Show Notes
In this episode, Chris and Angelo discuss their current hunting season, focusing on bird hunting experiences, particularly pheasant hunting in New Jersey. They reflect on the changes in hunting practices, the allocation of birds, and the challenges faced by hunters today. The conversation highlights the importance of conservation, the role of hunters in wildlife management, and the need for better practices to ensure a safe and enjoyable hunting experience.
They also express their frustrations with current regulations and the perception of hunting in society. Chris and Angelo continue to discuss various aspects of deer hunting, including future plans, deer behavior, the impact of weather on deer movement, forest management, and the transition to mobile hunting techniques. They share personal experiences and insights on tracking and calling deer, as well as observations on deer behavior during different conditions. The conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding deer habits and effective hunting strategies while also addressing the challenges faced in managing deer populations and habitats.
Show Transcript
Chris (00:01.108)
What is going on Whitetail Nation? Welcome to another episode of the Wing and Tail Boys. I'm Chris, and we're here to give you just a little bit of an update of our season so far. you know, we're here, we're sitting here today as we record. It's December 3rd. Most states here are starting to wind down their season. They usually end somewhere around December 31st. You know, New York ends December 30th, I believe, New Jersey, depending on what seasons you're willing to hunt. I think you'd go until like mid February, right?
Angelo (00:06.583)
I'm Angela.
Chris (00:31.528)
Pennsylvania, I'm not exactly sure of the date. We're going to get into that in a little bit. so we're just going to kind of talk a little bit about, we're, in limbo right now, basically. So we kind of have like little bullshit session. We're going to give you a little update and how the season's been going on. I tried something brand new this past weekend, on Saturday, which I found to be a lot of fun. was pretty, pretty interesting, something different. I want to share with you guys.
Then we're going to kind of just talk a little bit about New Jersey, what seasons we have going on now, New York, PA, what seasons we have going on now. I'll give you a little update of where we are in the season and kind of wrap it up for you guys. So hopefully you find some value in this, maybe a little perspective that you haven't heard before and we'll take it from there. So, Ang, what's been going on with you? What's new?
Angelo (01:15.855)
I've been relying on bird hunting to keep me occupied. As everyone knows, that's listened to the podcast. I had a little bit of an injury kind of hold me down as far as whitetail hunting. We were in New York and I was kind of nursing an injury that I had to my neck, which is kind of getting better. Still got some things going on. I'm still seeking treatment, but you know, I'm still feeling a little sore, especially my lower half, which I haven't really been.
hunting. it's kind of that I got into the woods finally again this Monday for the opening of Muzzleloader, New Jersey. And I could feel it that I hadn't been in the woods. My lower half was starting to get a little fatigued as I was walking. The bird hunting in New Jersey, I would say is really not what I have been accustomed to in the past years. Growing up, we did a lot of bird hunting. It was something that us as a family, we did together.
myself, my brother, you, your brother, we kind of mainly hunted birds and then kind of branched out into some of the other stuff. I think your brother did a little bit more deer hunting earlier on than we all did, but bird hunting was kind of where we all kind of really started our hunting journey. And to be honest with you, those memories were stuff that we kind of really built off of because you actually had to fill the hunt.
The New Jersey woods that we live around and we hunt in are filled with old logging roads, trails that people hike through. We've got the Appalachian Trail that cuts through a lot of our different hunting grounds in our state forests up here. And then a lot of the other hunting grounds too are really popular with recreational hiking and outdoors stuff, whatever you were camping.
That, having been true, a lot of times the people who are stocking the pheasants would drive down these old logging trails or they'd drive down these old logging roads and they would release birds a little bit further in, more spread out, and it would make the hunting a lot better. know, it wasn't, you know, something where you walk in, all the birds are close to the road, which is what it seems like is happening now.
Angelo (03:41.34)
I'm saying it because I really hope someone hears this and something is done about it because it's actually a joke.
Chris (03:48.864)
Yeah, and I mean...
Angelo (03:50.017)
It's not what we paid for. And to be honest with you, would say majority of the money that goes towards conserving the resources, conserving the woods, conserving the animals comes from the hunters, comes from the fees and the costs of our licenses. And I feel like there should be more of a priority of putting the hunters first. Knowing that if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have a lot of the funds coming in.
Chris (04:17.589)
Yeah.
Angelo (04:17.615)
I don't believe that a lot of the people who claim to be nature conservatists, you understand what I'm saying, people who are activists for nature and animals, leave animals alone, I'm vegan, all this other stuff. Okay, that's great, but how are you contributing to helping these animals and helping the resources?
Chris (04:39.404)
Right. And you touch on a bunch of great points and honestly, I could go on talking about vegans and how are they really that much better? I don't know. I know, I know, I I know. Yeah. And well, I say that all the time and people always say like, my God, like deer are such beautiful animals. How could he go out and hunt them? And we talk about this all the time, like hunters, people who truly go out and have a connection with the woods.
Angelo (04:51.405)
I mean, it wasn't my point to holler out on vegans. I'm just saying it's like we're contributing the most.
Chris (05:08.78)
They probably admire deer more than anybody else or admire a bear or a fish or whatever the case is, you know? So I really get frustrated as a hunter when hunting becomes synonymous with animal cruelty. And it's just, couldn't be farther from the truth. you know, me myself, I've talked about Hunter a few times on this podcast. I have a hunting dog. used to run them in competition last five years or so. haven't hunted quite as much with him as I would like.
Two reasons, one, I don't feel like I have the time to get them out as much as I would like. And when I do have the time, it's the middle of the rut, you know? So when it comes to that, what am I, you know, if I can only hunt Saturdays and I only have a choice of going bird hunting or deer hunting, the last few years I've gone deer hunting. But the problem is, not only the birds, the way they're doing them, not only are they not fun, right? It's not, to me, it's not fun to drive an hour, an hour and a half to go.
sit in the car for an hour before the sun comes up simply because you want to get there first and get the spot. And then you take all this time to drive and sit there and get ready, you're freezing your balls off, you step into the woods, you shoot two birds, you get back in your car and you leave. You know what mean? Like to me, that's not, that's not, that's not hunting.
Angelo (06:19.695)
Well, to be honest with you, and I know you're speaking a little bit about my and our family members' experiences. I know you haven't had a chance to hunt birds with us this year yet, but we're lucky to have that experience because there's a lot of guys whose experience is they drive, and again, they're not stocking pheasant around everybody's corner. There's some people who live near the places, but most people are driving. You drive there.
You get to your spot, a lot of people hunt in the same spots. Not a lot of people are picking new spots to hunt birds if they've hunted them for a long time. But you get there and then you don't see anything. And a lot of times you don't see anything, it's because you're looking in the wrong places. It's because we've been accustomed to a certain type of disbursement. They were driving the old logging roads. They would put them further deeper into the woods.
They wouldn't allow you to access those logging roads unless you walked them. And then the birds would be more spread out. So you'd have to walk through the woods. You'd actually have to look for them. You'd actually have to go to all the different brush piles or fallen down trees. You'd have to hunt for them. And if you had a dog, it was a little bit more challenging. But now, and you know, I'm talking to a bunch of people who I'm friends with and who I'm acquaintances with that are in the woods that I come across.
Chris (07:27.734)
You'd have to hunt for it. Yeah.
Angelo (07:43.369)
And a lot of the people are having the same experience. A lot of the people who are looking forward to running their dogs aren't even running their dogs because they don't want to have their dogs be that close to the road, which I've mentioned a couple of times. But what the experience is that a lot of people are finding is the people who are stalking the pheasant in New Jersey specifically, where we hunt in Northern New Jersey, they're just driving down the regular main roads where everyone else can access.
They're releasing the birds out of the cages right from the road. And in most cases, the birds will just maybe run right to the closest brush pile and they'll bed down. Or they'll fly up into a tree and a lot of them are just on the trees overhanging the road even. Like they're literally above the road.
Chris (08:28.492)
And I think it's important to also point out, we had a complete shift and I don't remember exactly how long ago it was now, maybe six years ago, give or take, four, six years, something like that, where they took, so they've always had an allocation of birds. know, this many birds go to this wildlife management, this many birds go to this wildlife management. And it was dispersed in a way where no matter how many hunters there were in any one place, there were always enough birds to go around. People always saw birds.
