out there November 1st till the 12th.

You live out there, right? Yeah, it was brutal. And I, it was probably the least amount of shooters I had. I literally, the second deer, I sh the, that I saw was the one I shot. And he wasn't even, he's not near my biggest deer, but it was the 21st sit and that was the first one I saw actually grunted, I take it back.

I got two probably 170 inch and a hundred. And he was probably over that. And they were nocturnal and they were in the same areas. And this is our Kansas piece, right? Yeah. And they're five miles apart. Our Missouri and Kansas. It might as well be hunting in Florida and Missouri. It could, it's that jurassic of a difference, just five miles.

No deer activity over there. Over here. I was seeing a lot of younger bucks [00:38:00] moving around. It was on the cooler mornings, it never froze really. I would see some, and I shot a dough early on, younger Buck was chasing her. And it was the, my 20th sit. So it was like the ninth day.

I saw it was a non-typical, he had it looked like his, just, when he was growing, it just exploded out of his head. He was the most gnarly looking. And we have a lot of cool non typicals. Year before last, I shot a pretty good one. I got that on, actually, I didn't get, I didn't get the shot on camera, but I have the recovery and everything.

He's an awesome deer. But I saw him that night before I shot the one and I had just parked the truck, and that's, so you hear these guys talking about like approaches to the stand and all this kind of stuff, and like sometimes it's impossible . I get it. You watch these guys on tv, those guys are hunting these big managed properties that they literally know every deer's name and year round where he is at and stuff.

And granted, yeah, there's something to it, but there's a reason I say that, that particular deer, like I was running late, I drove and I parked probably 200 yards from where I was sitting. Like [00:39:00] you park on the property line and it's these big fields and it's woods, fingers of woods. Yep. So I'm in the finger and I can see the truck and he walked right next to the truck and he comes out and, and the, you're used to that kind of stuff.

Now, if I was running around in the middle of the field, yeah, sure, he's not gonna come out. You might bump him, I, that's just how it is. And of course the doze went the other way. I grunted at him, he looked and he didn't care. When they're on a dough, it doesn't matter. They're just

Dan Mathews: like, guys, man when guys are horny, we get really stupid

Like that. a buck during the rut is the equivalent of a guy on a four-wheeler. After a couple drinks, a camera

Jimmy Shelhamer: comes out, , there go. It's a big group, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's, there's a lot of truth to that, and that's the thing, like we were there and that's the only time we had, and Missouri that's another thing, man.

Like when you hung outta state, the all the rules are so stupid and you gotta really be up on all of them. Like Missouri, I think gun season was at 12th, so we always stay up to [00:40:00] gun season. We don't hunt gun season, that's when we usually go to Missouri or Illinois. But if I wanted to stay, even if I want to hunt with a bow, I have to buy a gun tag to be able to hunt with my bow during gun season.

Yep. And then you can't shoot that second buck until after that gun season's over. The problem with Missouri is though their gun season is right in the middle of almost always the best rut. That's usually, yeah. Last four years it's kicked off wide open. and that deer that I saw and I filmed him out in the field, he got shot a week later after we left.

So it's like with a gun and he was out in the middle of the field being dumb, but

Dan Mathews: what it is, that's been a big complaint for years from a lot of different people. Unfortunately, the bulk of tag sales go to rifle hunters, yeah. And so when they're listening to, when they're listening money, listen to the public opinion, it's Hey, this is where the money's coming from.

So we can't just cater to, the archery hunter or the alternative season hunter. But yeah, I can imagine that would [00:41:00] get pretty frustrating. You're there, you've got a tag, you don't wanna make a totally separate trip. And I'm in the same boat. I love getting into your early season with my bow but then it almost ruins it for rifle season, cuz I'm sitting there I could shoot one during rifle. Yeah. I really want to shoot one with my bow again. And, sure. I'm buying the tag anyways, so I might as well. I just have a really hard time not carrying a rifle during rifle season because I know I'm gonna see that big one

Jimmy Shelhamer: out of Bow range,

Yeah. Especially out there, man here and in Georgia, most of the places I sit, I'm not getting more than a 40 yard shot anyway. Yeah. Now out there for sure. The thing is like with Kansas, yeah. You see those guys, they at the end, so you got those field fingers and they set up a blind at the end of the finger and you have this, you're a sniper up on the ridge and that's fine.

Hey, if you get that deer that way, that's cool. But, it's just it's does definitely make it easier. And I, it's so Illinois, right? I'll go into their rules. We go for a week and I get a [00:42:00] five day license. It saves me $20 over an entire year long. BO license, it's $520 or something like that.

Geez. And they're one of those, you have to buy the gun or the you have to buy the hunting stamp, the deer stamp, the, it's like you just go to the guy and you're like, how much is it gonna cost? Just gimme everything I need, and hope that it's right. , that's, but they have they have three gun seasons and they're each two days long and they're only there's no, it's shotgun and black powder only, which, these new shotguns that have the rifle barrels, they can reach out and touch those deer for sure.

But it's just crazy how different from one state to the other. And like I said, even for us as far as the deer movement and the directivity five miles apart, it's completely different. And that's what I, so what I do is, like this year I got there, put cameras out and I just went to Missouri, cuz that's our go-to.

