Three Week In-Season Update

In this podcast episode, Chris and Angelo discuss their recent experiences in the hunting season, including gear updates, climbing techniques, and personal stories from their hunts. They delve into the intricacies of saddle hunting, camera arm setups, and the importance of safety while climbing. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced during the season and reflections on their hunting strategies.

As the conversation continues, Chris and Angelo discuss their recent hunting experiences, focusing on self-filming, hunting strategies, and the importance of scent control. They share personal stories about targeting specific deer, including a notable buck named 'Road Rash.' The discussion also touches on the emotional aspects of hunting, including the pressure to succeed and the personal growth that comes from spending time in nature. The episode concludes with reflections on spirituality and the significance of gratitude in their lives.

‍

Chris (00:01.218)

What's going on guys? Thanks for joining us here today for another podcast. I'm joined with my cousin Angelo and we're gonna be giving you a little bit of an update today. We did have a guest that was gonna join us today but there were some technical difficulties. So we're just gonna kinda put together a little bit of an update video or audio podcast, whatever it is. So with that being said, Ang, how you doing today?

‍

Angelo (00:24.34)

I'm doing great. It'll be refreshing to talk about some of the things that we've been doing. Like you said, we've had a couple of guests recently in a row, and we thank them for their insights and their perspectives and their information that they were able to provide. We really are interested in hearing the perspectives and the interests and the information from our viewers too. So if you have the opportunity, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

‍

Please leave us a review. We hope that you would leave us a five star review and leave us any questions, concerns, comments, anything that you have there and we'll try to incorporate them into the show.

‍

Chris (01:00.686)

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've said this before, we want to stay relevant to you. You know, if you're taking the time to listen to us, whether it's on your way to work, on your way home from work, hanging out, doing yard work, whatever the case is, we want the information that we're sharing with you to be relevant for you. So if there's anything specific that you want to hear about, whether it be something new or something that you want more information on or more details on, just leave that in the review down below and we'll be able to start tailoring some of those episodes towards some of the stuff you're looking for.

‍

With that being said, Ange, mean, we're three weeks into the season, give or take. I think it's like three and a half, or we've had three weekends of hunting, I think we could say, right? So two and a half weeks into the season. We're going to get into the actual hunting stuff a little bit deeper into this podcast, but do you have any updates, like as far as your gear is concerned or different processes that you're going through or anything like that?

‍

Angelo (01:52.56)

No, so I think last time we were on the podcast we talked about that I had put a dough down early on. We donated that to Hunters Helping the Hungry, a great organization that my club works with and we help get some food to people who are in need. As far as gear goes, I practiced with a bunch of the stuff that I planned on using this year and that's what I've been sticking to.

‍

I did put a hang on stand up in one of my properties, the one that I'm hunting. Again, I've mentioned a couple of times, it's a township that's near where I live that's got a high deer population that we're helping them limit. And there's like a nice rut funnel that's right along this creek that it runs through the property that I could tell that they're starting to rub on, they're going up and down, they're scent checking some of the bedding areas that are along there.

‍

I have a hang on stand in one spot that I'm going to try to see if I can. I've hunted it a couple times. I won't go too far into it because we're going to talk about it today, but I've hunted it a couple times. We'll talk about what happened in those stand. But other than my gear, that's really the only thing I've changed. I've been saddle hunting now for, say, my third year and I've mostly saddle hunted since I started. But yeah, nothing's really changed. There's a couple things that I might look to change for next season, but

‍

For now, I'm just gonna keep going the way I am for this season. about you?

‍

Chris (03:19.982)

Alright, honestly, I'm still upgrading things. I'm still trying to streamline my process. We've talked in the past, I've got an issue with heights. So the whole climbing portion of the setup, tends to be, some days it's better than others, I guess you could say. But this past week, I made a big change to my sticks that I think are going to make a huge difference. Anyone who's familiar with the muddy sticks, or I forget, like the muddy climbing sticks, or there's another...

‍

Angelo (03:39.54)

Thank

‍

Chris (03:49.72)

company that has a one stick platform, same as your sticks that have the cam cleat or the cam buckle like the teeth that cinch on the ropes. I bought four of them and put them on my double sticks. Originally they were XOP sticks but I don't even know if I can officially call them that anymore. I've taken the single steps off, replaced them with doubles. I've taken the locking system off because I don't need it anymore. I've removed their button.