Well, four or six years ago, they decided to take a whole bunch of birds from where we go hunting and reallocate them down south somewhere. I don't know the exact specifics. All I know is if you go back and look at the digests year after year, the number of birds that are being stopped each week, those numbers have reduced over the last few years for us. On top of that, around the same time, New Jersey used to raise their own birds. One of the pheasant farms was in Brockport, New Jersey.
And again, about four or six years ago, those birds or those pheasant facilities, they ended up coming down with some kind of disease that wiped out like a majority of their birds. So instead of New Jersey starting back up and rebuilding their system, instead they decided, you know what, we're going to shut down the pheasant farms. We're going to save money as a state. And instead we're going to bring birds in from another place.
So now not only are we getting less birds in our area, we're getting a different quality bird. And the reason I say that is because when we were young, not only did those birds not sit there and wait for you, but like as a kid, was, I feel like it was very rare for us to walk up to a bird and just kind of fricking sat there and stared at you. I feel like you got within a certain radius of that bird and they were gone. And most of the time they took off flying. You know, like when I, when I talked to you guys last year and the year before, I haven't done any federal hunting this year.
But the last couple of years, most of the birds have been running. They don't really want to fly. Even with a dog going on point and me going and putting my foot under the bird's ass, they don't want to fly. And my last experience that I had in Jersey, and the main reason that I've been very, very hesitant to take Hunter out again, is that the last time I went hunting in Jersey, Hunter was working a field, you know, along the road, granted the field's along the road, but there was a hedgerow that split the road from the field.
Chris (10:48.618)
And Hunter was working this field, working this field, and all of a sudden he got the sight of a bird in the hedgerow. So he started working on the hedgerow. Next thing you know, some asshole jumps in off the road and freaking shoots the bird. Mind you, Hunter was chasing him. Hunter was right behind him, within 10 feet of that bird. So that guy goes up, ha, my bird, I got him. Like literally, he says this out loud. He goes, nah, you ain't getting my bird now. And I said, hey, man, you just almost shot my dog. He goes, no, I didn't. I said, bro, yes, you did. I literally just watched you.
And we went through this whole thing, whatever. And it came down to the guy was finally like, well, your dog stole a bird that I shot last week. So I wasn't letting him do it again. And I was like, I haven't even hunted here in two years. So that's bullshit. I was so first off, I was angry. I was just angry as a hunter. and I just took my dog and I went in a different direction, but nevermind being angry as a hunter. How about just being angry as a citizen? Like when you're out hunting, you see a bird running, you see a dog behind you. going to shoot that bird? Probably not.
Angelo (11:46.307)
I think it comes down to, again, a lot of the different things that we're calling the Fish and Wildlife Commission out on is, you know, the guys who don't have dogs are getting the short end of the stick, right? I mean, yes, the people who have invested their time and money in a dog, they are going to have a better opportunity because the dog has got, you know, heightened senses and they have the ability to find the dog. They're trained. Even though you might be a seasoned hunter.
Chris (12:09.196)
The nose nose.
Angelo (12:15.999)
I mean, you really kind of relying on a little bit of luck when you're walking through the woods as far as not having a dog. The thing is. Yeah, I would like to. And again, I'm not putting much faith in them, as you can see by what we're talking about right now is. But I would like to say that they probably are allocating the birds of elsewhere because maybe they have an influx of hunters in the south.
Chris (12:22.668)
And that's where the numbers come into play. When there were more birds there, there were more birds to find.
Angelo (12:43.255)
and maybe less license holders in the North. So they're just doing it by license holders, right? I would hope that there's some sort of mathematical equation that led to that. I will say that in my experience, I've continued to hunt where we've hunted as children. I've also lived the closest, it's easiest for me. I would say that my experience as far as obtaining my limit
Chris (12:55.116)
That's I could-
Angelo (13:12.355)
hasn't changed, but there's also a handful or more hunters less in the area. So usually it's you, your brother, your father, my father, my brother, our godfather. And, you know, if we go really far back, we used to have a couple other family members that joined us too. You're talking about between four to eight people that I potentially could have had next to me hunting. If those four to eight people were coming, and let's just say four more, no one's getting their lim-
On Thanksgiving this year, they did a great job. I'm not going to say that they didn't. Everyone had a blast. Everyone that we know saw birds. Everyone in our group got their limit. The people that we know that were around us saw birds. Everyone was shooting at birds. It seemed like there was plenty to go around.
Chris (14:01.164)
According to your dad, there were way less people out on Thanksgiving.
Angelo (14:07.703)
I don't know that he really would be able to be the one to speak on it, only because that was the only day he's hunted this year, as far as birds are concerned. And I don't know that it's really been much more than Thanksgiving for him in the last two or three years. He was also nursing an injury. If you watched our Halloween buck video on our YouTube channel where we featured my father harvesting a buck, you'd know I mentioned that he had an injury.
But I think that it's just been less people in general since the last couple of years is my point. So yeah, fine. Maybe the people who are going are still having the same experience as far as getting their limit, but that's also only because there's less hunters. So I'm hoping that maybe they're allocating the birds to a different place because of the lack of hunters. There's less hunters. I can only speak from my experience and in my experience where I hunt, there's less hunters.
Chris (15:01.836)
So that's kind of, so first off, remember hearing a lot of people being upset when the birds got reallocated. Because like you're saying, it should be based on a mathematical equation. This many birds per person, you know I mean? Like for every one bird, five hunters or whatever, the, well, they're not doing, they're not in a perfect world.
Angelo (15:22.211)
Well, I would say for every hunter, two birds, right? Because then everyone get their limit. I mean, in a perfect world, in a perfect world.
Chris (15:29.866)
What I'm saying is the state says, okay, we can, we raise or we buy 60,000 birds every year. Period. That's all, that's all we're paying for. Right. So I would imagine the way it should be done is they allocate, you know, this many birds for this many people in this location, blah, blah, whatever. From what I heard, from what I understand and what I remember, it's that there were a lot of pheasant forever guys living in the South area or people that are part of that organization that hunted South and they made a big enough stink that they got the state to relocate birds.
How much truth there is to that, I don't know, but I heard that from a lot of different people back then. The other side of that is like Joey, Uncle Tony, Brian, like they used to hunt with us, but I feel like they stopped coming with us long before the birds got reallocated. I can't speak for anybody else, I, the longest drive, yeah, yeah,
Angelo (16:16.175)
Well, they also have the longest drive. talking about a three hour drive and they have places closer to their house to hunt.
Chris (16:21.356)
Correct. Where the birds got sent to. But I could speak for myself and say, I went to college in Pennsylvania and hunting the fields in Pennsylvania and Fezzel hunting in PA, they do a phenomenal job. And they do things a little different. Like in New Jersey, we know exactly what days they stock. The state lists in their book for the entire state, we're stocking Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday for these weeks.
Then we're going to move away and we're only going to stop Saturday and then for the last week, whatever. Right? So they tell you exactly when they're going to Pennsylvania says, okay, we're going to stop this week, this week, this week, and this week, but we're not telling you when we're stopping. They don't tell you. So you're pretty much going out and hunting as wild of birds as you possibly can within a stocking program. You know what I mean? So.
Angelo (17:10.263)
I do. there's maybe a little bit of, I would say that I would hope that in a perfect world, again, we're talking a lot about perfect worlds, that that would be a great system. Cause then it's like people go when they have time and they live with the results. I'm hoping though that in Pennsylvania that they're also not having some of the problems that we're having in addition to the stuff I've already mentioned in New Jersey. We've found, and this is collectively, but again, you know, with the people that I've hunt.
Chris (17:24.03)
Exactly.
Chris (17:32.936)
in.
Angelo (17:39.843)
We've found more than I'd like to share of birds that are either dead already on arrival. Either they died in the pen, they died in the cage in transit, or they died from shock of environment or maybe an animal got to them. I know most recently this past week that we were over there, we saw that there was a bird that either had some injury that led to it not being able to move or it just wasn't moving.
and some predator was feeding on it and it was still alive, but was half eaten and still alive. I mean, so that you're talking about there's dead birds. They're not used to the conditions being out in the wild. Most of them are penned. They, you a lot of, and I know you've worked in a pheasantry before. When you, when you release these birds into the fields for your clients, within a day or two,
Chris (18:24.748)
I was just about to touch on that. yeah, go.