And I was, I shoot a deer there every year. And I figured, let me see what happens. Let's see where all the activities [00:43:00] at. And there was just more big deer I got on camera at night, but it was still getting pictures in Kansas. And that's where I went. I didn't hunt Missouri once this entire year.

The first day I hunted it, so it was weird. I've always hunted over there, but I had that luxury of being able to do two states at once. Yeah. Yeah. And I've drawn two years in a row. Kansas is a draw state, for out-of-state guys. I may not get it next year, yeah.

That sucks.

Dan Mathews: Least, yeah. That's the tough part about those states that you have to draw or really any tag that you have to draw. It's like when you get it, you have to capitalize on it because you might not get it again next year or the next year. And I talked to guys, especially up in Iowa, they're like, dude in Iowa?

Oh yeah. You're lucky to get it every three years.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Yeah. You had to put in for it for three or four years before you get one. .

Dan Mathews: And that's gotta be wild too, especially coming from outta state if you're hunting public land , a lot can change in three years, oh yeah. There's gonna be certain spots, if the habitat stays the same, great. But, any type of fire, major flooding that can alter a whole public

Jimmy Shelhamer: land system. [00:44:00] Yeah. Oh yeah. Honestly for us too, since we live so far away, we can't just run up there and, scout or clear lanes or whatever.

And if that farmer, the past two years, I wanna say even three years, the farmer hasn't planted. It's been too wet. So the neighbor, he lives out there, so he puts food plots in and his farmer actually is a pretty good farmer. They work with him. Our farmer doesn't like us. The way it, a lot of these places were, when the farmer leased the land, they automatically just hunted it.

So that was an issue that we had originally when we got the property. , they just go out there and hunt. And if the landowner doesn't live anywhere near, they don't pay attention. The farmer's supposed to be out there anyway, so he said, oh no, we lease this for the farm grounds, we get to hunt it too.

That's not the case. , so that was an issue. But yeah, so now if we don't, if it's not planted it, all those deer get pulled over on our neighbor. So we might have a trespasser come over every once in a while, now if the rut isn't kicked off wide open, your chances of shooting a big deer go way down.

Yeah, for sure. Unless you can get over on his [00:45:00] property line. Maybe they'll come in to check and see on the edge of a field or something like that, cuz they'll still come to fields. But that's been our big issue lately for sure on that

Dan Mathews: property. Yeah. When corn or beans or alfalfa or whatever it is, don't go up or don't come down that's another issue that I've seen in the past.

It's been too wet to harvest. Yeah. And when they're standing corn, especially when I go up to Wisconsin to hunt. dude, it changes everything. Those deer have no reason to go anywhere else, but stay in the corn and he can't deer in there. Yeah. Yep. There's no way. I talked to the farmer whose land we hunt.

He's from the combine I can see. He's I can see the deer moving and I'll be coming down this strip, cutting 18, 20 rows wide, whatever it is. He's I'll be coming down this strip and I'll just see the deer hop over, move 2020 rows of corn. Yeah. Turn around, come back and they do it again until there's nothing left.

And he is until you cut that final strip, they're not leaving the corn. And if I leave that strip up, they'll just stay there forever. But you've seen

Jimmy Shelhamer: those those videos online, those guys cutting that stuff and they got a bunch of hogs. [00:46:00] Yeah. And they'll go to the last row and the hogs just scatter

Dan Mathews: Yeah. Like a 500 square foot area of corn and there's just hogs. I saw one also with bears. There was a sour in five cups. and they all book it outta the end of this corn. When this combine's coming through , I'm like, see, you just call me. Just gimme a call when you're about to cut that last thing.

Oh yeah I'll step on the rifle and, or well, on the hill with a rifle and we'll see what I

Jimmy Shelhamer: can come up with. Yeah, man, I'll tell you what, that's there's so much that affects hunting, and that's the thing, again, we watch these guys on these TV shows that have these managed properties where the food plots are always going in.

They've got, they're managing it. They're only shooting certain deer. Yeah. Makes it easier. I, and again, there ain't nothing wrong with that. I wish I could do that too. Yeah. Then you got you see these guys like what's the guys on YouTube that hunt the public land, oh yeah. The hunting public. Yeah. Yeah. So those guys are pretty cool. I enjoy watching them, but the thing is, and I tell people all the time, is how often do they come to Florida and hunt public land? They don't,[00:47:00] you gotta, Florida's the third most populated state in the union, right?

And public land's like a war zone. I won't hunt public land out here. That property we have, I'll go there, like I said, for nostalgia. And again, I haven't been out there in nine years. This is the first year I went and I'm sitting in the stand at seven in the morning, perfect time. These two idiots come walking by and it's look, I understand it's public land, but why in the hell are you walking around at seven?

And it's it's just, so that's why I never really hunted a whole lot here on public land. Now the only, you know the, and there's guys out there that'll argue, oh yeah, it's still good. It is. And these guys haven't figured out, maybe I just don't know what the hell I'm doing.

