The Lords Gift In The Woods

In this episode of the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast, Dan Johnson and Mike Stewart delve into the complexities of marriage, family life, and personal growth. They discuss the challenges faced in their relationships, particularly in 2023, where busy schedules and lack of communication led to feelings of disconnection. Mike shares his journey of realization and the steps he took to mend his marriage, including the role of faith and the importance of prioritizing time together. The conversation highlights the significance of communication, understanding, and the need for both partners to feel valued and connected. In this conversation, Dan Johnson and Mike Stewart explore the dynamics of marriage, communication, and personal growth through the lens of hunting and faith. They discuss the importance of trying to connect with partners despite differing interests, the role of faith in personal balance, and the impact of a healthy marriage on family dynamics. The conversation transitions into the challenges and strategies involved in hunting, including overcoming physical setbacks and the thrill of pursuing a once-in-a-lifetime deer. In this conversation, Mike Stewart shares his intense journey of hunting a mature buck, detailing the challenges he faced, including hunting pressure, tracking a wounded deer, and ultimately gaining access to new land. The discussion delves into the emotional and spiritual aspects of hunting, emphasizing the importance of faith and personal growth throughout the experience.

Takeaways:

• The importance of communication in a marriage.
• Recognizing signs of a strained relationship early.
• Prioritizing time together can strengthen bonds.
• Faith can play a significant role in healing relationships.
• Small gestures can lead to big changes in a marriage.
• Understanding each other's needs is crucial.
• Balancing personal hobbies with family responsibilities is essential.
• Owning your problems can lead to personal growth.
• Regular check-ins can prevent misunderstandings.
• Making time for each other is vital for a healthy relationship. Different tastes in entertainment can lead to humorous situations.
• Communication is key in maintaining a healthy marriage.
• Trying to connect with your partner is essential.
• Reading the Bible can provide personal perspective and balance.
• Short prayers can help settle the mind before sleep.
• Children can reflect the changes in their parents' behavior.
• Guilt-free hunting enhances the overall experience.
• Physical challenges can be overcome with the right mindset.
• Accessing prime hunting grounds requires strategic planning.
• The anticipation of the hunt can lead to both excitement and anxiety. The impact of hunting pressure can drastically affect deer behavior.
• Mature deer can be very sensitive to human presence and pressure.
• Access to new hunting grounds can change the dynamics of a hunt.
• Observation and scouting are crucial in understanding deer movement.
• The emotional rollercoaster of hunting can lead to moments of doubt and regret.
• Tracking a wounded deer requires patience and careful consideration of property boundaries.
• Utilizing technology, like drones, can aid in recovering game effectively.
• Faith and personal growth can intertwine with outdoor experiences.
• A successful hunt often involves a combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention.
• The journey of hunting can lead to deeper reflections on life and purpose.

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Dan Johnson (00:00.894)
All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast. And we have what I'm gonna call a real episode today. And the realness is gonna be there, but then this big buck story is gonna be there too. And I can't wait to hear it. I can't wait to pick today's guest and his brain about all of this stuff. Mr. Mike Stewart, welcome to the show, dude.

Mike Stewart (00:29.648)
Thanks man, pleasure to be here Dan.

Dan Johnson (00:31.708)
Yeah, yeah. We've been trying to get together for a little bit now. You kind of had this story. You know, sometimes on this podcast, like I'm a silly guy, right? I like to joke around. I like to have a good time. But I also like to be serious. I like to be relatable. I like to talk about family. I like to talk about problems, that whether maybe I'm having.

And correct me if I'm wrong, maybe some of that inspired you to reach out to me with this story that we're about to get into today.

Mike Stewart (01:07.874)
It absolutely did man. I've been listening to you for a long time back to the wired to hunt days with you in Kenyon and one thing you've always done is kept it real and kept it family. And you've always thought it good, bad and ugly. And you know when when this story transpired and you know at the end of it when I felt compelled to write the story, quite honestly, you were the one person that really jumped in mind first of you know, I think this might be something you want to talk about, because I think you could relate to it.

Dan Johnson (01:18.045)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (01:35.272)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So we got a little bit of faith. We got family and we got big bucks that we're going to be that we're going to be talking about today. All those things. Yeah, all those things are important. And so we're going to we're going to jump into that. But before we do that, I'm just going to run through the partners of this of this podcast. And all I really want for you guys to do is to go out and to just visit their websites, maybe Google the brand.

Mike Stewart (01:42.736)
What better way?

Dan Johnson (02:04.367)
look at the products that they offer and just take a look, man, because I really enjoy some of these products. I really enjoy the functionality, the affordability, those types of things. So if you're looking for a saddle, go check out Tethered. Everybody knows that brand. They're legit. Wasp Archery, in my opinion, some of the best broadheads in the market. WaspArchery.com, discount code NFC20 for 20 % off. The cream of the crop when it comes to optics, Vortex Optics.

Vortex optics calm these these guys have apparel. They have sunglasses They have any type of optic that you need and then we have code blue sense. I mean like I I've had so much fun with their mock scrape kit the rope a dope mock scrape kit that It's one of those things where it's just become a part of my my season now So code blue sense comm discount code NFC 2-0. We have hunt worth in my opinion

They're starting to creep up there with the other elite brands that everybody knows about I mean the the fit the function the comfortability is Second to none so huntworthgear.com go check it out reveal trail cameras I mean as far as setting one of those up Scan a QR code set it up It's good to go and you start getting pictures sent to your phone and really that's all we want when it comes to cellcams so

go to tacticam.com slash cameras. And then of course, my brand Full Sneak Gear. I'm wearing, for those of you listening, you can't see this, but I'm pulling my shirt apart and I'm doing the Superman right now, but it just says Full Sneak Gear. This is the OG shirt. Just go to fullsneakgear.com and check out all of the apparel that I have to offer. So, all right, we're done. Now let's get into this story. But before we dive head first into it,

what do do for a living, man?

Mike Stewart (03:59.256)
So I'm in sales. work for a service company in oil and gas industry. I don't know if you're familiar with like the Marcellus and Utica drilling that takes place in Ohio, West Virginia, and PA. Yep. Okay. Okay, yeah, so it's a sales job. I do like...

Dan Johnson (04:12.186)
Okay. I do not know. I do not know that brand. No, that name.

Mike Stewart (04:20.592)
corporate sales and offices and then I also do a field sales portion where I'm actually hitting the drilling rigs on the actual work sites, which I love, man. I work for a great company and I love being in the field and, you know, in the offices as well, so. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (04:36.603)
Yeah, okay, awesome. And so do you have to travel a lot for your job?

Mike Stewart (04:41.688)
So I have to travel in the sense of, I don't work in an office every day. I do get to enjoy work from home once a week or so, but traveling Ohio, West Virginia, and all over Pennsylvania, which I love traveling to Ohio because I hunt out there and it allows me some extra opportunity to see some ground and scout. So it's actually nice.

Dan Johnson (04:51.153)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (05:04.325)
Gotcha. And so what state do you live in then?

Mike Stewart (05:08.514)
I live in Western PA. Yeah, actually originally from Punxsutawney, PA home of Groundhog Day. It's coming up here soon. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (05:10.394)
when western pennsylvania okay

Dan Johnson (05:16.258)
Okay, all right. So when you bring that up in conversation, like that movie is iconic, right? We got Bill Murray at what could possibly be his best, right? And so we got Bill Murray in Groundhog Days, like how many times do people from Punxsutawney watch the movie Groundhog Days in a given year? Okay.

Mike Stewart (05:24.208)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (05:29.519)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (05:41.85)
I don't think it's that much. A lot of people didn't like that movie because it wasn't actually filmed in Pongsi. So that was, yeah, they were pretty hurt over that.

Dan Johnson (05:48.753)
Okay.

Gotcha. And I see that you're wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap. I, okay. All right. That, that old, the thing about, I like about Pittsburgh is it seems like it's a no nonsense town, right? It's like hardcore dudes that just work hard in some kind of iron factory or you know what I mean? Like that's the vibe that I get from

Mike Stewart (05:57.26)
Yep, Steelers and Pirates,

Mike Stewart (06:09.433)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (06:15.734)
Yeah?

Dan Johnson (06:19.705)
just the fan base of those sports teams.

Mike Stewart (06:22.352)
That's exactly how it is. It's how the whole city is and surrounding city too.

Dan Johnson (06:23.825)
Yeah. Okay, cool. did that when Ben Rothenberger retired, did that city shed a tear?

Mike Stewart (06:35.248)
Yeah, dude, it was awful. I mean, we're really feeling it now because, I mean, we're just without him, I think it's going on year four or five. It's been brutal without him, And he encompassed what being a stealer was all about, tough, gritty, so.

Dan Johnson (06:44.719)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Well, but Russell Wilson recently has come in and like filled some shoes. I feel.

Mike Stewart (06:58.736)
Yeah, he's brought the veteran presence that we need. We have a veteran team ready to win, but you know, I wish we would have had him five years earlier. I don't know. But it's OK.

Dan Johnson (07:06.737)
Yeah, right, right. I gotcha. I gotcha. All right. All right. So where do we start on this story? Okay. I think you mentioned somewhere around 2003. Is that correct? 20. Yeah, I'm sorry. 2023 is where this story starts, right? And so talk to us a little bit about what is going on in your life.

Mike Stewart (07:21.232)
2023. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (07:29.573)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (07:35.048)
in 2023 that that is that are key indicators of why we're here today.

Mike Stewart (07:43.276)
Absolutely man, so in 2023, so for those that don't know, I have a wife and two kids. I have a nine year old son, 16 year old stepdaughter and I coach my son's baseball teams as I believe you do too, Dan. And that starts, we do like winter warmups January ish and that goes spring ball. We got all stars and fall ball and I coach all three. So very busy with my son.

Dan Johnson (08:03.215)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (08:12.686)
My daughter is in dance. She's a...

amazing dancer. She does like five different dances and my wife at that time in 2023 was taking her and doing that. So my wife and I were, we were experiencing some issues in our marriage. I wouldn't say it was like, you know, catastrophic. were on the edge of divorce, but we were just really growing apart. I was super busy going one way. She was super busy going the other way. We were not making each other a priority at all. We were just basically surviving.

Dan Johnson (08:40.175)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (08:43.972)
I think like all of the families do. And with that, you know, there's an imbalance at the household when you're living like that and just kind of in survival mode, right? So that's kind of like the first thing that was going on in 2023.

Dan Johnson (08:55.821)
Right, right.

Dan Johnson (09:01.456)
Okay, this is important because I'll be completely honest, we are in the thick of it here in life as far as my kids. Tonight, my wife is going one direction with our daughter. I'm going another direction with our son. Saturdays, my wife goes one direction, I go another direction. Sundays,

Right as of right now, we're kind of both hanging out together, but there's not like here's what I'll say there the the the honeymoon phase of our marriage is long gone. All right. The the survival mode in the marriage is in place right now. And what I mean by that is we we are heavily into our kids activities and that is

Mike Stewart (09:43.268)
Yep.

Dan Johnson (09:58.497)
the priority of like our existence right now. Okay. And so talk to us a little bit about your experience with what happens when we talk, like what happens when we step away from the, like the foundation of all of this is the marriage, right? Because without us, there's no them.

Okay, so in your experience, talk to us a little bit about when that gets neglected.

Mike Stewart (10:31.162)
Well, I think it affects everything, man. It even affects the kids. You'll just be in passing and it's almost like you're living with a roommate at times, right? When you get to that part and then the kids start to feel that, right? And then there's some acting out with the kids and then...

Dan Johnson (10:39.598)
Right.

