Show Notes
This week the guys recap their weeks along with some news from around the Buckeye State. News updates from the wild ginseng criminal ring, Scenic wildlife lottery opportunities, and free range day at Ohio shooting facilities. Paul discusses some arrow alterations for the upcoming year, and Andrew reminds you to drink water.
BIG NEWS, the show is now going to be partnering with Timber Ninja outdoors. If you’ve heard Jason on the show in the past, he’s the man with the plan at Timber Ninja. They are a USA made company that is on the front line of innovation in the mobile hunter world. Check out the awesome products coming from Timber Ninja and use the Code : OHIO to get free shipping!
The meat and potatoes comes from the discussion with Ryan and Justin from Black Gate Cameras. Black Gate is an Ohio based trail cam company that is on the up and up. Once you see pictures from one of these cameras you will not want another camera in the woods. These things are lights out. The guys discuss trail cam strategies and just hunting in Ohio in general.
Have a great week and enjoy the O2 if you get out into Ohio’s great Outdoors!
Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant, outdoor content!
Instagram: @the.o2.podcast
Twitter: @Ohiohunt
Show Transcript
[00:00:00] What's up everybody? Welcome back to the O two podcast, the Ohio Outdoors Podcast. Paul, that was a little Bo radish. Was that Borad? Very nice. Very nice. What's up everybody? That's what that sounded like. My sister is number four, prostitute in all of Kazakhstan. Weird. It got weird. Should we restart this?
Set this? Oh man. No way. That's hilarious. There's one buckle up, about three lines I remember from that movie, and that was one of 'em. So there you go, man. What what a movie. Dude, what's up man? Hey, I've, we've been flying by, we've been flying by deer season's getting close. It's freaking what?
October 7th. This will or August 7th. This is gonna go live August 9th. And we're almost middle of August, dude. We're starting to think about killing stuff, hunting, getting ready for [00:01:00] small game and goose and teal and deer. Man. It's time. The the honey regulation book, 'cause all I care about is s deer.
We got that early deer season starting up there in the d s a again, September 9th. So that's two months. I was gonna say, when is, that's September 9th. Wow. Two is a month away, dude. Is you do it. Oh shoot. That is one month, isn't it? Whoa. Whoa, buddy. Damn. This's been released on August 9th game and September 9th.
You'll be able to be up there in the d s A. Yeah. Pretty cool. What a day. What? No, man. It's been let's see. Made a quick trip up to Madison, Wisconsin last weekend. The little stop at the CrossFit games. That was fun. My other hobby. But the just is, this is a little p s a to all the people out there.
If you're out in the heat and stuff, make sure you drink a lot of water. Keep your body, oh yeah, hydrated and make sure you get rest and recovery. I don't know exactly what I was dealing with there the last week or so, but it was something along the lines of my [00:02:00] kidney's not working right.
And I think it might've been either, was it rhabdomyolysis or something? I don't know how you say it. Maybe coming off of that or whatever. So that was a lot of fun, Paul. And I've been drinking a shitload of water and pissing every 20 minutes. Trying to get these things flushed out. Man, I'm glad that, I'm glad that it's working its way outta your system.
You were. That's scary stuff, man. It wasn't fun. That's turn 37 and the wheels really start to fall off, oh God. But besides that I'm trying to think, when's the last time we talked? I haven't really done a whole lot. You know what I got. We're just gonna start getting, start this right now.
Yeah. What you got? I don't even know if I told you this yet. What thermal monocular from Vission showed up. Oh. Oh, nice. Yes. Oh little coyote. Little coyote apparatus. Coyote. Now we got, you got another set of eyes out in the fields, but dude, I'm ready. Hell yeah. What's our website? X provision optics.com.
So that's gonna be your thermal optics, night vision, all that kind of stuff. If you guys [00:03:00] got any desire to get into that, check out their stuff. It's awesome. It's I haven't gotten to play around with the binocular a whole lot, but it seems to be set up very similar to the scope. Got the ability to record on there.
Picture and picture zooming in and out. Can't go wrong when you can see the coyotes coming in at night or whatever. Oh, that's super cool. Super cool. Yeah, check them out. Vission optics.com. What's our code mod? No code there, Paul. No code. Okay so big announcement. Let's get this one. I wanna bring this in earlier.
So we met Jason Red, the owner of Timber Ninja at a t a gosh, man, what, two, three years ago. And we've gotten to know Jason, you guys, if you're listening, if you've listened to this program, he's been on a couple of times talking about deer hunting, talking about Turkey hunting, doc hunting, all these good stuff.
Great guy, hell of a hunter great businessman. And so his company, timber Ninja Outdoors, Andrew, we built a relationship with him last [00:04:00] couple years, really like his products. And he was we talked with him. He's man, I wanna work with you guys. And so we have. We're fortunate enough to be a part of the Timber Ninja family right now.
So Timber Ninja Outdoors, check out their saddles, their sticks, their mobile hunting gear. They got some cool shirts that you can get. But listen, we couldn't be more happy. Andrea, I can speak for you to work with these guys, man. All just when we talk about being able to impact a small business for us, with you guys with your help, with your participation.
With our participation and products that man that, that we really believe in, that made in America, all of it made in America. A hundred percent made in America. How cool was that? That's amazing. And Jason, innovation, man, Jason's all about innovation. He like takes that d i y thing to the next level to the point where it can be produced.
And I, I. Bought up a set of the sticks. What was that, a year or two ago? And those things are just amazing in the woods. [00:05:00] So light quiet. Yep. Love those things. Heck, even the guys that go wild, we're talking about how light the pallet when they get a pallet of those sticks and it's dude it's incredible, man.
Yeah. You can find 'em on goad. You can go to their website. Timber Ninja Outdoors. Use a Code R Code Ohio real easy, Ohio, o h i o. You're gonna save you, you get what? Free shipping, I believe. Free shipping on, on, on all orders. Which man, when you're shipping some of those weird sized boxes with sticks in it, that's really gonna save you some money.
Yeah. O H I O, Tim and Outdoors, check 'em out online. Go Wild Instagram. Man, what a great company. And I'm excited to to be a part of that ecosystem. Super. Super. So thanks to those guys. Super stoked for that one. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Randy mentioned Amanda, time to go wild.com. Our boys down in find state south of us, Louisville, Kentucky, which did you listen their do their podcast this morning?
No, I haven't. I haven't listened to anything. It's all in the family. They had a nice little trip to Western North Carolina to go fishing with. Yeah. Mr. Jason Red from Tim Ninja. Yeah, that was a good little story they had [00:06:00] there. Man people helping people, dude, I love it. That's awesome.
And that community go out is so great. You talk about I had some questions about some archery setups that, that, quite goodness, I've got this cherry limeade seltzer that is just wrecking me right now. Excuse me, Andrew. Drink water. I had some questions for the Go wild community that, quite honestly, I was a little embarrassed to ask at a bow shop just 'cause they felt dumb.
About clarifiers and rec, fire and verifiers and stuff for old man eyes. And man, those guys on the go while the community questions got me squared away and hooked up. I can't speak highly enough about that community, all the products that they have. So check them out. The response from our listeners over the last two and a half years, Andrew, have been fantastic.
So time to go out.com, sign up, free 10, 10 bucks. There you go. Midwest Gun Works. Another partner of ours down there in the Lou St. Louis. But there, it's your one stop shop there for all your gun parts you can buy guns, ammo, accessories. Gun season's not [00:07:00] that far away, right? And I don't know about you, Paul, but when it comes to sighting guns, I've always been one of those people that's wait till the last second.
It's three degrees outside and I'm sitting there and my fingers, course you are cold and it's, whether it's muzzle load or whatever, now's the time to do that. Okay? Get it set up, get it ready to go so that when that season does roll around, you got it all Set Tech check out Midwest Gun Works.
Use the code Ohio Outdoors five to save 5% off of your order. And let's see, thanks to guys, that half dash rack, what's that? Half dash rack? half-rack.com. Love those guys over there. Find gear from him, Joe. Sorry. Go. I saw TJ had on Instagram the other day. He had a meat lug who delivered to his house, so I think Yeah, I saw that too.