‍

and replaced it with the cam cleat so I guess the only thing that is factory standard on my sticks anymore is the center shaft but I'm really hoping

‍

Angelo (04:28.052)

So you're not using the XOPs to climb anymore?

‍

Chris (04:31.31)

So I'm using the XOP sticks and I'm still using the XOP button to like with the with like that Exactly to keep it. Yeah, the transport thing. So the first one I put on Like I mentioned in some of the previous episodes I have like a triple ater that I made myself is basically a rope ladder and That I'm five six my first step I literally put as high as I could reach and and clamp it to the tree my first stick between my

‍

Angelo (04:38.366)

So keep it on the back of your saddle. Top two.

‍

Chris (05:00.876)

between my ladder and the stick, by the time I get to the top, I'm probably seven feet off the ground. So with one stick, I mean, I'm making a huge difference. Then I have a single ater on my second stick. So by the time I get from the ground to the top of my second stick, I'm probably already at 10-ish feet, give or take. Some of the other stuff I've done here is I'm actually back to the saddle, baby. I sold my saddle, I don't know, two weeks ago.

‍

to help me pay for the new stand that I wanted, the XOP retrograde. And the moment I got it, I immediately regretted getting rid of my saddle, my saddle harness, that is, I should say. The retrograde is like the perfect platform, just for the record. We are not sponsored by XOP. We have no affiliation with them right now. I just tend to like their products. mean, we're trying to help that weekend warrior, the people who have limited time to hunt, limited funds to hunt. We're trying to help.

‍

those people find success a little bit easier. And XOP really has a great middle ground of price and efficiency or quality, I guess you could say. No, quality's a bad word. Their stuff is very quality. What I should say is like, their sticks aren't the lightest on the market. Their saddle might not be the most comfortable on the market, but it's great stuff. The quality is good. It works really well. And the retrograde, I am completely

‍

Completely excited about because it is small enough to use as a saddle platform But it's just big enough that I could stand on and turn around now when you and I went to that soybean field I think we talked about it in like the third episode And we practiced climbing I was good going to my strong side and going around the tree on my strong side with the saddle But the moment I had to turn away from the tree have my back to the tree and kind of turn an open space That's kind of where like my body froze

‍

this new platform I'm able to stand on completely put both feet on it turn and find that comfort so I think like this is the perfect combination of Saddle tree stand platform to literally get 360 degrees around a tree Which is the original reason I wanted to go to the saddle in the first place I wanted the ability to make those shots behind the tree, so I'm really excited about that Did you have something to comment on about that?

‍

Angelo (07:28.532)

I'm gonna go after you, Dan. I took a couple notes here.

‍

Chris (07:30.934)

Okay, my last thing and I actually have it here because we were talking about it before the podcast aired or we started recording. I am working on my camera arm. Now we're working on, I know we keep saying this in all the episodes, but we are planning on posting all of these videos and audios to YouTube. Maybe not all the videos because the quality isn't the greatest right now, but we are going to be putting these on YouTube. So once it gets there, I'm showing you the camera arm that I've somewhat made myself.

‍

Alright, this is a DIY project, but by DIY I really mean like I took pieces from old camera arms that I bought and kind of pieced them together to make my own thing. One of the things I didn't like is how unsteady the connectors were. So I cut out my own spacers out of basically like cutting board material and made them three inches so that way there's a good solid platform like for stability. And I did that on my farthest, like between my second and third arm.

‍

and first and second arm on the stick here. Excuse me. And I used that for a couple of weeks just like that. And what I started to realize was there was no way to level this thing. If you look here, I mean, this just kind of clamps to the tree and it just goes on the way it is. So you can level it like a clock, know, like left and right, like a clock, but I wasn't able to angle it up and down to get it level.

‍

So what would happen is I would get it okay when it was straight out and then when I wanted to angle my camera around to the side, gravity would take effect and pull it in. So what I actually did today was I installed this piece of aluminum on the backside of the mounting bracket with like a standoff that I have from another old camera arm and a little leveling bolt up here. So long story short, I'm working each week I'm...

‍

modifying this camera arm until I get it exactly the way I want it working exactly how I want it. And I just get personally I get a great deal of satisfaction in using stuff that I've made. I did the same thing with guitar. I taught myself how to play guitar. I taught myself how to drive a stick shift. It's just when I do it myself I just get a lot more enjoyment out of it. So what did you have to go on with that?