Angelo (18:33.209)
These birds who don't get shot come back to the pens and they'll be running around outside of the pens wanting to get back in because they want food. They're not out looking for native insects and stuff to eat. You know what I mean? So a lot of these birds, if they're not shot within a couple of days, they're dead within a couple of days.
Chris (18:44.128)
What? Sorry.
Chris (18:54.614)
So a couple of things, I'm glad you touched on the pheasant preserve thing, because I was going to bring that up too. In my experience, yes, the birds don't know what it's like to find their own food, but then again, within the pens that they're in, there are bugs and stuff running around. They do have access to food. It's my experience that the reason they come back to the pen is because they're covey animals, and obviously you don't call them a covey of pheasant. I forget what you call a group of pheasant.
But pheasant like that to group up and hang out together the same way a quail does or a grouse. So essentially what they do is they call to each other so that way they can find their way back into their groups. what you saying, you said, what would happen is we would put birds out and trust me, a shit ton of birds got caught by hawks or foxes or coyote or whatever the case is. But we did find a lot of pheasant coming back to the pen and we would do our best to, know, scoop them back up and put them back out and try to get the most out of.
out of the birds that we could, but when I worked at the pheasant farm, we had to deal a lot with owls, with hawks, with eagles, different animals that want to, you know, different predators that wanted to eat the birds. And the big thing that I noticed was when we used to have a hawk come down. So it's crazy. Cause we, we saw hawks start to work together and what they would do is you'd have one or two hawks kind of circling around and diving down towards the pen.
And then you'd have other hawks just kind of perched up on some of the posts that hold up the netting. And they would just wait for the pheasant to come up and hit the net and they would grab one and they fucking pop the head off and the head would come off and the body would drop down. And that was that. You know what I mean? So what I think is happening again, I've never seen the facilities where these birds are coming from in Jersey, but it's my experience and backtrack. Most of these pheasant farms are either hatching their own birds and raising them from an egg.
or they're buying one or two year old chicks and raising them from the time they're chicks. So the only thing they ever know as far as a life is concerned is the life inside that pen until you let them out. Some of these places have pens that are higher than others. You always have to have a pen high, like low enough that you can reach it with like say like a 10 foot net or something. But you also need them high enough that these birds can fly when they feel the pressure because they need to be able to fly when they're out, when they're let out and you know they're found.
Chris (21:22.092)
whatever. So the reason I say all this is because when they felt the pressure from the predation, where I used to work, they used to fly. There are other pheasant farms that I've seen that don't have room for them to fly and maybe, you know, their pen is only five feet tall. So if I had to make an educated guess, what I would say is a lot of the birds that we're finding now don't know how to fly because they've never had to fly.
You know what I mean? Again, speculation. I don't know where these birds come from. I've never seen their pens. Can they fly? Yes, but it's not their... Yeah, it's just not their first instinct. It's not their first escape.
Angelo (21:51.513)
Yeah, I mean, obviously they'll fly. They will fly because they have the ability to fly. A lot of times in my experience when I'm hunting, most of the times they will only get up and fly when they feel like they're cornered, they're really close and they know that they have the space. Even in the fields that we hunt, when you get close to a bird, like you said, it'll run.
unless it's maybe tangled grasses that are falling over to the side and stuff like that, and then it can't really get through, it'll fly. But if it's just standing vegetation where there's rows that these little birds can run through, they'll run. They don't get up and fly. A lot of times it's inside the woods, right? We have fields, there are some fields, but as we've said, they don't stock the fields.
Chris (22:35.98)
Thanks
Angelo (22:44.409)
they'll release them by the road near a field, but then they can kind of run wherever they want. A lot of times they just run to the closest bush, as I've said. So a lot of times they're not in the fields, they're just in the hard woods or they're near some brush and they can't even spread their wings to fly when they're in that thick brush. So what they'll do is they'll run. And then once they kind of get a little bit of space, if you're on the other side of a bush and they kind of take off running, they get out of the bush.
It's almost now there's no reason to fly. You know what I mean? Cause now it's like, okay, well I've already gotten so much distance between me and this threat. I could probably just keep running. Plus again, like I said, when they're running, they're running in the open hardwoods and you know, it's not always open hardwoods. Sometimes there's a lot of, you know, we don't have manicured forest. So a lot of times there's really low cut bushes and you know,
Chris (23:37.996)
to be wide open, all of a sudden you come up to a thicket and then...
Angelo (23:39.853)
Well, it'll be wide open as far as the human eye can see because there's no leaves on the trees anymore, but there's still a lot of stems. There's a high, you know, high stem density. So for the bird to get up and fly, it's still maybe a little bit of a challenge. So they just, they run. And again, I'm sure there's also an added part to it is that maybe they're raising pens where they don't really have, they don't want to fly and get their wings caught in the, in the net or whatever else. They learn that running is safer.
Chris (23:43.18)
Right.
Chris (24:07.99)
Also, and I'm just going to throw this out there because I've had enough conversation, you know, in my training, in my competition organization that I was in, I used to run Hunter in NAFTA and I came across a lot of guys, a lot of seasoned guys, guys who have hunted three times as long as me, you know, and one of the big things they said is like, anyone who thinks that when you go out to South Dakota or North Dakota, if you think you're only hunting wild birds, you're crazy.
They always supplement the wild population with some form of raised birds and whatever the case is. Now, what I'll say is the nice thing about a pointing dog is when you find a bird that is huddled in, it's tucked into the brush, almost always you're able to get within eyesight of that bird before it takes off. Wild birds or birds that have been released for a little bit of time, they're usually a little bit more skittish than...
the birds that have just been released this week. What my experience has shown me is that if a bird is already standing, like if a bird is already propped up standing tall and you come on it, it wants to go ahead and run. But if you have a bird that's tucked in, pressed down real low, then your bird goes on point and you walk up. Basically, and I think I'm sure you've seen this before. What they do is they use their legs to actually push. Well, yeah, they use their legs. And I just launched my hat off.
Angelo (25:28.055)
Launch.
Chris (25:32.332)
What they'll do is they'll use their legs to launch through that thicker stuff. And then they're clear of that to, you know, fly off. So very often what a pheasant will do is they'll almost come up like a helicopter, you know, hover up and then take off. Which is really cool to see. Whatever the, whatever the case is, Jersey, if anybody who has any ability to make any decisions is listening to this, this is what we're pretty much trying to get at.
We grew up hunting pheasant in New Jersey. We loved it so much that we kind of made a lifestyle out of it. And not kind of, it's we've made a lifestyle out of it. And the hunting that we have now is not the same hunting that we grew up with. It is unsafe. We just had an entire conversation about that with the family. It's yeah.
Angelo (26:13.007)
It's unsafe is what it is. It's unsafe is what it is. And there's literally, there's so many people that are willing to volunteer their time, they don't even want to get paid. And I don't know if it's that the, you know, the conservation is saying, you know, people are maybe going to want to help us out and then they know where exactly where the birds are released and then it benefits them. There's guys that would
volunteer to help stock in an area and then not hunt that area and only hunt a different area. I mean, there's so many people who care about the sport that are willing to do what it takes to make sure that people have the same experience that they had that made them love the sport. There's so many people out there that are gonna do it for the right reasons.
Chris (27:01.162)
Yeah, and the truth is, like you said, we pay for a pheasant stand. Like, we physically, as pheasant hunters, have to pay an extra fee to have the right to go pheasant hunting. Which to me is just egregious, but that's neither, yeah, that's a conversation for another time. But I don't have a problem with paying as long as I get my money's worth.
Angelo (27:16.557)
I mean, I don't have no problem paying. This isn't a thing to say, hey, I don't want to pay. I don't want to shoot two birds over the road and then be done hunting in 10 minutes because the people who are stalking the birds are not doing a thorough job. They're just releasing them straight from the street. These birds are getting released literally the night before or hours before people are shooting them and they haven't had a chance to even move. And you could literally see pretty much every single bird right from the road. If you look hard.
Chris (27:33.842)
Exactly.
Chris (27:45.932)
And to be honest with you, please tell me if you disagree with me, but I think by the hunting digressing the way it is, and the pheasant hunting specifically becoming as unsafe as it is, I think we're giving anti-hunters an argument. I really do. I think we're giving people like, this isn't, I think you're putting birds in the woods and then you're going to shoot them and they're not even moving. You're killing them off the road.