But we have certain like special opportunity hunts they call it, and a friend of mine, he does one and it's like a quota type thing you have to put in for it. But you can also. I guess for a better way a word. It's bribing them, essentially. You can pay so much and it gets you more points. Interesting. Kinda like you were talking about, but it's not like it doesn't roll over, it's just for that pick. But you can do [00:48:00] it. He was explaining it to me like, you can do it when you apply, but then a week later and then another week later. So then these guys have these systems where it's like $50 and maybe another 75 and then it's what

It's it's a weird system Florida has for sure here.

Dan Mathews: Yeah. That's wild. That sounds like a, almost like a raffle deal. Like the more money you pay, the more chances you have. And I'm glad it's not like that all over the place, because out in Colorado, you've got these point, the point system you do have to pay and so , the more years you do it, the better your odds are gonna be. But you can't just buy like 50 points one year. if you could, it would only be the rich, exactly like the richest people hunting. So for sure to have those opportunities. The way that they are out west I think is good.

Although , there's definitely still some flaws with some of the systems. Yeah. You can never

Jimmy Shelhamer: make it perfect,

Dan Mathews: right? No. What what do you have next? What's your next season or what's the first thing to open up down there?

Jimmy Shelhamer: See that's what's great is we can pretty much fish year round here, right?

Yep. There's [00:49:00] always something coming in and outta season. So it just depends on who calls me and says, Hey, let's go do this, or hey, the, the Kobe air spawning and, or we get certain areas here where you can go casting at these gigantic shrimp. Nine inch, huge. It's just like there's so many.

Ran Florida is great cuz there's a lot of stuff to do. It also sucks cause it's very crowded. Yeah, and being a firefighter, that's the best thing about it is my schedule. . I only do that stuff in the middle of the week. Yeah. But this year, like now what I'm gonna do, and I've never done it, cuz like I said, we go out there for two weeks to Missouri, Kansas, then we go to Illinois for a week.

I haven't been to Georgia in three years, I've just been busy, had the kid, in just too much going on. I screen print on the side, we cut hay during the summertime. We've got Wagyu bull cows. I dunno if you're heard a Wagyu or not, but that's Oh yeah. Cattle we raise here. And which the good thing about that is not only do we have awesome steak, but we save the fat.

So all that fat, that's what we grind into our venison. So we bring coolers of fat with us when [00:50:00] we go out west, Sure. Take our Yeah. It changes the game, man. You can't eat venison. This, it's not the same anymore. It's amazing. It really is. But I've got a piece of property, so like I said, we do hay four years ago, we hate this field.

And I was like, man, this looks. Big buck, right? This is big Bucky over here. Like I'm I put a camera up without asking for permission to hunt it. And the first picture was like 140 inch, like 10, in Florida the registry starts at a hundred inches. So you go in the, you go in Florida's registry book at a hundred inches.

So 140 is a big deer here. And the neighbor, he, so that story was, that guy was okay with me hunting. He lives down in Miami, but he had bought it from the neighbor who we hay their property as well. And he's if he doesn't care then I don't care. So I talked to him and his wife was one of, they're pets and all that.

Oh what are you gonna do? So I walk to the edge of the field, I look through and I'm like, man, that looks really good over there. So fast forward three [00:51:00] years, we hate that property last year. Got to know the people just from doing the hay and stuff. And I was like, listen, this is always my segue around here cuz we are a horse country where I'm at.

and all these horse people are really big kind of tree hugger type people, and they don't understand hunting. But these people were cool. And I said, listen, what if I go out and start shooting some coyotes and see how that goes? Okay, cool. So I get permission to do the coyotes. So I put the cameras up and I just started throwing corn out and I was like, let's see what's here.

And this was in August and I got four bucks that I would've shot. I was like, okay, this is pretty good. So I started to talk to him a little more. So then it's funny how it worked out cause the wife finally is you know what? You go ahead. Just don't tell my husband if you wanna shoot a deer, go ahead.

So then a month later he tells me the same thing. Yeah, I don't mind, just don't tell my wife . I was like, all right, I guess this works. So this property, it's weird. So like you pull in off the pave road and it's like a zigzag. So their house is right in the front. It zigs [00:52:00] over to the right. They've got all their barns, they've got someone living in a camper, and it zags back, away from the road.

And that's probably five acres. So really the only place to set up was in that back little five acre sliver to the, I guess it would be the north of that was that field where I got the picture of the big deer. So we haven't had that in four years. It is a jungle. It is so overgrown. You would never believe me if I showed this place to you that we used to cut hay off this.

It's amazing how much it's grown. But north or the west of that is a rock quarry, an old rock quarry. So you got these big, huge dirt hills are so overgrown. So it, it kind of funnels the deer to that corner. Yeah, so they, they can still slip by me if they wanted to. So I was steadily getting pictures of some decent deer.

Then it stopped. Then we went out west and I was like I pulled all the cameras down. So when I got back, I put all my cameras back up and of course this is a second year in a row, you think I would've learned We're at the grocery store and my phone went off. And right here on the farm, which I'm working on trying to shoot a deer here too, on our farm, it's 82 acres, but it's almost all [00:53:00] pasture.