Mike Stewart (10:49.956)
You know, you're just not communicating and things are getting missed at home, right? Because you're not talking about this and dinner plans and this and then you get to like that. We used to get to the point where we just kind of like, you know, bicker at each other or like make snide comments that we never used to do that. You know what I mean? But it's just you're disconnected. Everything is disconnected when that marriage isn't linked, man. The kids aren't linked. You're not linked to the... It's just everything's discombobulated.

Dan Johnson (11:05.56)
Yeah. Right.

Dan Johnson (11:13.796)
Right.

Dan Johnson (11:17.367)
Yeah. And so like, what are signs of that? Right. Because it sounds to me like the story here is these things were happening to you and it wasn't going in the right direction. And we're going to talk about what we what you did to type to try and fix that and how this eventually connects to hunting. But what are some of the key signs that you

Mike Stewart (11:42.382)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (11:47.02)
we're witnessing or that we're popping up that we're like, holy cow, just this is not, this is not a healthy relationship.

Mike Stewart (11:55.674)
I think one of the first things that I started to notice was like we wouldn't check in with each other through the day, right? She's a nurse, so, you know, we, and I'm a salesman, but we always check in throughout the day. And when that stopped, I didn't even think I noticed it at first. We just stopped talking through the day. Maybe a text, you know, hey, what's the plan for tonight? You know, what time's practice? know, that would be it.

That was one of the first things that I noticed. was like, that's weird. And then from there, I think that it just kind of snowballs to where then you never talk during the day. You see each other in the morning, you see each other in the evening, maybe before bed, maybe not, depends what time the game ended. You know what I mean? I might not even talk that day in person. And that snowballs. And then, like I said, the little bickering and little snide comments here and there.

Dan Johnson (12:25.654)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (12:36.098)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (12:41.677)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (12:47.208)
It just makes for an uncomfortable, a comfortable household.

Dan Johnson (12:50.07)
Yeah. So. So as far as specifics are concerned, like. I've been through some of this too, where our schedule is busy and everybody like. Everybody starts worrying about themselves and not the other person, OK, so I'm just going to use an example of what kind of goes on in our house, all right, so I'll wake up and I'm you know, we're both crazy busy until we get.

to the end of the day and sometimes the end of the day is eight o'clock at night and there's dirty dishes in the sink. All right. And I'm guilty of this too, but one thing that my wife wears her emotions on the outside of her, she is that person, right? And so there might be some big sighs or like something is you can tell that she is frustrated that she has to do the dishes or maybe I

Mike Stewart (13:26.96)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (13:36.29)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Dan Johnson (13:48.482)
come home after a long day up in the office or something like that. And I am assuming, and she is assuming that we are going to take care of these problems, right? And they don't get taken care of, like dirty dishes or laundry starts stacking up and things like that. And they become resentful towards the other person because we are wanting them to do it.

and they're wanting us to do it and then finally someone does it and then they're pissed that they have to do it because they didn't like, you know what I mean? yeah, so for us, like there's some of that that happens in our house. And I think it's because there is a lack of communication. Like, hey, this is what I'm doing today. I am gonna be busy all day.

Mike Stewart (14:25.037)
Yeah, yeah, 100 percent.

Mike Stewart (14:33.221)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (14:45.535)
and my wife really doesn't necessarily tell me that stuff as well. And so, are those relatable to you? I mean, is that some of the stuff that was going on in your household as well?

Mike Stewart (14:50.351)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (14:56.132)
Yeah, I mean.

Mike Stewart (15:00.962)
It was, yeah, that's one of the examples that's spot on. So my wife is the opposite. She doesn't talk. She'll shut down.

And when she shuts down, it's really hard to open that back up. Like she'll shut down for days or a week. It's just how she is as a person, whereas I'm a fixer, right? So if there's an issue, I just want to address it right now and fix it and move on. Like that's just, it's what I do for work all day. So I just, who I am as a man too, you know? But yeah, that exact thing. And I would say like, I can give that example now, like as of this morning, right? We both got up and we,

we'd said, I said, hey, I'm gonna make Jake's lunch and start Malaya's car. Can you make sure that his swim bag's ready for school? Yeah, and make sure his papers are signed. Yeah. And we both, and then we were right back where in 2023 to your point, we would have just kind of roamed around the house and.

maybe somebody missed something and they would have made a snide comment towards the other person from it. You know what I mean? And it's so small, but man, those things are just, you just gotta have that communication.

Dan Johnson (16:05.409)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (16:11.34)
Yeah. And so.

How?

There like we could we could literally talk about marriage the entire podcast, right? Like it's a struggle. Men have different needs than women. Men are completely different creatures than women. Like. Every time you use the word fixer, right, I I cannot I can't get it because it's ingrained in most men.

Mike Stewart (16:21.492)
yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (16:44.244)
My wife comes to me with a problem, whether it's work, whether it is the home, whether it's a friend, whatever the case is. And I go logical. I say, that's easy. Do this, this and this, it's problem solved, right? Call them up, talk to them, blah, blah. Yeah, here, fix this, do this, problem solved, right? But it's almost like they just want to tell you the problem.

Mike Stewart (16:58.224)
Yeah. Same.

Dan Johnson (17:12.65)
they don't want you to fix it, which is mind blowing to me because I'm the guy like, I only talk about problems if they're problems, right? Like, and then if I have a problem, I try to fix it. I don't just talk about it and not do anything about it. So I don't know, like we're so different. We require so many different things. It's laughable to me that men and women

Mike Stewart (17:12.676)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (17:22.404)
real problems, you know.

Dan Johnson (17:41.521)
exist on the same plane like we're other than maybe some geese that that mate for life like it's almost like from the natural world we're not supposed to do this

Mike Stewart (17:46.202)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (17:52.3)
Yeah, right. I know. It's like oil and water, And you know, to your point with that, I'll say one of the things I was really guilty of back then, and it was not making her a priority. And when I say that, I don't just say it like, broadly. I mean, like, I can give a specific example of, we, her and I, we tried to do a weekend trip by ourselves without the kids every year since we got married.

Dan Johnson (18:07.189)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (18:21.86)
And there's been years that hasn't worked, but I remember that year we had one scheduled for June. But anyways, something happened in my son's baseball was going to interfere. And to me, I was like, okay, we'll figure it out. We got to do the baseball thing. And that was, that was a big deal for her. And I, to me, I didn't, what's a big deal? You're my wife. You know what I mean? I, I forget sometimes that I'm not just married to this woman that I'm still like,

dating and in love with her. And I take that for granted more and that affected her a lot. And the fact that I really didn't care, really affected her. And I learned a hard lesson there, man. Like those little things that are not big to you, they're just an afterthought. Cause again, you know, like we'll just make it up. Well, that's not the same for her, you know, that, and it's not that she would have been okay with making it up. The fact that I just like,

you know, didn't even talk to her about it. That was not, that was not cool.

Dan Johnson (19:23.871)
Yeah. Like, it's so crazy because I hate to be, I don't want this to sound disrespectful to women, but

Mike Stewart (19:26.436)
You

Dan Johnson (19:37.515)
Men are creatures that just want you to tell them exactly what you feel. Okay. So Mike, don't like, let's, let's say we had beef with each other. Dude, you're pissing me off. I don't like it. And you go, well, you know what? I don't like you. Hey, what? Cause you did this. Well, I did this. Okay. Well, I thought you did this. Okay. We talk it out. Boom. Done. Fixed. Right. The word fix comes up, but there's an element of.

Mike Stewart (20:03.15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (20:08.078)
mind reading and magic that has to happen in order to like for me to fully understand what what my wife wants sometimes and that is that is difficult for me because I don't know about you but there are times where we ask each other like are you okay you good and and it's maybe we're not good and we say I'm good you know what I mean and so

Mike Stewart (20:36.729)
Yeah?

Dan Johnson (20:37.778)
just to shed the conflict and put it off for another time. And then there's times where I just, I talk it out and I talk it out and then she gets pissed that I try to talk it out, right? so, and that's, no disrespect to my wife, but trying to keep the conversation relatable here, that's the struggle that I think a lot of us go through. And then,

Mike Stewart (20:51.972)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (21:07.344)
what we have here and this is where I think it gets the most real and this is one of those conversations where my wife if she if she hears this will probably be upset with me but it's it's reality and then we start these these small things add up to big things okay did you ever have any of these small like the smaller arguments and things like that eventually turn into bigger things that

affected the individual on a bigger scale.

Mike Stewart (21:45.641)
I'm sure, I'm just trying to like think of an example.

Dan Johnson (21:52.146)
Okay, I'll just say it for me. Men connect with women through intimacy, physical touch. You know what I'm getting at, And so women, when they get to a certain age, don't necessarily require that anymore. You know what I mean? And so now we have this thing where there's larger amounts of time that are

Mike Stewart (21:54.192)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (22:02.7)
Yeah, yeah, of course.

Mike Stewart (22:12.558)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (22:21.255)
going between these connection times, I guess we'll say. And then men usually get frustrated because of it. Because now they start thinking, like, holy shit, what am I doing wrong here? Why am I being rejected? Why am I, like, all of these things. And then now the resentment, that's the word I think here that is the most poisonous thing, the resentment.

Mike Stewart (22:26.724)
Yep.

Dan Johnson (22:51.181)
And if you talk with my wife, this is where the hunting part comes in. She starts to resent me when I go on my trips. Okay, she starts to resent me when I get to go do what I love and I've set up my life to be this way, starting the business, starting the podcast, like the resentment sets in and she's like, well, he's gone. He's doing something that he loves almost looking at what I do as a vacation, which for me,

I've just set my life up around something that I love, okay? The resentment sets in. And then she doesn't...

understand why I can go do these things, but I don't give that same amount of time towards the other things, the family trips, the date nights, all of that shit, which is understandable, right? And so did you guys ever go through a period of time like that? Yeah.

Mike Stewart (23:55.942)
God, yeah. mean, and in fact, I'll be honest, and I used to get that way when I wouldn't be able to hunt, right? Like when I, you know, and I used to tell myself, you provide, you're a good husband, you're home every night, you take care of the kids, you coach all this year and dedicate your time, and then when you wanna go hunting, she gives you attitude.

Dan Johnson (24:12.145)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (24:23.478)
or you know what I mean? And I would get resentful right back at her. So it wouldn't just be her. And I think that would be even more detrimental because then I'd go to work the next day, pissed off and not even wanna, you when I did walk through that door that night, I was not in a good mood. You know what I mean? So it would go both ways. Yeah, for sure.

Dan Johnson (24:24.584)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (24:40.507)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. And I definitely understand my wife's point of view on that one. The cool thing though is back in the day, I used to maybe go check some trail cameras or see a cold front coming through and I used to be, my, hey, just want to let you know this week and I'm going. So it maybe took her by surprise a little bit. Now everything I do is scheduled, right? So August,

Mike Stewart (24:50.736)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (25:14.746)
Hey, I'm going to let you know in three months I will be gone on these dates. Like or this date in this state. And so now there's preparation, there's planning, there's more communication and every year seems to get a little better. Of course, there's flare ups, you know, like when I'm gone on one of my trips and the kids are acting like little buttholes, they, you know, she's the one that has to deal with it, right? She's the one that has to deal with it.

Mike Stewart (25:31.088)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (25:44.687)
And so I gotta give her credit for it because when I'm gone, she is literally that fall widow. She's that single mom where she has to take care of everything. We do rely on neighbors to help and other friends and family to help get kids to where they need to be. I do like I tell her, man, I appreciate all of the stuff that you do when I'm So it's it's it's it's still.

this balancing act.