Angelo (27:46.541)
You don't even have to find-
Angelo (28:07.715)
I see, I see.
I see a handful of more violations within the first minute of the first shot being legal, which is sunrise. I see more than a handful of violations. I mean, if they had a game warden on the road where we hunt or where a little bit further down the road, and I'm sure pretty much everywhere else.
Chris (28:32.042)
We are way down south Cape May for the record.
Angelo (28:34.571)
You wouldn't even be able to shoot birds. You wouldn't. It would be illegal to shoot the bird where they are. I'm telling you, literally on limbs, overhanging, over the road. How? I mean, I get it. you know, leave the bird alone. Don't shoot it. When you drive, like you said, when you drive an hour, and I'm not saying I do this, I'm saying that this is what I witness people do. When I drive an hour, like you said, and then I have to sit there for a little bit. Now you're talking about two hours worth of my time and I'm probably gonna have to drive an hour back.
Chris (28:54.348)
Just in general, yeah.
Angelo (29:04.655)
Now you're talking about my time hunting, plus the fact that I paid for my license, which is again, at the end of the day, if you're hunting every single chance that you get, if you're hunting every Tuesday, Thursday, every time they stock, the $40 is way worth it. I'm not complaining about the money, but I also don't want to leave empty handed. You know what I'm saying? So if, and it's not like, okay, well we went in on this side of the road and we kind of walked in through the fields and we did our hunting.
Chris (29:15.724)
It's worth it.
Yeah.
Chris (29:24.03)
huh.
Angelo (29:33.443)
You go back, that bird's still sitting right in the tree. It doesn't move, it's not like it's gonna go somewhere and now it's like, okay, that bird went down, it's probably over here, let's go hunt it. They will literally stay there all day.
Chris (29:36.744)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (29:41.1)
And the worst part is, because obviously I know where you're talking about. You can only fit 10 birds in these crates. You can only fit, and it's hens. It's been a while. I haven't worked at a pheasant farm in like five years. But if I'm remembering correctly, I think it was eight or 10 hens per crate and like six cockbirds per crate.
Or you could have four and four or something like that. forget the exact numbers, but it's not like these crates weigh a hundred pounds. You could take 10 steps into the woods just off of the other side of the field and let them go there.
Angelo (30:18.647)
What's the point when they have logging roads, like I told you? There's no reason why these vehicles can't just drive into the woods. I don't even want them to have to do that. I don't... I wouldn't want to have to carry the crate.
Chris (30:21.642)
Well, no, no, I agree. But what I'm saying is happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy middle ground. I'm just, I'm just saying to be honest, whatever the case is Jersey, you gotta do better. New York pheasant hunting is great. Pennsylvania pheasant hunting is great. New Jersey, you gotta do that. This is a cry for help without crying.
Angelo (30:45.173)
If there's other people in New Jersey who are not having this experience, then let us know also because I don't want to have just one man's experience and one man's rage speak for everybody.
Chris (30:52.022)
Well.
Chris (30:56.97)
Yeah, maybe we need to talk somewhere else. right, maybe the rest of the state is great and we just have a bad lemon or whatever the case may
Angelo (31:04.279)
I mean, my dad hunts further south too, like you were saying. He said it's a lot of the same stuff. And you know what? There's a lot of other areas too, where it is a lot of fields, like you said, down in the Delaware Water Gap, a lot of fields, right? So, you know, even if they did just drive down the road, when they let those birds out, they're letting them out into the fields. There's a lot of places though, that exist where there's not as many fields, but they have to be able to service every hunter.
Chris (31:28.883)
Mm-hmm.
Angelo (31:31.307)
And because they can't get every single hunter to go in a field, it would be extremely dangerous. They have to stock some of these other areas. And if you're going to stock some of these other areas, there needs to be a different strategy because right now, especially where we hunt, my experience is it's unsafe. People are choosing to rather break the rules so that they could get their limit, then hunt the correct way. And it's not because they're being
Chris (31:45.928)
Thank you.
Right, yeah.
Angelo (32:01.295)
you know, bad hunters, it's just that's where the birds are. And it really, honestly, in the last couple of years, it's felt like if you can't see the road, then you're probably not going to see a bird.
Chris (32:12.458)
Yeah. And I got one more point to make, and I think at this point, we've kind of beated that horse on this. Like I said, Jersey, you got to do better. But I feel like coming from New Jersey and being a hunter in New Jersey, I feel like we've always felt like we were fighting to just simply keep our right to be allowed to hunt. That's how it's always felt. You know, whether, whether they're, whether they're passing no discharge laws in certain, in certain towns or if they're, you know,
Angelo (32:40.473)
Bear hunt, no bear hunt, bear hunt, no bear hunt.
Chris (32:41.9)
No bear, which, the last bear hunt, actually can't, I can't disagree with why they ended the last one. mean, someone decided to literally obliterate an entire family of bears for no reason. You know, one guy, it's always one guy. Yeah.
Angelo (32:54.103)
One guy, it's always how it is, what are we gonna do the same thing in this country, right? One guy does something stupid with a gun and now they wanna take everybody's gun. I'm not sympathetic to what happened to the people who were the victims of whoever decided to do something stupid with a gun.
Chris (33:01.514)
Because it's easy.
Chris (33:06.028)
And the worst part is, the fines that they got were a joke. An absolute joke.
Angelo (33:13.199)
I mean, that's the part that you should have, that's the part that we should have made a bigger outrage about is if there's gonna be a penalty, make sure it's something that people just really never wanna break the law again. Make an example out of the one guy, right? All we do is slap people on the wrist these days.
Chris (33:23.02)
Exactly. Exactly. But the point I'm trying to make is... Right. Now the point I'm trying to make is the fact that we're always fighting for our right to continue hunting. I feel like a lot of hunters aren't as willing or as open to come forward and make a stink about something for laughing the better way to put it. You know what I mean? Like every year we're like, okay, what are we losing this year? What are we losing next year?
You know, so like just the fact that we're allowed to bird hunt, think people are like, let me just keep my mouth shut. And they're going to say, you know what? You're not happy with what we're giving you. We'll just take it completely. You know? So like, I agree.
Angelo (34:01.901)
And to be honest with you, the democratic state that this state is in, by the way, which hopefully we're making headway on that. And again, it's not to say that the Democrats are just not doing anything good, but I feel like they wouldn't care. They would have no problem taking it off the table because they are doing everything that they can to get in the way of it already as it is. So for them, you know, it's just one less thing that they have to worry about.
You know, it's something else to, you know, stick it to us. You know, the law-abiding citizens who just want to be able to enjoy a, you know, a time out in the woods enjoying, you know, whatever sport it is that we want to be enjoying. Anyway, so that was that. You know, we've definitely gone too far into that, but that just shows you, it shows you, yeah.
Chris (34:47.029)
Sure.
Chris (34:53.0)
I mean, I think it needed to be said though. Coming from...
Angelo (34:55.297)
It shows you how much we're frustrated with it and it needs to be better. It should be better. There's no reason why it can't be better. It might just be, you know, lack of state funding, not for the sport, but for the people who help facilitate the sport. I'm sure that there's a bunch of guys out there who are stocking birds who say, I wish that we could get a couple more guys and we would be happy to do it. And it's not up to them to accept volunteers. So, you know, nothing against you people.
Chris (35:21.11)
Yeah. No, nothing against the people who actually doing the work. No.
Angelo (35:24.055)
Benefit of the doubt, I would like to give the benefit of the doubt to the people who are doing the work. It's nothing against you. It's just the experience is not what it should be.
Chris (35:33.184)
I mean, it's the same thing with me as a teacher, right? Like myself, my colleagues, my coworkers, we come to work every day. We work really hard and we were trying to give the kids the education that they need to have a bright future, but we can only work and do so much within the system as it's designed for us. You know I mean? So like, I understand completely and I'm glad you made that point because we're not blaming the workers. It's the system. It's the system.
Angelo (35:59.247)
Yeah, it's very rarely ever the workers. It's usually always the system.
Chris (36:03.018)
Yeah. So anyway, with that being said, if there's anyone who has an opinion on this matter, whether you agree with us or disagree with us, please reach out to us. We would love to have you on the podcast. We'd love to talk to people about this, or if you just want to share your opinion for us to share it on here, you can reach out to us with that as well. Again, my email is wingandtale.chris at gmail.com. Angelo's email is wingandtale.angelo at gmail.com.
