Ohio B.S. Session

On this episode of the Nine Finger Chronicles, Dan talks with Ty Kellogg of Ohio about everything from trapping and bowhunting to family time and hunter mentality. Ty was a gun and crossbow hunter for most of his youth and after a couple of "Ah-Ha Moments" he decided to pick up well used compound bow and a Summit climber to make things a little harder, and to get mobile of course. Ty talks about his love for trapping and how he think it helped him become a better outdoorsman.

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another week of the Greatest Show on Earth, the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast. I'm your host, Dan Johnson, and today we have a really good BS [00:01:00] session. We're gonna be talking with Ty Kellogg from Northeast Ohio, and we're gonna talk about his family farm. We're gonna talk about how deer moved through it.

We're gonna talk about northeast Ohio as a whole. We're gonna talk about trapping. We're gonna talk about that, that thing that I don't necessarily think we focus on enough, and that is that hunt life balance, right? Just many of you, Ty doesn't get out as much as he would like because he's got several kids, he's got a full-time job and he's got a wife, right?

And so I always tell this and you'll hear this in the episode, if you're gonna get married, Hunting time will go down. If you plan on having kids hunting, time will go down. And so unless you are upfront with your wife or your girlfriend at the time, or however that works, you gotta let 'em know.

Right now there can't be any mistakes. We also share stories. Here. I'll just say it this [00:02:00] way and don't take this outta context. We also share a couple crazy beaver stories. Take that how you want it. You're gonna have to listen for those, but it's a really good episode. I know you guys are gonna enjoy it.

So right now is usually when we go ahead and do the commercials, but what I'm gonna do today is we're just gonna run one commercial. And really what I'm doing is I'm introducing a new partner to the nine finger Chronicles. And As of this episode, we have partnered with a company called Wood Men's Pal.

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Dot com. Check this thing out, dude. It, I can definitely see the [00:04:00] functionality. I'm gonna be putting it in my pack when I go do my my annual tree stand hanging or moving or things like that for my traditional rut locations, and so hell, this might even be something that I attached to my hip when I'm being mobile and not like on a big mobile hike, but maybe on a smaller, more short distance from the truck mobile setup.

Woods man wood's pal.com you're gonna hear a lot more from this company here in the near future comes with a leather sheath, 1941 American made sharpening stone. It's just, it's badass. So go check it out. All right, that is the only commercial I'm running today. And go check out. Go check those guys out.

What else do we have to do? We gotta do some housekeeping. I had a note here, but I forgot it. Anyway go to Instagram, make sure you're following the Nine Finger Chronicles comment. If you like something, go to iTunes or wherever you download your download your podcast, make sure you're subscribed.

And then also make sure that you [00:05:00] leave a five star review there as well. And that's it. That's it. That's all I wanna talk about today. Let's get into today's episode with Ty Kellogg. Three, two, one. All right. On the phone with me. All the way from Ohio, Mr. Ty Kellogg. Ty, what's up man? How you doing today, Dan?

I'm doing good. I don't know what what it's like where you live, but for the past, Two days. It has been so windy. Like yesterday I had, we had a baseball game and the dust was coming off the field and smoking the kids right in the face. The parents right in the face, the entire game. And so people were starting to get fed up, with it.

The kids couldn't focus. And so I always I was joking. I said, it's South Dakota Windy here right now. Cuz every time I go out to South Dakota, there's a couple days out there where it's just gnarly, windy and and so Iowa [00:06:00] is ex experiencing some of that, that real western wind that is, 

[00:06:05] Ty Kellogg: Pretty well.

We've had some wind gust in northeast Ohio for the last few weeks, but not the constant wind that you guys probably see. And I think I saw on the news here was that in Illinois, that there was a dust storm on the highway. 

[00:06:18] Dan Johnson: Yes, I saw that on the news briefly somewhere. Yeah. Where there people were recording 

[00:06:22] Ty Kellogg: it.

It was we've seen a lot of increased winds. I'm in insurance, and at the end of March, we had two weeks of significant winds here in northeast Ohio. And I can't tell you the number of claims that we filed just for structures and the dollar amounts that were getting paid out and are still getting paid out as a result of it, it was pretty 

[00:06:43] Dan Johnson: nasty.

Yeah. I was pretty disappointed. And so we had to get a new roof due to hail. We had major hail damage which is crazy. A big hail storm comes through the, our town, our neighbors roof. The insurance adjuster goes, Hey, man, your R [00:07:00] roof looks G fine. Meanwhile, my insurance adjuster says mine is destroyed.

And so he went up there with some chalk and he was circling all the, and I guess the calculation is if there's x number of damage in a certain square footage, that's a total loss. Long story short, We get a brand new roof. But I was hoping that it w the damage would've also destroyed my siding because we need new siding on the house and I just got it quoted out and that shit's expensive.

I'm not hearing 

[00:07:30] Ty Kellogg: this 

[00:07:33] Dan Johnson: next time there's even a slight wind. I'm gonna be out there with a claw hammer ripping siding off, then go to jail for la for insurance fraud. I heard nothing. Heard nothing. There you go. Do people try to do that shit? 

[00:07:48] Ty Kellogg: They do, but nowhere near as much as perhaps is advertised or talked about.

Especially since I started seven years ago under my dad's tutelage, [00:08:00] every insurance carrier has really started to tighten down on what they'll pay and what they won't pay. I gotcha. And to the point of they will hire a third party appraisers to evaluate a roof or the siding. Yeah. To make sure that yes, this is legit.

Cuz you also got a factor, at least for your roof's perspective. Is there matching shingles or a matching metal depending on what it is? Yeah. How much damage is truly there or is it just wear and tear? Yeah. The reality is the insurance company doesn't want to pay out more money than they have to.

Especially now it costs doubling and tripling in some areas. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you're obligated to whatever the policy says. 

[00:08:39] Dan Johnson: Yeah. It's 

[00:08:39] Ty Kellogg: So you happen to get a good adjuster for your house and whoever your friend's company is might have been green on the job or maybe the company said, Hey, not a dollar more than what 

[00:08:50] Dan Johnson: you're seeing.

Yeah. That's nuts. I tell you what, now that I remember, I let him in my house because he was all the way from South Carolina. [00:09:00] And he came. Oh, wow. He came to my house, so it might have been one of those third party deals. Who, these people, I reached out to my my provider or my home insurance people.

They said, okay we're gonna reach out to someone. They're gonna come look at your house. So it must have been a third party, like storm chasing crew that was out there and said, Hey, go look at this house. I remember letting him in my house for a moment and he saw all my deer mounts and he's oh man, these are awesome.

We don't have bucks like that in South Carolina. And and so maybe that was the reason hunting saved me again, and I got a brand new roof. 

[00:09:38] Ty Kellogg: It is not out of the realm of possibility. It suck anything else in your business. You find some common ground with someone. You're a little more a king to bending for 

[00:09:47] Dan Johnson: them.