We have a. Two, three acre, maybe sliver of woods, and that's it. And I had put a camera in there and I got two pretty damn good deer for Florida. And I was at the grocery store and this deer pops up of course eight o'clock in day. I told Taylor, I was like, I knew it. I knew I should have sat, you just got back from three weeks and I wanted to spend time with her and all that.

You know how that goes. So when I put the camera back up over there on that other property, I got a picture of two really nice eights and one, he was big. And I was like, all right, this is the deer I'm gonna go after. So that was what November I guess towards, it was right, right before Thanksgiving.

So I really started hunting that deer hard December. And I've never been able to actually try to pattern a deer or do any of that cuz like I said, we just go hunt and then leave. It's a tough way to hunt. So I've never named a deer. , I would be at work and we clock in at eight o'clock every morning.

Whenever I work 24 on 48 off. Okay. So I [00:54:00] gotta be there at eight in the morning, so I can't hunt that morning. Obviously I can't hunt that afternoon sit cuz I'm at work. We don't get off till eight the following morning, so by the time I clock out I can't go sit. So technically I really only have one morning that I can go sit and I can hunt the evenings.

This deer ended up being a morning buck for sure. And I would literally be standing at the clock to clock in and my phone would go off. So I named this deer shifty because he was always there on shift and I'm like, man, so it was like this ongoing joke at work, they'd be like, you getting any pictures of him, you getting any pictures of them?

And I'd go on in the afternoons, nothing. So we had a Christmas party and we were sitting out there and it was like three o'clock and I was like, I don't know if I want to go. I was kinda getting burned out. I said, he never shows up at night. What happened that night? He showed up. Of course. , and I was like, what?

Whatever. So I'm like, I'm gonna hunt this deer harder and harder. Two weeks go by, same thing. He's showing up, he's daylighting at eight o'clock every morning that I'm at work and [00:55:00] getting off. Same thing, it would've been maybe two weeks. And I said I forget I was doing something. And I just ended up saying, you know what?

I need to break again. I need to, same thing. He showed up again. He only showed up twice in the afternoon, sit. And it was when I decided not to go. And I swear I thought the deer could see me. I thought he was watching me. Yeah. And this area it's not urban hunting. Like you see some of these guys do, the urban It's, but it's still like the people are right there.

Like the one sit. I'm sitting there and there's a guy right here, a hundred yards behind me. They're piling up all these trees. They cut down on the neighbor to make a burn pile. Yeah. And they shut it off. And the two guys are talking in Spanish back and forth. And I'm like, man, I ain't gonna see nothing.

Sure enough, I saw two spikes come out, a couple doughs, and I'm like, all so These deer are used to it, but it's tricky to, it's hard to pattern them because what if those guys are over there that day? That deer's just gonna go somewhere else. It's not gonna spook him.

But he is gonna go somewhere else. He's not gonna come by that day. So as I'm hunting this deer, a [00:56:00] random deer shows up. Same thing, eight o'clock, broad daylight. It's the biggest Florida deer I've ever seen. He's an 11 with a split g2, probably 150 ish. He's a stud heavy. And I was like, what is going on?

Like firing against me. That and that deer on. I actually got another picture of him. I've only gotten two, two separate days, so I thought he was just a trespasser, but maybe he's still around. We'll see. I haven't gotten any pictures of him again. But it was a week before season ended and the week before that we had days in the twenties, and it doesn't get in the twenties a whole lot here.

And I'm like, man, I'm gonna see him. I had a ground blind set up. That's what I've been hunting. I had a little Mr. Buddy heater in there. I'm like, man, I'm gonna be set. I got my electric vest like, this is Florida. I shouldn't be this freaking cold, but whatever. I'm gonna see deer. And I swear there's less movement here it seems, when it's cold, at least for where I'm at than when it was hot.

It was unbelievable. Yeah. So it was a week before and it was LA the last morning I could hunt cuz it was my daughter's birthday. We were going down [00:57:00] and doing a Disney trip and he had been there two days in a row at eight o'clock. He's never showed up three days in a row. And I'm like, this is it.

Like he's not gonna do it. And he always comes in from the left, always. I'm watching my phone and I'm like, man, it's 7 55. It's 7 56 and I'm just staring over there out of the side of the blind. I gotta peek over the thing cuz I got the side. And it was like 8 0 5, 8 10. And I'm like that's it.

And I just looked to my right and I could see movement, and I saw horns. It was thick in the, and it's like a little strip of woods. He was behind some Palm Meadows. And I was like, that looks like a buck, right? So I got everything, cameras on, turn on, my camera's on and all these set up.

And then nothing. I don't see it. And I'm like, all right I'm imagining things now. Like I want this to happen so bad , right? That's not him. And I had set up I finally, actually, I finally got permission to hunt on that property too, that I said I wasn't able to. He finally let me hunt. So I had put a standup on the opposite side of where I was.

It's like real thick. There's a 60 acre chunk of woods, nobody hunts. That's the bedding, right? And I got a picture of him coming out. As [00:58:00] soon as I hung it, I hunted over there twice, never saw a deer. So again, that was the like four days before this. And. I just, like I said, didn't see nothing, shut the camera off, put the bow down, everything.