Angelo (36:29.059)
Yeah, and if you do, just please just add your name, maybe a contact of yourself. And then if you disagree with us, let us know also where you hunt. And then maybe we'll come and do some research ourselves and see if it's a better place to hunt. And then, yeah, we'll do a little bit of research and see if that's true. Anyway.
Chris (36:40.874)
Yeah. Got to do a little R &D, you know what I mean?
That's awesome. Anyway, so now that we got that out of the way, I've mentioned on the podcast here before that this has been a year of firsts for me, a lot of firsts. I pretty much hunted the same two patches of woods my entire life growing up. I know you branched out a lot more and a lot sooner than I have. so I kind of want to talk about something new that I tried out this past weekend. Before I get into that, is there anything you have going on, anything you're planning for?
going into the future or anything up until this point as far as deer hunting is concerned that you want to share.
Angelo (37:23.609)
I mean, the only thing I have planned for the future is trying to get myself healthy and get back out in the woods. I mean, I told you again this past week, it's actually yesterday, Monday was the first, it's 12-2 December 2nd was the first day of the New Jersey muzzleloader season. There was an earlier season for antlerless deer only in some zones, but in my zone, it only opens when you can hunt antler deer.
You know, I didn't see anything. I'm not going to say that, you know, there was anything specifically wrong when I did, but normally when I come in during the muzzleloader season, I haven't hunted this area at all this year. And there's a...
Chris (38:04.842)
talking about where you and I went to stop for turkey.
Angelo (38:08.527)
I don't, I don't really. Yes. Yes. It was where we scouted for Turkey, but not there. I hunted the complete opposite side of that mountain range. It's the same, the same far, the same, exactly the same area, the same, zone and everything else. So, but there's a lot of sunny sided slopes, you know, so this during the winter, it was like 24 degrees yesterday. I think it was at sunrise. only thing is.
Chris (38:15.082)
Not this, but the same like the same national, the same wildlife management or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, okay.
Okay.
Chris (38:34.793)
You didn't know what's sad, I think.
Angelo (38:40.013)
Dead calm, no wind. So, I mean, I just feel like in my experience in the public land woods, and I do believe there's a difference. I do believe that the deer are smart enough to know to act different than other deer in different situations. The deer in public land do not move when it's still conditions. They know they're being loud.
They know they're an easy target. They're easy to be seen. They're easy to be tracked. They're easy to be followed mainly by predators, but also by hunters.
Chris (39:16.008)
specified real quick are you referring when when you say that they know better than to move on calm days are you referring to as the season gets later or you or is it
Angelo (39:25.207)
I'm saying once they know there's pressure, mean, I don't know that on a calm day with leaves on the trees and the ground not as leaf littered that it makes as much of a difference because by that time, a lot of the leaf litter that is from the previous year has had snow on it, melting snow, melt, snow, melt. It's broken down a lot of that leaf litter. It's decomposed a little bit.
And, you know, throughout the spring, the conditions tend to be a little bit more damp. There's a lot more humidity in the air. A lot of the ground usually ends up holding more water because there's less sunlight directly to the ground. The conditions just tend to be a little bit softer for the deer to walk around. don't make as much noise. Right now, especially with the drought that we've had in New Jersey, I mean, you can hear a squirrel from 200 yards away.
Chris (40:22.7)
Have you been getting, speaking of the drought, you been getting precipitation over the last week or so?
Angelo (40:22.925)
rummaging through the leaves.
Angelo (40:27.567)
We had a couple days of rain in the last week or so, and then we did have one night or so in where I live specifically, which is I live closer to where I hunt. We did get like an inch and a half of snow, but then it melted the next day. So there has been some rain and some, yeah, and some.
Chris (40:38.54)
Ready?
Chris (40:42.134)
and look
Chris (40:45.548)
some precipitation. So in the last week and a half, two weeks for any of you who listened to our last podcast, we were talking to Kevin, from mid Atlantic outdoorsmen. were talking to him about how we have my wife and I, had three limbs, three, four limbs in our house alone. a couple of days, you a week and a half ago, we went all of a sudden we went from not getting any precipitation whatsoever for like two, three months straight. So almost every day now it seems like it's snowing.
We got 14 inches of snow in one night, 12, 14 inches of snow. Then it snowed again. Up in New York, there's like a foot of snow on the ground right now. We ended up getting another six inches while I was there this past weekend. So it seems like we went from one extreme to the next. you know, so no, it's not good for anything.
Angelo (41:30.797)
And that's not going to be good for these deer. I mean, it's not going to be good for these deer. The trees that are experiencing this drought might not be as fruitful next year. There might not be as much natural forage for them, which again is going to drive more of these animals into private land where there's manicured properties. And you're just going to have more of the same as it continues. You're just going to have more of the resources congregate near private property.
and less of the resource congregating in the huntable public lands that we're paying to hunt. And there's really nothing happening to change that. There's not any programs that I know of in New Jersey that they're creating forage for these animals to be spread out. It's not healthy for these animals to be living in such close quarters. They're meant to be grazing animals that spread out, that migrate and forage as they migrate.
Chris (42:04.566)
that I hate.
Chris (42:09.932)
And I hate to put it this way, but no, no, no.
Chris (42:19.179)
Listen.
Chris (42:27.51)
Yeah, this wasn't designed this way, we're going pretty hard on New Jersey right now, so I'm gonna keep going. They deserve it.
Angelo (42:34.859)
I mean, this specific topic as far as the animals congregating near public private property is also to be said about Pennsylvania, New York.
Chris (42:42.7)
But here, girl, that's not even what I'm getting at. What I was about to say was New Jersey is known as the garden state. New Jersey was known for its beautiful gardens, its beautiful flowers and plants and natural forages and trees and diversity. That's where it got its name from. So how did we as a state get so far away where we never, in all of my time living in New Jersey, never once did I ever hear of a single forest restoration project.
a reset of a forest, a forest burning, unless it was in places that were not able to be hunted and were only allowed to be recreated by whoever. Right?
Angelo (43:24.015)
I mean, they're talking about turning our state forests into national forests now.
Chris (43:28.374)
Which is even worse. Which is even worse. Trust me. I know man.
Angelo (43:30.095)
That's just another food for more food for thought because I just don't think that New Jersey cares to have the liability.
Chris (43:37.696)
They don't. And the worst part of it is in an economy where everybody's struggling for money, there are millions upon millions upon millions of dollars worth of timber in those forests. If they just yes, work, everybody, people can make money. The state can make money to lower the taxes. But at the end of the day, they don't give a shit about that. They really don't. They don't. And it's really frustrating. And you can see me getting a little heated now, but it's because I'm
Angelo (43:50.403)
Not even that, you could put people to work.
You wanna create jobs?
Chris (44:07.564)
I'm literally, my second job is literally restoring forests. It means a lot to me. And you and I have talked before in the past, you know, when we were, when we were going over stuff earlier in the season and we pulled a card out of one of my cameras and you're like, that's a nice eight pointer. I was like, I'm not shooting. You're like, yeah, okay. You see it, you see him in the woods, you're shooting. And I'm almost, if it wasn't the same deer, it was the same caliber deer of the one that I passed up when I was with your dad, you know, last weekend when I shot the doe instead.
Mainly because I truly believe that if you, hunters, our job is to manage the population. the proper management, and again, in a perfect world, and I feel world going back to that from before, you want to take out the older animals so the younger animals can thrive and grow and reach their potential. So it's just everything, I try to attack everything from that standpoint. What's going to be best for the future?
And I'm sorry, Jersey, just the way they're managing and honestly, New York to an extent is the same problem. I challenge anybody when you're driving down the road, whether it's New York or New Jersey, I challenge you to drive down the road and find me a stretch for more than half a mile that you can't see into the woods. It just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist anywhere you go driving down the highway. Once the leaves are gone, you can see for a country mile into the woods. No animal is going to survive there. It's the reason we lost our quail. It's the reason that
You know, the deer don't stay where they're supposed to stay. But yeah, I digress. Sorry, this is a very, this topic just hits home for me. So I apologize for the deep breath and we progress. So I want to talk a little bit about this past weekend that I had, something new that I tried out before I get into it. Is there anything else you want to share? Anything you want to touch on? All right. So I have always historically been a tree stand hunter.