‍

Angelo (09:48.626)

Yeah, so one of the things you were talking about is your ater being seven feet off the ground. And one of the things that I do, mean, I'm not much taller than you. I'm five nine. I wouldn't say we have a big difference, but as far as my my my reach to being able to reach up into the tree, I think that might be a little bit more like four five, maybe six inches. I think my wingspan, if you're three inches shorter, I got three inches on each side. It's six foot wingspan or six inch greater wingspan than you would have. But

‍

So I'm able to kind of get around maybe a little bit bigger of a tree and for that reason I can do a couple different things with my setup. And for me with the Ader, what I've actually started to do was I'll put my first step and I'm not using my Ader yet. I've had the in the works that I've wanted to put even just a one step Ader maybe even on all my steps. I don't have any Aders on my steps yet.

‍

Chris (10:40.568)

Do you have them?

‍

Angelo (10:44.596)

It was something I wanted to do. ran out of time this year. It's probably going to be one of the things that's on my to-do list for next year. But what I have been doing is normally when I put my sticks on the tree, I'll just put them to where my knees are. And then when I bring my leg up 90 degrees, my foot is basically where my knee is. What I've actually been doing now though is I will, on the first step at least, put it a little bit higher and I always put my second step up from the ground. I put it as high as I can and it's usually in a good spot.

‍

What I'll do is I'll hold onto the top step, which is my second step, and with one foot I'll put it on the tree and I'll actually hoist myself up to be able to step up a little bit higher onto that first step. that the biggest? At that point, no, I'm not, but it's, mean, I'm very close to the ground at that point. So even if I was to fall, what am I falling? Four feet at the most? So I probably am gonna be okay.

‍

Chris (11:28.706)

You're wearing your safety harness, I'm assuming, right?

‍

Angelo (11:44.06)

Most of the time when I'm climbing up, it's in the daylight. Obviously if I'm hunting morning, it's different, but you know, in the morning maybe I'm getting that. I'm sorry I touched my mic and it did that thing again.

‍

Chris (11:57.735)

We'll fix it in the post editing. What was happening?

‍

Angelo (12:00.468)

trying to see if can get it to stop. There it goes, stopping now. It's making like a really crazy noise in my ear that's unbearable to even listen to. But anyway, it stopped. I gotta stop touching my microphone. Anyway, so in the dark, maybe I'm less likely to do that. For the most part, for me though, I actually just recently watched a really interesting video that I think we should do a video on ourselves or at least touch on it in a podcast. Talk about stand height and how high do you really need to be? How effective are the different heights?

‍

I would say probably the lowest I really want to be is somewhere around 15 feet. The highest I'll be is 25 feet. I think in that sweet spot you're good. Any higher than that is too high and any lower than that you're running the risk of scents accumulating on the ground and pooling if there's not enough wind and you also run the risk of being seen. Obviously we do a lot of our hunting in the mountainous terrain. I wouldn't necessarily call them mountains but it's mountainous terrain.

‍

And if you're hunting on slopes, even if you're 20 feet in the tree, you're going to be eye level to a deer that's only what 30 feet away from you or 30. Yeah. You know what mean? So like if you're, if you're straight up 20 feet leveled with you, probably 30 feet away or, know, you're going to have a deer that's, that's going to be eye level with you and that's not far. That's what I'm saying. If you're on the slope, anything below you, you're going to be extremely high, but anything above you.

‍

Chris (13:15.82)

Yeah, especially if you're hunting on that slope, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

‍

Angelo (13:24.114)

What I'm saying is even the deer above you, it's not like they're going to be farther away because of the slope, usually the steep slope of the terrain. They're probably only 30, 40 feet away from you when you're 20 feet in the tree. So they're extremely close to you and you're at their eye level. Or if they're coming from above you and they're walking down the mountain, you're in their eyesight. So anyway, that was one thing that I figured I'd touch on that I'm just doing.

‍

Nothing groundbreaking. I'm just kind of trying to get a little extra height there and then When you were talking about going around the tree, so one of the things that I had seen I actually saw a guy so my saddle platform has Yeah, when you're in the saddle and you're I would say I'm talking about when you're setting your platform up

‍

Chris (14:06.128)

you're talking about when I'm in the saddle. You're talking about like... Okay, I got you.

‍

Angelo (14:14.366)

There's this company that I saw, they have a strap. I don't know if it's built in. I'm trying to think now if I would even be able to do it with my setup. I think that I could. I think that my strap that goes around into the ratchet comes out so that I could put anything on that strap. And what he has is he has two little like plastic things with maybe a little bit of stippling on them so that you could stand on them. And he has them on the strap.