There you go. Big bucks in Iowa got me a new roof in, in some way, shape or form, maybe. All right. I don't really know where to kick off. So we've already talked about the fact that you live in [00:10:00] Ohio, that you're you work in insurance. What part of Ohio do you live in?

[00:10:06] Ty Kellogg: I'm in northeast Ohio, so we're almost exactly halfway between the city of Cleveland, which is to the west of us and the Pennsylvania line, which is to the east of us. And we are probably 10 to 12 miles as the crow flies directly inland from Lake 

[00:10:21] Dan Johnson: Erie. Okay. All right. So northeast Ohio. Talk to me a little bit about the vibe, the hunting vibe there as far as whitetails are concerned.

Cause I've heard some good things about Northeast Ohio, but then I also have heard that with its location between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. And then what's the, is how far is Cincinnati? That's much further 

[00:10:43] Ty Kellogg: away. Cincinnati's the southwest corner of the state. Oh, okay. All right. From us, it's.

Five hours away 

[00:10:48] Dan Johnson: roughly. Okay. What's on the southeast corner of 

[00:10:51] Ty Kellogg: Southeast Corner you're getting into Marietta. Marietta, you're getting closer to West Virginia line. That weird corner of Marietta meets West Virginia [00:11:00] meets a little corner of p PA as well. 

[00:11:02] Dan Johnson: Okay. All right. And I've also heard that area of Ohio, because it is over the counter, gets flooded a lot of times for not only out-of-state hunters, but just hunters traveling from the cities as well to go take advantage of their public.

[00:11:19] Ty Kellogg: Yes. That's true on all fronts. Ohio in general is, has been for a while now, a pretty strong white tail state, and I think every year when you look at the Pope and ro young Records and Boone and Crockett, Ohio up there in the top 10 to top five almost every year. Yeah. In terms of total harvest numbers the county next door to us, near the PA line and the one to south.

There's some of the strongest harvest numbers in the entire state. Okay. So people love to hunt. There's a lot of pressure. There is a good amount of ag land mixed in with some real good natural habitat, a lot of swamp ground and hardwood. So it offers a lot [00:12:00] of good territory for deer of all shapes and sizes to get lost and get mature.

So you can see your big bucks, or if you're just like me and you're just trying to get out there and get the first dumb deer that crosses your path. There's plenty of those opportunities too. And the price tag for permits is still pretty affordable compared to where you are in Iowa or elsewhere. 

[00:12:22] Dan Johnson: Yeah, for me, dude, I love it.

I paid $28 and 50 cents. For my deer tag every year, my, my archery deer tag and so Wow. That's nice. Yeah. And even the cheapest whitetail man, what is it, $163 for a non-resident to go to one of the other states that I was looking at. That's fairly cheap as well. And so I look at 28, I look at 28 50.

There's people that complain about that price. I am like, dude I would pay double or quadruple that for a, as a resident here in this state. Yeah. 

[00:12:57] Ty Kellogg: And that says a lot. Yeah. If you're willing to say [00:13:00] that, I would like to see, I wouldn't say I want the permits to go higher, but the reality is that there's always talk of cutting funding for conservation programs and Yeah.

Licensing and fees and long term, I don't think that's a smart idea. So at some point we'll probably have to raise dues again. Yeah. But 

[00:13:16] Dan Johnson: that's just part of business. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Northeast Ohio where you're at? Are you a private guy? Are you a public guy? Do you hunt, mix? What's your story?

[00:13:27] Ty Kellogg: I've been very fortunate. I'm spoiled. I'm a private guy. Okay. Born and raised on the family farm. We're fortunate, my wife and I, and our three kids to build on the farm just a few years ago. And all the family land connected is probably somewhere between 112, 120 acres. All right. Okay. And it's a good mixed terrain, so there's plenty of white tails.

And it's also geographically limited, so there's not a lot of pressure from neighboring lots, so a lot of 'em just congregate to our area. And [00:14:00] I walk out the basement door and I go pick my spots. 

[00:14:03] Dan Johnson: Gotcha, gotcha. And so the neighborhoods, and when you say geographically limiting I hear that and I say, okay, there's a river or there's a state park.

Yeah. Or there's something big that prevents people from entering in one side of that property. 

[00:14:22] Ty Kellogg: You're two for two already, Dan. So we've got a big creek or a small river. Okay. Behind the place. All right. And then we've also got a very steep, hilly hillside, which I would probably consider the uppermost region of the Appalachian mountains if you really wanted to get tick for tack about it.

Okay. So you one, you gotta cross that small creek, big creek river, and then you gotta get up that real nasty terrain up to the hillside and then to one corner of the property is a park district. They have very limited permitted tags for hunting for archery and a ca couple for gun. But it's very limited.

Very few folks get access to it. Okay. [00:15:00] That really limits the, that helps pressure that those deer get tremendously. 

[00:15:03] Dan Johnson: Okay. Good. All right. It sounds to me like you got a you got the terrain, it's not necessarily flat. You got some egg, you got some timber. How are the deer in that area, using that river that you mentioned and using that steep terrain?

And how then do you use it to, to put yourself in the best position? 

[00:15:25] Ty Kellogg: I've told everyone that I've ever hunted with or talked about hunting with my place. Our farm is the hardest place for me to hunt because of the mixed terrain. So to visualize, you put up your hand and you form that shape of an L to the far side of the L is a county road.

Immediately next to that is a swamp with a pond in it. Next to that is a L-shaped hay pasture. There's never been a lot of row crop down that way. Next to that, then is the creek river with, lots of your river edge hardwood, [00:16:00] some sycamores, a little bit of locust, some willows. And then you hit the steep terrain, which is all hardwood and hemlock.

Okay. It offers a lot of finger ridges and real tiny passageways and grapevine choked passageways. So these deer have a number of options and I've come to the conclusion there's multiple families on this property in terms of deer groups. So they all use it at different times, at different days, and that's what makes it difficult is I have to figure out best wind pattern.

When's that wind pattern hitting the hillside and those thermals, how's that coinciding? And then how do I get in without making a big ruckus? Yeah. Because a hundred, and for us, 120 acres in northeast Ohio, that's a big plot of private. Just because you have it doesn't mean you're gonna pick the right spot.

So you really have to study it a lot. 

[00:16:49] Dan Johnson: Yeah, man I've hunted some areas where, how do I put this when I'm looking for a big mature buck [00:17:00] or a hit lister or I'm paying attention to certain dough groups, right? And I find out how these dough groups move through tree stand observation, and I find out how they move through trail camera intel.

Okay. So here comes a dough group through, and sometimes it is the same time every single day, or sometimes it's coming back to bedding the same time every single day. It may fluctuate a little bit, but what I'm getting at here is I know that if there's, if I'm hunting one specific dough group or dough bedding area where.

Now, let's say at four 30 on a afternoon hunt, they come through a certain area. That means I gotta be in my stand before four 30 and get set up before they come through. Same thing in the morning. Sometimes a dough group comes through at nine and I have to, get back in between the food source and the bedding before that time.