Angelo (45:57.551)
That's okay.
Chris (46:04.022)
Whether that is going in with a climber, going in with a hang on setup or going into like a preset hang on or a preset ladder stand. It's just always been the way I've done. this year and last year really started last year. I really started to get into the swing of being more mobile, know, lighter, lighter hang ons, lighter sticks, saddle, not sad. Whatever the case is, I've kind of been, been trying a couple of different things out.
And it's all been new for me and it's worked really well. It's given me an opportunity to do more scouting, get in, walk around, find some more stuff and put myself in different positions every time. But that's also come with a little bit of a downside for me too. Cause in the past, if I always hunted the same stand or the same type of stand, you know, whether it's a climber or a preset ladder or hang on, there wasn't a lot of room for move.
Right? Like the old climbers were very bulky. Nobody wants to five miles. But what it allowed me to do was it allowed me to kind of learn a certain patch of woods year after year and kind of gather information. What I found this year is that being more mobile, I've been able to put myself in different places and check out different patches of woods with different types of cover. But I haven't hunted at least in Pennsylvania where I haven't hunted here ever.
What I find is by not hunting the same place more than once, at least the same general area, I'm not learning anything about the woods. I'm basically going somewhere and saying, well, I didn't see deer here, onto the next one. So I think for next year, I need to do a better job of maybe picking like two patches of woods and just moving around within those patches of woods and learning that. And I think that's going to benefit me moving forward.
Angelo (47:49.113)
I think one of the things that's gonna help you is cause you know that a lot of what you just mentioned is a version of what I like to do. And when you know that you're not gonna be hunting in the same spot more than once, you tend to be a lot more critical of where you choose to hunt. And I think that with the time that you had to prep for that hunting style, which was not that much, it left you with...
Chris (48:06.27)
Chris (48:14.08)
Now it must have what I like.
Angelo (48:15.226)
kind of having to just rely on some of the older tactics that you used in the stationary stand setup for a mobile stand setup. And just hunting from a mobile setup doesn't change what you're doing unless you're hunting the mobile setup for a mobile style, right? Just hunting the same style but with a different setup is gonna usually produce either similar or different.
Maybe worse, maybe better results. But again, with you hunting a new area, it was kind of hard for you to figure out what to do. The mobile setup for me, I'll climb a tree. If I don't like it in an hour, I move my setup. That's the whole point of the mobile thing for me is I'll set up in an area. If the wind shifts on me, I move. It's about being able to say, I like this spot.
I pick this spot, but if something happens, if something changes, can make the adjustment, which is what I think you're going for. But as far as learning the woods, I think when you pick your spot, you'll start to see, and the more time you spend in that area and you start to learn the woods a little bit more, I find it that in my strategy, I learn the woods as much as I can in my scouting, whether that's pre-season.
or late season when I'm walking and I am more mobile to then learn the woods before my setup rather than using my setup to learn the woods.
Chris (49:52.96)
Yeah. So a couple of things there. And it's funny you say that I tried to hunt my old style with simply a mobile setup, because honestly, I just came to that realization either yesterday or the day before. Because it's very easy to fall back on old habits, right? You start doing stuff, you get a little tired. Every day you go out, you either don't see something, you don't see something you want. And you start to get a little discouraged.
And it's very easy to fall into those old habits that you've used to find success in the past. Now, my problem is, and this is a personal problem, is that every state I hunt are different conditions for me. So what I mean by that is Jersey, we've put in enough time in Jersey. I think you and I can basically both for the most part, go into the woods in Jersey and find deer in the areas that we've hunted our whole lives.
Whether it's the area where we're talking about pheasant hunting or where you and I hunted last year, where you're hunting this year, I think we could go in and find you. New York, we're monitoring with cameras. We have food plots. We have history from the old owners that they shared with us and a friend of ours that has hunted our property from when he was young who can share information with us. But for Pennsylvania, I don't have the time, at least during the week.
to go out and say, okay, I'm gonna scout for two hours, three hours, and then find a tree to sit in. I have just enough time to get out of the woods, climb a tree, and hunt for two hours. You know what I mean? So like, excuse me. What I wanna do this coming year is I wanna put a lot of time into Pennsylvania and do a lot of scouting, especially once the season ends and there's snow on the ground. I wanna start walking, I wanna start finding these tracks, and I wanna start tracking deer as if I'm hunting them.
Angelo (51:43.023)
Well, you can do that now during the gun season too, because I think that's going to lead into what you're about to mention after this as well.
Chris (51:44.938)
No, I-I-
Yeah, I, I, I could do that. And I was, I was thinking of doing that and we're going to talk about that here in a second. But what I find is that, like you're saying, the nice thing about the mobile setup is to be able to get up, get down and move if you need to. I'm at the point now where I find it a lot more comfortable to climb in and I find it a lot more comfortable once I'm up in the tree. But between the stuff I bring in and the camera gear and the camera arm and all this other stuff, I still don't find a mobile setup.
Easy for me to pack up, move and reset up.
Angelo (52:20.377)
Well, that's why the camera is almost, you have to take that out of the equation. The camera is something you introduced to the setup. The setup is what it is. You know, that's just an extra thing. Because if it wasn't for the camera, that would be the... Yeah.
Chris (52:26.38)
Yes, yeah, yeah, that's why it's important. Yeah, yeah. Well, 100 % It would be a whole different, I mean, would be a whole different ball game, you know, because I have, I have the GoPro, I have the camera, I have the camera arm, I have the battery for the camera, I have the mount, you know what mean? Like it's just, I know it doesn't seem like a lot to anyone who's never filmed before, but to anyone who has filmed before, I think they can understand where I'm coming from.
Now, what I also have found out is that I can pack up and break down in about half the time it takes me to climb and set up. I don't know if that's a me problem. I don't know if that's like a typical thing. I don't know, but I think it's going to next year. need to get a better camera arm. I built one myself. It works. The function of it is great. It's just very weird, awkward to set up and it's awkward to get around the tree. so that's something I got to work on.
for myself and we talked about this actually before we started recording this year. think we're going to, we're going to, at some point, once the season wraps up or as the season starts winding down, we're going to get into an episode where we talk about the gear we started with, the changes we made, what we ended the season with and kind of what we want to, you know, change going into next season. But building on your snow tracking, that's actually exactly what I did this past weekend on our private property for the first time.
And there's been a couple of things that have stopped me from wanting to do a spot install. Mainly, if anybody knows me, I'm like a freaking Oompa Loompa, right? I'm not, I'm not the tallest guy in the world and I'm not the fattest guy in the world, but I'm not, you know, I'm short and I'm, and I'm big, but I'm big, you know? So it's just, I feel like it's very hard for me to stealthily sneak through the woods. feel like I'm always cracking leaves, breaking branches. but this past weekend, there was a snow. And like I said, we got about six inches.
Friday. We had Thanksgiving on Thursday, we drove up to the cabin Friday, we hunted Saturday. So I figured, you know what, fresh snow, powder snow, let me get out. I'm just going to put boots on the ground. going to, I'm going to spot and solve. We're going see what happens. When I first started walking, my dad hunted someone on the left side of the property. So I wanted to go and walk the right side. I didn't want to disturb him and what he was doing, but I figured I would wrap around the backside of the right, you know, the backside of the right side of the property.
Chris (54:46.38)
and then kind of like zigzag my way back towards him. So if there was anything there, maybe I would push it towards him. I was very discouraged when I first started walking the woods, because what I noticed was I was only finding dog tracks, whether that was a fox track or a coyote track, I'm not familiar enough with them to tell the difference, but it was 100 % dog track. I mean, they were like going up and over rock walls, not in breaks and rock walls, like up and over actual rock walls. You know, I'd see them kind of cut a deer track.
hit the deer track and then circle back around and come back onto the main trail when they couldn't find the deer. But eventually I got into some deer tracks and I started, basically my goal was to walk the trails, like the cut logging roads of our property. And if I found a deer track, start to track that deer track. But eventually I got to a place where there were a lot of trees down.
our trails haven't been manicured. were kind of like overgrown before we got the property. And now with the weather we've gotten in the last couple of weeks, like there's a lot of trees now. So at this point moving forward, they're probably just gonna travel through their property with a chainsaw every time we go. But I got back to the place where I had shot that doe with the bow, probably about a month ago now and didn't get a recovery. And to date,
The hunt that I had up there has been the best hunt I've had in all four years, all four hunting seasons we've had the property. Once I got, so as I was walking that trail, I saw one deer track. I started tracking that. It was actually pretty big. I had a picture of it up against my hand and it pretty much took up the whole inner of my hand, which was pretty big track. But it started going down towards the private property and I didn't, obviously I'm not going to trespass. So.