‍

Chris (14:40.73)

you're talking about the step ring. You're talking about the ring of steps. Yeah.

‍

Angelo (14:44.276)

Yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's like a ring of steps. But the way that I looked at it, it looked like he had his platform and then I don't know if they sell those individually, but if they do, I'm thinking about maybe even just getting two of those just to put on the strap. They'll always be there. And then as I'm tightening down my stand or my platform, I could just kind of maneuver those onto like maybe the 10 and two position on the tree so that I can kind of swing around.

‍

Just a thought, those are two things that I was thinking about as far as adding. And then I guess let me, since I'm going down the rabbit hole, I might as well finish. One of the other things that I've been thinking about too is one-sticking. I think I'm gonna upgrade to one-sticking for next year. I don't mind the saddle situation that I have now. I'm okay with it. It's just, I wanna take the weight off me. I'm trying to get...

‍

Chris (15:16.152)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (15:22.136)

Yeah, go on.

‍

Angelo (15:41.618)

I've been blessed so far this season. I've been hunting pretty close to the parking lots because I'm hunting this property. But I know once we get into the rifle season and once we get into New Jersey gun season, I can't hunt this property with gun. I'm going to be going a lot further into certain properties that I know where good deer are in the properties that I've hunted so far. And I just I don't think I want to carry the weight. I want to try to drop the weight as much as possible.

‍

Chris (16:09.458)

is and we've talked about this already before you and I have talked about it extensively it turns out that apparently I have some kind of degenerative disc disease in my back I don't know how serious it is apparently the doctor said it's normal at my age which deteriorating discs doesn't sound normal to me you know but with that being said I've really been trying to reduce my weight and the problem is that

‍

Since we're trying to record, we have to have the camera arm. We have to have the strap. Right. Yeah. Exactly.

‍

Angelo (16:42.612)

Well, that's part of it, right? You know what mean? That's part of it. Cause I have the added weight of the camera gear now and my sticks are not top of the line. It's space age aluminum or whatever they're using that, you know, it's really light and strong and I'm carrying four sticks in and I probably need a fifth to really be where I want to be in the tree, but I'm definitely not using that. I don't want to

‍

Chris (16:52.12)

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

‍

Chris (17:06.968)

Well, here's what I would suggest to you. You are very comfortable in a tree. I've seen you climb, I've watched you climb, we've hunted together. You are very comfortable going up, going down, no issues at all. If you're trying to reduce weight and increase how high you could get, I personally would put a triple-ader on your bottom stick and at least a double-ader on your next two or three.

‍

Angelo (17:33.78)

That's the only thing, I just don't want to get caught up with all these different ropes and gadgets. No, it's not even that. It's just I don't want to get caught up because I've already even just with now without the Aiders on there. Just with all the extra stuff that I'm using to climb and to I just feel like there's too many straps in my way already. And and what? No, I'm talking about while I'm on the tree, while I'm trying to assemble everything, right? So, you know, I mean, in transport, yeah, you got to bundle everything up and I'm sure it's not a big deal. You tie it up, whatever else.

‍

Chris (17:36.568)

They're iffy. But...

‍

Chris (17:49.24)

But the thing is, are you talking about in transport or are you talking about when you're on the tree?

‍

Angelo (18:03.294)

But when I'm trying to climb the tree, know, as I, once I step up onto that next step that I'm taking, so like if I have, if I have multiple sticks, obviously a lot of people who saddle hunt do, once I step up onto the bottom step of my next stick, I've got sag in my saddle ropes, I've got sag in my,

‍

my connecting gear and it's not until I pull myself up completely that I'm able to take the slack out. A lot of times I'll find that I'm like stepping on my the rope that I use to keep myself locked into the tree. I'm finding that a lot of those things are getting in my way. Now with the one stick one of the things that they're using is they're using a safety rope that is I don't know like 40 feet long or 30 feet long however

‍

high you feel like you want to climb and it might not necessarily be less in my way but at least I won't be always kind of having to deal with the tag end you know what I mean so I feel like I'm always kind of getting my steps and for me I'm righty I don't know that it's a big deal like I always make my step up with my right foot so I mean it's it's really just a matter of

‍

wanting to be a little bit more comfortable with my setup, wanting to have a little bit more fine-tuned to me. And again, I might try one-sticking and hate it completely, but I think that that's just something that I'm going to at least look into, at least try, knowing that the style of hunting that I'm doing is a lot of walking, a lot of climbing. And by climbing, I mean like walking the steep terrain.