And I looked back up and there he was walking by and he had come from a different way. He's never come before. And it just worked out great cuz he was right in front of me. I got him coming in and looking, he was sketched out. He was definitely spooky for some reason, which I don't know why he didn't smell me, but came over the fence, came around, got a good shot on him.

But I haven't scored him, but he's probably pushing one 30, dang. And honestly, that's the second Florida buck I've ever shot. The first one was two weeks before I I just got trigger happy and I had a younger eight come in. So not only was he the first buck I shot in Florida, but he ran into a tree and snapped his horn off.

I dunno if you've ever had that happen. Nope. That, that would be a first. Yeah. It's funny too cuz when I reviewed the footage when I was editing it, you can actually, you can't see it, but you can hear it when he hits, it just snaps. And I'd gotten over to him and I'm [00:59:00] looking, I'm like, man, something is wrong with this deer.

Sure enough, but but yeah, man, that was the hardest I've ever hunted for a deer cause I've never been able to. Yeah. Like I said, I put cameras out, I see what's there and I hope one of 'em walks by. This was different. This was, I know it's him and I'm trying to pattern him.

He's unpotable Another part of the story I didn't mention, I'm sitting, it was 10 o'clock. I'm sitting at the station in the recliner and my phone goes off and it was a buddy of mine that knows I hunt over there and he is it was a picture, right? But all I saw was the top of the text, I didn't see the picture yet, said, Hey, this isn't your deer, is it?

Oh no. And like instantly, I was like, wait a second. No. And I'm this dear I looked at him for five minutes and I'm like, man, like that looks like him. A lot of the deer are very similar, right? And with these cameras, they don't take us crispr pictures like our regular SD card cameras do. And it was just really hard to tell.

But man, like this guy. . He was hunting in the, the landmarks that he gave were like right next to where I [01:00:00] was. And I've never seen anyone hunting there. I didn't know anyone was around. He even sent him a picture of a six point, a real big six point that Shifty was running around with. I would see those two together quite often.

Yeah. And I was like, that's him. Like he shot him. But the more I analyzed, I went through all my pictures. I actually had the deer, the guy shot on camera. Those two deer looked so identical when I just was glancing. I just assumed it was shifty and not this other one. So it's just crazy how Yeah. How it turned out.

And I've got two more that literally look like his spawn. Weak brow time on one side. Good one. Crooked. They're genetically the same. And it's man it's crazy. Just from, and that was just making a relationship just through doing hey and throwing a camera up. Yep. And then now look, and that's my goal this year is to, I'm gonna start putting feet out over there , these deer are genetically fantastic already.

So if I can pump feed to 'em I'm gonna use our feed from the farm. So we feed our cows. It's a crack corn distillers grain soybean hole. And we actually use citrus pellet now. And they [01:01:00] also put mineral in it. We mix it all together. Yep. Mid back it in with a big truck at augers about, so I was like, I've already got this stuff.

It's 16% protein, like 12% fat. Why not? So I just did a test, the deer eating it like crazy. So nice. I'm some little feed bunks and yeah, I'm gonna, so I'm gonna make it a whole story about taking this little tiny chunk, like I literally have five acres I'm allowed to hunt on and I still made it happen.

Dan Mathews: Geez. And people discount that. They're like, oh man, I've only got 20 acres. I've only got 10 acres. Yeah. You can make it happen if you hunt smart, and I'm not saying every if you just have an open pasture and it's just five acres in the open pasture, you have nowhere to hide.

Obviously. It's gotta be in the right spot. There's a serious challenge there, but we've only got, I haven't mapped it out fully yet. Probably three to five acres of woods here. Okay. Everything else is pasture.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Yeah. But

Dan Mathews: the way that it funnels south of the road, we've got big woods and then my tree lines, they go straight up to a, [01:02:00] the north fence boundary where they plant a couple hundred acres of corn.

So it's a perfect funnel. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, although I can see all the way through the tree row right in front of me. It's just enough cover where the deer are gonna work that fence line and get from cover to the corn. , whether or not they do it during daylight, that's a different story.

Hopefully I can catch one, but this is gonna be my first year and I've been seeing sign already in the woods. I went and pulled a couple cameras. I plan on putting them up today and just see what ends up happening. But yeah, small properties, I can't tell you how many. The other nice thing about small properties is you don't overanalyze it.

That's true. Yeah. When you've got five acres, you don't have, you can only go so many places. , you don't have 50 trees that you can put your stand in. Yeah. You've got a couple that are actually gonna work. And that's one of my biggest issues with the property just down the street. It's, between a couple different properties, it's about 300 acres [01:03:00] and every day I'm like, dude, which tree should I sit in?

Where should I ? Where should I climb? ? That does suck. Yeah. What ground line, where should we go for calling coyotes? At every turn here. Yeah. I don't have that many options. . Yeah. So I think that's gonna work to my benefit actually. And if it happens. If not, yeah, I'll try to figure it out and switch things up.

But

Jimmy Shelhamer: that's it, man. As long as you, the longer you own property, and that's the thing, right? Like I've got a tree, actually the tree that Taylor shot her deer when she was pregnant. Two days later, I shot a buck, I shot that 10 point. I shot my non-typical and I shot one other one. I shot five bucks out of that tree.