Usually I go in early. But what I'm getting at here is that [00:18:00] the, there are places where I, it's almost impossible to get into because dough groups come through those areas different times. Different days. Yes. Or they're crisscrossing their paths, or they may meet up at a social, let's stay staging area and then distribute from there.

So I, I get what you're, I get what you're saying. 

[00:18:23] Ty Kellogg: For all of my early life, the deer hunting was pretty much, here's your crossbow. Sit at the base of a tree in the hayfield. And just wait for the deer to emerge. Yeah. But over the years, the deer have gone nocturnal when they get into that field. Yeah. So I won't say the spot's rendered useless, but Yeah.

Let's face it, we can't spotlight. Yeah. 

[00:18:43] Dan Johnson: Yeah. 

[00:18:44] Ty Kellogg: Yeah. So you have to find trails and food patterns. And so fortunately when I cross that creek, that small river, most of the time I got a good thumb on what food is available when I'm hunting. And so I tend to find what's the [00:19:00] biggest travel corridor for that section of the area and what food is available.

And I start with that and I've been fortunate that's worked. Yeah. So if it ain't broke, I'm not gonna fix 

[00:19:09] Dan Johnson: it. Is there a time of year that, so for me I really, now on this new farm, I got I should back up a little bit on this new farm I got, man, early October, mid-October. Looks like a good time to get out there.

But most of the time I'm waiting until that late October, early November timeframe, not even worrying about it. Are you laying off of your farm until the good times, or are you, is it just, people coming in to hunt throughout the entire season? 

[00:19:41] Ty Kellogg: We're very fortunate. We cut back years ago on the number of people that hunted the farm to the point where my family was only comfortable if I was there with whoever else came.

Okay. So that restriction was good because I eliminated competition pressure. Yeah. The bad news for anyone else that wants to hunt the farm is I'm [00:20:00] not really available most of the year except I basically cut off deer gun season for Ohio. Yeah. As my time. In terms of most deer activity, I see a lot in the early fall because the neighboring property has replanted their hayfield all to clover just recently.

Okay. So they were munching on that fresh, late. Grown clover right before, winter and rut came on, and then they would go up to the hillside and hit the soft mass. 

[00:20:29] Dan Johnson: Okay. And hearing you talk about this property sounds like it, it sounds like it's just, it's almost perfect. You got the thickness in there, they have cover the marsh provides water, you have hay and you have clover in the area which provides food.

It sounds like you have the hardwoods that provides f food. And so it seems to me like the deer are gonna be there all year. Am I accurate with that? 

[00:20:54] Ty Kellogg: The deer are there all year. It's just finding that particular group. Yeah. Making sure your wind [00:21:00] is right. And then just hanging out until they show.

Yeah. 

[00:21:03] Dan Johnson: Do you have set places where. Like your traditional rut hunting type funnels or Destin, field edges or maybe a pinch point of some sort, or are you tr are you mobile in your approach? 

[00:21:19] Ty Kellogg: I became more mobile in the last five years, and it was a blessing in disguise. I wasn't really anticipating, just fell into my lap.

The first piece of the mobile became moving to a compound bow Okay. That I got on the cheap from a neighbor. He was selling it for his dad. It was a browning compound, had eight arrows with it case everything included 125 bucks. Yeah. 

[00:21:44] Dan Johnson: Did you start out on a 

[00:21:45] Ty Kellogg: crossbow? I had started out on a crossbow.

Okay. Which I know on a several of your episodes you got a little bit of a beef with the crossbow folks, but maybe a little, I don't know. I get why you have the beef, but I will say this, the crossbow [00:22:00] for me was the gateway drug. Yeah. It made it accessible without investing a boatload of money.

And also too, it kept teasing me with, Hey, get out there, use me, get out there, use me. And then finally, so I got the compounds like I can't really shoot the compound from the ground. I only know one or two people that have done that with any success ever outside of Native Americans. So when I got the compound, then I started looking for a climber as opposed to the traditional ladder stands that I'm sure you grew up with.

Yeah. And then I grew up with, when we first started hunting, so I had a friend that said, Hey, I'm getting rid of my Summit Viper, here's 125 bucks for it. Yeah. And all of a sudden I was 20, 25 feet in the air and I was seeing deer that I had never seen before because I was off the ground. The scent was being carried away, and it was just fantastic.

Yeah. So being able to go mobile, With that at the time really opened my eyes to more [00:23:00] travel corridors, patterns, behaviors, what I can get away with and what I can't. 

[00:23:04] Dan Johnson: You just had the ability to observe more deer movement throughout your entire farm, not just those ladder stand spots. Okay. All right.

And man I think I saw a statistic somewhere where during the archery season the state of Ohio, those archery tags, I wanna say 70% of those archery tags are filled by crossbows. Some, something like that. My, my question is if you started off with a crossbow, was it, you're literally doing something harder than.

I look at it, I go, you can shoot a crossbo from the ground. You can shoot a crossbow from a tree helicopter, whatever. Yeah, it might, A compound might be a little more difficult if in a Turkey hunting position. Like a Right. A, if you're, you can't really do that blind or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. I can see but [00:24:00] what was it that made you go, okay, I want to, I wanna try this compound bow thing and put the crossbo to the side? 

[00:24:08] Ty Kellogg: I think it was a mix of artistry and magic. Let's face it, if you have a compound and you wanna shoot whatever with it, deer, Turkey, squirrels, rabbits, you need to shoot it and you need to shoot a lot.

I grew up as a baseball player, so form and mechanics were critical to whatever it was I was doing. And to get your best form and your best mechanics, you had to have thousands of repetitions. Yeah. Muscle memory. And I guess in a weird way, going to a compound at that time made sense and appealed to me because not only could I challenge myself a little bit, but I also knew I have to commit to this to make this work.

Yeah. I can't just hang that summit, Hey, see a broadside shot at whatever that shooting angle is and make it work the first time. If I did, it's beginner's luck and it [00:25:00] shouldn't 

[00:25:00] Dan Johnson: count. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. All right. So you jumped into the compound bow world. How long did it take you to get comfortable shooting that bow?

Especially during the hunting season. 

[00:25:13] Ty Kellogg: I was fortunate. I don't know if it was the weight of the bow or if it was. Just the fact that I've been around guns and bows most of my life, but getting a form down, being comfortable shooting, it didn't take very long. Yeah. The hardest thing to practice is at least using the Summit Viper, is making sure you get the bow over the rest Yeah.

So you don't bang the bottom of it when you're drawing. Yeah. So that part takes probably the longest to learn, be comfortable with, and the only way to do that is just to do it hundreds and hundreds of times and get out in the woods as much as possible, or your backyard. That was probably the bigger learning curve itself, as opposed to just 

[00:25:54] Dan Johnson: shooting.

Yeah. Yeah. And so did it take you a [00:26:00] season, couple seasons to get, to feel confident in that change? 