Mike Stewart (26:15.706)
Yeah, and you know, one thing I'll say with that is one thing I've gotten really good at is saying no. And like, you know, I get invited to do things all the time. Like, you know, I have some really cool neighbors and my neighbor the other day just texts me and he wants me to shoot in an archery league with him. It's not that I wouldn't love to do that. I would love to. But the fact of the matter is on a Friday night for 10 weeks, am I willing to leave and start cashing in some of those?

Dan Johnson (26:29.671)
you

Mike Stewart (26:45.424)
those away points or brownie points, whatever you want to call them. No way, man, not for that. I'm saving those all for the fall and I'm going to go all in in the fall. I'm not going to, you know, if it's something I'm passionate about and I really cared about, you know that? Absolutely. But I'm not going to say yes to something just because I was invited. And I told my wife, she's like, well, you should do it. And I'm like, you don't understand. That's four hours on a Friday night. She's like, oh, it takes that long to shoot. No.

Dan Johnson (26:46.788)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (27:00.57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (27:11.77)
But gotta go there, you gotta drive there, you gotta shoot, you gotta stand around and BS at the end, and then you gotta drive home. That's your Friday night for 10 straight weeks. She's like, you know what I mean? It doesn't sound bad. Trust me, you have to say no to some stuff.

Dan Johnson (27:18.31)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (27:22.628)
Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, and this is the struggle that I deal with where we're like my wife doesn't necessarily have any hobbies and other than hunting and this business So I'll just be completely honest I'm not hunting this much if I didn't have this company or I didn't have this podcast if I was back in cubicle world or some factory line somewhere I would be a week a year guy, you know, maybe a couple weekends a year

but I'm not hunting, I hunted way more than I probably should have this year with my two non-resident hunts and the amount of time I spent in Iowa. And so I hunted a lot. I'm not doing that if I'm not self-employed, right? For multiple reasons, the PTO, but also I get to use those experiences to talk about on these podcasts.

and social media and all that stuff to build my brand awareness to make more money. So it's all intertwined. I wouldn't be doing that if I was, you know what I mean? And so I set this life up for that. And so the struggle is, like, she doesn't necessarily have, she has friends and she goes out with her friends every once in a while. And you know, this week she had a date night with her friends and I support those every single time.

Mike Stewart (28:32.538)
Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Dan Johnson (28:52.953)
Go do it, go do it. But the issue is going out for one night and being gone for eight days are completely different, And so I've had to, I was that guy who was like, all right, well, if I add up all the friends, the friend things that you go do, like when you go out to dinner every night and then you add up all the stuff, you know, maybe that's a little bit of more of a balance, but.

Mike Stewart (28:53.04)
Yep, same.

Mike Stewart (29:01.232)
A little different. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (29:20.304)
being gone consecutively for eight days is nowhere near being gone for four hours on a night to go have dinner with your friends.

Mike Stewart (29:27.198)
now.

There's a tag mate coming back after four hours. She doesn't have that after eight days. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (29:34.574)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I had to learn, I had to learn how to just be like, dude, you got it good. you, you, I, there's times of the year where it is shifted a hundred percent in my favor, right? And man, it's, the communication key that, is the most, most important. So now when it comes to like,

So there were some bumpy roads in this marriage, okay? Was there a moment where it was like, shit, like we gotta fix this before it gets any worse?

Mike Stewart (30:06.352)
There was.

Mike Stewart (30:15.502)
Yeah, man. So that kind of all happened in 2023. Like everything was just out of order. We were bickering. It was just not going well. And then something else had happened and all kind of transpired around the same time as I actually hurt myself while climbing up a crooked cherry tree hunting season that year. I tore something. didn't know. I just thought it was like a muscle or whatever. Going on my rut trip.

that year in Ohio and dude, things just weren't going well. I don't know if you've ever had like, and you're, I don't know if you're like this, but when I go hunting, man, I need my shit in order because if I go hunting and me and my wife are fighting, I shouldn't even went because I'm not going to have a clear head. I'm not going to be enjoying it. And in Ohio that year, from the moment I got there, number one, I was hurt. Number two, I'm

Dan Johnson (30:56.366)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (31:03.384)
I've been there, yep.

Mike Stewart (31:10.96)
My wife and I were barely talking, so I didn't have a clear mind. I was worried about that the whole time. It was just a bad deal. When I left there, I left there two days early, and on that way home, I told myself right then and there, I'm like...

this stops, like I have to fix this. And you know, I owned all the problems instead of like pointing everything at her that she was doing wrong or I didn't feel like she was doing right. I owned it all. I just went home. We talked about it days later. She obviously felt the same thing I felt. Things were out of order. And we came up with little let's fix it. Let's go to church. We started going to church.

And that kind of led us into like some small groups at church. one of the biggest things I started doing was reading the Bible. And that's kind of how we, it was a process. It didn't fix overnight, Dan. But that realization, when I left that trip early, when I was at that trip, I knew then like, this is not gonna work. If I can't go on the one trip I look forward to a year and even enjoy it, mean, shit's out of order.

Dan Johnson (32:21.09)
Yeah, yeah. OK, so there's there's a lot of stuff to unpack in that that last little paragraph that you were talking about here, because I am not a. Religious person, just straight up like I do not go to church. My family is not involved in a church. We do say like. I grew up in a church, we say prayers at night. I I pray I personally pray.

Mike Stewart (32:25.976)
There is.

Mike Stewart (32:34.906)
Okay.

Dan Johnson (32:48.947)
every night and before like I this is this is the these are the type of conversations that

I'm in my head right now. I'm thinking there's some guy out there stopping this podcast because he doesn't want to hear this shit. Right. He's like, Jesus, two dudes talking about God and their wives and shit. I didn't come here for this. I didn't come here to, to, you know, I came here for big bucks, right. you know, all that stuff, but that like it big bucks in the grand scheme of things do not matter one bit. Right.

Mike Stewart (33:04.528)
Mmm.

Mike Stewart (33:08.2)
I'm

Mike Stewart (33:15.31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (33:26.704)
All right.

Dan Johnson (33:27.938)
So as we shift into this next line of questions here, like, you don't just go to church and your problems are solved, right? It's like, well, I know how to fix our marriage, we go to church, right? That's it, easy button. It's not that. Talk to us about that process and how the process of how you feel faith led you to a better marriage.

Mike Stewart (33:36.535)
No. Not at

No.

Mike Stewart (33:46.116)
Yeah, no, absolutely.

Mike Stewart (33:53.376)
Absolutely, man. it was the biggest thing we did like by going to church every Sunday, Dan wasn't just the preachings. So if that guy that's trying to get off this podcast, dude, just pause. Hold on a second.

It wasn't just going to church to fix it. It was honestly the fact that we made time to be with each other every Sunday and go do something and then go to lunch after. Like we spent that whole day on Sunday. That's what saved our marriage. was making that time. Yes, church was a big part of that and Jesus and God were a big part of that, but...

That was the baby step, right? That's what got the train rolling. man, just as it goes, unwinds, dude, it winds right back up the same way. It's one step at a time, right? It wasn't one thing that unwinded. It wasn't one thing that brought us back. it was, we started talking more. We started enjoying each other. We realized on Sundays, man, I actually like this person again. You know what I mean? They're fun people. I love my wife. She's super fun. She's funny. She's nice. She's sweet. So we just enjoyed, then we started making date night stuff.

Dan Johnson (34:55.564)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (35:03.73)
That was the next step, every month. Regardless if it was a breakfast, a night away from the kids, whatever it was, man, just that little time together. And it was just step by step, man, just talking more, how it was work, know, instead of just saying good, which is what I did, I had to be like, it was good, and here's why it was good, right? Because I'll just tell you it's good, man, I'm done, I'm good. You know what I mean? So those are some of the things.

Dan Johnson (35:22.679)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like when that, when that kid comes home from school and what'd do today? Nothing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. So you started doing more activities together, right? Whether that was a date night, something. Now were these things, did these things have to be big things like, because

Mike Stewart (35:31.086)
Yeah, Your teacher would beg to say different, I think.

Mike Stewart (35:42.437)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (35:51.746)
As a man here, I'm going, okay, I would love to have a date night with my wife every week, but now we're talking about finances, right? It's like, I don't wanna go out and spend $100 or $75 or $50 every single week to connect or, you know, like go out for dinner and things like that. Were you guys doing big events like that or were you doing like something small like walks or coffees or something like that?

Mike Stewart (36:20.176)
It would vary. It was usually monthly. It was never weekly. One thing we, another thing we started doing is we started calling each other again and then we started trying to watch like a TV program together in evenings instead of, you know, just on our phones apart from each other. The hour we were together, we try and, you know, even if it's a news or watch a small program together, you know, just anything to reconnect. It doesn't have to be a date or a trip or anything like that, you know.

Dan Johnson (36:29.993)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (36:35.243)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (36:39.774)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (36:46.357)
Dude, I'm laughing on the inside right now. And here's why. Because my wife and I have completely different tastes in television programming. And so I do try sometimes to sit and listen to like one of her programs, but she's into like forensics and murders and mysteries. And so like I'm sitting there and she's really into these

Mike Stewart (36:56.663)
Okay.

Mike Stewart (37:09.668)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (37:15.957)
Dateline or forensic files. And it's just like, as the body was decomposing in the trunk of the car, they found that a hacksaw was used to remove the head. like, just, and I'm just like, dude, like I, I, I get that this is real life, but I can't just sit here and stay positive. You know, while Keith Morrison is talking to me about how somebody was decapitated, right? And like, I'm just like,

Mike Stewart (37:23.216)
You

Mike Stewart (37:43.514)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (37:45.25)
Okay, well, I'm going to go watch the Paw Patrol with my kids or something like that. So like she likes that kind of stuff. And I know I'm that typical guy sports and deer hunting and stuff like that. like, did you like have to force yourself to watch, uh, like glamour girls or like the housewife shows just to be with your wife?

Mike Stewart (37:49.101)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (37:58.181)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (38:04.048)
No, no, my wife's big into Dateline, so Dateline's always the go-to. Yeah. But here she is, dude. She's watching football last night. She was watching the—I came home from baseball and I said—and she had the Penn State game on. I was like, yeah, she's into the Steelers now. She doesn't have any clue what's going on. She'll—and we make fun of her. She'll be like, I think he—I think he hit a home run. You know what I mean? Just like she has no clue.

Dan Johnson (38:10.625)
So yeah, yep, Dateline. Yep, there it is, there it is.

Dan Johnson (38:30.835)
Yeah, no that that was a touchdown. Yep. But it's the attempt right? It's it's it's the try that is the important and I think that in any marriage it's the try right? I I'm I don't know shit about certain types of things but I'm like hey do you need help with this? Can I help you? Can I try it? And I think from a female standpoint that is what is the most important and even with men like

Mike Stewart (38:33.857)
Yeah, yeah. That's the attack, man. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (38:45.486)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (38:59.839)
You know, we did this fantasy football thing this year and she doesn't know too much about football. She doesn't know any players. And so I had to help her with some of that stuff. And it was an opportunity for us to like communicate more and get together more. All right. So kind of getting back on path here with the the the faith aspect of this. What was the next like what was the next step? In in this.

Mike Stewart (39:13.082)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (39:29.537)
for rebuilding the marriage and then how did that then transfer to better hunting for you?

Mike Stewart (39:39.438)
Yeah, so we, like I said, it was the build back. was the calling each other during the days again, right? Being excited to see each other and I spend a little more time together. was all those building blocks. And then personally for me,

I started reading the Bible. Like every morning I have a routine and I don't read. I can't quote you stuff from the Bible. I'm not that guy. I'm just a regular dude right at the end of the day. I just know that that centers me for the day and it helps me. I don't always understand what I'm reading, Dan. It's still intimidating to me, but I do it and I like it.