‍

So I don't want to have to do that with added weight on my pack than I need. And like you said, I'm comfortable in the tree. I'm not saying that you can't do it if you're not athletic or whatever else, but you definitely have to trust the system. You have to be comfortable. If you're one sticking, you're definitely going to be dangling just to even bring the step up from underneath you to where you're going to be putting it.

‍

Chris (20:17.096)

No, I mean that that all makes sense and one of the things real quick I just just pop into mind one of the other things that's great about the retrograde platform that I have is that When you're in a true saddle system you get up you lean back You really don't have that many options, right? You can either be a need of the tree kind of guy You could be a lean back kind of guy You could be a pull your you know pull your tether real tight and stand up against a tree kind of guy but Right

‍

Angelo (20:43.102)

I mean I do all those in one sit, depending on how long I'm there. I'm in all those positions.

‍

Chris (20:48.598)

Now the best part about it is, now that I have the saddle with this retro grade, I can pretty much stand with my back to the tree at all times with the tether coming across my chest as if it was an offside shot, be standing normal, sit down when I get tired, and when I need to come around the tree to make a shot, I could do so. Right? Then, if I want to, I could use the seat of the stand as a saddle platform.

‍

and just go up and down throughout the day when I get tired, come down when I wanna, you know what I mean? So I just feel as far as like a comfort scenario, I think this platform is gonna be awesome. I mean, you and I talked, well, after the first...

‍

Angelo (21:29.62)

Yeah, know you're intending to do like a little bit of a hybrid of kind of like a hang on stand in a saddle situation. You know what mean? It gives you the opportunity to shoot behind you in a stand where if you were sitting, you wouldn't really have that shot because you have your saddle in. The only thing is, you you may or may not get into a situation where you have your gear maybe in your way. Or maybe there's something to be said about a system that maybe we can design and we can kind of make it something that, you know, we do where

‍

Chris (21:33.154)

Yeah!

‍

Absolutely.

‍

Angelo (21:58.824)

I'll tell you what, if I'm saddle hunting, I wouldn't be opposed to maybe putting a little bit extra big of a platform, maybe doing something similar. Maybe we can come up with some sort of harness system to where it's reversible. Right? So it's like you're sitting down in your stand and you have a clip on your back and you can clip in on the back. And then you turn around if you want to, you just take the clip off and clip it into the front. So I know the muddy system that I have right now.

‍

Chris (22:16.078)

That's what I have.

‍

Chris (22:22.094)

That's what I have.

‍

Angelo (22:25.396)

The only thing is when you're clipped into the back, it's got an extra long rope that goes up even higher. And then when you want to clip in the front, that doesn't have that rope. So maybe something we could design a harness that doesn't have that extra length behind it. then you can just, you you have to obviously, you have to be able to, I don't know, you might need a little bit, maybe not as much, but you need a little bit because people might have trouble.

‍

clipping themselves in behind them. People might not be able to reach the center of their back. I mean, I'm able to kind of get close, but I definitely can't get like to the middle of my shoulder blade. So there might need to be like at least like a one foot strap to be able to clip in.

‍

Chris (23:06.54)

Yeah, now actually I will say the saddle that I'm using is the XOP Mondo again with the XOP. Excuse me guys, I was sick a few weeks ago and I don't think it's gone away completely and I got this cough coming back again. It's it's absolutely killing me. But the XOP Mondo harness, like the saddle harness that I'm using is basically exactly what you're saying. It is a saddle harness. It has a little like four inch tab.

‍

on your back, but it doesn't have that three, you know, that two, three foot long strap that comes off the back. Now, what I will say is I looked up hybrid saddle harnesses and XLP and one other company, the only company that make them, but there's not a single hybrid saddle that is feature rich like some of the other higher end saddles. Me personally,

‍

With my fear of heights, it's just what I don't like about the saddle. And I know you saddle hunters that are listening, you're gonna laugh at me and it's okay, I don't care, it is what it is. But my thing is like, what happens if I fall out of the tree? And when I fall out of the tree, I fall head down. Is it possible for me to slip out of a saddle without the shoulder straps? I don't know.

‍

Angelo (24:27.156)

I mean, I think with the leg straps, you're in there pretty good. think you'll be fine. mean, technically anything's possible, I guess you could say. I think you'll be fine, No, I know. A lot of people have irrational fears. It's not only you.