[00:26:06] Ty Kellogg: I would say it took two seasons. Okay. To feel really confident. But I'll be the first to admit, I was not out there every single week at that point. Maybe every couple weeks I'd be out there.

Yeah. 

[00:26:16] Dan Johnson: How many days or how much time throughout a given season are you dedicating towards time in the woods? 

[00:26:27] Ty Kellogg: Every person on your podcast will probably answer that question with never enough. Yeah. 

[00:26:32] Dan Johnson: Yep. 

[00:26:33] Ty Kellogg: I would say realistically at this point for deer, I might be getting out to scout and or to hunt probably two weeks combined.

Yeah. Total. 

[00:26:42] Dan Johnson: Yeah. So that's not only scouting throughout the whole year, that also includes hunting as well. Yeah. Okay. Two weeks total. And however you wanna look at that, whether that's 14 days or 10 days, depending if you're a week or a, a [00:27:00] workday type guy, which sounds. About what would you, what if you were to guess, what would you guess, you think people are hunting more than you or less than you on average 

[00:27:13] Ty Kellogg: if you stay off of social, I would say folks are probably hunting more than me.

Yeah. Yeah. To be very realistic because I know I'm lucky to have the access to private. So if it's, Hey, I got the kids down early, I can get out the door and just pump it up the hill and take a good look around and take a couple hours. Yep. I don't have travel time, I don't have to deal with any of that.

I don't have to worry about people stealing cameras if I wanted to hang cameras. I get glass from a certain ridge for an entire evening if I wanted to. But I know the last few years my time's been very limited between basically being self-employed in addition to three kids. Yeah. And just working that balance and that balance, I'll admit, has not been a good balance.

Yeah. The last 

[00:27:59] Dan Johnson: couple years. [00:28:00] So you're saying it, it's leaning heavy towards family and work and less towards hunting, which ev Yes. Everybody. I do this for a living and it still is it, and I make it lean that way. You talk to a lot of people when it comes to this hunt life balance where they put hunting before most things and it just they either end up regretting it when they get older or their their life falls apart in some kind of aspect.

I don't like, I've never seen it work where guys are like, okay, I'm putting hunting first and family second. It just it never works that way. 

[00:28:39] Ty Kellogg: It's funny you say that. Cause I recall a marriage class that I was in with my wife before we got married, and there was a bunch of couples there.

And I remember this one individual stood out and he said, Hey, I go on four or five big hunting trips a year, and they're five days to 10 days at a time. How is that gonna change or how is that's supposed to change? And I'm thinking in my brain at that [00:29:00] time hey guy one, does she hunt with you?

And then two, if you decide to have a family, are you gonna be around? And then like you said, are you gonna have that aha moment realizing I either need to dial this back and be more realistic, or this is probably gonna end in divorce and be more expensive. 

[00:29:19] Dan Johnson: Yeah. That work life balance is always a struggle.

I, I'm sure if you ask my wife, I hunt too much. And obviously if you ask me, I wish I could hunt more. I just I sh here's where I, what I struggle with. I struggle with. Do I leave my town or leave my county and go to another county that has, I could hunt public, don't get me wrong. I could find a way to hunt public close to my house and get out and do it more, but I have really good property one hour away and three hours away.

And so [00:30:00] here in the state. So me, I usually just don't hunt until the really good times. Leave for leave, get the job done, and knock on wood leave, get the job done, come home. And that's what I've been doing the last handful of years. And and then I, when I go on my trip, so I very rarely do just an evening or just a morning.

That's not what I do anymore. I probably could if I wanted to go, ah, I'm just gonna go hump public, but everything in my life has to be scheduled, has to be. It's gotta be on the calendar. And if it does, if it's not on the calendar, then it doesn't happen. 

[00:30:37] Ty Kellogg: Yeah.

I get that to the team. My wife works part-time too and we don't have babysitting cuz we do it on our own. Yep. And then you add in the element of my son being recently diagnosed with autism. So you're figuring out all these other things for him. So it's a constant ebb and flow of that calendar.

Okay. Who is what, who is [00:31:00] where, from what time to what time? When am I in the office? When am I out looking at properties, doing Sure. Okay. All right. What about this weekend? Okay, we've got this going on. We got that going on. We got travel to see in-laws, or we got, home and farm projects.

Things like that. Yeah. 

[00:31:16] Dan Johnson: My may calendar. It, there is something on every single day of May. Yeah. And once football is over spring football, then we'll be able to relax a little bit. Then the summer comes and it's not so rushed per se. But as a, and this is crazy. I, and I don't remember playing this many games when I was a kid, but my son, including the tournaments that he plays in or no, excuse me, not including the tournaments that he plays in, has 26 baseball games this season.

And I'm just like, to me, that's mind blowing. I'm just I don't. I don't, I think I old maybe played 10. He is he's eight. He just turned [00:32:00] eight two weeks ago. 

[00:32:02] Ty Kellogg: 26 seems like a stretch. 

[00:32:04] Dan Johnson: 26 games and four tournaments. It's gnarly. It's gnarly. And that's what we're doing. We're like full blown activities mode.

And last night, we were just the kid. I had to go pick the kids up from school. My wife got off work, we got in the car, we drove 30 minutes north to a different town. We played the game. The game was an hour and a half. The game got over at eight. We got back to the house at eight 30.

I had to give two kids, we gave two kids a bath. And then it was like nine 30 before we all got to bed. And we're doing something like that almost every night now, which like I just need a drink by Fridays. 

[00:32:43] Ty Kellogg: Make it two 

[00:32:44] Dan Johnson: or three. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then I just fall asleep and then I'm worthless.

Anyway 

[00:32:49] Ty Kellogg: I was really fortunate when I met my wife, she quickly grasped how important being involved with the outdoors was to me. And of course she met me [00:33:00] when I was starting to hit my apex of fur trapping. Okay. Which is not something you put on your dating 

[00:33:07] Dan Johnson: resume. I smell like castor oil.

[00:33:11] Ty Kellogg: Ca Hey, what's that funk you got in the trunk there? Oh, Wiley red 5,000 by haulers, come on. But she knew that. Yeah. And she got to see it on several occasions so she understood, Hey, why is Ty standing at the window and just looking lost in for Lauren? He's dreaming of the outside world.

He is not experiencing right now. Exactly. And. Exactly. She, we had a kind of an awakening a few years back. We were really stretching dollars to try and save up to build this house and buy the land with it. And there was at a point where she saw my outdoor activities actually contributing to the bottom line of the household.

The fur trap and money paid off several debts before we got married. Paid off for a car, paid for wedding bands, engagement rings. And then when I started hunting more [00:34:00] seriously, it was a couple deer in the freezer. Hey, you're knocking off a few hundred dollars off the grocery bill. Yeah. And if you're processing it yourself, all of a sudden now you freed up a few more hundred dollars.