Dan Johnson (40:04.873)
Right.

Mike Stewart (40:21.712)
And it helps me keep myself perspective that I can't, you know, don't hold her to some standards she can't be on and I can't be how those standard I can't be on. And we just, we just found a really good balance. Still have our ups and downs every day, just like everybody, man. But that's been, that's been very, very helpful to me.

Dan Johnson (40:36.732)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (40:42.954)
Yeah, I've read the Bible before, right? It's been a very long time ago. And I've said this on the podcast before, like my church approached me at one point to see if I was interested in going to seminary school to be to be a preacher for that congregation. But I told them, I'm like, dude, I'm living a lifestyle right now that is like I can't go out, close down a bar.

Mike Stewart (40:46.309)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (40:58.13)
Mmm, really?

Dan Johnson (41:10.675)
then go to an after party at four in the morning, then come to the church and be like, hey guys, this is the lifestyle you should live when I wasn't living that lifestyle, right? And so that was before, that was like even before hunting, right? That was like high school, college type timeframe. But one thing, like I think everybody struggles with like just life. There's just.

Some people can handle it better than others, I'm not religious. I've already said I don't go to church. My family is not involved in church. We do pray a little bit. He's in our life a little bit. But one thing for me that settles me, because I used to be that guy who did not ever pray or if I had a problem, I would just gut it.

You know what I mean? Like a lot of guys do. you got a problem? Well, we're going to push it way down deep. We're going to swallow it until it turns to blinding rage. And then it's all going to come out at one time. Right. I used to be that guy. And actually I used to be like, that when I was a kid where I would get so sick and throw up because I didn't know how to communicate my problems to anybody. Okay. Today in this world, I, every night.

before I go to bed, is a routine. lay my head down on the pillow, pull the covers up, close my eyes, and I say a very short prayer, basically to the extent of like, watch out for my family, watch out for my wife, watch out for me. That's what it comes down to. Family first, like, please don't let bad things happen to my family, whatever, give my kids strength, them to make good decisions, whatever the case is. 30 seconds.

And that settles me. That settles me enough to where I can fall asleep, I can relax, and then I can go take on the next day when I wake up in the morning. Maybe the problems are still there, maybe they're not. I don't know. But it's something that I've started doing over the course of the last four five months, and it helps me relax.

Mike Stewart (43:34.032)
Good, good for you.

Dan Johnson (43:34.207)
And that's that's the that's it for me. Okay. All right now These are the steps that you've taken to kind of rebuild the marriage to to try to Did once your once your marriage started recovering from this low point did you see any Change in your children as well

Mike Stewart (43:37.732)
Yeah, good for you.

Mike Stewart (44:03.578)
Yeah, which was not anything at all that I... So I obviously, we had some issues like just with the kids and fighting and stuff like that. And some outbursts with my son has been a struggle his whole life, but he has gotten a lot better since that moment.

And I can tell you a couple little things, man, it's so funny you just asked me that question because, so I wear my cross, right? It's not something I think of. I I've worn it for a long time. For Christmas, my son wanted a cross necklace and he won't take it off. I'm just like, oh man, that's different, okay? So I read the Bible every morning. Most of the times the kids never see me read the Bible, because I get up at five, I read.

I drink my coffee. I'm done reading before they ever get out of bed, but they see the Bible laying around. The other night, my daughter comes home from dance, gets her Bible out, starts reading at the table right where I do. And I'm like, it's caught me off guard.

Dan Johnson (45:06.558)
And that's pretty crazy for a 16 year old to do that in this world of electronics and All the shit that is on social media basically

Mike Stewart (45:16.74)
Dude, I'm telling you. and then it's funny, like shortly after that, I saw something probably on Facebook, real or something. It was like, if a woman, if the mother dedicates herself to faith, 7 % chance that the kids will follow. If a man dedicates himself to faith, 93 % chance that kids will follow. And I saw that after I saw my daughter do that. And I'm like, wow. Now don't get me wrong. She's been baptized. She goes to church. She knows the faith. It's not like she just randomly did that because I did it, but

The fact she sat where I sit and started reading on her own in the evening, I was just like, wow. So I see these changes without me asking or forcing them. They're just starting to pick some things up on their own. So that's probably been the most rewarding thing so far, even aside from this giant buck is that those changes.

Dan Johnson (46:07.695)
And so the benefits are there, right? Now we've talked about these hunting trips, right? And how you go on this, especially for me, I'm 900 miles away or whatever from my house and I get a phone call and we have unhappiness there. And I'm somehow expected to try and fix this problem from 900 miles away. It absolutely.

Mike Stewart (46:10.606)
Yeah, of course.

Mike Stewart (46:16.164)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (46:37.297)
ruins my day, it ruins my hunt. And I'm not sitting there blaming it, but it's hard for me to focus on a spot in stock on a bedded mule deer when in the back of my head, like, I can't even like, I know I'm gonna make a mistake on this stock when I'm not fully invested in the stock, right? Like there's something in my head that's, or when I'm in a tent, I'm two miles off of a trailhead and I'm in a tent lying at night, knowing that I should get sleep.

but I'm just wide awake thinking about all of the stuff that's going on at home and debating getting back in my car, driving 900 miles back home and trying to fix whatever the problem is and cut my trip, whether that's 900 miles or nine miles, right? It's kind of the same thing.

Mike Stewart (47:27.728)
Yep. 100%. Been there so many nights.

Dan Johnson (47:31.482)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So how then did hunting improve when these other problems started to get solved?

Mike Stewart (47:42.092)
It was well so The journey has a couple more twists that I kind of have to talk about in order to get to that But so the injury that I had ended up long story short. I won't go through every detail it ended up being double hernia, okay, and then Again when I would I would be out in Ohio and I would I would get to Get some evenings evening time. I would

Dan Johnson (47:48.517)
Okay.

Dan Johnson (47:59.311)
Okay.

Mike Stewart (48:10.71)
scoured around and try and find a new place to hunt and know yada yada and I found you know I found this this particular piece and I ended up through a long long way of kind of long story I ended up getting permission to just sneak through and put my camera on but through throughout the summer I lost some weight on the doctor's recommendation and then I ended up

still having some flare ups with these hernias, which at the time I did not know were hernias. I was told they were something else. Well, so in August after baseball, All-Stars and all that, I went to the surgeon and here was a double hernia and it was very severe. High, I forget what she said, but basically they could erupt. The one could have ruptured at any moment and create all kinds of issues. So I had just found this giant buck on public land.

And now I'm now I made all these changes to get to this point, right? In August of 2024, I'd gone through all these changes, got everything healthy at home. Wife is good. Family's good. Improvements are happening. And now I'm basically I'm being told by a surgeon, I have to miss the whole archery season. I have to have surgery. And five days earlier, I just get a picture of what would end up being a 200 inch deer on public land.

Dan Johnson (49:26.757)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (49:35.566)
And I'm like through the moon to chase and now I'm being told that it's over. So the story almost never even happened, right? This whole journey was just null and void. Luckily, you know, started, asked the surgeon to work with me, explain the situation and she did. She fit me in earlier that I was gonna miss most of archery season, but not completely all of it. So that happened. It's unfortunate.

Dan Johnson (49:45.85)
Right.

Mike Stewart (50:05.05)
But through this though, being more rededicated in my faith and stuff, I was just like, okay, I'm okay, I'll just keep going. And I look back on that now and during that time off, allowed me more time to spend with my son hunting, right? It's only his second year with the crossbow. And through that, I spent more time at home, getting ready for the hunting.

Dan Johnson (50:33.092)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (50:34.116)
There was some things that led up to that. But to answer your question, when I was able to hunt completely, it's guilt free, Guilt free.

Dan Johnson (50:42.906)
It was guilt-free hunting. that's, dude, you know how good that feels to know that it's handled at home. It's handled. There's no issues, right? And you're not even thinking about it, right? Yeah, you're thinking about your kids and your family and stuff like that, like you always do, but you know that you can go out and you can grind guilt-free. Holy shit, dude. That's such a good feeling. Yeah. Right. Right, right. Okay.

Mike Stewart (50:51.408)
It's good. Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Mike Stewart (51:05.284)
Yeah. dude, I would have it no other way. Hopefully I can keep that up.

Dan Johnson (51:13.26)
Now we get to this guilt free hunting, right? Now we can focus, right? But the deal is you got these hernias and are they affecting you from like climbing up in a tree stand and like hanging, like doing running guns, like, or are you hunting from the ground? Like what's the story with these hernias?

Mike Stewart (51:15.087)
Yes.

Mike Stewart (51:32.526)
Yeah, it's a good question. So I hunted out of a summit climber most of my life. I don't know if I should have said summit or not, but it was just a, it was a climber and that's actually how I got hurt. And it wasn't because of the climbers. So it was my stupid mistake for going up a tree. shouldn't have. I going into this year, even though I was, I lost like 40 pounds on my surgeon's recommendation to ease the pain and the pain was easing. was still very nervous. I was like, there's no way.

Dan Johnson (51:40.57)
That's fine. That's fine.

Mike Stewart (51:59.128)
I can use those muscles, the ab muscles and the hip flexors and stuff. So I ended up getting a hang and hunt so I could still be mobile when I practiced in my yard with it. got very efficient with it. So I was like, okay, that's what I'm going to use. And then after I ended up having the surgeries, I think even though, you know, there's some more to that than just a climber, just not having to use those, those muscles allowed me to still be as mobile as I always was. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (52:28.666)
So yes, it impacted you but not enough to just keep you out of the woods for the entire year Okay. All right. Now we got to get into the strategy side of this thing like number one It's a piece of public land

Mike Stewart (52:35.386)
Correct, yes.

Dan Johnson (52:46.051)
Did you know this deer was on this property before you hung that trail camera up? Is it a piece of property that you've hunted in the past?

Mike Stewart (52:54.352)
So no to your first question, no idea it was there. And number two, it's near a piece of property I hunted in the past, but I've never hunted this or real close to it.

Dan Johnson (53:04.323)
Okay. Why did you go into this piece of public and hang a trail camera?

Mike Stewart (53:11.31)
So I felt while driving around, had a couple years earlier, I had arrowed a good buck by getting permission to cross a farmer's ground to get to a public piece. And that worked, that strategy worked out really well. It's hard to find, it's hard to get. But if you can get it, it can be killer, right? So I saw this property set up the same way, that it was kind of landlocked.

public not completely you could get to it but the access was not as good to come through the public so if I could scoot through the field to get back to that public I felt like that was going to hold some some good dear and it ultimately and ultimately did it it paid off so yeah so that's what drew me to this piece is the access being hard

Dan Johnson (53:54.189)
Yeah. OK. What was what was special about this piece of property? Like, obviously, the access hard, but as far as the terrain features like 200, we know and people listen to this 200 just doesn't happen, right? It's not it's not realistic for. It like if a guy kills a 200 inch deer on any piece of public land in.

the area two things happen one he got lucky or two he's known something that other people don't know okay he knows something that other people don't know about and that's how you connect with that big of a deer on public ground anywhere in the country okay so what was it about the this that allowed a deer number one to get to that size or maybe he was a genetically freaked three-year-old or whatever the case is

And two, like what was the terrain like in there that kept this deer there and he got to that age?

Mike Stewart (55:03.268)
Yeah, so I wouldn't find out until the recovery, okay? But what allowed, to answer that part of your question, what allowed him to get that big was I believe he was living the majority of his daylight life on a private piece that nobody was allowed on. That, to me, 100 % is why he got as big as he was. I sent his teeth off and was praying I'd have him.