Like finally we've been talking about this for a while hell yeah. No that's gonna be cool. Yeah. Ohio Outdoors 15. Save yourself 15% on all that. Check 'em out on, go Wild. Check 'em out on Instagram. Good stuff. The Hunter Hangers, dude, I, we, I said it the other week, man. I've got I could find a [00:08:00] thousand uses for the hunter hangers.
I need 'em in my new, I'm trying to renovate the office here. See this, see that new wall back there? Looks great, man. Looks great. I'm trying. It's a little echoing here. I don't have anything in here but yeah, haptic shrack.com. Thanks to guys at First Lite for their support of the show. Check out some of the new stuff they've got coming out.
A lot of warm season stuff this year. And then they got that new camo pattern, was it Cache or something like that? We call it Cash. Cash River down in Arkansas. Warm. Yeah. That's cool, man. They're, they're just they're marketing to the freaking duck hunters man, which I'm one of those, but that's a Turkey killing pattern if I've ever seen it.
So there you go. Can't wait. Finally in today's show, which we will get to more in a second, is Black Gate. Hunting gear.com. The guys over at Black Gate I'm gonna pull it up here real quick. Oh, it's Black Gate hunting.com. Excuse me. Yeah, dude, their products are legit. Cell cams, trail CRAs, the R four G light and the R four G the best trail cameras I've [00:09:00] ever had.
And that that's, no, that's no exaggeration, man. Like when you put those the picture quality up against some of the other cameras that we've both used night day just unbelievable. And that's our episode today. We talk about the technology behind those cameras.
Justin and Ryan really did a nice job talking about that. Dude I'm excited to, it was super easy to get 'em in set, set up too. Yeah I'm excited to see what these guys have to come out. So like now, they're relatively new company but they've got 2018, so yeah, they've got a handful of camera options for you solar panel, a couple other things.
But it sounds like they're gonna really keep diving into some of this stuff that will be, this is gonna be good. And it's Ohio based company, so if you're listening to this and you're in Ohio support your Ohioans. Sweet. Yep. Yep. Man, I, yeah, the user experience on that app is really, it's really nice.
It's so far, man, I've been really impressed and I bought two cameras. I'm gonna get or I've got two cameras. I'm gonna get 'em out this week. Andrew, let's go. Going down south, man. Putting some trail cameras out [00:10:00] south. And a code on there is O two podcast. Save you 10%, man. O that's freaking awesome.
The number two podcast. Two podcast. All right, so let's dive into the news, man. I've got a few. What? You got something first, first off, I just wanna remind we had Craig from O Hero to the line on last week there for our brief intro. That event's August 26th up there in Cyrus. Check out there website Hero, the number two, the line.org for more information.
It sounds like a pretty sweet event. All right, Paul? Yeah. News. So we've got, so this is not news from Ohio, but. In Illinois, there was a two year poaching ring that was busted up for wild turkeys, and these guys killed 20 freaking wild turkeys. Is this the one with ar 15 in the thermal?
Yeah, dude, they were finding turkeys in, in roost trees and shooting 'em out of the roost. So they, they got charged with killing 20 wild turkeys, and that's just what they found. So who knows, like how many they actually killed. And then three Cottontail rabbits [00:11:00] was the other grider.
They were fined with. But tie that into Ohio, O D N R Division of Wildlife wraps up multi-year ginseng investigation. So this was a two year long investigation covered the great states of Ohio, West Virginia, New York, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. That's pretty much like in my territory at work.
These guys were, man, 259 combined violations resulted in 110 people being charged with that. They're talking about over $75,000 in fines illegally harvesting and selling ginseng and jail time, which is wild dude. Almost 8,000 days combined with those folks. There, there were hit with that.
So there it's wild outta season digging. It's just crazy, man. So ginseng is, that is a regulated resource in this state. If you have ginseng on your property or find it there is there is a ginseng season in this state, Andrew.[00:12:00] It is September 1st and December 31st.
That is your your ginseng harvesting season and is limited to mature ginseng plants. That's at least three leaves. So check your regulations if you wanna be a Gen zg digger. So there you go. New spot number one. What have we got next, Andrew? OD R is offering special deer hunts on nine state scenic river properties.
So we talked about this last year in the past, some of the different properties around the state. This is one of those ones where you have to be in person. I believe in most of these two, get a ticket and then, they have the lottery there in, in person to draw the winners, right?
You do. Yeah. You have, yeah, you have to be there to apply. And to win, so yeah, there you go. In person, check it out. You can get on the OD R'S website. Just put it in Scenic River Hunt. You'll pull it up. Enjoy a free day at Ohio's public range ranges. In August, that's Saturday, August 19th.
This is one of the following public shooting ranges for a free day. So Deer Creek. [00:13:00] Delaware, grand River, spring Valley, and Woodbury Wildlife. Those shooting centers will be open and free of charge to the public. Onsite staff will write equipment, ammunition, ear protection and eye protection to get people in.
So if you've got someone that is interested in shooting you can go out and experience of drafting some ski shooting at these events. So a complete list of range facilities and the Amen to offer, and each can be found@awildohio.gov. So check that out. Do you wanna talk about something controversial real quick here?
I do. We're going to that's the answer. Months shoot. I'm gonna show you, see what I got here. Oh. So I got my, I went down, I saw her boys down at Sirius Archery down in, in in what is it? Northern Kentucky. First of all, you took two of my arrows. Did they, were they able to do anything with those?
We didn't. I didn't know. Yeah, they got one of 'em. Seth was like this other one I can't fix. He's if he's got like a little kid that can, that shoots heavy arrows. Okay. Because the way it hit, like it pushed the insert up into the arrow and it's [00:14:00] split oh, fractured all the way up in there.
So here, look at these man, look at how beautiful, these freaking serious Apollos are. 30. I'm loving these third year shooting these I'm watching a lot of a lot of videos online. John Dudley from Knock On, which that dude is unbelievable, super smart great archery shooter. Just been in that competition arena and just a phenomenal hunter for decades.
He's really getting on Troy about I, I guess his delivery and I'm not really sure. I haven't paid Tom, but I like when people question things. You do your research, like you really dive into it. But I will tell you, man I couldn't be happier with these arrows and with this company and with this setup.
I saw someone trying to say that there's a 30 foot drop on a 40 yard shot with an arrow that's 600 grains. Like I can tell you right now, I do that in my backyard almost every night right now. And there's not a 30 yard drop. I just what a crazy thing I get. Yeah, it's heavier, right?
It's got [00:15:00] that beautiful arc to it, man. That beautiful natural arc. So I just don't understand, dude, the online hate man. That people have for both. For either like light, a light, light and fast mechanical. There's people that have an extreme hatred for that and people have an extreme hatred for single bevels.
And it's getting it's getting like contentious man. And the hunting public guys have you just through their experiences have really gone to these setups. So I just don't, I don't, it's not even arrows I don't know why we have to fight about things that don't really affect each other.
If you like shooting a heavy arrow and I like shooting a fast arrow, don't care. Yeah. If we're all trying to, now if you're sitting there saying, we're gonna try to hit it in, some stupid spot to see if we can kill it like that's not cool. That's unethical. But if the arrow is gonna do the same thing, like if you like Coke and I like Pepsi, this isn't, there's the same, it's the same thing.
We're all trying to kill the same animal. The best way possible. If it's for [00:16:00] you, it's fast and light, that's fine. Some of us shake a little bit more or aren't as confident with that. I bought some mechanicals last year. I might try to use one this year after I get a couple under underneath my belt, and I feel confident with what's going on, but I'm not, that's my decision and I, this shouldn't be this massive yeah.
Battle back and forth and everything in life. People are aggressive online, man. I don't know, man. I see stuff online. We've talked to people that hate on it and it's not Yeah, it's like whatever. It's wild, dude. Yeah. If, if there's something that's like egregiously false or whatever, call someone out.
I get that, but dude, the personal attacks, I'm like, holy cow, these people are angry.