Yep. Cuz around here, most processors around that a hundred dollars mug to break down a deer for 

[00:34:17] Dan Johnson: you. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I tell you this, it, that communication's important. So if there's any young guys out there who are unmarried or are thinking about getting married and you're serious about hunting, And you decide that you're gonna go this family route, the hunting will slow down.

It's just, it's going to, it's gonna suck at first, but it will slow down. It's how you communicate with your bride, or hell, it could be vice versa with your husband or I, whatever today's world, who knows? But you will, it will slow down. But if you communicate and you say, listen, I, this is what I want to do.

I wanna make it a big part of [00:35:00] my life. I want to include you in my life, this is important to me. And a couple things happen. They say, yes, not a problem. Or they have an issue with it. And then at that point you get rid of 'em and go find a different one. Yep. So if hunting's IPO important, you gotta communicate it.

[00:35:17] Ty Kellogg: Sometimes a little shock and awe early on, I think helps. Exactly. Because it's easy to talk about it. Yep. But if they don't see it yep. They don't grasp it. And I still remember the time my wife understood the hunting trapping influence on me. I had stayed at her apartment over Christmas break, so I stayed at her apartment several hours away for I think it was four days.

And I went on a trapping excursion with my best friend from childhood. He rigged up this private property that just had beaver houses everywhere. This place was untouched. You could have said we were in a whole nother state just with how the terrain was. And so at the end of all of it, I'm getting up at four o'clock, no morning to drive this property, to check all these three 30 s, [00:36:00] all these snares.

All these footholds with my buddy. And at the end of the week she says, I didn't see that much, but I could tell you had a lot of fun. Do you wanna show me what's in the truck? Because we skinned a lot on site and put it in coolers so I could take it to the fur buyer when I went at home. But there was a lot on the carcass still.

Yeah. And I said, are you sure? She says, yeah. So I opened up the cab of the truck and there's a dozen beaver, a couple foxes, some raccoons, blood on the noses. Dead as door nails, half frozen. And she looks me, and she says, I've never seen a dead fox before. That was her only comment. Yeah.

That's all she said about it. Yeah. And that was it. 

[00:36:47] Dan Johnson: She didn't run away. Yeah. But maybe that helped her understand. Or maybe she was afraid. Like she, she was like, this guy kills shit. If I run, I'm dead. This guy is So 

[00:36:59] Ty Kellogg: [00:37:00] is it too early to get out of this? Yeah, exactly. Help of line, yet I can break looses.

Right? That's 

[00:37:05] Dan Johnson: right. I got a funny beaver story, so I, that can be taken a number of ways. Exactly.

I got a couple of those too. Anyway, so it was right after Christmas break and I was in college and there was a day where man, there wasn't much going on. So me and another guy grabbed some beer, got in my Chevy Blazer, S 10 Chevy Blazer, and started doing some gravel traveling. And it led us to my uncle's house.

And we're just, hey, we're in the area, let's stop by, see what he has to say. And he was in his he was tr trapper at the time. And I remember going along with him and my grandma and things like that. But anyway, we get to my uncle's little garage that he has, and he's out there skinning a beaver.

[00:38:00] And, there's some juices that are involved once you. Start the process and all the fat's coming off. And anyway my buddy has this brand new white sweater that he got for Christmas and we're in my garage and my uncle picks this beaver up and flips him on this plywood table.

That's just on two saw horses and juice just flies everywhere, right across this kid's white sweater. Oh my. He looked, my, this guy looks down at his sweater. My uncle looks at his sweater. My uncle just goes, oops. He just ruined it. It was done just juice all over it, brown juice all over it.

Oh. And so I got a good laugh, he was mad at the time, but, a year later it was all, it was just a joke. And that's my. That's my funny beaver story. I don't know. I found it funny. Anyway, so I'll give you 

[00:38:55] Ty Kellogg: one more funny beaver story and then we can go on to another topic, not about 

[00:38:59] Dan Johnson: beavers.

Got [00:39:00] it. I want to continue to talk about trapping though, but you can tell me a funny beaver story. 

[00:39:05] Ty Kellogg: So part of that same trapping trip, so my friend that I did all the trapping with, he took a few beavers with him. And he said, Hey, I'm not gonna skin these right now. Next time you come down the area, we'll do it together.

We'll thaw 'em out. Do it that way. Yep. So he puts several of them in this massive commercial chest freezer he had in this rental house of his next to his house. And he said, I'll put 'em in here. We'll freeze 'em whole and I'll we'll deal with 'em in a few weeks. Said, okay. Make sure you tell your wife.

Yeah. So if she goes there to grab something, she's not scared shitless. He forgot to talk to his wife about this. To your point earlier, if you're into hunting or trapping or anything outdoors, you want to disclose this to whoever your potential partner is. He did not disclose such beavers were in the freezer.

She opened up the freezer about a week later almost had a heart attack. Threatened to call the minister cuz she [00:40:00] thought the house was haunted because there was dead critters in her freezer. And so I get this call that says, Hey man, when are you you coming back down the area? Said, ah, probably not for a couple more weeks at this point.

He says, we need to skin these free these beavers asap before my wife divorces me. John, I told 

[00:40:17] Dan Johnson: you, you gotta talk to 

[00:40:19] Ty Kellogg: Her you have to tell her don't go in that freezer. Don't ask me why. Yeah, just there's stuff in there you don't need. They got divorced a few years later anyway, but yeah, whatever.

[00:40:28] Dan Johnson: Get win 'em all cake probably at that point. Oh, that's funny. 

[00:40:33] Ty Kellogg: Grievances dead beaver in the freezer. Yep. 

[00:40:36] Dan Johnson: Yep. Even I would be surprised if I opened my freezer and there was a dead beaver in it and I didn't know about it. Yeah. But then I would get over it real fast and I wouldn't care.

I want to, I wanna talk about trapping. That's something we don't talk a lot about on this podcast, but I know some people do it. I know, you talked about gateway drug, right? That crossbow was a gateway [00:41:00] drug, but I've also heard that guys talk about how trapping was a gateway drug to several other outdoor endeavors.

How long have you been trapping? Do you still trap, and talk to us a little bit about the impact it had on you. Sure. 

[00:41:18] Ty Kellogg: Trapping had been in my family a long time. My one grandfather was a pretty renowned coon hunter and beaver trapper. Both of his sons who were my uncles were big muskrat trappers.

So there was pictures all over all the family photo albums of them with, that day's catch. And there was a stretch where they were even recruited out of state to trap some private marsh. And it even got local press on it, which was funny. Yeah. I really started trapping. It was probably 2011 is when I really got into it hard.

And it was through a friend and I, he was doing a bat removal job at my grandparents' house. And I look in the bed of his truck and I see all these coil springs, long springs [00:42:00] canna bears, and I said, Hey, I know what those things are. I've seen those things before. And so we started talking and he said, Hey, when season opens, we'll set, put some sets out behind your place at the time and see what we can catch.