The age back before we did this podcast, but I don't know how old he was or how long he had been there Now I can I can tell you the terrain was nothing special. It was just hilly terrain There was oaks It was nothing there was nothing there to be like, oh, well, that's how he you know what I mean? Nothing stood out from the rest of the properties around it except for There were some private farms

And there was a big chunk of ground that I would later recover him on that those people did not allow anybody hunting on. And I believe that deer got very old there. They knew. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (56:12.546)
Gotcha, okay. it's a straight up sanctuary scenario, right? How far away from where you killed him to where you believed his core area was that got him to that age?

Mike Stewart (56:17.424)
100%.

Mike Stewart (56:26.736)
I believe I was about, I believe where he bedded regularly, 300 yards. Yeah. No, and where I shot him, I believe he laid there sometimes too, but it was an odd east wind.

Dan Johnson (56:38.327)
Okay, so not too terribly far. Okay.

Mike Stewart (56:49.572)
why he was there that day. believe on a normal west, northwest, southwest wind, he was across the valley about 300 yards and that's,

Dan Johnson (56:56.875)
Gotcha. Okay. All right. So as far as access is concerned, right? When you said that you basically backdoored this piece of public through a piece of private, okay? What was that conversation like with the landowner about using their property for access?

Mike Stewart (57:03.194)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (57:11.397)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (57:20.428)
Okay, so I'm gonna make this as quick as I can. So when I first saw this layout, I drove down, farmer wasn't there. Next week, drive back, farmer not there. Drive back again, farmer not there. Now I'm like, okay, and I noticed grass was getting high. I'm like, okay, something's up here. Go talk to the neighbor, farmer no longer lives there, it's vacant. Send certified letter, okay, gets returned.

driving around again one day, completely wrote the place off, Done with it. Okay? Sure.

Dan Johnson (57:53.227)
Now wait, I gotta step in here a second. Did you know, did you have pictures of the buck before you got access?

Mike Stewart (58:03.322)
to cross?

Dan Johnson (58:04.223)
No, no, no. Did you have trail camera pictures of the giant buck before you got access to walk through the piece of private? No, okay. So you didn't even have a trail camera up. You didn't know about the buck. Your main goal was to get access through. Did you scout that piece of property at all through the access that you did have before you did this? Nope, okay. So step one is trying to get access through private.

Mike Stewart (58:08.4)
Hmm.

Mike Stewart (58:28.91)
Nope. Nope.

Mike Stewart (58:33.284)
Yep, I felt the property would not be worth it to even if I had to access the way that everybody else had to access because it was just you were going to drive deer.

Dan Johnson (58:33.823)
Okay, all right.

Dan Johnson (58:42.176)
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yep, absolutely. All right, so continue.

Mike Stewart (58:46.768)
Okay, certified letter sent gets returned. Wrote the place off Dan, I'm moving on, okay? I'm out driving around, and this is important to tell, so I'm gonna tell real quick. Driving around and I get this feeling over me like, you need to go back there. I'm like, what the heck? It's just weird out of nowhere. And it got stronger and stronger. So I drive to the farm.

and I start down the long driveway, the grass is super high man, the truck's still parked there, nothing's changed. I back out and I leave. And I get this overwhelming feeling again, you need to go to the house. And it's just weird, it come out of the blue, I can't explain it. So the further I drove away, the stronger it got. Man, I turned around, I drove the whole way to the house, I drive by the super high grass, I see the truck's still parked there, nothing's changed, knock on the door,

note on the door and it says if you're trying to get in touch with so and so call these numbers and I got in touch with the son of the farmer talked to him super good dude still talked to him to this day and he gave me permission to cross through explain that his dad was you know living out of state now and you know him and his brother were kind of looking after the estate so that's how that's how I even and I went back then and put some two trail cameras up

Dan Johnson (01:00:07.592)
Okay, on private, mean, was like the piece of private, was this like all ag or was it just a like a acreage? What was?

Mike Stewart (01:00:17.124)
There was ag across the field or across the road. There was ag on the portion I was crossing through and there was probably five acres of woods maybe.

Dan Johnson (01:00:29.994)
Gotcha. Okay. All right. So you get access, right? And then step one was go and put up some trail cameras. Okay. Were they cell cams?

Mike Stewart (01:00:34.052)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:00:38.5)
Yep, put two cameras up. One was a cell cam over a mock scrape.

Dan Johnson (01:00:43.221)
Okay, over a mock scrape. Okay, and what time of year was this? June, okay, all right, June. So how long did you have to wait until you got pictures of this giant?

Mike Stewart (01:00:46.724)
June.

Mike Stewart (01:00:57.176)
I got my first picture of him August 23rd. Yep.

Dan Johnson (01:01:00.669)
August 23rd. Okay. And so was that sent to your phone or was that when you went to go check one of these cameras? Okay. So it got sent to your phone August 23rd, still probably in velvet. you get a deer this big on camera. The mind explodes with possibilities, right? I've had a couple deer on trail camera throughout the course of the year and

Mike Stewart (01:01:08.942)
No, that was on my phone. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:01:15.941)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:01:22.672)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:01:30.045)
It's almost like the rest of the world does not exist. You're so like, holy shit, I am, I got an opportunity at literally a once in a lifetime type of deer, okay? Who is potentially, who's on public land, which means that other people, mean, let's not kid ourselves, other people could have pictures of him. Other people could have hunted him in the past and will be back.

Mike Stewart (01:01:33.572)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:01:43.034)
Yes.

Dan Johnson (01:01:57.203)
What, when you got that picture sent to your phone, you open it up. What is going through your mind at that point? Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:02:04.068)
Holy shit, this isn't real. That's honestly like it wasn't real like dude I'm from Pennsylvania and I'm hunting Ohio public land like Don't get me wrong. I've seen Giants in Ohio and they're there on public land but that I knew that thing was special and I mean I just I I have a group text with a couple of my best friends man and I just sent it to them and we just were like holy cow man what

And I didn't think I'd ever get them again, to be completely honest with you. I just didn't.

Dan Johnson (01:02:35.059)
Yeah, yeah, okay. So you get the picture. Does he become regular at any point throughout this story where you got a picture and you got another picture and another picture? How many pictures, how many different encounters with that trail camera did you have with this buck?

Mike Stewart (01:02:56.74)
So yeah, he did become very regular. There was two giant white oaks, and when they were producing hot and heavy, he was there every two or three days. I mean, like clockwork, on that camera.

Dan Johnson (01:03:06.964)
Okay. All right. Okay. Did you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together as far as, okay, we're getting close to season now. I need to start thinking about wind direction, access routes, know, where I possibly would set up a tree stand, that kind of stuff.

Mike Stewart (01:03:26.244)
very shortly because if you remember August 23rd I got them, August 28th I'm told I have to have surgery. So August 23rd to the 28th I'm thinking yeah this is gonna be an early season kill just like I did two years prior in Ohio. You know that to me is one of the best times to kill a big buck is that first week of the season especially if you're hunting public before it gets you know completely decimated.

Dan Johnson (01:03:33.352)
That's right.

Dan Johnson (01:03:48.284)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:03:51.884)
So once that happened, mean, I was now in, I got, hope this thing survives so I can at least have the opportunity to say I hunted a 200 inch deer was what my mind went to. But.

Dan Johnson (01:04:02.088)
Right. I'll be completely honest with you.

So I don't know anything about the type of surgery that was potentially needed for here, but it like if it's not life threatening and I had an opportunity to chase a deer of that caliber, like I'm that guy who's like, I'm going to push this surgery off. Right. Did that, did those thoughts ever cross your mind?

Mike Stewart (01:04:25.345)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, right there in the doctor's office. I debated it whether I just lie to her and tell her that I'm, you I don't know. I thought about it.

Dan Johnson (01:04:38.61)
Yeah, that that's that tells you how sick we are for deer, right? Like I'm going to put off my own health in order to go chase a giant buck. Right. Like that. You say that stuff to to somebody. It's like, well, I'm hurt, but I'm not hurt enough. You know what I mean? That's that's crazy. OK, so when does Ohio season open?

Mike Stewart (01:04:43.044)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:04:48.046)
Yeah, yeah

Mike Stewart (01:04:58.864)
I'm not dead yet, yeah. I know.

Mike Stewart (01:05:06.496)
It was, I believe, September 28th this past year.

Dan Johnson (01:05:08.948)
Okay, so you had roughly an entire month to wait before you could even do anything. All right?

Mike Stewart (01:05:14.736)
Yeah, I didn't get released until October 21st.

Dan Johnson (01:05:18.066)
October 21st, okay? And when you mean released, you mean the doctor did not recommend certain types of physical activity.

Mike Stewart (01:05:28.868)
Yeah, anything over 10 pounds or any like hiking, extreme hiking or anything like that, yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:05:32.743)
Gotcha. Did you break those rules over the course of that time frame? Of course.

Mike Stewart (01:05:37.591)
Yeah. Of course. I had a 200-inch deer on camera, man, and then when I lost him, I went scouting for him to find him again. So, yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:05:46.695)
Yeah, okay. So that's a great point there, all right? So you had this time where you didn't know what was gonna happen. Trail cameras are consistently showing him throughout the month of August. Was this even into September after Velvet Shed? And then you said you lost him. What happened when you lost him?

Mike Stewart (01:06:07.896)
So, and this is where like I put the pieces to the puzzle early on this steer where when he started showing up regularly, I happened to notice those two oak trees I told you about and they were absolutely loaded those white oaks. And I had a feeling his direction, he was only there for those white oaks. And when those white oaks were, when he disappeared, I went back to move my camera and those white oaks were, there was not a white oak there. So I was like, okay, he only came for those white oaks and he's already gone.

So then I decided, again, I wasn't allowed to be doing a lot of this, but I was like, well, I got to find him to get ready. And I jumped across the road scouting because there was only a small amount of room I had to work with on the public back there. I didn't ask permission to be on a private at that point. So I just figured I'd try to stay on public. So I found another Oak Ridge across and it was producing, but not crazy.

No sign of him. So I'm like, crap, you what am I gonna do? So I'm like standing, and this is another interesting thing that happened. I'm like looking at my onyx on my way out. I'm like, okay, maybe I'll head to this ridge next. Maybe he went over there. And as I went to take a step, I looked down and I'm standing on like 200 acorns. Just like, I didn't even notice them.

So was like, wow, okay, well, I'll just throw a camera up. Next morning, there he was. I made him all scraped too. That was another thing with the steer. Every time I put a camera and made him all scraped, he'd show up once and then I'd lose him, but I knew he was in the area.

Dan Johnson (01:07:44.765)
So he came in to investigate the mock scrape. And I'm telling you right now, there's something about that. Because whenever I put out a fresh mock scrape, it may not produce consistent results. But within the first week, I'm getting bucks on that. They're coming to investigate it. They come and smell. They may not scrape it. They may not rub against it. But they are coming in, in front of the trail camera.

Mike Stewart (01:07:47.301)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:08:13.54)
And really, really, that's all from a strategy standpoint that a guy needs. One picture, he's here, he's somewhere, now it's time for boots on the ground. Yeah, okay.

Mike Stewart (01:08:22.756)
Yep. And to your point, Dan, I would do that two more times. And every time I made a fresh mock scrape with some scent, he'd show up.

Dan Johnson (01:08:31.452)
He'd show up, okay. Now, knowing that he had this pattern about him, were you debating using a mock scrape in like run and gun type scenarios? Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:08:43.588)
Yeah, that's exactly what I did when I got released. When I was able to like start shooting and hunt again, that was exactly the tactic I used thinking that's my best shot at this deer. Cause like you, to your point, they may not stick around on those muck scrapes, but I feel like if they hit them, it's in their core area enough that they came to investigate it. So you're in the game with them.