Anything, people just don't know. I will say like Sirius, we've got a podcast coming out with them just because they're man their [00:17:00] quality is awesome and Can you hear me? It says that it's unstable. Am I good? You've cut out for a second there. And like Sirius, they've got every their spines go from 200 to 500 or something like that, right?
They've got a light arrow set up, light and fast. They've got a heavy arrow. And it's all about the quality. And I like, I've, you've been down there to their shop. Like we see the quality of carbon and Seth and I talked about in the podcast and you guys will hear in a week or so. But dude, we've talked about how much stuff they throw away because it doesn't meet like the quality, with the spinning, like the spine testing, the spine alignment, all these things.
If it doesn't match up, they throw it away and people are like, oh, they buy it from Alibaba. And Seth is like, that's hilarious, man. These guys have no idea what we go through, like testing, designing carbon, working with manufacturers. But that, people say, ah, they buy at Alibaba and then it's just not true.
But that's the, you get a couple people. I don't know, man, just be cool if and, I think it's, I think it's good to [00:18:00] have like civil conversation. It's civil dis, if I don't agree with someone, I can talk about it. There's a Turkey, a big time Turkey hunter that I've gotten know, I don't agree with some of the things that he say We don't bash each other online.
I call him on the phone, we talk through it, man. And he makes some really good points and I make some really good points. And it's just, that's, we've lost that with, with some social media interactions. I don't know. Deep breath, man. Deep breath. Do your research, figure what you like.
There's new product out. Have you seen this on the serious arrows? I don't think so. See that? That knock collar interesting. Keeps the knock from coming off. Keeps the knock aligned. I like that. How sweet is that? It's super lights. I've been a bunch of that back end on it. So that's brand new for this year.
We will talk about that. Paul, what your, what's your draw weight and length? Draw weight is 74 pounds and draw length is 31 and a half. Yeah, I think I'm 28 and a half at 74 pounds. Yeah, so even that just right there though. You're getting that arrow zipping. Oh dude. So I, this thing is over.
[00:19:00] I. It's almost six. It's it's, I think it's 615 grains. Like these are heavy ass arrows. That's crazy. I put 'em through a chronic, what is it, chronograph? Yeah. 260 feet per second is what this thing's falling at. That's pretty quick. You have those light arrows that I was shooting down at at the archery hike.
Those things were 417 grains. They were real fast, really whipping. Yeah, I don't know, man, that's the thing that it's different strokes for different folks. I is that the appropriate analogy here? I don't know. But yeah, just keep it just, do what you're comfortable with.
Do what your budget's comfortable with. Do what you practice it and, I don't know, man. I just, I see. I just, I've been really watching the hate that, like t h p and Troy and even John Dudley, the hate that he's getting from people like, God, man, it's just you. You're shooting a, it's a bow and arrow, dude.
It's a bow and arrow. There's no reason to like, Attack people's lives and like safety over a freaking arrow. Like just, [00:20:00] it's some madness. Absolute madness. So that's it, my soapbox. I'm gonna drag it back to the corner and I'm done, Andrew. Sounds good. You know what, we should get Dan Johnson on someday and just talk controversial topics with him.
I feel like he's a good one to get all hot and bothered. Dude. He will stir. He will stir controversy up and I freaking love it. Oh, anyhoo guys. So this week we are talking to Justin and Ryan from Black Gate Cameras Black, black ear hunting.com. And like we said, God, I love those guys.
Love 'em. Ohio based dudes know how to kill deer. They've got some. Really good insight. Excited to see what this company's gonna bring. But we try to, it's not a commercial for them. It's we talk a lot of tactic about how to just place cameras and what to do. The mock scrape idea.
Paul, oh dude, that mock scrape ideas. That's no joke. Yes, no joke. You are so excited. And, so it's really nice 'cause Ryan talks about it. He doesn't hunt public land man. He hunts all, land that he owns, that he manages and puts a lot of a lot of effort into. And then [00:21:00] Justin, great deer hunter in in his own right and does 95% of his hunting on pub, on public property and uses trail cameras to execute some of that.
Man, great. Talk it good strategies. It was, it really was. Anyhow, we'll get to that here. Now if you guys have wanna reach out to us let's see. D do o two podcast on Instagram, O two podcast on Go Wild. The website is the o two podcast.com. If you got any questions, whatever thoughts, let us know and we'll go from there.
Have a great week everybody, guys. Appreciate you guys listening. Leave us a review. Appreciate everything you guys have done for us. Love ya. Keep we'll, keep coming. Take care,
dude. I'm an Adams County. Whatcha talking about? I know. I Ryan, I drew a permit of Controlled Hunt today, 25 miles from Peebles in Eagle Creek, w m a. Did we familiar with it? Did we lose him already? Say that again. [00:22:00] Oh, there he is. I drew a controlled hunt permit 25 miles from your hometown in Eagle Creek.
Oh, yeah. You familiar with that one? Yeah. That's good stuff, man. Yeah, dude, I can't wait. It's first two weeks of the season, so it's gonna be hot, but, yeah, man, I'm looking forward to that. Oh, dude, the deer down there are freakish. Are they? Yeah. First time I talked to Ryan, Ryan's man, you gotta come down here.
He's I think there's like a meteor hit down there, apparently. He's man, these deer are freaks. We were looking at the map and the onyx layer of the, it had the mass crop and the oaks down there. I'm like, man, that's where there's, I don't even know where you'd start, but there's just so many, and a lot of the property in central Ohio, we don't have the greatest soil for going.
Good mature oaks. So that's when I saw that, I was like, my eyes lit up. Oh yeah. Oh, it's loaded with oaks. Southern Ohio is, it's pretty wild. Yeah. It's our whole property. Shoot, we got some, our whole entire property's white oaks on the other side of our road, so it's really [00:23:00] difficult for us to hunt in the fall because that's where they're at.
It doesn't matter how many food plots you have, it doesn't matter. They're just gorging on those for about three weeks and Yeah, unless you kill your deer there, you're screwed. Justin, I just sent you that. It's the OnX pen for the w m a. Look at that. Where would you. Where would you put a camera?
Right now? We want answers right now. So this pissed. Where would put it right now? Where would you put a cam? I got two. I got two black gate cameras, Ryan, that need to go out on this. W m a. Where would you put 'em? And Justin, if I don't kill a deer or get a deer on the camera, I'm gonna blame you. Lot of Where's it at?
Where's your where's your topo at? You want me to send it? Do I don't know if, do I have your number? It's probably in the group text. Yeah. Oh, it's in the group. Say send it over into group. Yeah. I, the pin, I believe you set it on a ridge or did you just, I, I do, I have access to the, everything that's public in that area.
The whole w m A [00:24:00] see it. Now when are you hunting? You said first two weeks? Yeah, I, yeah, the first, first two weeks. So September 30th to def. Definitely gotta be on Oaks man. Yeah, like Red Oaks Penn Oak usually falls. Then Red Oak, then white oak. So I'd say you're in that Penn Oak Red Oak. Phase.
Yeah. They'll be hammering those. Dude, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that. I'll send over. So I'm gonna sc I, I saw this quote from Abe Lincoln Abraham Lincoln. You know what I'm gonna say? No, I have no idea where this is going. And it's have you seen the fake quote where it's like, where someone references like Googling something and it's like Abraham Lincoln probably, I think of like great quotes.
I think of you miss a hundred percent of the shots. You don't take Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott probably. So this one actually was attributed to VE Lincoln and I like it, it was if I had eight, he said if I had eight hours to cut a tree down, I'd sharpen my axe for six. And I was like, damn.
That's, that's deep from the big [00:25:00] fella. Like in more ways than one. And I, it's I feel like for For a hunt like this. I got two weeks, man, it is compacted. And I'm not gonna get to hunt every day that week. That's not gonna happen. So I might have, oh, realistically I might have five or six hunts that I get to do for this property.
So you need to spend your time. Sure. That's it, man. Man, I wanna sharpen that extra 'cause I want the times that I do hunt, I want it to be like, I want to use, I wanna use the cameras. I was gonna say, are you sharpening your broadheads for the next 600%? Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Those things are gonna be like shiny when I go out there, but, so I don't know, man.