And it just, it grabbed a hold of me and I couldn't let go for several years. So I was trapping beaver muskrat raccoon, but I'll be very blunt. That timeframe, 2011 till about 2016, we saw ridiculously high fur prices. Yeah. For a muskrat we were seeing 10, $14 rats. Yeah. 20 to $30 raccoons. Even for our real ugly Midwest coyotes, you were seeing anywhere between 25 to 50 bucks, depending on the color and you know how thick the quality of the fur was.

So I got into it at a really good time because doing it now, most people, they're catching it for favors for people or for hunting access as an exchange. Yeah. And they're just freezing any fur that they have until a better auction opens 

[00:42:59] Dan Johnson: [00:43:00] up. Yeah. That, that, that is a trapping is a crazy part. The participation in trapping is crazy.

It's if the fur prices go up, everybody wants to do it, and then the prices go down and it's it's now it's not worth my time anymore. And it seems now correct me if I'm wrong, there's guys who are passionate about trapping. They love do it, doing it, but it seems that. Trapping in my eyes is less passion, more maybe a little passion sprinkled in with profit.

How? How would you take 

[00:43:37] Ty Kellogg: that? I wouldn't say you're wrong. I would say for a lot of people you're actually pretty spot on. There's passion included with it. But the profit has to make sense. Cuz if you were to just look at pure dollars and cents in time and compare it to hunting. Yes.

Whether it's deer or waterfowl or whatever. The cost. The cost benefit analysis today, trapping is at [00:44:00] the bottom end of the scale. That is a massive time inventory. That's a massive supply material trap, cost lures, Bates. That takes a tremendous amount of time. And to think of it all, most of these folks are doing is harvesting the fur.

Yeah. Now you do need population control. There's no question about it. We don't have enough of it. Yep. But if I compare it to just hunting deer, Two weeks of my scouting and hunting exposure gets me a couple deer for the freezer and I process them both myself. The cost benefit analysis is totally weighed the other way.

It's totally beneficial for that two weeks to time. 

[00:44:37] Dan Johnson: Yeah. It's funny it's like it needs to be done, but at that, at the same time, you get the, you can potentially sell a fur at the same time with a deer you can eat. It's me. There's not a lot of people out there going, Hey, I'm gonna go trap a raccoon and eat it.

You know it. It helps in that, on that front. And but one thing I just wanna mention here, [00:45:00] there's a guy that I follow his know, his name is Casey Shootman, and he's on a show called The Management Advantage and. I believe he said out of one farm he trapped over a hundred raccoons one year, and then the next spring you would see a direct result in all of the Turkey that he had on his property because of that.

And so he's just Hey man, maybe this is part of it, maybe it's not. But I can't help believe that me trapping all of these raccoons led to me having a better Turkey season the next year. And my talks with wildlife biologists here in the state of Iowa, that in Iowa, and I think throughout the entire country, raccoons are the most overpopulated animal on the landscape period.

[00:45:55] Ty Kellogg: I think that's all spot on. And another piece of trapping, I don't think is really talked about. [00:46:00] What trapping made me do is focus on. Not only the macro details of the wildlife landscape. So your bu your buddy talks about the correlation between removing of the raccoons with the increased population and hatching of wild turkeys.

You could say the same for rough grouse. Yep. And other native birds in that concept. But also too, what if you're trapping a lot of farm country? What commodities attract certain things? I noticed in all my trapping years that I did it really hard and heavy. Obviously, standing corn brought coon beans, brought coyotes and foxes.

Because the beans brought the rodents, which in turn brought the canines. Yep. And those types of equations. But on the grand scale, you start looking at these things, it's not just, okay, a raccoon was here, or a coyote was here. It forced you to think. Why, why were they there? And also also forced you to recognize there's a reason why it's called trapping and not [00:47:00] catching why it's called hunting and not a guaranteed kill.

Because these animals still have minds of their own. And just like us, sometimes they're going to make a decision based on some internal thing that steers them out of another direction, away from your decoy or away from your scent or your ba something crawled up their butt and said, Hey, we're going another way.

And there's no way to explain that. 

[00:47:25] Dan Johnson: Yeah. I, man, I'll tell you what, I had a lot of fun trapping when I was a kid with my uncle. I'd run it, I'd run lines with him in the mornings. I can remember when my grandma and I've told this story a hundred times, I feel like on this podcast.

My uncle went to college and my grandma he, so he set out the traps. And then he had to go back to college. And so my grandma would check him for him. Yeah. And then he would go back and reset 'em. And I can remember my grandma and hip waiters running through this Farm Creek checking Muskrat [00:48:00] traps.

And if there, there was times where they were still alive. I was the ball bat carrier. So I was like okay, Daniel, wp 'em, give him a good w and i would you look at that now? A little kid beating an animal to death, you look at that and you're like, that's pretty gruesome the way I just described it.

But back then, man, I didn't think anything of it. And I'm not a serial, killer right now. So I don't know, maybe that, no. 

[00:48:24] Ty Kellogg: But it also taught you a point, a greater point that's hard to understand at 5, 6, 7 years old. Is that all right? If you're going to do something with a consequence, you need to do it efficiently and mercifully.

[00:48:35] Dan Johnson: Yes. Yep. Yep. So 

[00:48:38] Ty Kellogg: whether you're five or six or whether you're 25, If you're going to hunt, you're going to trap, you're gonna do something, you're gonna take a life. Try and do it as quickly as efficiently as possible, but also understand there is going to be the time where that drowning set with that number one long springing on the muskrat hunt, didn't drown that muskrat and it's just swimming in circles.

Yep. We're gonna have that [00:49:00] gut shot deer that you're not gonna find. Yeah. You gotta eat those once in a while. 

[00:49:06] Dan Johnson: Let me ask you a question that just popped into my head as hunters, right? There's no, no joke about what happened to mine last year. I shot a walking a deer that didn't stop.

I hit him back, hit him in liver and guts. He went and it took him a long time to die. Not what you'll want. Do you feel that hunter's like I am. I feel compassion for these animals. I love these animals. But there's a part of me that almost has to black out when I kill, I black that out when I have to cut, try and kill one, because I don't know what it is.

Like I, I feel very strongly about these animals or otherwise I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. However, there's a part of me that is, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't have [00:50:00] the feeling of that animal dying. If I had this massive breakdown, like of, let's say, some people, how they care about dogs, right?

If I had that breakdown oh my God, I just killed an animal. It sucks, oh God agree. Like sorrow and things like that. And I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Maybe you can help me express this, but there, there comes a time when, as a hunter, you have to be able to shut that off and know that you are going to hurt an animal really bad, and if you don't do it right, it could potentially suffer and be in a lot of pain for a long time. 

[00:50:35] Ty Kellogg: The human animal bond relationship dynamic. However you want to, however you wanna look at it for you or for me, because I have the same thing. Yeah.