Dan Johnson (01:09:04.634)
Mm-hmm, right, right. Okay, you got the access. You're gaining knowledge of this deer's core area based off of the trail cam pictures, based off of the mock scrapes. You lose him and then you find him. You lose him and then you find him. You said you did that two more, the mock scrape thing two more times and then I take it this, as far as the timeline here, this leads up into the time that you get released, right? Okay.

Did you instantly start hunting this deer?

Mike Stewart (01:09:37.71)
No, I got released on the 21st and I was only going to wait for weather. I needed some type of weather front for him.

Dan Johnson (01:09:38.373)
Okay.

Dan Johnson (01:09:43.538)
Okay. Okay. Was he day lighting on these cameras or was he still nocturnal?

Mike Stewart (01:09:51.534)
No, he was nocturnal, which is why I was waiting for a weather system.

Dan Johnson (01:09:54.962)
Okay, all right. How long until you got that first weather system to come through? Four days. And so now we're talking, what's the date here?

Mike Stewart (01:09:59.44)
Four days. think it's like the 25th, 24th, something like that.

Dan Johnson (01:10:05.583)
Okay, 25th. How long from the 25th to the last time you got a trail camera picture of him, what's that time frame? A week, okay, roughly seven days. So you got the trail camera pic, you waited for the weather, seven days. A lot can happen in seven days. Guy can shoot him, they can completely get bumped, they can...

Mike Stewart (01:10:15.28)
It was about a week. Yep. Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:10:26.693)
yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:10:32.058)
you know, start chasing does and go a completely direction, different direction. You go, what was your game plan on that first hunt going in?

Mike Stewart (01:10:42.192)
So I was going to that ridge, it was gonna be a morning based hunt and it was loaded with acorns. So I figured that he was probably up there eating in the morning and bedding close by. Cause it was absolutely loaded with acorns. So I actually drove four hours from my house. I left like 2 a.m. drove to Ohio that morning. And this is actually kind of an important part of story too. It was...

one of the more epic failure hunts I've had. yeah, I was so excited. I mean, you can imagine I was like a penned up dog for six weeks. I'm getting released. I got a cold front. It just quit raining. or no, it didn't. I'm sorry. It did not rain, but it was like cold front coming in. Anyways, I get up and I start walking out the ridge, Dan. And it was like instant. Like you just threw a bag of potato chips on the ground and said, you got to walk across that the whole way out. It was just so crunchy and so loud.

Dan Johnson (01:11:20.356)
Yep. Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:11:40.578)
And the minute I got up on the top of the ridge, deer started taking off running. Every step they're blowing. I mean, in Ohio, it doesn't have a huge deer density. It's not nothing like Pennsylvania, but the amount of deer up there was still to this day blows my mind. They were just up there feeding. It was just like an ag field to them up there. So I blew deer the whole way. I get in my stand. The first hanging hunt of the year, as you know, it is just you're rusty. It's you're in the dark.

Dan Johnson (01:11:59.194)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (01:12:09.52)
You're in a tree that I didn't have picked out. It was loud. And I got up there, man, and I was just so disgusted. I was just, I totally ruined that hunt. Fast forward a few hours, 9 a.m., I hear chasing out in front of me, and I start shaking like a little girl. Like, I mean, I'm uncontrollably shaking and can't see.

Dan Johnson (01:12:31.14)
And you don't even know what's going on yet. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:12:34.984)
And ends up, that goes on for about 20 minutes back and forth. can't see into the thicket. And 20 minutes later, a little forky comes out. And then like a spike comes by. you know, all that was for nothing. was, so.

Dan Johnson (01:12:48.112)
Right, right. I was chasing a absolute giant and I'm talking about, I'm guessing he probably would have been in the two twenties in about 19, or excuse me, in about 2018, 19 timeframe. I haven't posted a lot of pictures of this buck. He's just this freak, non-typical, just points everywhere, giant.

giant buck, tons of mass. Anyway, I went in on a perfect wind for this buck. I had trail camera pictures the morning before I went to go. This is before I had cell cams. had trail camera pictures before the. That afternoon or that late morning, I got out of a tree. went and checked a specific trail camera and I saw him going into this piece of property. And I went in there that night with a perfect wind. I was set up.

and I started hearing crunch, crunch, crunch. And I'm like, this is him, 220, right at me, right down. And it was like a squirrel or something. I don't even know if I saw many deer that night, but my heart, I just, in my head, I'm like, this is him, this is him. I've done everything right. And it was just like crunch, crunch, crunch.

Mike Stewart (01:13:55.856)
You

Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:14:08.496)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Freaking out, man.

Dan Johnson (01:14:09.167)
it was a raccoon or a squirrel or something. was like, like having cardiac arrest in the tree for a raccoon, right? So yeah, freaking out. All right. And so those deer run by, what was the rest of that evening like? that day like?

Mike Stewart (01:14:25.168)
So nothing else that morning left. I did find his rub and that was a big key. I knew he was still on that ridge. So I leave that ridge that morning and I check a camera that I had right along the road. I mean, I'm talking, you could almost see it from the road. I had a feeling he might be crossing ridges and crossing that road there. And I just checked it and my dreams are crushed because he crossed.

Dan Johnson (01:14:31.906)
Okay.

Mike Stewart (01:14:51.68)
onto that ridge I was on at 4 35 in the morning that morning. He made that cross.

Dan Johnson (01:14:55.437)
Okay, so potentially he was one of the deer that blew out of there when you started coming in.

Mike Stewart (01:15:00.814)
Yeah, I believe he was there because I went in at six, he crossed at four-third and if he ate acorns for any amount of time, he was one of the deer I blew out.

Dan Johnson (01:15:10.073)
That's gotta be a big gut drop.

Mike Stewart (01:15:11.728)
Oh, I could have threw up right there. I almost just, I almost just went home. I was committed to two days, but I just, I was like, well, I just ruined this. But I decided to give it a go that night. Still good conditions. Um, but that night was the same. It was a nightmare. Um, right at last light or right at like 15, 20 minutes ago, my thermals dropped down the hill. I was on right to the way the deer were coming.

They started blowing just a blowing parade and when I turned to look at what was blowing You know just to make sure it wasn't a buck there was deer to my east I didn't see and not blowing so I had like two different herds of deer blowing at me I mean total disaster Total disaster Yep

Dan Johnson (01:15:54.179)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so they caught your scent, right? Yeah. Okay. Now here's one thing that I know about, about mature animals. Okay. Even does mature white tails, even does a dough group with a big, like a mature dough will blow at you. She will.

give you, like she will give an area a second chance. But if you get busted by them again, they maybe move down further or they relocate to a different piece of the property or a different farm altogether, whatever the case is. Big bucks may do the same thing, but my experience is that once you might be able to get away with it, twice you may not ever see them again. Okay?

Mike Stewart (01:16:49.712)
Yeah. Yep.

Dan Johnson (01:16:51.304)
And did you start getting, was there any period of time where he just disappeared through all this October, November timeframe?

Mike Stewart (01:16:59.352)
Yeah, so good question because I think that was a Thursday or Friday that I hunted and when I went home, I left my cameras up and I had cell cams on that ridge. He didn't come that night obviously, but the next day three hunters came out that ridge and they went in and out of there like three times that day. They did again on Sunday and from that moment on that deer never

If he set foot on that, he looted all my cameras. I never saw another sign of him. I never got another picture of him over there. It was almost like he tolerated. And this was something else I learned about this deer is that when I would scout for him and I'd make the mock scrapes and stuff like you and I talked about, I would get pictures of them. When I would, when I would sneak out scouting, it seems like I never blew him. never booted him out of an area. But when those hunters went in that day, three of them,

It was like you flipped a switch, game over. I don't know that that deer ever went back on that ridge after that, after they went in there and blew him out. And from that time on, you're getting into the traditional rut hunters. It was just craziness in there. I could never go back in there again. They stole my card.

Dan Johnson (01:18:13.07)
Okay, so I do have to ask a devil's advocate type question, right? So this buck has been potentially busted by you two times, okay? Now, we can't sit here and have all of the blame on these other hunters that came through, right? I mean, because, okay, so it's not your pressure that was the problem, it was their pressure that was the problem, right? Love it.

Mike Stewart (01:18:16.826)
Sure.

Mike Stewart (01:18:22.096)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:18:30.52)
I would like to be right here.

No! Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Dan Johnson (01:18:42.914)
But let's just combine all the pressure. He ghosted. Okay, when was the next time you got a picture of him?

Mike Stewart (01:18:53.026)
I wouldn't get a pic, well someone started tampering with my cellcams, of course, shutting them off, taking my cards, so all that nonsense started, which I know you've had experience with that. And the worst part about it was they got pictures of them off the one card, so that's what I was most pissed about. I wouldn't get another picture of him until the day we showed up for our retcation, that little stupid camera I put on the road I told you about, the road crossing.

Dan Johnson (01:19:01.864)
Jesus.

Dan Johnson (01:19:19.614)
Mm-hmm, right.

Mike Stewart (01:19:21.786)
was the only camera he was on and he was on that morning at like 1 a.m. So I knew when he was alive.

Dan Johnson (01:19:28.862)
Okay, going into this the ridge where all the disaster happened. No.

Mike Stewart (01:19:32.822)
Now he was walking off of the disaster ridge, coming back for it.

Dan Johnson (01:19:36.424)
off of the disaster edge going into a different piece of public.

Mike Stewart (01:19:42.436)
back towards where I first got him at. Yep.

Dan Johnson (01:19:44.818)
Okay, okay. All right. So this piece of public is split by a road then. Okay, all right. There's a road that runs through it. Okay, now I gotcha. And are you still using access through the piece of private to hunt this buck at this point? Okay, all right. So you do have a shortcut above all these other hunters that are there. Correct. Okay. All right. So rutcation starts one in the morning, whatever you get a picture of this.

Mike Stewart (01:19:49.967)
Yes.

Mike Stewart (01:20:01.134)
Yes.

Mike Stewart (01:20:06.17)
Correct, I do.

Dan Johnson (01:20:14.24)
this buck, you got him again, right? And so now what were the next moves that were made once you got this buck on camera again?

Mike Stewart (01:20:23.94)
Yep. So one thing to on my way home from that first trip, I decided that I had ruined this deer. He had disappeared from camera that I had like three other bucks that I would have shot, you know, probably one 30 or better up to 150. They're big bucks, nice bucks for Ohio or public land. And I was going to shoot any of them if they can buy. wasn't just going to hold out for this deer. I was pretty sure he was, he was going to be ghost mode and I wasn't probably going to see him where I could hunt him realistically.

Dan Johnson (01:20:52.96)
Yep. Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:20:54.608)
So that was a change that I did make too. So I get there, I check my cameras, he's alive. I had a couple other properties I was hunting to in case he got killed or something. So I checked all those day one. Day two, I did my first hunt for him, being he was alive on a property with a good access and he did not, nothing showed, I think a couple of does and a couple of small bucks or something. Then,

Dan Johnson (01:20:57.868)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (01:21:24.496)
So the farmer died, okay, and the the son was coming to the farm the next day. Okay, and this is where things start taking a twist and things that the reason I kind of named this story the Lord's Gift in the Woods because this is too much divine intervention happens to for this to all be me, right? So he wants to meet up. So I don't hunt the next morning. I go and I meet with him.

Dan Johnson (01:21:28.716)
Okay.