I guess that's the I, I wanna, because I know it's gonna be, I may never get to hunt this place again. So I wanna be prepared for that and, yeah. I'm sitting here looking at your area, man. Yeah. But right off the rip, first thing I see is two power lines running through there.
That's, isn't that great? Yeah. Yeah. So I need to find those travel corridors, man, where would you throw out? Did you see that? That No, I haven't seen it yet, man.[00:26:00] Yeah. So I'm sitting here looking at the map, right? So we're looking at the public area. You got two,
kind of two power lines, or maybe a gas line maybe, but almost up in a shape, right? So it's running south to north, both of them. But over there on the left hand side, the, or the right hand side, sorry, where the power lines running through and it goes over the top of some of these ridges up and down.
Yeah. There's this little draw just shy of the y of that creek that's in there, cuts off to the right of the creek. Yeah, I see it. That's gonna be a hot spot. They're gonna walk up. So that's, this is pretty steep. So 700 to, that's a. A hundred foot drop in a matter of that's really steep stuff over there, right?
Oh yeah. If they're in the area, they're gonna wanna come down for water. And then you got those two draws that go left to and I'd really be focusing on those [00:27:00] draws that lead up to the yeah. Power lines for sure. They're just gonna funnel, that's the first thing just looking at it sticks out.
Yeah. That's gonna be a heck of a hike for you. But that'd be a good, that'd be a good camera spot too. Get out there a couple weeks early. Because I've got access to it. It's open to hiking I could get out there tomorrow and throw cameras out there when you have a spot like that, Ryan or Justin and I think this interview started months.
I, I like the way this started, but what are your camera tactics? How aggressive with cameras, are you getting out there moving them a lot? Are you gonna let 'em sit keep the pressure off of these deer? What's your plan? Ryan, I'll let you go, man. I think there's two, two different strategies, right?
That we need to look at. You got your public land and you got your private land. Ryan could probably speak a lot more on the public side of, or the private side of things. Yeah, private. Honestly, the biggest thing with me is I let 'em soak man. I don't touch 'em. So I try to get as many cameras as I can [00:28:00] out all the travel corridors, food entry, exit, a place I can ambush a deer 100% of the time.
If you can have cameras out there and they're not touched and you're not messing with that area you're gonna win. My buck that I killed this past year same thing, man. I knew every move he was making all the time. He was just waiting on the right time to do it. And I think that's huge with private, if you don't have to worry about other people.
I don't hunt any public. I've been fortunate enough to where I've always had really good property to hunt. I'd like to get into public hunting 'cause I'm wanting a little bit more of a challenge, but just time. And I like to keep my especially cell cams. It's such a valuable tool to save time and I've found that letting them soak and learning your farm over, over time, these deer don't change.
The deer is still doing what they did 10 years ago, which is pretty amazing. The bucks that I killed eight years ago took the same exact path, doing the same exact thing during the same exact time of the year now than what they were, eight, 10 years [00:29:00] ago. So it's, it is pretty wild, man.
Just learning the property, tons of cameras. If you're not fortunate enough to have a lot of cameras to use, cell cams to use even regular cameras, man everything's revolved around food 99% of the time. Yeah. Justin, do you do some public hunting? Yeah. 90, probably 98% of my time is public hunting.
Yeah. You deploying cameras out? Yeah, I do. I just started doing the camera thing about three years ago. And I've always been pretty successful at public hunting, which has helped when I started getting into the trail camera. So it's hard for a lot of a lot of guys to go out and get these trail cameras and then trust that no one's gonna steal 'em when they put 'em out on public.
And I bit the bullet one time and I took a trail camera out and I will, about three years ago and I said, I'm gonna continue to do it because I think it's worth it. I think that even if you can go, we [00:30:00] run Black Gate now and we have access to some of these trail cameras, but then I didn't.
So even, going out and getting a cheaper trail camera was worth it for me if it did get stolen just to put it out. But yeah been running trail cameras out on public. I typically don't start putting my trail cameras out on public until probably early July. Maybe a little sooner if I'm trying to catch some of that velvet, the first velvet, first instances of some of those deer.
'cause those deer have been back into their home range. After traveling through the rutt, they've been in there for a little bit. And so I'll start to get out and scout an area with the cameras based on what I've seen the year prior. It's very little do I ever put a trail camera somewhere that I don't have some form of knowledge like in a relationship with.
Yeah I'll put 'em out. July, early July, and and monitor up through the year. Those deer, they're not [00:31:00] fully into their habits yet. A lot of times movement, like Ryan was saying, food is huge. And in the summer months, food is abundant. And, you can have a bean filled man, and them deer, especially the mature bucks, they just won't come out because they got all that greenery, the shrubbery, the thick stuff in public.
So it, you can get out early like I do and do it, but you really don't start to see too much movement, man, until July, mid July, that July range into August where the bachelor groups, they're bachelor up. It's still a bit early for their, their their velvet to come off and rut yet, but you'll start to, you can start to pattern 'em, right?
You start to see what made it through last year. And what you can go for. So Justin, you, that's when I put 'em out. You talk about putting 'em out in July. How long are you leaving them out there on the pri or on the public? Oh, as long as I can all the way through the season. Up until probably February, towards the end of [00:32:00] hunting season.
After that, I might leave him out for two reasons. One I know a bigger, that big buck's still out there and just wanna monitor him. Or two, I don't know if he's out there. And I want to try to catch him or I'm just lazy and don't have time to go out and to grab the cameras. 'cause if you hunt public, you know that you put a lot of miles on and you can put a lot of miles on for a single hunting spot.
So trying to find the time to, to go around at the end of the season is rough. So they'll stay out there for a while. Yeah, I put my first trail camera out, cell cam out last year on public. And it was deep in a marsh in a river bottom, nasty, thick stuff. And I like hunting that stuff.
And I was like, ah, we'll leave it out there. See, I kept, I was getting some turkeys on there. I'm like, nah, I'll pick it up in Turkey season. And it flooded. And when I picked it up in Turkey season, I opened it up and it was full of water. All the batteries had rusted and exploded inside of that [00:33:00] thing.
So learn that lesson, take 'em outta the river bottoms before the snow melts, for sure. Ryan, when, like on your private pieces that you've got, like you've got intimate knowledge of these Of these locations, are you like, are you experimenting with different locations, adding cameras, adding mineral spots or any sort of bay piles or anything just to get more information or see, if there's just something else that's out there that you haven't really explored yet.
Most of my stuff I've just been hunting for a pretty long period of time, so I've got my established mineral sites. I actually do not bait at all 'cause I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of food plots. Gotcha. That's huge for me. And I swear that's why I kill big deer consistently is because they have, they don't have that pressure.
Nothing against corn piles at all. Anymore you have to have one to have deer on your property. It's just the way it is in Ohio right now. But yeah, I don't have anything. I'll try new stuff, especially during the rutt. I'll open up a new scrape. I'll do some cool stuff, just [00:34:00] immediate stuff and end up finding some cool stuff along the way.
Bucks hitting spots that I never knew that they would hit. I find that out every year. It's usually within the same vicinity, but yeah, it's I'm pretty routine as far as all my stuff. It's if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like I continuously or am on solid deer and I'm not busting 'em out, but what I'm doing, but I'm monitoring them and know where they're at.
I'm a preventative hunter. I play defense a lot. I don't, I don't go in super heavy until it's rut time. I don't even touch anything. All my cameras are already set, most of them. Within the next, usually by mid-August, I have everything ready to roll. When he does show up, I can game plan.
Other than that, I don't touch the property. Gotcha. So you, you mentioned mock scrapes and you were just a guest on the W C B podcast. Working class Bow Hunter. We've gotten to know Kurt and Clint and those guys the last two years. Great group. They, man they're mock [00:35:00] scrape systems that they use.