Damn. And it's you hear these guys talk about yeah, these one, these old timers get a tree and that's it. And that's the where they sit. Sometimes I might throw a climber up to tweak where I'm at, but then they end up over at the same frigging spot Anyway, , and I'm like, Screw it.

I quit hunting, . Yeah.

Dan Mathews: These mobile hunting setups didn't used to exist. I'm sure people made do with what they had, but I used to sit on the same dead [01:04:00] stump in the woods for years. Yeah. Yeah. And even now, like I've got a saddle system. I could go and hang it in any tree on the property up in Wisconsin during rifle season.

Instead, I sit on the same little knob in the middle of the woods that I always have, and it seems to work out. Yeah. And so you don't have to, you don't have to be mobile, you don't have to stay put. That's the nice thing about hunting. And again, back to the debate thing, everybody always has the best way to do it.

The only way to do it. And it's just not true. There's, yeah, man, there's a thousand, you wanna do it.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Yeah. That's it. Like you said, the saddle thing. I just I don't understand them. I just recently saw them. But I guess if you're hunting public land, you're going a long way, that would make sense.

But other than that, I don't, I can't see hanging on a tree all day would be. It's just weird to me. ,

Dan Mathews: The saddle systems are definitely helpful. I did switch to it this year for the different types of hunts that I do. , it's never gonna be as comfortable as like a giant hang on stand, yeah I'm a millennium

Jimmy Shelhamer: guy.

I love my

Dan Mathews: millenniums, . [01:05:00] You bring that up in the tree, like it's comfortable, man. They make 'em comfortable. Yeah. But the issue that I ran into here, and the main reason that I got a saddle system is because I would see the deer moving quite a bit. , they would just shift, they'd bumped 70 yards down the fence line where they would cross into the cover and I'm like, dude, I gotta be able to get over there.

I'm not unscrewing all of my pegs. Yeah. On top of that, these trees around here, it's not like Georgia Pines where it's straight clear for 40 yards. You can't find a straight tree. You can't find a tree that doesn't have big limbs coming off of it low for. And so I'm like, for sure I can't get a climber in it.

I'm not gonna screw new pegs in every time. I could do a lightweight, hang on Stan. But then finally I just said, screw it. I'm gonna get a saddle system. And I'm glad I did cuz I shot my biggest buck with a bow this year. Okay. And I wouldn't, I can't say I wouldn't have got a shot. I may have been able to.

Yeah. But the angles that you can shoot at from the saddle, that's the number one benefit in my mind. Okay. You can spin any [01:06:00] direction 360 degrees around the tree without having to lean way out and hope your harness catches you when you step off the edge, yeah, for sure.

But they're cool man. I think forever I'll probably do a hybrid setup. I'll have trees that I've got permanent stands in. I'll have a saddle system. Eventually I'll have an actual blind, a tower blind somewhere. And yeah, we'll go that.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Yeah. No, that makes sense too. Like you said, that's our biggest problem out there.

This freaking trees man. They're also crooked and gnarly and like Illinois, this was the first year I've ever done it. I've never done it before. I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna try it. Do the old hanging hunt, right? Yeah. Like I knew across the road, my dad hunts by this road and he shoots every deer.

They, for some reason they come through there like he's got all the luck in Illinois. And I was like, I'm gonna go on the other side of the road. There's a little sliver we can hunt. I'm gonna go over there. And I just took my climber and I went over there. So I'll tell you right now too, the biggest thing that's changed the way we hunt is the electric bikes.

Oh yeah. I love those things, man. Oh my gosh. Yeah. [01:07:00] I zip I'll go right to the tree and lay it at the base of the tree. I have had no issues with deer spooking with that. Everybody probably thinks you're crazy doing that, but they see you, they don't know what hell you are.

You're just cruising along and you're just here. You just keep going. You just go right by 'em. I've literally driven by deer. They just watch you. They don't know what the heck it is, but . But with that climber on my back, hopped on the bike, drove down, laid it in a little ditch in the field, went and hung and saw like 12 deer.

That's it. Just wasn't a big one. But it was like, it was cool cuz it felt accomplishing, like when you go in the woods, you try to read the sign, but yeah. Okay, here's a trail. The deer hopefully gonna use this, but they're still an animal. Yeah. They're gonna come from wherever the hell they want.

That's what I like. These guys are like, they get so focused on like the bedding to the feet and they're gonna transition through here. I don't know about you, but I'll sit that one tree for 10 hunts in a row and I never see deer come from the same direction. Yep. I think they just wake up that day and they're like, I'm just gonna go this way.

So if you, maybe it's like if you're hunting a field and you know they're gonna come a certain way or maybe where your shot's gonna be. You don't wanna hunt with the wind [01:08:00] blowing right there. But I don't I don't try to do the scent elimination anymore. I think it's a waste of money, all that crap.

Honestly. I do scent covers. I try to make myself smell more. We started using nose jammer. I dunno if you've ever heard of that. Oh, yeah. Even here in Florida, we've, I've had fantastic results. My cousins hunt in Georgia, they get a lease on the, west side of Georgia. And same thing, like we all swear by it.