Mike Stewart (01:21:53.412)
and his family and talk just for a few minutes. I didn't even want to go because I felt awful about the circumstances. But we go, I talk to him and he's like, hey, you you got some things to do, great to meet you. And I wasn't even going to hunt the farm that day because I didn't know how long they were going to be there. As I'm walking back, as I'm getting ready to leave, he just looks up at me. He's like, hey, Mike, he goes, just hunt anywhere in the farm that you want if you're up to it. I was like, are you sure? He's like, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Hunt a form if you want to.

Dan Johnson (01:22:24.629)
And you're the only person that now has access to hunt this farm.

Mike Stewart (01:22:29.68)
There was two other people he told me I might run into. One, which was a crazy person, he said, watch out for that one. The other guy might question me, just call him. And I'd never asked for permission before. I was just happy. And I certainly wasn't gonna ask under those circumstances, So I was like, okay. So go back, I call my buddy Jeremy and I'm like, oh my God, you're not gonna believe what happened, you know? And I had a feeling.

From my pressure and all the other pressure, this buck was definitely pushed back on the private. Now, the gig was up. And I felt where I now had access to hunt, I knew it was probably at least close enough to work with this deer again.

Dan Johnson (01:23:15.723)
Okay, all right.

Dan Johnson (01:23:19.839)
This is crazy. the reason you have this this connection to the farm now, it's almost like because a lot of times the guy dies, they kick everybody off and then they sell. Right. That's there's a lot of that going on. So now he dies. He he wanted he wants to talk to you. And what was the conversation like just.

Mike Stewart (01:23:34.682)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:23:47.6)
Let me preface that. So he doesn't live locally there. So we've been trying to meet up like when he would come into town, but the weekends I'm not there. I worked there during the week. So we didn't just never were able to meet up. He was making that unplanned trip and said, Hey, if you're going to be around in the morning, I'll be there to get some things before I head out of town. So that's why he wanted to meet up while I was, while he knew I was there hunting. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:24:10.857)
I gotcha, okay. All right, so you took the morning off even though you had a picture of him, but that led to getting access to more ground. How many more acres of private now do you have access to?

Mike Stewart (01:24:24.689)
probably like 60 but realistically it hunted pretty small. Like maybe 10 acres of woods it was worthwhile to me.

Dan Johnson (01:24:31.583)
Gotcha.

Dan Johnson (01:24:35.595)
Okay, so you get access to more core area of this buck, basically. Did you run in or ever see, leading up to this point, any of the other hunters on that piece of property? No, did you ever? No, okay.

Mike Stewart (01:24:49.582)
No, never. was a... No, I never did. I saw a blind that was like totally demolished and I asked who's that was and he said it was the other guy that hunted it in the past and he might be back but it was never moved, so...

Dan Johnson (01:25:05.673)
So nobody really hunted it. Okay, all right, cool. All right, now you got some things to work with. Additional, did you bring cameras in?

Mike Stewart (01:25:13.049)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (01:25:16.942)
No, so that night I had, I had an east, it was a weird east wind, which was good. I needed it, but it wasn't gonna be good for the evening, how the deer come out. My wind was gonna be blowing basically into their bedding area. What I felt was their bedding area before they got to the field, so I didn't even hunt it. I did an observation set across the road.

And I mean the line of traffic was going. I also, don't know if I didn't tell this part, but like I did observation drive-bys after I found that deer and there was a line of traffic there in the evenings looking for that deer. So I knew he was very well known.

Dan Johnson (01:25:53.693)
So people started to recognize this deer. Okay.

Mike Stewart (01:25:58.051)
yeah, he had been watched all summer I think in those fields.

Dan Johnson (01:26:01.385)
Okay, all right. So now you're understanding that this now it's almost like it's becoming a fragile situation, right? Okay, all right. So you get you get access to this farm. What were your first steps?

Mike Stewart (01:26:10.872)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:26:15.364)
Yep. So next morning, got the east wind, I go in, I sneak in at daylight, because I didn't want to walk in there in the dark, and you know, never been in there before. Go in, I see fresh scrapes immediately, and I climb a tree relatively early. was going to kind of sneak around and find a good spot, but I was like, you know what, this looks good. Up a tree, two small bucks that morning, but I had very little shooting lanes. I was like, ehh.

So, climbed down, I scoured around, and I quickly realized, like, I was like in the middle of like, I swear to you, like 30 rubs. Some fresh, some old, some from early season, but there's just rubs everywhere. Big, small. I was like, this is the spot to be. So I went right back, put my stand up, and I just left it there. Because I wasn't going to hunt that night again. There.

Dan Johnson (01:27:11.005)
Yeah. Okay. So you went in, mid morning, hunted for a while and you left your stand right where it was at, backed out, didn't hunt that night. Why didn't you hunt that night?

Mike Stewart (01:27:20.452)
Yep. Yep. Nope. I did another observation set.

Dan Johnson (01:27:27.795)
Okay, and what did you observe that night?

Mike Stewart (01:27:30.096)
coming out right where I was going in at. Yeah, no bucks again.

Dan Johnson (01:27:32.745)
Okay, all right. No bucks again. But that's a good sign, right? What day is this?

Mike Stewart (01:27:37.007)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:27:40.632)
I believe this was November, this was November 2nd.

Dan Johnson (01:27:44.017)
November 2nd, okay. So we're still coming out of this, like we're in this pre-rut timeframe, right? And so you're seeing big dough groups, which means that it's not necessarily on and popping quite yet. All right, what about November 3rd, 4th, 5th, what's the deal?

Mike Stewart (01:27:51.236)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:27:57.893)
Yep.

Mike Stewart (01:28:01.636)
So November 3rd is the day it happened. I go in that morning and I, yep, in the dark this time to that stand.

Dan Johnson (01:28:03.977)
Okay. In the dark, to that stand. Is your access through a field, by the way? Were you nervous that you were gonna bump deer off this field going in? Okay, continue.

Mike Stewart (01:28:12.974)
Yes.

Mike Stewart (01:28:17.348)
Yes. Yep. But I followed this little hedgerow in and snuck in, got in there well before daylight, got set up, broke daylight. I heard squirrels behind me, looked back. Okay. And I think it was like seven, 10-ish. I heard heavy footsteps coming around the ridge and...

I just immediately stood up because I had a feeling it could be a good buck coming. I didn't even wait to see the antlers. I stood up and then the deer stopped and it like put its head down and scratched its neck with its back leg and when it put its head down it was really thick and there's a lot of saplings. I could just see like antler, the right side of his antler.

Not enough to tell which deer it was. I could tell it was a mature deer. So I immediately got in position. I had a 40 yard lane that he was gonna walk into. And when he got there, at that time, I was pretty sure who he was, but I don't know how I am. Like once I make up my mind, I quit looking at the antlers. I just go into kill mode because I don't wanna get all jacked up. And there was a freaking limb going right across his vitals. I debated, hey.

Dan Johnson (01:29:22.502)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (01:29:30.597)
How far is he at this point? Okay.

Mike Stewart (01:29:32.016)
40 yards. I debated taking a shot, thinking maybe my air would loop over and just didn't feel good. And as soon as he crossed through, I had the most instant regret I ever had. I'm like, I hope you don't regret that the rest of your life. Keeps coming, no idea I'm there. Gets to 32 yards and I draw back and as I'm drawing back, I'm like right on the lip of a ridge.

and he just starts dropping over like he's just gonna leave and he like is quartering kind of away leaving downhill takes a couple more steps and I'm like at this point I'm full drawn he's just stops and I'm like I'm trying to like find a hole through all those saplings and finally I like was I had to like come off my peep to figure out what I was gonna do and I got on executed the shot I cleared through the lane I thought it was

Dan Johnson (01:30:27.047)
Could you see his legs?

Mike Stewart (01:30:30.256)
No, it's funny you asked that. My buddy asked me that too. I could not. It wasn't over, but his legs were behind a tree and he was like angled down. I don't know if that makes sense.

Dan Johnson (01:30:34.705)
So he was over the hill.

Dan Johnson (01:30:42.031)
Okay, all right. Yeah, so was this a pretty hard quartering away shot?

Mike Stewart (01:30:47.288)
It was quartering away. It wasn't as hard as you would think though. Yeah, but it was quartering away.

Dan Johnson (01:30:53.753)
Okay, executed the shot. How did the deer react?

Mike Stewart (01:30:58.704)
So he bounded down over the hill and I lost sight immediately. He runs, I could hear him running. And then about five seconds later, I heard him stop. I heard nothing for about five or seven seconds. And I heard all kinds of crashing and thrashing. And to me, he was dead right there. It was over.

Dan Johnson (01:31:02.727)
Immediately.

Dan Johnson (01:31:17.479)
Okay, yeah. And like, I've been there dude, but I've been on the bad end of a 200 incher, right? What I mean by that is, I hit him, he instantly disappeared, I came apart, and I never found this buck. I never found him, okay? He was actually killed by the neighbor the next year. So I've been on the bad side of this.

Mike Stewart (01:31:25.517)
You

Mike Stewart (01:31:39.12)
Mmm.

Mike Stewart (01:31:43.696)
Hmm

Dan Johnson (01:31:47.089)
caliber of deer. The second he disappears, you listen, you hear chaos, you think he's dead. Like what else starts going through your mind at this point?

Mike Stewart (01:31:57.744)
I started shaking like my body was. didn't know I was capable of. I dry heaved like I couldn't believe it. Right? Like, yeah, full disclosure, man. Totally lost control of it. And I didn't even know at that time it was 100 % him. I thought it was because I snuck a peek, but it was in some thick shit, man. And I couldn't tell. This is where I really made a bunch of mistakes. Um, call my buddy.

Dan Johnson (01:32:05.894)
UUGH!

Dan Johnson (01:32:12.228)
Yeah, okay.

Dan Johnson (01:32:21.369)
Okay, all right.

Mike Stewart (01:32:24.816)
home run, he's dead. Cause every time I've heard that crash and they're meet me here. He comes to the farm, go in, pick up the arrow and immediately Dan, I'm like, that's dark blood. And I even said to him, I was like, dude, does this look dark to you? He's like, yeah, but it's, it's good, man. It's good. Cause I told him I heard it crash. So he, in his mind, it was dead.

Dan Johnson (01:32:47.44)
Dark blood for the initiated means liver, right? Like liver, meat, tissue, and then when you get into the lungs and heart, we're talking pinker, more vibrant reds, things like that. Now, I've had my fair share of liver shots, and liver shots can be very, very good hits, okay? At impact, was there a lot of blood?

Mike Stewart (01:33:15.683)
impact.

Dan Johnson (01:33:16.42)
Not an impact, okay. How far down this blood trail until you started seeing decent blood?

Mike Stewart (01:33:23.216)
Probably about 30, 40 yards, probably about 40 yards.

Dan Johnson (01:33:26.662)
Okay, all right. And talk to us about the blood trail then. What's the story?

Mike Stewart (01:33:31.45)
So we started, was a steep hill. We get down, we got on walking, just walking. And then we came to the crash site and he wasn't there. And you could tell he was like tangled up in some stuff. it was, that's when I started to like, I like kind of panicked and my buddy.

was kind of with me like video and in case this was the 200 inch buck, you know, he's like videoing this whole thing for us. And I look back and like, man, I don't, I don't know. And he's like, you got to remember, you know, we're on a steep hill, so you feel like you're going for it, but this deer that's a couple bounds. Okay. So we continued on and just steady blood, just walking blood. And then we go for probably a hundred yards. And then I heard him say, we need to stop. And I'm like, looking back, I'm like, what do mean we need to stop? And he's like,

There was a bed with a bunch of blood in it and we had just jumped this deer. So... No.

Dan Johnson (01:34:24.624)
Did you hear yourself jump him? Okay. Now I do have to ask this question. I should have asked it earlier. How long before the time that you let the arrow go to the time that you started up on this blood trail?