Those guys are real. They're good, man. And that's something they're, that I don't know, man, I'm really intrigued. I'm intrigued by setting a mock scrap because that's something like, you can do that on public property, you can't obviously can't throw a corn pile out. But for a public land hunter I've thought about.
Do you think that's something that, that people should consider just setting up a mock scrape? Are they Absolutely. Even in June, man, I have two, they're, I call 'em community scrapes. They're not rubs, they're extra scrapes. They hit those licking branches and, they pin it just like they would in November.
They do the same thing. They communicate with each other year round. The biggest thing with during the rutt is, you get new deer coming in there, so they check 'em more frequently. But when you have your home range deer, man, I can once, twice a week, my three and four year old bucks are hitting those scrapes Yeah.
Plants. They just, no kidding. It's part of their routine. Yeah. Yeah. He be scrapes like all the time. Yeah. Yeah. [00:36:00] Justin, do you deploy 'em on your public land? Oh, abs, absolutely. Yeah. It's nice to find the natural ones when you're out scouting filled edges. It's really nice to find the ones that are a little deeper in the woods because, those are typically not typical.
They tend to be the more more mature deer 'cause they don't want to hit the, those field edges out in the open as much. But, oh yeah, if I have an area that's highly traveled too and it's in a nice spot, around food or especially in travel corridors, if I'm doing some digital scouting, and find a decent area that I want to go scout, get a couple areas to go scout, but find a decent area where the deer are traveling from what looks to be thick stuff over to maybe some neighboring ag fields or some of the od n r stuff that they put out the corn and bean and sunflower fields.
If I can find a nice transition spot. Absolutely. And there's not a scraper already there. I'm putting one in hands down. I'll put it right next to one of the main trails and slow 'em down, direct 'em a little bit too as well.[00:37:00] We know that the scrapes are a way for them to communicate, but get them into the camera range too as well.
They'll be walking by, they might not feel like touching it, but they see it and come over and. Gets some, gets 'em in front of the camera too, but I was gonna say gets that picture of them, man, if you pull 'em off the trail. Yeah. It's that dude that, that fresh turned dirt. If you can go out like this year, do something for me.
Yeah. And I've tried this about 50 times. Go out in the middle of a field that you hunt or in the woods and just open up some dirt, open up the forest floor a little bit, like a scrape wood. Yeah. And put a camera on it. Okay. It's in, it's incredible. Yeah, no kidding. They smell that dirt man.
And they know what it is. You're gonna see everything come out too as well. I got pictures of a scrape. I just opened up on my property, my personal property that I have. And all night long I was getting Turkey that would come over and look at it. I was getting, you'll start to see the Raccoons will be all over it.
Everything in the woods is wow, what's this? They know, you know what it is, but they'll come over and investigate. It's just [00:38:00] opening the dirt, not putting anything else on it. Yeah, nothing in it, man. Just open it up. Yep. I'm doing that. Yep. Like during the year, I don't even, if I go to like my food plots and stuff and I go around the edges, I don't put any urine in it.
I don't put anything in it at all. I open them things up and that first two yearold or one year old that comes by it and sees it, he's gonna do the work for me. Done every time. Oh man. What a, what an easy thing, man. That's crazy. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do that in my front yard tonight just to see what happens.
Camera on it. I'm gonna 15th skunks just beating each other up. Yeah. And then your wife's gonna call and say, Andrew bring grass seed, because Paul is out making scrapes in the yard and tearing up the grass. I'm like, Brian something. Do it. No that's funny. So Black gate cameras. We met you guys at a t a I think, we you met Justin through social media.
And found out about Black Eight. And I'm gonna be honest, the first time a black eight camera came into my phone, I was like, holy cow, this is, this quality is freaking [00:39:00] nice. I was impressed, man. You guys have, you've hit the nail on the head man. With that the camera, the operations.
I can't wait to get 'em out. You've had 'em out for a couple weeks now? A couple weeks now. Yeah. But the and there's a lot of camera companies out there and we liked you guys 'cause you were from Ohio, right? That was one of the main kickers there. We're all Buckeyes. But the like Paul was saying that image quality, I put a couple up on our social media stuff.
I still am blown away at it. And I sent it to somebody who's not even a hunter the other day. He's more of like a photographer type person. He is like, That's really good image quality, and I've never been able to count tines and stuff like that on deer. So totally blown away by, by the quality of the image.
Do you guys wanna give a little background of about Black eight and kinda how you got to be where you're at? Yeah. Honestly this started outta in my living room in 20 18, 20 19. It's a pretty wild story. It's one of those, it doesn't even feel real surreal type of deal right now.
I was working in healthcare at the time and covid [00:40:00] hit and I was just like, man, I'm outta healthcare now. Yeah, I'm outta healthcare now. Thank God. Nothing gets healthcare workers. I give all credit. You all putting up with all that stuff all the time. That's tough. It is I. It's pretty wild how much we've grown.
But when I first started, I started with non cellular cameras just for the love of trail cameras in general. I've always ran like 30, 40, 50. I've always been known as the trail cam guy around here a little overboard, if I should say. But it's just something I enjoyed, man, checking cards.
That was like the best day of the week was going and pulling freaking SD cards. And I miss that now with cell cams. You don't get that anymore. So I put out, our R four Ks, which we're under making it better right now so we could have it out hopefully by fall. I still put a ton of those out just 'cause I love pulling cards, but it just all evolved honestly.
Just kinda like how Justin and I met a friend of a friend through the industry. And when I first started, honestly I didn't think it'd get to this level. I was like, man, I love [00:41:00] it. I'm gonna try everything I can to get it here. Cellular's just a whole different world. You're talking all the functionality parts of it, dealing with the manufacturer.
Now that Justin's aboard, he is been with us for what is it, over a year now? Year and a half? Yeah, a little over a year. Yeah. Yeah, year and a half. So it, he built the app and we own that now. We weren't using a third party app or relying on somebody else.
So that was huge for us was, any change we wanna make, any customization. Justin was sending me texts, an hour ago Hey dude, check us out. This is gonna be pretty sick. And it is. He does a wonderful job at it. I would not want that job. I message him throughout the day on issues.
I swear that's the only thing I ask him about is, Hey, fix this. Not, Hey Justin, how you doing? Yeah, how's your mental health? Never asking how my day's going. Yeah it's pretty wild, man. Everybody asked me where the name came from and I said this on the other podcast too, when I first started testing cameras the backside of our property had black gates.
They had cattle gates on [00:42:00] the back. And these deer, there was one that was slid over and these deer always using it. And one of the best pictures I have, and I'm gonna have to use this so you guys can plug it into your podcast is I'd say he's probably 1 65, 1 60. It's the biggest eight.
He's mainframe nine. One of the biggest deer I've ever had on camera. And it's like the cleanest, there's no motion blur. He's walking by and I was just like, my wife was sitting there with me and I was like, that's it right there. It's black gate. And she's yep, it is. She's there's no doubt about it.
And it still gives me, chills thinking about it, but it's it's pretty incredible. That's still this far and people are actually saying black Gate and stuff. Like I hear people all the time. I was in I was in Cincinnati oh gosh, what's that new store? They call, it's like a sportsman's warehouse, something like that.
And this guy was looking at truck and he was like, yeah, I just bought three black gates and I was just eavesdropping. Yeah. And that was like the coolest feeling, dude, to know that and I didn't say anything. I'd come up there and be like, yeah, we do that. That's [00:43:00] us. But I just wanted to hear what he had to say and it was, man, just humbling for sure.
Yeah, that is cool. Justin. So how'd you get roped in, man? Were you like, eh, I like trail cameras. Why not? Yeah, he dangled a carrot in front of me. Kidnapping freak trail cameras for life. Yeah. So we have a mutual buddy like Ryan was saying, and his name's Doug. And Doug calls me up one day and he is Hey man, I got this guy he's posting on social media.
He should check it out, and he's looking for somebody that can like, do tech stuff. And so it was Ryan. So I reached, I think I messaged Ryan say, Hey man, what are you looking for? I do this and X, Y, and Z. And he's Hey, let's hop on a call. And I think we, we talked the first time for probably an hour and a half, maybe two on the first phone call and just seeing what he needed.