We had to put down my parents' dog just a couple weeks ago, and it was devastating. The dog was awesome. Yeah. But every deer that I've successfully killed, I did not cry about it. Yeah. Did do. I want a clean [00:51:00] kill, a merciful kill. Absolutely. But I think for some folks, and this goes too with livestock, because we wa we raised white-faced herford for a while.

And if you're not careful, livestock can become pets. You can become a sanctuary farm, which I don't believe in that purpose. Personally. So you have to, some people have the natural ability to say, Hey, this relationship is a direct A to B relationship. I am the predator. I'm going to consume this animal.

And as much of it as possible with as much respect as possible, but I'm not shedding tears about it. Yeah. 

[00:51:38] Dan Johnson: Yeah. 

[00:51:39] Ty Kellogg: Other folks, it's different. My brother is different. He, we used to hunt together as kids. He won't hunt anymore. He can't do it. And I, I don't argue with him about it. I get it.

Because there are some things I can't do and I just won't. Just like he will. But you're right. You gotta black it out. And just understand this is the end result. This is [00:52:00] what I'm doing it for. Yeah. 

[00:52:01] Dan Johnson: And I think, and there's plenty of them to go around. And I think a lot of that had to do two, two things.

And this, the second one's gonna sound crazy, but the first one is being raised on a farm. Or within that I, like my parents, my, my dad had a a desk job ish. My mom, when I was working at or when I was getting dropped off at my grandparents who had cattle and they had hogs and they had row crops and things like that.

My mom was a dental assistant, so my parents were removed from that, but I was still raised on that farm, per se. So you got to see death happen. And I think at a, the more the earlier you're on, you are exposed to death at a young age, it allows you to understand it better, especially if you have an adult.

Teaching you about it? Yeah, because I can remember there was a pig named, oh man, I forget what we named him. Like Gilbert, probably not Porky, no, it was like Gilbert [00:53:00] or something like that on my grandpa's farm. And I would feed him, I'd feed him handfuls of corn. He'd come up to me. And then one day we took him to the slaughterhouse.

My uncle and my grandpa put him in a trailer, took him away, and I never saw that pig again. So I I was sad about it. But then, you learn, hey, we're gonna eat this animal. And so cattle, seeing cattle die, seeing, like just living that farm life, I think helped me be okay with that.

Second, and this is the weird part. This is how I think, and this is where like obviously I want a clean kill, but you look at every other predator in. The animal kingdom lion. Some of the most efficient killers like a lion or a a mountain lion or a bobcat, or, things like that.

Those animals have no mercy. They no they do it zero. They obviously do it for survival. [00:54:00] And I think that watching National Geographics with my dad and listening, seeing how it was about survival, I tried to implement that thought process into my hunting style. And so it's Hey, here's an opportunity.

You take it because an animal, like a bobcat or a mountain lion doesn't go well. He is not broadside. I'm not gonna take it. Can't take can't go on this stock because, he's a th only a three, three-year-old, so I've taken a little bit of that. I guess you want, some guys would call it a killer mentality into how I hunt.

And I feel like now I have a good crossover of having love and passion for this animal, but also when it comes time to pull a trigger or send an arrow like on a, Turkey or deer or whatever, then I can disconnect from the emotion and go into the [00:55:00] logic of why I'm doing what I'm doing right.

[00:55:03] Ty Kellogg: So I grew up on e s, ESPN Outdoors with Tom Miranda, Chuck Daley, Jimmy Houston. Yeah. And then Marty Stauffer had the Wild America series. I think it was on p b s for years in the late eighties, early nineties. But it was the same thing. Hey, we're in the Yosemite Park and we're watching grizzly bears.

Hey, grizzly bear sees an out calf. They don't care how old it is. They don't care how young it is. They don't care if you have a permit for it or not. They know they got a aspiration and they're hungry. And they gotta eat. Yeah. And they're hamstring them, they're breaking necks. Yeah. I guess nature is brutal.

I was pray and I got a choice into which way I was gonna go having the lights out without even me seeing it coming in my natural habitat or being hamstrung by a wolf trying to pull me down. I don't. 

[00:55:51] Dan Johnson: Getting eaten by your butthole first. 

[00:55:55] Ty Kellogg: That would hey, crows, take out my eyeballs while I'm still breathing.

[00:55:59] Dan Johnson: That's [00:56:00] gruesome, 

[00:56:00] Ty Kellogg: man. It's gruesome. But it's true. It's an natural, true world. And most people don't wanna recognize that. Hey, you could choose th this way to go if you want. 

[00:56:08] Dan Johnson: Yep. We are literally the most efficient killers when it comes to hunting prey. We're not choking it, we're not wounding it and let it bleed out for the most part.

We're our goal is to end it as quickly as possible yeah. Man, dude, nature, I, that's one thing that I always think about is nature and evolution and how there's no nature is the ultimate example. Of, I don't know, logic verse emotion, right? And why does a mother grizzly bear get so angry and so vicious to, to protect its young so it can e so its bloodline can continue so their bloodlines can continue and things like that.

It's [00:57:00] not oh my God, how does this deer feel? How does, I hope they're okay. Like that kind of, that there's nothing like that in nature. And I, that's why I love watching those animal documentaries and being able to see that stuff there go that stuff firsthand.

And I get to see it firsthand in nature too, when I'm out, when I'm out in a tree stand. I wanna get into one last thing here. And I know we've been all over the place, just having a good old fashioned BS session today. But I want to talk a little bit about your aha moment. All right.

And you mentioned this before we started recording, about topics that you wouldn't mind discussing. Talk to me a little bit about your deer hunting strategy, aha moment, and what that was like for you. 

[00:57:48] Ty Kellogg: The first deer hunting aha moment I really, truly had, I'll admit it came with the first kill. Okay. And I was in my mid twenties.

I hunted throughout [00:58:00] my younger life with the crossbow, would join up with my dad and his friends during the deer gun season. But I myself did not cleanly take down a deer until my mid twenties. And I had to backtrack it. And it was a big deal for me because it was two weeks after my grandpa died and I had just shot this deer with his Remington eight 70.

From the 1950s. Okay. Because Ohio was still a gun slug gun state at the time. And that aha moment came to me because here was a single dough coming across another hillside crossing this little tributary. And it was this weird moment of I felt like this deer was just on a beam coming straight toward me.

It wasn't being interfered with anything. I didn't have to guess. And like you said, I had this kind of blackout moment of it's just me and the deer. I know the one thing I have to do as long as the deer's in range and that moment brought a level of clarity of location [00:59:00] and wind, because where I was sitting at that time was on just like a little knob full of hemlocks.

And at that time of day it was 9 30, 10 o'clock. So most of the morning thermals have already moved out. The afternoon ones haven't kicked in yet, and it showed me the importance of wind because there really wasn't any, which was a big deal when you get into that kind of real rough terrain with the steep hillsides. If you don't have a day with wind, that to me works to my favor because then I don't have one less obstacle to contend with. So the element of wind was in that moment there, that was a huge aha for me, is keep the wind at minimal and you'll have a better chance of success. Then the next aha moment came when I got a climber, because then I could see significantly more deer behavior and more deer activity by being elevated and keeping my scent pattern out of their range as much as [01:00:00] possible.