I looked ahead with the binoculars. didn't see any deer there. So I just turned around and got back to the main trail. Once I wrapped around and started going kind of like towards that spot where I started to the deer, where I hit the deer last time and came up that trail. I saw one, two, three, four, five, six tracks. One by itself, two together, two together, one by itself. It was pretty cool. So then I turned around, I came back and I kind of made a plan. said, okay, this is the far side of the problem.
Chris (57:02.474)
So what I want to do is I want to back out on a wrap around the back like I said zigzag back down So if there are any deer on this backside, maybe I push them further into my own property And if there's deer down low, I'll make my way to them eventually. So literally I'm sitting there I just tracked this is my own fault stupidity. I just tracked it Hit a hit a actually a doe like estrus type bleep on my call and then like an asshole I took my
GoPro off my head and I started filming myself. have done it the other way. Should have filmed myself and then called. Whatever. So once I filmed, I'm trying to get the battery plugged back into the GoPro because when it's cold out, those things don't last more than 10 minutes. I had it plugged in the entire time in the woods. So I put it back on my head. I look up, there's a doe staring at me. So I just tracked, I just called, and she pops up. I don't know how long she was sitting there. I picked up my gun, scoped her up,
put the gun on the vitals and I was like, you know what? I shot, I hit a doe, I shot a doe, the neighbors have shot a couple doe. I don't know how many are left. I decided not to shoot it. So instead I dropped the gun down, pulled the camera up, you know, took some pictures of her video, whatever. And then she kind of went off, but she never spooked. I was really surprised about that. She was staring at me the whole time, picked the gun up, recorded her, moved around a bunch, was moving my arms and she'd never even lifted her tail. She kind of just turned and moseyed on off down the ridge. I don't know what the deal was.
So thought that was pretty cool. First deer I ever tracked, slash called on a track, whatever. And then I went back to the original plan, came back around, zigzagged around, found a lot of tracks. And as I was following the tracks, I found at least 15 beds. I'm sure that some of those beds were, you know, they were made, they moved, they made a new bed or whatever, but the snow was fresh. So the fact that the beds were down to the leaves, that tells me that those were all fresh beds.
And even though I didn't track a buck and I didn't shoot a buck that day, what I did gather was a shit ton of data and field data that I could use for next year. Now I know where the deer like to go. So I have to start hunting them when they first get there. Now, whether that's when they, whether they go there when someone the leaves clear off or what, I don't know. But at least now I have some data going into.
Angelo (59:23.865)
Well, I'll tell you something, you got to realize this too, because you said that it started snowing the night before. Think about all the stuff that you found and then realize that everything that they did, all that sign that left behind was all in the dark. It's a lot of movement. Well, you started hunting in the morning, right early.
Chris (59:28.79)
Uh-huh.
Chris (59:37.12)
But, you think so?
Chris (59:42.726)
No, we didn't go in in the dark. I think we hit the woods at like 9.30.
Angelo (59:46.063)
But even still, 9.30 a.m. I mean, from it to be overnight till 9.30 a.m., you would assume maybe they're going back to bed around that time. They probably bed down a little bit, maybe in the middle of the night and then got back up and bed down again. That just shows you how active they actually are at night.
Chris (59:47.98)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (01:00:05.224)
yeah. You know, and the thing is, think we as humans, like we get wrapped up and we go to sleep at night, we're awake during the day. Deer are just out. They live out all the time. They sleep when they want to. No, that's what I'm saying.
Angelo (01:00:17.711)
But again, they're not sleeping for eight hours and then they get back up. They don't bed down at daylight and then get back up right before dark and then they start walking. They're up and down every couple of hours.
Chris (01:00:25.579)
Yeah.
Have you ever had the luxury or the fortune, I don't want to say luxury, I kind of sound like a dick, but have you ever had the fortune of seeing a deer grazing and then bed down like while you were hunting and watch the deer bed and get up and all in one sit?
Angelo (01:00:43.961)
Yeah, I mean the buck that me and my brother just recently harvested in New York, that's exactly what we did. We observed it feeding in the field. We didn't observe it while we were traversing to to jayhook on it, get downwind and everything else. But as we kind of cut through the field, cut through the stream, the river bed, and then came up up on the bank, you know, we had realized it was still in the field. It was still grazing while we were trying to get set up for the shot. It bed down.
Chris (01:00:48.019)
that's right.
Angelo (01:01:13.807)
We watched it from like 12 to two, it was about two hours or maybe like 1230 to 230 or something in that timeframe. was midday. I thought it was a little too warm for him to be out in the sun like that. It was like 55 degrees. I mean, with our jackets on, and my brother were basically sweating just sitting there. So it was odd to me that at that temperature that he was still sitting there, but I guess, you know, that he liked it.
And it kind of changes how I view things, right? Because I usually try to think like, okay, I'm not going to hunt the northern phasing slopes with the sun in their face until it's like freezing. But maybe I can start doing that a little bit earlier because, you know.
Chris (01:01:57.58)
You also got a like it could have just been like that day or like every year has got a personality You know like my wife gets cold when it's 80 something degrees out I know other women you know they think it'd be hot and 50 degrees so I think Obviously every deer has its own personality. We've talked about that before we both agreed for that to be true But I don't know that we want to make a decision off of one deer either. You know what I mean?
But it's just something to keep in the back of your head. Well, 100%. But what I was getting at was the beautiful part about the property and having some food plots and stuff is over the last two years, I've gotten to see three different deer. Granted, out of the same food plot, which is kind of ironic, but out of the same food plot, I've watched three different deer eat and then go off to bed and then get up. And I have them on camera, know.
Angelo (01:02:24.911)
no obviously not. i'm just saying it just was odd for me, i didn't realize it.
Chris (01:02:52.076)
Couple of years ago, I had one deer eating in the food plot, walked up and like basically laid down where he was at the top end of the food plot. It's got like a little bit of a slope down and his one side was up against the thicker grass behind him was thicker grass in front of him was thicker grass and he just laid there to our 45 minutes and got up and moved, but he never fell asleep. Last year one, you know, I think it was October 30th and 31st. think it was Halloween Eve.
and Halloween, I watched one deer each day, in that same food plot, walk right under my tree, and about 70 yards, 60 yards, 70 yards in front of me, lay down, chew on their cud, and fall asleep. One was sitting there coughing up a lung, literally, for an hour straight, and the other one fell asleep with its head up. Did you know? What's up? Maybe, honestly, like, I don't know, maybe, have you ever seen a deer sleep with their head up?
Angelo (01:03:41.337)
Maybe I had COVID. Maybe I had COVID.
Chris (01:03:50.122)
I didn't know deer slept with their head up.
Angelo (01:03:51.481)
I mean, they'll close their eyes, they'll doze off. I mean, a lot of times, I've never seen a deer full on for more than maybe 30 minutes have their head down and be completely passed out.
Chris (01:04:04.332)
That's what I'm saying. So like that leads to another question for another day is like, deer actually sleep? Do they go through like rem cycle? know, like.
Angelo (01:04:10.637)
I mean, I'm sure that they sleep, again, you know, they might be doing like, what's that? Was it, forget who it was. Was it Einstein or somebody said that they would sleep like 20 minutes every hour?
Chris (01:04:21.836)
I don't, that I don't know.
Angelo (01:04:23.023)
Remember there was somebody that was, this is this old story that somebody said that they would sleep 20 minutes every hour and then they could get more production, more time during the day or anyway. So.
Chris (01:04:33.324)
Well, the, the, the, the whole thing behind that just since you brought it up is you go through a, you go through a sleep cycle and if you sleep for more than 20 minutes, you go into REM, which is a deep sleep. And if you don't allow yourself to go through the full sleep cycle, once you hit the REM stage, you end up actually waking up feeling more tired than you were because you didn't let your body go through the cycle. So they say if you're going to take a nap, don't take a nap for longer than 20 minutes. Otherwise you actually end up going into a deeper sleep. Exactly. So.