And then I. Ryan's this is, I was like yeah. We can probably make something happen. I can probably help out a little bit. And he's Hey man we need it done like a month and a half. [00:44:00] And I was like a little skeptical, but we put the pedal down and we ended up launching the first app in what, 12 days or it was some crazy two weeks.
Yeah. Yeah. It was like two weeks later from the ground up. I was like, Hey man, I got got this basic version of the mobile app done it. You can get photos, you can get video, you can get, you can request your hd check it out. And got it up, man. And we just, from there just snowballed.
And then it was the server stuff, and all the infrastructure. 'cause that's what I do for Black Gate is Like the C t O type stuff, all the engineering side of things. Mobile application development, website stuff, server infrastructure and all of that. So customer service now, or, we're looking for reps we are to try to help us out.
But yeah, man, just grew and grew and stayed on board with it, fighting and so just keep on pushing forward, man. And then next thing you know it seems like it was just [00:45:00] yesterday. I can't believe it's been a year and a half since that phone call, but how far we've came and it's been a crazy ride.
So that, just from there. And then I think, what, a year not quite a year ago maybe Ryan and them reached out and was like, Hey man. And at this time I wasn't full-time at all. This is I run another company and he is we wanna offer you a position.
I was like, sweet. I just dropped everything. I actually closed the business sale today and but been with Black Eight since, yeah. Heck yeah, man. Yeah. So let's talk about what you guys have on the market right now to offer. We've got the RG four and then the R four G sorry. R four G and the R four G light.
Yes. Lt RG fours. That's Robert Griffin the fourth. That's his son. I probably. That's our trademark. It's all good, man. Don't worry. I used to do it too at the beginning. I'm gonna reach out to Robert Griffin now. Dude, people get this twisted all the time. Let's roll with it. Yeah, exactly. [00:46:00] He's out there just hawking black eight cameras on e s, ESPN or whatever he is doing.
He just chucking 'em, man. He could still run like a 4, 2 40. He's oh, exactly. He's so fast, man. Our cameras are so fast. We caught RG three. There you go. Look dude, that's so killer. Marketing team. Marketing team right here. That is awesome. I'll screw it up. Paul, come up with good ideas.
Justin, you keep writing all the tech stuff. There you go. Yeah. Oh God, I wanna see that happen. Yeah, that'd be sweet. Yeah. All right. So yes. Yeah, dive in, dive into the products. If I'm looking to get into the trail cam. Or just switch. We've both had, our first experience with Go, or with Black Gate has been exceptional.
And so if I'm looking to switch and what, what do you guys recommend, for, our listeners as far as like trail camp cell cams? So if a lot our R four G's kind of our flagship camera, that's what put us on the map. It is an excellent camera, but it's also a $200 camera.
So the people that are looking, to be [00:47:00] more in that competitive price range with other companies, but you're gonna get a better camera. Our R four G light's pretty tough to beat. You're sitting around 139.99 retail. You can usually find it at some dealers a little bit cheaper.
Honestly, the R four G has got it all. It's got video, it's got the L C D screen. It's like a full pro version cell camera. In my mind when I went through, the development and the creation of the R four G, the R four G light is essentially the same thing. It's got the dual lens, dual sensor.
It's no glow completely at night. These deer have, they can't hear it. They can't see the flash. It's the ultimate, I hate saying Stealthiest camera because that's another brand. But it is, it's, we're the only one on the market that does not have a shutter. And that's huge. I don't know how many times people get pictures of bucks on camera and they're looking at the camera, they're hearing that click, man.
They're especially in transition times, when's most of your deer move? Right before dark. Yeah, right at [00:48:00] daylight. It's quiet 90% of the time. And yeah, and it's super quiet at that time too. And they hear that shutter and that filter drop. They can hear it. I hear it when I walk by it, so I can't imagine what a white tail hears.
So you know, that, that came, when we started developing that, that was huge for me is because we're always after big deer, big finicky deer in Ohio, they're just over pressured. And I wanted every advantage I could get. So we've stuck around that, along those lines, the R four G offers video mode, has an L C D screen to set up.
It can also be used as a regular trail camera in the off season if you don't wanna pay for data the R four G light. Is just a simplified version, a turn the camera on, make sure it's taking a picture of you walk away. Gotcha. Change all your settings from the app, the R four G. You can still change settings from the app too, no problem.
But the R four G light is solely relied on changing settings from the app. Okay. So the screen on the front of the R four G, [00:49:00] that is just dive into that just a little more so that, that covers the, because it's shutter list, so that just like blocks out access light it shutter lists.
There's no filter with our lenses. So we have one day lens and a night lens. Okay? So we have one lens doing a specific job. In between, say, in that transition period, most trail cameras on the market now are gonna drop that filter to take a photo because it needs to be night vision and it's right at dark, it's in between.
So it'll actually click back and forth. You'll have some night photos, then you'll have some day photos before it goes all night. Photo. You notice that with a lot of trail cameras. So we did away with that and it's actually one less thing to go wrong. On your camera. One less thing to stick, because that is a common thing is they will stick your camera's gonna wear out a little bit quicker 'cause you gotta have that filter.
And it's also less power consuming. So it's actually just an overall benefit to the camera. Why nobody had that before blew my mind. But when I found out they didn't, I was like, we gotta [00:50:00] roll with this. There's just, we're the only dual ends dual sensor camera on cell camera on the market.
That's a big deal, man. Yeah that's a big deal. Talk about the battery life on the R four G if I'm getting, obviously it's gonna be dependent on how many pictures it's taking, how many it's sending. So what are, like, what's the, if I put that thing out in July in Ohio and I've got just say, a moderate number of deer, nothing insane.
Am I gonna have to go back out before the season? Or is that soccer gonna be running all year? It'll be running a pretty good long time. It'd be, the biggest thing is signal strength. If you're running a moderate signal or low signal, it's going to take longer to send that image, which is gonna be more power consuming.
Gotcha. If you have good signal and you're not over bait or something like that and you're just on a heavy used trail or something, I've had cameras last for, seven months in the field with just double As. And that's, it is pretty incredible. With my deer density and all that stuff, I get tons of pictures of [00:51:00] deer and to last that long is pretty incredible.
We've dialed that in pretty well. Yeah. Munz is just shown me pictures. Yep. I it's a the quality really is, it's wild man. You totally sidetracked by looking at the pictures of the deer. You're good. Solar panel that'll add obviously it's the life of that. Do what kind of batteries go in that, or does it.
It just hooks right into the bottom of the camera, right? Yeah, so it just it plugs right in the DC port, the external power port. So it's a 12 volt system. The solar panel has built in lithium, so it's pre-charged before you go out. And then ambient light or full sunlight keeps it charged enough to run the camera permanently.
So if you're in a wooded area that gets a little bit of sunlight during the day, and then it doesn't get any sunlight, it'll still work. It, that's why the front of that is black on the front of that solar panel, and it's, why it's full glass is because it pulls more power with less effort. And that was a huge deal for us.
There's a lot of people that don't use field [00:52:00] edges or, stuff like that. They use hardwoods and we wanted that to be an option for them. And, you can run our solar panel pretty much anywhere. Yeah. That goes, that's where I'm at, man. All hardwoods and on the battery life.
I, I wanted to add, Especially on public. And if you're only around and you're maybe a scrape a field edge, but you're not baiting or anything like that, obviously I'll run one set of batteries all season from July all the way until February. Okay. There's no reason why I would need to go back on change the batteries on that.
Yeah. Being on public which is a plus all around. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Man I'm impressed. I love 'em. I know. Or the feedback we've gotten from some of the listeners has been pretty good too. So Amazing. Yeah. I do have one another kind of like technical question, we'll get you all the tactical ones outta the way before I go off the wall oh, okay. How, if I've got if I've got a scrape, just a natural scrape or one, I'm gonna open the dirt up. That's the one thing I'm gonna do [00:53:00] for sure. What's the position that, like for best photo capture that I like the camera position on that scrape or a trail, a field edge.