So those were two moments that really just struck me. Yeah. In the last couple years, I've incorporated more just basic still hunting in addition to the climber, the still hunting, more so for the gun season because that's when I tend to typically do most of the hunt now. But the still hunt it's something that's not often talked about anymore, but the bigger hunters out east, like how blood, I know Mark Kenon has done a lot of discussions with him and had some series with how blood on tracking big woods bucks and things of that nature.

Yeah. But just the element of moving along slow, keeping your silhouette out of the picture as much as possible. The last few years I've had a lot of success still hunting just by keeping the wind in the face and keeping the eyes open and moving slow. And I've been amazed at just how much more I see.

Yeah. And how much more I can digest and react. 

[01:00:51] Dan Johnson: Yeah. I myself had a bit of an aha moment. It wasn't like a light switch moment, but it did [01:01:00] happen over the last, I'm gonna say two, maybe three seasons. And so I thought I knew, I thought I got it right. I thought I got it, but my aha moment I had an aha moment in 2016 ish timeframe when things started to really click for me as far as strategy, how dear move.

But one thing that I, from my point of view and my experience, you mentioned wind. I feel like wind is only important. I shouldn't say only most of the time. In my experience, wind is only important when they're betting and when they are at a destination food source. Okay. In between there, yeah. They're going to, they're going to take, they're going to put themselves in position to have a good idea.

But it, it's truly the terrain in what I've seen that dictates how these deer move from bedding to food and and [01:02:00] that sometimes they'll have wind to their back. Sometimes they'll have wind head on. Sometimes it'll be quartering. Sometimes they'll be on the leeward side of a ridge. Sometimes they'll be on the wayward side.

There's something that they do that is unexplainable, but they're doing it for a reason. I just I can't explain it right now. You know what I mean? Everybody can say, oh, here's how a deer uses its nose with wind as far as wind is concerned. But they don't always do that. They don't ever, I can remember watching a big buck stand out of his bed.

I was in there. Perfect, man. I had this, I had the tree stand already hung. The wind was blowing over the ridge. There, the food standing corn was behind me, and this buck stood out of his bed. I had a good idea he was there and I'm like, game over. Game over. He's gonna use the wind. He's gonna come right to me.

What'd this deer do? He stood up and he [01:03:00] walked with the wind straight away. And I'm like, that goes against absolutely everything that I had read, everything that I had, had been told up to that point. And so I was just like, they're not always doing, they're not always doing the same thing all the time.

And so there is an a like, which kind of leads me to this aspect of luck. There's always an aspect of, hey, you just gotta get lucky sometimes. Or yes, you can put in the strategy, you can know where they're at, you can know where the food source is at, but they're not always gonna take that. And sometimes luck has to play a little bit in your hand.

[01:03:38] Ty Kellogg: The rule book for hunting. Really is not a rule book because just like you said, nothing is guaranteed. They will, they all have their individual minds or corks or just something says, Hey, I'm gonna walk with the wind on this scenario. I hear a dough bleeding over there. I'm gonna go check her out even though I should walk with the wind because [01:04:00] this book said I'm supposed to.

They give zero f's about that. You talk about luck. Two years ago I was in a climber. I got up a half hour later than I wanted to. I was already pissed off about that. My headlamp the battery burned out. I didn't have the spare, so I was pissed off about walking through the dark through this grapevine choke trail, in the early morning hours.

And then climbing up in my harness and making sure that's secure in the dark. When I had crossed the creek to get up there, the boots started leaking. So I'm sloshing around and it's freaking freezing. Yeah, after Thanksgiving, So I get up there, I'm sweating bullets. I'm pissed off cuz I'm late. I get up 25 feet and I sit there.

I don't have my jacket on. I'm sweating bullets. I'm a big guy and I sweat like a wilder beast until it's 10 below zero. So I'm up there, jacket's still hanging, hat's not on the head. Ammo clips not have been loaded yet. And I turned to my right and literally 40 yards [01:05:00] away. It was a very mature dough just looking at me like, what?

Who is this Sasquatch in the tree? And why is he making such racket? Yeah. Pop the clip. Load around. Pick off the lens cap. She still hasn't moved. Okay. Two steps broadside. Okay, here it is. Yeah. Bam. She's down. 7 0 9 in the morning. I called, my wife said, Hey, I got one. She said, did you kill it last night and leave it there to get it this morning?

I said, thanks. Great. Bringing endorsement for your husband. 

[01:05:41] Dan Johnson: Shoot him in the middle. Find him in the morning. Currently lucky than good, right? Absolutely. Ab my 2021 buck I'm gonna say was a little luck. And like he was already, when I first saw him, he was already past me. So I was setting up on this [01:06:00] terrain feature I would say the end of a ridge where the deer would come and they'd loop up to go up the ridge into the food source.

And so I had how do I say? I saw him as he was already past my stand. Going towards the destination that, that was the flow of the deer. But luckily, I, he, I caught him on a pissed off, he was pissed off and raking trees and I snort wheezed him and he came right to me. And so I feel like that's where lu that, that's a lucky move right there because 

[01:06:34] Ty Kellogg: you could snort weeds in another buck and they might run away.

Oh yeah, 

[01:06:37] Dan Johnson: I did, I've done that before where I've snort wheezed at a buck. Maybe his body language was off. Maybe he, doing the same exact thing and he's Uhuh, I'm out. So 

[01:06:47] Ty Kellogg: I did a fond bleed several years ago and I was just totally shocked. I didn't even pull a trigger because I had a full family group of dos come rushing in.

There was probably eight or nine of 'em. Oh, [01:07:00] really? That respond to a fawn bleed, it scared the shit outta me because I did not expect the response. I'm used to calling and getting nothing. 

[01:07:06] Dan Johnson: Ty, man, I really appreciate the good conversation today. Thank you very much for your time. And good luck these upcoming seasons.

Hopefully you get yourself out, you get your family out and you get to hunt always just a little bit more than you expected to. And so good luck, man. 

[01:07:24] Ty Kellogg: Thank you Dan. Thanks for having me and good luck to you. 

[01:07:28] Dan Johnson: And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Another episode in the books. Huge shout out to Tethered.

Huge shout out to wasp. Huge shout out to Vortex. Huge shout out to HuntStand. And now, huge shout out to Woodman's pal. Go check all the brands out, go and support the companies that support this podcast. And last but not least, huge shout out to Ty. Huge shout out to all of you for taking time outta your day.

And we gotta send those good vibes out. So send the good vibes out. The good vibes come back, right? That, that the positive energy snowballs. And dude, Check [01:08:00] this out. I'm getting cell cam picks of velvet. It's may, I'm getting cell cam picks and nubs and I'm starting to get a nub, if you feel me. Good vibes in, good vibes out, and we'll talk to you next time.

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