Mike Stewart (01:34:31.354)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (01:34:42.16)
30 to 45 minutes tops.

Dan Johnson (01:34:44.838)
So your buddy was already in the area? Okay, all right. All right, go ahead and continue.

Mike Stewart (01:34:50.208)
so we, we, we jumped them and I sat down and was like instantly sick to my stomach. but then we realized we had a new problem. The deer, we were at a property line now. We were at the edge of the, the private that I had permission to be on snuck up to the edge of that. The crick we were on to make sure he wasn't laying in there that I could get an arrow at him. He was not.

So now we have to back out and get permission from the other. We have like two sets of, I'm sorry, two sets of property owners. The one I was pretty certain he went on, but so we had to back out.

Dan Johnson (01:35:33.22)
So in Iowa I can follow a deer onto private property. I can't bring my weapon with me. I can follow blood without getting permission. It's like I have the right to recover the animal that I shot. All right. So I don't need permission. South Dakota where I go hunting, I cannot follow it. I need permission from the landowners. What was the law in Ohio? Have to have permission. Okay. All right. So that obviously complicates things.

Mike Stewart (01:35:41.748)
Mmm.

Mike Stewart (01:35:48.271)
Mmm.

Mike Stewart (01:35:57.688)
You have to have permission to go on. Yeah.

Yep.

Dan Johnson (01:36:02.564)
Was there blood all the way up to him crossing a fence or into the next property? Okay. Could you see blood on the other side of the fence going away?

Mike Stewart (01:36:09.348)
Yes.

Mike Stewart (01:36:14.352)
No, not well, I don't recall I just remember taking it to the the creek ditch and there was like a little creek that broke up and I remember seeing it go into that creek and it's like shit I could see across and there was no deer so So we head back I get on get on onyx get the property owner found the address I go and We like pull in now mind you I'm in camo

Dan Johnson (01:36:30.243)
What's the next steps?

Mike Stewart (01:36:43.81)
face paint on, right, I'm in kill mode and I go to this porch and I'm probably very distress looking, I'm knocking on a door and I hear my buddy say, there's someone in the house and I think this guy was just so freaked out by my presence that he wouldn't answer the door. So my buddy's like yelling at the door, he's like, go to the back door, he's in the back room just standing there. So I go to the back door and he opens it and I could tell he was like, what the heck is going on here?

So I just like stood back, I explained my situation. was like, I know that my buck went on your ground. had proof. I had like a tracker on Onyx I tried to show him. And he like him haunt around and he's like, yeah, I'll let you go this time. Kind of a deal, not super nice or friendly. And as I was walking away, you know, I thanked him and stuff. And he's like, just so you know, we don't let anybody on our ground. So this is a, this is a very unique situation. So don't take advantage of it.

Dan Johnson (01:37:38.596)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:37:40.772)
Okay. So at that point, I was consulting with my neighbor, Matt, who is a dog tracker. He has a dog and he sent him pictures and everything. And he's like, dude, you got a dead deer, but it's a liver hit and you might've hit God's like dog or drone. And I had told, he knew that it was this buck and he's like dog or drone only. You're not, you're no longer tracking a steer. Okay. Which he was right. It was right thing to do.

especially with private lines and stuff I was messing with, like, there was no sense of dicking with this anymore, I already had. So, called around, there was a drone able to come. I scheduled him for that night, and he came, which was a super cool experience. I don't know if you've ever dealt with that at all, with drone recovery. But yeah, we found it, and...

Like so when you use a drone, this is another super neat part of the story. Like they give you, they give you like actual coordinates of where the deer is laying at. So it was on the piece that I had permission to go recover on. So we drive around, mind you, it's like midnight now. We drive around to the other access point of the other property and those coordinates took me to a church parking lot. So after this whole journey, man,

this journey ends at a freaking church parking lot. Like what's the irony of that?

Dan Johnson (01:39:09.004)
Right, this hap- kind of, merging the two parts of this conversation that we've had, does this hunt and trip, rutcation happen if you did not solve the issues with your wife?

Mike Stewart (01:39:26.222)
Nope. No way.

Dan Johnson (01:39:29.538)
So there's the tie in here, right? The home life has to be secure for you to put in the energy and effort that you did going into the, chasing this buck pretty much. Okay. All right. So you park in this church parking lot and then you cross the fence to get into, look at this buck.

Mike Stewart (01:39:40.922)
Yeah, absolutely,

Mike Stewart (01:39:52.664)
Yeah, so there was there was a sign up that said no trespassing dawn to dusk and Being the caliber deer, you know, I mean maybe in my youth I would have just jumped the fence and I got the deer out. I called a game warden No answers midnight. I called the cops They were like look they were super cool. They're like man Look, I get it if if you want it if you're going if you're telling me you're going If someone calls on you, I'll just tell me you're getting a deer, but I can't

I can't tell you to go, you're allowed to go. So I decided to wait till morning at dawn and we went in and recovered it at that time and got it out so we could be everything on the up the up as possible.

Dan Johnson (01:40:33.888)
Yeah, and that's the right thing to do, right? The right thing to do. Did in your, in your mind, did you ever have to worry? Were you thinking like, Jesus, like the coyotes could get to this thing. Like it's not even going to be there when I get there. Like, so you go in the next morning, you jump the fence, you're going right to where the drone tells you to go. When you start to get close to this thing,

Mike Stewart (01:40:35.95)
It is, yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:40:43.781)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:41:00.16)
what's going through your mind when you initially see it, maybe you're 40, 50 yards away, however many yards away, and you start to realize the scale of this thing that just happened.

Mike Stewart (01:41:12.88)
I mean, I was just overcome like with so much motion. Like my buddy saw it first and he was like, he just like yelled out, my God, you shot a 200 inch deer. Like, cause he knew which deer it was. I didn't, couldn't it. It's 202. So I wouldn't say it's a no doubter, but they, they're pretty good at judging deer. I'm not on the hoof like that. But yeah, he just blurted it out and, and we,

Dan Johnson (01:41:25.792)
Yeah. So it's a no doubt or 200 incher at this point. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:41:42.512)
I just, think I probably got a little emotional. I prayed, you know, I thank God because it was obviously him that took me to that. There's too many things that happened along the journey for it to be all me. And I'm not going to pretend it was. So yeah, I did that and took some pictures, man. Probably should have taken more, but I was just so excited to get my hands on them and get them back home. And you know what I mean? And join with friends and family that we just got them out of there.

Dan Johnson (01:41:53.996)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:42:12.12)
I had, like I said, I was still recovering from hernia surgery. I was not able to pull that deer. That first tug on those antlers, like I felt some shit going on down in my incision. And my buddy noticed that. So he was like, you just go get the truck. I'll drag this thing uphill. And he did, man. I'm thankful for that. So that's what friends are for, right?

Dan Johnson (01:42:21.772)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (01:42:31.586)
Crazy. Yeah, absolutely. All right, now leading up to this point.

What was the biggest buck you've ever killed?

Mike Stewart (01:42:39.504)
133 inches. Yep.

Dan Johnson (01:42:40.961)
133 inches. All right. This is a giant jump, right? And so when, when you look at the rarity of all of this, like what, what kind of thoughts go into your head when like, is this bucket the taxidermist right now?

Mike Stewart (01:42:46.788)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:42:59.416)
I have them right here.

Dan Johnson (01:43:01.63)
Okay, so you got the skull cap? Yeah, that's a freak of nature. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell everybody, if you wanna see this guy, hold, know, Mike, hold this antler up. Like, my God, is that a, hey, wait a second, hold that right there. That's like a double, that's a double brow time, right? That is, it's like it's broken and it almost looks like it was broken and then glued together.

Mike Stewart (01:43:15.994)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:43:22.158)
Yes. Well, yeah, it's like a unique.

Mike Stewart (01:43:31.076)
Yeah, it's like a second pedicle. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (01:43:33.012)
pedicle type looking thing. Holy cow. And then there's just junk all over the place. Holy cow.

Mike Stewart (01:43:39.054)
Yeah, matching junk too, which is super cool.

Dan Johnson (01:43:42.304)
Mass. Man, that's ridiculous. Congratulations, ma'am. And so like now you're in the 200 inch club, right? Are you gonna try to make a TV show now?

Mike Stewart (01:43:43.546)
Yeah. Thank you very much.

Mike Stewart (01:43:51.929)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:43:55.504)
No, man. No, I'm just happy to be able to hunt these things.

Dan Johnson (01:44:01.03)
Absolutely, Well, congratulations. And it just sounds like kind of this this whole thing, right? As far as you get in order for you to enjoy the the fun moments of your life, you kind of have to have the rest of your life in order to really experience, you know, things on a guilt free type type level. Is there any other type of information or thoughts or?

that you want to share with the listeners at this point.

Mike Stewart (01:44:35.152)
There's just one last thing, man. Through this journey with this book, I felt at the end of it that I was given the name of the story that I wrote called The Lord's Gift in the Woods. And I felt like I was given that to share it with outdoorsmen specifically, okay? Which is why I'm here. Otherwise, you never would have known about this deer, Dan. Nobody would have. I'm not a very voiceless person. So I believe this deer was given to me as a gift by the Lord.

Dan Johnson (01:44:51.904)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Stewart (01:45:05.168)
but to share with outdoorsmen that might be struggling with something, anything, that the Lord's the way, man. Jesus Christ is your savior, so whether you believe it now or not, it is true.

Dan Johnson (01:45:14.196)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, insightful there, you know, and so maybe this helps somebody. Maybe, yeah, maybe someone hears about this. They're struggling with their marriage. Maybe they're struggling with addiction or they're having low thoughts about themselves that, you know, there's a potential answer for you in the Lord. So I don't I don't necessarily dive in to the the religious and political side of things on this on this podcast.

Mike Stewart (01:45:25.712)
Hopefully.

Mike Stewart (01:45:39.28)
Absolutely.

Dan Johnson (01:45:48.724)
but I am about helping people. so when you have someone who has a story to tell where they felt like they were guided to become a better person some way, or form, whether that was through religion or not, or like rehab, because I've talked to a guy one time who was a severe drug addict and hunting kind of saved his, set him on the right path.

Mike Stewart (01:45:51.376)
Sure. Me too.

Mike Stewart (01:46:17.679)
Wow.

Dan Johnson (01:46:18.432)
It's pretty cool to see these different type, like all these different ways that hunting in the outdoors can, like I hate to use the word save, but really that's what it is, right? Like I've dedicated my life to the outdoors and to hunting, but what does that do? It keeps me out of other things that are negative, straight up, right? And so it's all good.

Mike Stewart (01:46:33.966)
I agree, yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:46:44.228)
Yeah, I agree.

Dan Johnson (01:46:47.687)
is what I'm getting at, right? It's like a bad day in the woods is better than, know, like, like, don't trust me. I like to, I like to hang out with some buds or like some buddies or go to a bar and have a couple beers sometimes if the opportunity presents it. But a bad day in the woods, man, is still a really good day. Right. And so, so I don't know if that's the message, that's the message. Right. And so again, man, really appreciate you. Thanks for your story. Thanks. Congratulations on a giant dude.

Mike Stewart (01:47:05.198)
Yeah.

Mike Stewart (01:47:17.136)
Thank you very much.

Dan Johnson (01:47:18.238)
I don't know if the Lord's gonna send you another one, but if he does, I need to go to your church,

Mike Stewart (01:47:25.942)
Yeah, no doubt. Thank you too, Dan. I appreciate you covering it.

Dan Johnson (01:47:31.803)
Absolutely.

Dan Johnson (01:47:36.602)
second here.

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