How far away from the, where I think the deer are gonna be? Do you put your camera, do you angle 'em? What's some tricks there? I don't personally. Some people like 'em out of line of sight, which is totally fine, especially if you're worried about theft or, the big deer, if they're really sketchy around cameras, you can put 'em up higher, angle 'em down.
But you gotta realize that you're The length of your p i r is gonna be cut because you're pointing down into the ground. You're not pointing out over a level surface. So a lot of people don't understand that. They'll get the deer when it's walking underneath the camera 'cause they gotta point it straight down.
It's man, I'm not getting anything in the top of this frame. The camera's designed to get it, the middle of the frame. And then as you get between here and here, it's less sensitive. It's the most sensitive right here, right in the middle. So that's a huge key in us not getting[00:54:00] false triggers throughout the day.
Constant false triggers, wind birds flying by. You can waste a lot of data doing that. And a lot of people do and they don't care. Some people, got unlimited planes, it doesn't matter to them. But you also gotta think about the life of your camera. The more pictures you're taking, the more you're wearing it out.
It's no different than putting miles on your car. And it also comes with a lot of maintenance too. But I do think on the scrapes, I think it needs to be waist high 15, 20 feet. That's usually where I'm at. I try to get some that are really close. 'cause for video I like to be able to hear them antlers hitting the branches and them doing their thing.
That's my thing. I love scrape season. Yeah. But I think that's my personal opinion. Justin May have something different. I can show you thousands of scrape videos that are just mind blowing. Oh man, I wanna see some of those. I wanna see the video, like where it's just you like scraping the dirt and then it's just packed full of deer.
That's the video I want see yeah. Yeah. The setups on Scrapes Man are really personal [00:55:00] preference. If you're looking for just depends on what you're looking for, man. Ryan's deer I shouldn't say they're more conditioned, but they're they're more comfortable where they're at.
They have no pressure other than what Ryan, when Ryan's out there. So they're not as sketchy when they see a trail camera, if they do see one or like on public though I would love to set my trail cameras up hip high and on public, and you get those really nice upwards hero shots of some of the deer you really get to, especially if you get a nice mature deer.
You're gonna see the outline of the rack a lot better. And you're gonna see those images that that we like to see on social media. But on, on public, we have have to think a little bit different. Sometimes you can put a cam camera low, especially the black gates with the no shutter and the no glow.
You can get away with a lot with, without spooking a deer. But For me, I have to put mine, I, I probably put it at least six foot up in a tree. And then I use one of our [00:56:00] universal tree mounts that we have here at Black Gate and just straps onto the tree. And that way I can get that right angle I'm looking for.
And yeah, but I, I do wanna note though you said how, what? Get that good results and this is where the R four G really shines. There's nothing like a good video with scrapes. The R four G light is great. You're gonna get awesome photos, but having a nice, mature buck on camera and.
HD video there. There's just something about it, man. Especially if you can get 'em set low like Ryan's talking about. Yeah. Man, there's just nothing like it. And I, I don't know if I've ever had a camera that could send me videos over the airwaves. Maybe. I know they're out there. But the first one I got Justin, I think you were, we were with you when I got it. It was man, it was awesome. The quality was great. And then it had sound with it too. Not that you really matters, but it was just cool to be able to listen to it. And there's, there is companies that [00:57:00] have video but they don't send it in 10 80.
They cut it down to six 40 by four 80, something that's manageable to send over the air that doesn't cost them data. It's costing the customer, they're charging extra for that. But yeah, it's, we're the only one that I know of that is actually it is sending a 19 by 20, or 1920 by whatever the aspect ratio is of 10 80.
And then when you get hd, and most people don't understand this high definition, when you have an HD video with sound HD compared to standard definition, not comparable, the HD sound, even if you go to a standard television show and then switch over to HD and listen to the sound difference. Yeah. It's next level.
Especially some of the stuff, I have a deer grunting deer fighting and stuff in front of the camera. It's just so you feel like you're there, man. Yeah. It's so cool. I'm gonna bring it up because it's what I do every episode, but I like the trail cam pictures, the videos when you got two turkeys that are just gobbling their brains out in front of the, [00:58:00] in front of a trail camera, fighting with each other.
That's the stuff I like seeing. I could probably get down with that. Like I, if we would set 'em up next, next spring, I could do that. Oh man. Yeah, we got some pretty wild videos over on our social media from last season. And then from customers that are sending us these videos, some of it's just abs see a full strutt, a strutter coming in and then he stops mid frame and just shoots off, and just the hd.
Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Oh, he knows he heard that shuttered. He's time to shine, boy. Yeah. And you know what's nice is you're like, you already got the video, you don't have to run in the field to get the high HD video off the camera, so you're hitting that share button, like as fast as you can or sending it to your buddies, the share button is pretty sweet. I do like that. That's pretty cool. So can you guys talk a real quick about your data plans? You have a lot of options and just how it sets up and especially if you have one camera, multiple cameras. Yeah, for sure. You want me to do it, Justin? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, so when I started this, I wanted [00:59:00] everybody to have multiple options because I knew there was gonna be a lot of people that had trail, I wanna buy a camera, I wanna put it on trail, but I don't wanna pay for a $13 plan. 'cause some of, a lot of these cameras are, you get 250 photos, 500 photos, or it's unlimited.
There's no in between. They, and they do that on purpose because a lot of people are gonna get 250 to 500 photos pretty easily in a month. So you have to pay $13 to get 600 photos. I don't think It's not necessary. That's why we wanted to offer more. The way our data plans work is, and you guys can plug in the data sheet that we have on our website, and that's just an example.
So say a person's running 10 cameras. The goal with those 10 cameras is on your first camera, a data plan on there that will cover all 10 of those cameras. This is the most affordable way to do it. And then every camera after that, you put on the $3 plan, which is, it gives you some data, but it just adds it to your account.
And then you can share all that [01:00:00] data from the first camera with the rest of the cameras on your account. So any data that you purchase, when you activate a camera, buy a plan, it all goes to your account and it all gets pulled out. It's all shared. So no matter what say your $3 plan that you bought is on a trail and it's.
We only allow 250 photos on a $3 plan. That's not true because you're actually pulling from your other plans until you run outta data. So you aren't outta data, you don't have a limit. As long as you have that one big plan, to start out. So say someone had three cameras, you buy one of them you have a $15 plan, and then you put a $3 plan on the next two.
So for 21 bucks, you're running three cameras and you're sharing, 8,050 photos between those three cameras. It's almost like a ba like a bank account, right? You, you put in so much, and then four people have debit cards and keep pulling out and, one might take $3 worth and the other might take $10 worth or whatever, right?
[01:01:00] Yeah. Yeah, you can, that's pretty good analogy, honestly that people just need to know it's all shared. So no matter what data you pick for whatever camera that's on your account, you're basically just buying the data. The only reason why you have to attach it to a camera is to activate the camera.
That's the only reason. And a lot of people don't understand that. It's very confusing. So we're trying to find a way to to tell people how that works. But yeah, that's actually a really good example is the, it's not divvied out perfectly. Like you only get 250, you only get 500 because the plan you're on it's divvied and sent wherever it's needed.
I bet RG three would be a great for marketing, how that plan to, the public along. Yeah, probably. I buy one plan yelling at you the entire time in the camera. Whoa. Play one play. Oh God. All right. We're diverting. So yeah I'll be honest with you, at first, looking at the plan, I'm like, oh my God, there's so many numbers.
But after doing it with the couple cameras, it's super easy. And I actually think I prefer it way better [01:02:00] than the other some of the other options out there in the market. But yeah, we're looking away. Like Brian said, we're looking at ways to simplify it. It, not that it's complicated the first impression it might be like, oh, man.
But once you like, know the concept behind it, it's oh, this is super easy. But we're looking at ways to streamline it too. I think we're, we've been talking and want to, and do like a wizard type thing. How many, how many cameras do you have how many photos you're gonna get, and then we'll just suggest a plan for you based off of that.