I haven't had a do blowing me in five years, I, and I've filmed deer and at first I didn't know what the hell was going on. I thought, I literally thought a bug flew up this deer's nose, but she was downwind to me and I had that stuff on and it went in her old factory, and screwed it up.

And she's literally just pawing her nose just blown and blown, blowing up like for two minutes straight. So I was like, all right, this stuff must work. It's literally jamming her , it's

Dan Mathews: literally jamming it up. Yeah. See I agree with the scent the cover scent. I just do smoke. I've heard that smoke my clothes and I

Jimmy Shelhamer: love it.

I do it all the time. Try it. [01:09:00] I might try it this year. It makes sense. Had an

Dan Mathews: issue. With pigs, coyotes, elk, hogs okay. It's just, it's a natural smell and you gotta think how far away you can smell smoke from, yeah.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Trust me, I know

Dan Mathews: well. Yeah. And it stays on everything. So it's every animal out there has smelt smoke, whether it's from a bonfire or a forest fire For sure.

For I heard this lady talk about it years ago, and she was like, man deer are curious when they smell smoke, she would light a fire at the base of her trees, just like a real small smoldering fire with leaves on it. So it pretty real smoke Really? And she's dude, I'll go sit up in my tree.

I light that little tiny fire and I get up there and I start looking and there's deer coming from all over and they're just kinda like peeking through the woods trying to find out what the fire is. And I'm like, this lady is crazy. Like she is absolutely crazy. . And then I talk to some of the people that I respect most in the elk world, like hunting elk.

First thing they do, they get out there, they make a bonfire, they [01:10:00] just put some green bows over it and they hang their clothes above it. They'll do that before the first hunt, and they'll do it halfway through the hunt if they're out there for a long time and makes sense. They're like, it's just cover scent.

There's Yeah. You're not gonna, there's no smell out there that will eliminate the smell of smoke. You

Jimmy Shelhamer: can't eliminate it. Like you don't wanna go lay in the diesel exhaust of your truck. Yeah. But even for like for me, when I, especially when it's cold out, it sucks because, . I can't put all my clothes on.

If I'm walking to my stands so far, I'm gonna be sweating my ass off. It's so you try to dress and carry it and I got all this stuff and I got my camera gear and it's there's no way I'm not putting off odor. Yeah. I could spray myself again, but yeah. But, and it was funny, it's funny you say that cause we were talking about the smoke thing and shit, that's what the Indians did, right?

Yep. . So it works.

Dan Mathews: I'm telling, there's gonna be people who are like, man I got blown out by a deer. Or, a lead cow smelled me and pushed the whole herd out. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's worked for me. I'm not saying it's the only way to go about [01:11:00] it. I don't claim that with anything. But just keep your mind open.

My brother, yeah. He used to tell me, he is like, dude, I smoke in the tree stand all the time. Like I was sit there. That's he, the guys used to do that back in the day. Oh yeah. And I can't tell you how many people I talked to that are like, dude, I'll have to set my cigarette down to draw my bow back.

Jimmy Shelhamer: And I'm like, , there's

Dan Mathews: something about smoke that just almost, they might be a little on edge, a little curious, but it almost puts 'em at

Jimmy Shelhamer: ease. Yeah. They're like, how many times too have you seen deer off in the distance and the dough start blowing? You know it's not a u. Yeah. So it could have been them.

They were close to you, then they started blowing at something else. They could be blown at that buck. I told you that Buck was dogging that dough and she's blown and screaming at him. Yeah. So I don't know. Like I said, I enjoy the entire process of deer hunting. I don't try if something new happens.

Yeah, cool. You see these licking branches and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, those are cool. There's something to that and the right area. It works. Do what works for you. Get out in the outdoors. My thing with the YouTube channel is I'm hoping it [01:12:00] introduces at least people to even just this lifestyle of everything that we do.

Yeah. In the fire department, even late so lately, in the past five years, it's gotten pretty bad here as far as the mental health. But the past two weeks we've actually had two suicides in our department. Oh man. And, it's it's something I never thought about. I may have been depressed at one point or I don't know, just not on the top of my game or something, but obviously it's never gotten to that level.

But I think for me, I have so many outlets, especially the outdoors, how many times you go in the woods and you don't see anything, but you're just in the woods and it's just, you're there, man. It's just peaceful and you're just relaxing and enjoying it. Yeah. That's what it's all about, and it's I can't help but think what if these guys had, access to the outdoors, or maybe they were doing more of that, it, it may not have changed anything. But who knows? So that's that's where I'm leaning. If I can get some of those guys, I wanna reach out and I can take 'em out or.

Get 'em started, the hunting side's hard to take guys hunting, but fishing here, we gotta, we can do that. And [01:13:00] even if you can be a mentor to somebody, right? I already had that. I didn't have to ask. I just grew up in hunting. Yeah. But if we can spread that and get rid of that stigma and I think we got some things planned.

We're gonna maybe I'm gonna work with my designer that does my t-shirts and stuff and maybe do like a charity shirt, almost like a multicross with some deer coming out of it or whatever we come up with. But all that money will go to like our benevolence fund and, our benevolence fund.