Angelo (01:05:00.303)
Deeper sleep, yeah. Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, again, I'm sure that there are times where they're more tired than others and they sleep, but I'll tell you what, there's a lot of observation that I've done where, you know, again, because we hunt in public land and there's some footage that I've released on my YouTube channel or our YouTube channel this year where deer literally are bedded within 50 yards of a trail that people are walking and the deer won't move.
They'll be bedded down in a thick little bush or something like that right at the base. They're so tight to the ground and so profile so small. You really honestly can't see them. They're so well camouflaged and they'll let you walk right by.
Chris (01:05:40.748)
Yeah. And I'd be curious to know, and I don't even know how we would test this or if there's a test out there, but the woods you're hunting this year are pretty frequented by people, You know, hikers or whatever, people walking through. Okay. I like obviously a deer in, in, you know, five miles back in the woods, isn't going to tolerate that pressure either, which honestly is why me personally, I prefer to hunt some of these more residential type areas, places where maybe it's public land.
Angelo (01:05:51.993)
Yeah, quads.
Chris (01:06:09.418)
with houses on the perimeter of it. Cause then I feel like I could get away with a little bit more intrusiveness because they're used to people being in the woods to some degree. You know what I mean? Like I feel like the more isolated you get, the more perfect you have to be as an object. Yeah. So anywho, with that being said, we said we would keep this shorter ends up being just a little bit over an hour, which is fine. know, lately we've been at like an hour and a half. So I guess for us.
This is a little bit shorter. You have anything you want to add, touch on, speak on before we wrap this up today?
Angelo (01:06:44.845)
No, that's all. I'm just looking forward. I'm hoping for a little bit of snow here too in New Jersey. My first sit, like I said yesterday, didn't result in much. I mean, that's really a spot that I really like to fall back on. I usually don't go there until maybe I've had a couple of sits already with the gun, the muzzleloader, and I haven't seen anything. I like to go into that spot. And I just went straight for it this year, hoping to get some content. And I didn't see a single thing. I mean, it looked barren.
I walked the trails a little bit and again, didn't see anything, didn't spook anything. Same spot where we did the turkey scouting. I think I walked somewhere in the neighborhood of five miles. I I did so I put some miles on. In the dark, I didn't see anything, didn't spook anything, bump anything. I mean, I didn't hear a single shot go off on the private property, on the public property, nothing.
Chris (01:07:18.122)
this was where again?
Chris (01:07:40.748)
And that's what I did this past weekend. foot of snow zigzagging back and forth put about four and a half, five miles on. And learned something really cool actually for those of you who have listened this far. Little piece of cool information. If you guys have a portable GPS, whether it's a Garmin, I personally use a Garmin, but whatever you use, handheld GPS, you can actually plug it into your computer, export those files, and then import those files into Onyx.
What I have found is ONNX isn't always the most accurate as far as like where you're standing in relation to other things. The handheld GPS is they're made for that. It's their only job. And you can, again, upload the data, whether it's a track, waypoint, whatever it is, you can upload it from your GPS into your computer and then take it from there and put it onto ONNX. So you get the accuracy of a handheld with the detailed map of ONNX or whatever other app you're using.
And that ends up working out really well. Moving forward for me, to be honest with you, my focus is starting to transition to Baby Mode, to be completely honest. My office, for those of you guys always see this great background, the background looks fantastic, the floors are bare, without plywood here. My walls aren't finished. I have no trim around the windows, which is why you never see like a full view of my office, because it looks like shit. You know, so.
we have about four months until the baby comes. have two months and two and a half months left to like get everything we need to done. So that way we can sanitize the house and kind of start organizing the baby room and all that stuff. So at this point with a month left in the season, my focus is starting to transition into dad mode. Really? Like what else needs to be done? What do I need to do here? What does my wife need? What do we have to do to have this house ready for the baby?
You know, so with that being said, we're still going to bring you content. I mean, I really look forward to this time every week. And that just means that next year, know, turkey season, deer season, that just means I need to maximize the time I have in the woods a little bit more. So I'm really excited for what the future brings. I enjoy any amount of time that I get in the woods. I'm to, I'm planning on getting out a couple more times this year, but anything from this point forward is going to be a blessing for me. And
Chris (01:09:58.724)
I'm really, we're really looking to welcome our first girl into the family. So with that being said, I want to take a minute to thank our sponsors. We have Andover Hunt and Fish. Angela, you like take Andover away?
Angelo (01:10:12.771)
Yeah, Andover Hunting Fish is a sports shop up here in Northwest New Jersey and they got everything that you could need to be outside, recreational, hunting, bow tuning station, live bait station, new and used guns, and a lot of knowledgeable staff to help you guide you through your purchases. If you have a chance, check them out. I know that they've got a new
website that they're hoping to be launching soon, which will be able to service some people outside of the New Jersey area. So we're waiting on that, but they've been a big help to the channel and we appreciate them.
Chris (01:10:48.734)
Awesome. We also have Big D Custom Shops over in Jefferson, New Jersey, slash Patcom, New Jersey. It really depends on what app you're looking up. Either way, they're up there on Route 15, fantastic custom shop. mean, they deal with bows specifically, bowling balls and embroidery. So if you're looking for like, to like customize your bows, they deal with Expedition and Darten. They're licensed retailers for those two companies.
but they can help you with any bow you have. Chris is awesome, he owns the shop. Anthony is fantastic, he's the bow tech there. And I promise you, any time you go into that shop, whether you leave there with something or not, you're gonna leave with a smile on your face and you're gonna have a fantastic time from the moment you enter, to the moment you get out. So if you need anything for your bow, a bowling ball, embroidery, head on over to Big D's custom shop, they'll take care of you. On top of that, we also have Fireknock LLC. I'm really excited, man.
We're about to start filming with Dorj tomorrow. It's going to be the first installment of the arrows of the science behind arrow flight series. I'm really, really looking forward to that. If you guys are looking for arrow building components, anything to make the most efficient arrow you can. If you're looking for components for your bows, components for your crossbows, he is the man to go to. Head on over to fireknock.com. Check out their line of stuff.
And over on the right side, have some like data research tabs you can click on if you want to start learning about some of that science of aeroflight. He calls it, I believe, Aeroflight 101. Head on over there to learn some information. On top of that, we have Antler Grow, fantastic micronutrient products for your food plots and for your woody brows out in the woods. Spray it on everything you want the deer to come to.
We have seen some fantastic results this year and I have no doubts that you will see some results if you choose to use them as well. we are related. are affiliated with dark and bows. Darten bows have been great to me. I love my bow so far. My brother loves my bow or his bow, I should say. And, can't really ask for anything more. I feel like I'm missing someone.
Angelo (01:13:03.951)
I don't know.
Chris (01:13:04.938)
Yeah, if I am, I'm sorry. We'll get you. We'll get you on the next one here. Cutty back. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Cutty back cell cameras. We absolutely love them. We use them on our private property. We use the cell, the cutting back cell link, which allows us to connect 20 cameras to one home cell camera and all of those cameras, daisy chain down to the camera that sends it to your phone. The beautiful part about that is you pay for one cell camera subscription.
Angelo (01:13:07.993)
How do you, the Excel can.
Chris (01:13:34.728)
You only have to pay one fee for the year and you get up to 20 cameras on that one daisy chain. So head on over to Cutty Bag if you're interested in any of those. With that being said, last but not least, please, please, please, please, if you like what you heard today, if you enjoy spending time with us week to week, if you're on Apple Podcasts, scroll all the way down to the bottom of our channel and leave a five star written review. It really goes a long way for us.
The more reviews we have, the higher our channel gets bumped up to the top of the list. So would really help us out if could leave us a review and want to hear more content coming. If you're on Spotify, real simple, scroll down to the bottom of our page and hit a five star review. don't have to type anything. Just click on that five star and you're good to go. With that being said, month left in the season. Hope you all are out there finding some success.
Hopefully we can find a little bit more success as we move on with the rest of the season. So without further ado, thank you so much for listening this week. Good luck as you move forward and remember success is just a commitment. Until next time, have a great week.
Angelo (01:14:43.311)
Peace.