Yeah. And the user interface there on the app and everything. It walks right through it, so it's not it's not hard at all, but yeah. Alright, so off on the deep end here, when we talk about, I'm one of those people that is hesitant to put a hundred plus dollar camera out into the woods on public land and honestly sometimes even on private land, but what are some tips you guys have for keeping theft under control and to, I, you can never eliminate it right?
Completely, but to help preserve your cameras if they're [01:03:00] not being able to be overwatched at all times. Lock gate sills, and this is where keeping honest people honest, so we do have lockbox Ryan, do we have one yet for the light en route? Yes. Okay. So there's a a lockbox that you could attach to a tree you put your camera in and but, and protect it.
But that's keep an honest people honest. I don't know a lot of people that rip 'em off the trees like that, but it does happen. I think another Ryan is, I don't think there's really anything that you can do too much about preventing it from happening. But there are things that you can do to handle it.
If it does happen, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I do. But I'll go ahead, Ryan. Yeah, no, you're good. You're good, man. I was just saying, honest people on the same thing. The R four G light, when we designed it, it's got the pipe through on the back. But you gotta remember it's molded plastic.
If someone really wants that thing, they're gonna get it off the tree. No. [01:04:00] No matter what. Even if you have a Python lock on the tree, 'cause public ground, you can't screw anything into the trees most places. I know you can't. So you know, when you're attaching a security box, you're either using a strap or a python lock and it doesn't take much for someone to bring in a small pair of bulk cutters and.
And get those out. Yeah I do think that there's, it's keeping honest, people honest, Justin couldn't say it any better because if somebody wants it, they're gonna get it. No matter what steps you take. Someone's always gonna work harder to steal something that you have. I swear it's how it works.
Yeah. Need to figure out how to mount a connie bear, like around the camera. So amount of what a Connie Bear trap like that you use for trapping beavers reach in there to take it off and it just like snaps down on there. Could you imagine? Oh my gosh. What I do, I take a little piece of like sticky note and post a note on the inside of the door when they open it to shut it off.
I said, don't be a dick is what I write on the. So far, or I [01:05:00] think too, yeah, man. I think too though, cell cameras I think theft was a lot more prominent before they had antennas on 'em. I think it's slowed down a lot just 'cause I think people are a little bit skeptical oh, I don't know if this is G P Ss tracked or Yeah.
Anything like that. But Justin has some good stories about that too, with Black Gate, but I do think the intent on top and knowing it's cellular does detter some people 'cause it don't take much of a mistake to to get caught. Yeah. Yeah. And just the same reason why some and changing it up for public here, but just the same reason why you would hang a camera a little higher.
The logic behind you don't want to, you don't want the deer to see them. Is the same reason why you may hang them a little higher on, on public. I like to take on, when I'm doing public, I like to take a stick with me at one of my climbing sticks. And I'll put that on a tree and then I'll climb to that top of that just to get it outside that range where someone could even jump and grab it.
And I tend to try to find the [01:06:00] biggest tree. So we know that chances are that they can't like bear hug this thing and crawl up it either. Really gonna make 'em work for it then. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's just a tactic that you can use on public. And again, that is where our, having a tree mount of some type that you can angle downwards to is really handy.
But yeah, you, how sad is our world to have to deal with that. Yeah. That we have to work around people that just want steep stuff. Dude, I'm telling we need to, it's, man, it's what's that ground blind company that, that ghost blind where you put the bark down? Yeah. I'm telling you Ghost, ghost Connie bear traps.
They would've no idea that it's on the tree. They just reach in there and it just snaps down on, but backed our screwed up world. The liability behind that is I was trying to steal this camera and he took off my fingers. I'm suing you. That's what we'd end up with, so Oh yeah. We would be in trouble for that somehow.
Yeah. But then, and then you get the instance. So we've talked about how to try to stop people or ease the concern about trail cameras getting stolen. [01:07:00] The other aspect of that is, If a trail camera gets stolen, what can you do? What are your options?
There's some trail cameras on the mark, but the R four G I actually had an R four g prototype of ours stolen out of my truck. They broke into my truck and it was in the center console. And you can look it up, it's I tracked this guy down. No, didn't and tracked him down to his house and knocked on the door and confronted him, and then, was followed up by the police got the camera back and pressed charges against the guy.
So you have those options. We, thankfully, with Black Gate we actually have access to use the similar technology that law enforcement uses when you're tracking your cell phone. No kidding. Yeah, so we were able to pinpoint, in my case I got my camera back in three days.
And I was able to press charges. Yeah, that's wild. And made all kinds of news, media stories and it's there. You can look it up, man. It's online. That's pretty cool. I've checked that out. [01:08:00] Yeah. And then we've had some customers too as well. That's called us and Ryan's Hey man, can this person thinks this camera was stolen.
And we, Ryan, we tracked that, that camera, they put it in her car. And we tracked that camera through the neighborhoods for days. This is what was crazy though, is this guy lived like 15, 20 minutes from where he hunted and that's where it got stolen. And it ended up being somebody like two blocks from his house.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. He was like, dude, that's my neighborhood. When we gave him the grid coordinates, he's That's my neighborhood. Dude, I don't know what to tell you, dude. It's right here. And it's still turned on. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah. That's hilarious. You'd be surprised if they're dumb enough to steal the camera.
I would say the most, in the two cases that I can recall for, that I was personally involved in, they weren't smart enough to turn them off. Yeah. And that's funny. Eventually if they're still in the camera, they're gonna turn it on at some [01:09:00] point. They're not Oh, yeah. They're gonna turn it on.
Oh. And all that's the worst one thing. If you get a black gate stolen, do not delete it off your account. On, do not delete it, it or deactivate it. Let us know so we can keep that monitored and keep it flagged. Okay. Yeah. And as soon as they turn it on, it doesn't even have to send to your phone. Like they turn it on and that four G module kicks in and in two seconds it sent a signal to our server to the network.
Maybe not even to our, maybe they turned it on real fast and they said, oh man, it's starting up and they turned it off. There's a high probability that it already pinged the cell network. Gotcha. And then, but, and we can monitor that traffic too. So we're we can provide you just call say, Hey man, this got stolen.
We think. Think it got stolen and we flag it in our system. We'll give you the last known location of it and we're off to the races and we'll sit there with you like detectives too and try to track it down for a nominal fee, RG three will go to the house.
Glad RG three became the joke [01:10:00] of this show. Yeah. Gentlemen where can appreciate your time, man. Appreciate the, the product that, that you guys are putting out. Really excited to see where, black Gate goes from here and just the evolution of your brand and your business, Ryan and Justin.
And thanks for, for the support of our show and for being our friends man. We appreciate you guys. Last question. Where can people find you both individually on social media, if you would like to give that information out, and where can they find Black aid camera products on social media?
On the internet? Yeah mainly, our website is where you're gonna do a lot of the shopping. We do have we are close to 200 dealers now we are all across the Midwest and we're on East Coast, we're everywhere. So a lot of your local dealers, we will have a dealer locator on our website soon.
You can visit us at www.blackgatehunting.com. All of our social media is handle is at Black Gate Hunting products. Yeah. Good. Awesome. And if you want to get ahold of someone specifically, just reach out to there because it's either me or Ryan. It's a very tight knit group of guys.
[01:11:00] And you're gonna be talking you got an issue with camera starting up, you're talking to one of us, yep. So yeah, just reach out to Black Gate. We appreciate it, guys, and wish you the best this fall. And yeah, we'll keep Justin, keep you sending you the pictures. And Ryan I'll start sending you the pictures too.
I'm sure you want more pictures? I just sent you guys a couple videos. I don't know who. Oh, man. Can't wait. Yeah, so you'll have to check that out on your phone. So it's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure out a way to get RG three on a black gate camera. That's what I'm gonna do. Let see, let's start campaigning it.
I like RG three, man, that, it's a shame he got injured. It is, man. What a guy it was. Who knows what a, what would've happened if he didn't get injured. Yeah, absolutely. Gentlemen thank you so much for. Forward to seeing what happens this fall. Yep. Thanks guys. Sounds good man. See ya.[01:12:00]