If guys don't know what that is, it's it's just a, it's kinda like a part of our union. It's technically not part of the union, but it's in that same realm. But they go out and raise money and actually the Benevolence Fund just paid for those two guys funeral. . And my thing is let's say you get hurt real bad and work comp is only covering so much and maybe they're having financial issues.

Benevolence Fund can step in and help them, if they need that. And maybe that guy is in a dark place at the time, right? And now he's looking at this and the financial issues and now, hey, there's no way out, yeah. So I can't go out and, call everybody and be like, Hey, how you doing man?

Because a lot of these guys they're not gonna tell you. They might or may not, [01:14:00] but this is a little tiny part that maybe I can do something, what can you For sure. It's been a dark kind of time in our department for sure. And it's made me, like I said, reflect and I already knew that.

But just realizing like how much the outdoors and. I guess being a redneck has helped me ,

Dan Mathews: Yeah. The outdoors definitely has that, like calming and healing and nothing else matters while you're out there and you can recenter. And there's a lot of people, I talk to, a lot of guys in the military community who use outdoor mentorship as a coping mechanism for D P T S D.

. And it just seems like the outdoors, it's becoming more and more therapy for people and I think that's awesome. For sure. Where can people go? To find your stuff. Where can they go follow along? Where could they go check out the

Jimmy Shelhamer: t-shirts on that? Yeah just find, just search us on Instagram Country Traditions Outdoors, and same with our YouTube country Traditions Outdoors and the websites.

It should be live now, actually. [01:15:00] So it's just, we've got so much going on all at once. And Taylor's definitely my my tech person and it's just like I said, it just came about kinda last minute and we decided let's go ahead and do this. Let's make it a community, and then if like I said, if you watch us and I feel if we can connect that, like I said, and we can use the t-shirts to ex and people can express what they're all about I know a lot of YouTubers have swag, right?

I don't know. I did, I can't, like some of these guys, it's just their name. Like it's weird. Like I don't wanna buy some dude's just shirt with his name on it. That's you. This is actually like a lifestyle. So you're not just buying a shirt like, oh this is because this dude's cool or whatever.

Hey, this is what I like to do. So yeah, if you're like me and you enjoy the outdoors and you see what we're doing and that's you, then go check our stuff out. If not, whatever man. Just have to take someone hunting or fishing,

Dan Mathews: for real. Man, sounds all, thanks dude.

Thanks for hopping on. It was definitely a ton of fun chatting and I'll be following along. I'll be watching and I appreciate it. I gotta go check out some more of your builds cuz I I like tinkering. I like projects and maybe I'll have to just dig a big mud pit cuz I've. [01:16:00] Gosh, that's muddy there.

I'm got 10 tons of dirt here right now. Okay. That I need to do something with.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Listen, when it's super cold over there, if you wanna make a trip down here, I'll take you out and show you what it's all about. .

Dan Mathews: That sounds awesome. We'll be down there. It won't be cold here, but I think we're gonna be down in Florida all of June this summer okay.

Okay. We'll

Jimmy Shelhamer: try to make something happen. It's good fishing time too, we're, that's when we're starting to get ready for our lobster season, and that's a whole nother thing we do. You can just have me on and we'll talk about all about that. That's a whole nother realm, .

Dan Mathews: Hey, that's how what we'll do is we'll just get out and do some fishing, some mudding, and then we'll do a podcast live.

Jimmy Shelhamer: There you go. Hey that's really cool. And I, and full disclosure, this is the first podcast I've ever done. . Oh, sweet.

Dan Mathews: Dude, you crushed it. You'll have to look into doing

Jimmy Shelhamer: some more. It was fun, man. Hey, if I just sit around BS and I'm good at that talking about what I love to.

Yeah.

Dan Mathews: Again, I appreciate it, man. Good luck this year. Yes, sir. And have fun at the big mud fest.

Jimmy Shelhamer: Oh, it'll be fun. Yeah. Stay tuned. We'll have some good videos. We'll probably catch some people doing dumb things. . Perfect.

Dan Mathews: And that is gonna wrap it up for today's show, [01:17:00] man. What an awesome episode.

I laugh pretty hard throughout that whole thing and I really do look forward to getting down there. I think it would be so much fun. I just like things with motors. Honestly. I didn't grow up like a gear junkie. I. Rebuild things. I tinkered with stuff I like to create. Like I would make my own bows out of PVC and wood.

I even made a sweet crossbow that actually had a working trigger. But as far as mechanical stuff, I never really mess around with it. But the older I get, the more I just want to get into it and build sweet things and like soup things up to just go fast to rock, climb, to do whatever. I don't know if it's on the water, on the ground, on rocks, on a mountain.

It all seems pretty fun to me. I'd love to get down there and. And fish and go mudding with Jimmy. And like I said, if we do, we're gonna do a live podcast episode For now though, I think I'm gonna head out to the property. I've got some work to do. I may go walk the woods one more time for shed see if anything fresh.

[01:18:00] Although I haven't had anything since we moved there. I have not had any antler deer on camera, just ones that have already dropped. So it's not looking great. But there's gotta be one hiding somewhere and it's only gonna be a matter of time before I find it. So until next time, guys, always choose adventure and God bless.

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