‍

Chris (24:31.352)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (24:36.32)

Yeah, but it, well that's why I said it's an irrational fear and I know that in my head. On the ground I'm good, on the ground I'm good. And when I first got to the side I was like, yeah, this is cake, no problem. I'll climb up the tree, I'll do whatever, I practice on the ground a bunch.

‍

Angelo (24:48.308)

I'll tell you what though, I mean you're talking about a feature-rich saddle, right? So there's gonna be people who need that. Like you said, you're someone who wants to have those extra features and if you have more than one stick, you're gonna need those features. You got the little clips for the, you know, you're able to put on the XOP little clips that you could put the extra sticks on. But there might be people who are okay with a featureless saddle because let's say I do switch over to one-sticking. I no longer need all that stuff. You know what mean? I might...

‍

Chris (25:17.272)

Right, yep.

‍

Angelo (25:17.62)

I need a pouch or something like that, I don't need anything crazy.

‍

Chris (25:20.76)

Well, I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about like the double panels, the bigger or more spread out, like the waist loops, you know.

‍

Angelo (25:27.59)

No, but that's what I'm saying. Maybe that's an avenue we can go down and we can design something and maybe we can get something set up and...

‍

Chris (25:33.486)

for sure. Now what I probably will do is right now what I've done is I have like the tethered dump pouches. I have two of those. And then I have two almost like they're belt pouches. They have zippers on them. And I kind of use that stuff to take some of the weight off my back. But I also put the necessities that I need set up in the tree before I pull my backpack up. So

‍

My process, well let me, real quick, let me backtrack real quick because we're getting away from the sticks. I ran downstairs to grab my sticks so I can show you what I'm working with here. And the way I have my ladder set up is I have two elastic bands that attach, I know, I know, now, right.

‍

Angelo (26:16.508)

I'm not worried about how and just so it was about when I'm stepping up onto the sticks I feel like I'm stepping on my saddle gear not not the ater stuff. I feel like I have like

‍

Chris (26:27.266)

Gotcha.

‍

Angelo (26:29.224)

I strap myself onto the tree. put my safety harness above me, right? And then I have a little bit of slack left because you know, you need to have a little bit of extra because what if the tree's bigger? Sometimes I'm climbing a little bit of a smaller tree. Now I have this tag end that's dangling down. The thing is, once I step up onto the next step, all that becomes slack. Now I've got it, you know, but a lot of times I feel like it's in my way. and I don't know, maybe a one step aider would help me because now

‍

Chris (26:38.072)

Yeah.

‍

Angelo (26:57.928)

that tag end might not reach where I'm stepping. I don't know. I have to figure something out. It's just, it's, feel like with the ones, my point in saying that was with the one stick, you have like a 30 foot rope going all the way down. And instead of stepping on the tag end, you're kind of dealing with the middle of the rope the whole time. You know what mean? So it's not kind of getting tangled in on you.

‍

Chris (27:17.772)

Right, I gotcha. What about, does your saddle have molly loops on it? Like, does it have loops for you to, like, hook things into it?

‍

Angelo (27:28.084)

The saddle has molly loops. Yeah, it has I don't know if it's molly, but it has loops Molly's Molly's though. It's the checkered pattern, right? I Don't even know

‍

Chris (27:29.902)

Okay.

‍

Chris (27:33.486)

Could you, could?

‍

Well, kind of. It's like the loop. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The point I'm making is, if you have those loops, why not take the tag end of your lineman belt and just run it through one of the loops on the back? It's not going to stop it from giving you slack or taking slack, but it's going to keep it away.

‍

Angelo (27:53.64)

It doesn't reach that far. No, so my tag end is, I only got like a six foot rope that keeps me on the tree. don't have, so saying there's a lot of people who saddle hunt who have multiple sticks that also use like a 30 foot rope. And they have it, they have it like either in their pouch or they have it all the way to the ground. There's people who have the safety rope that they're on longer. Mine's just to get around the tree and to get into my.

‍

Chris (27:59.894)

Okay. Right. I don't even know how long mine is.

‍

Chris (28:11.073)

Yeah. Well...

‍

Chris (28:19.906)

Yeah. You're talking about the lifeline. Yeah.

‍

Angelo (28:23.412)

The lifeline, yeah, But I have, you know, sometimes it's a six foot, I think it's a six foot rope, an eight foot rope. I put it around the tree. I put my safety part through the loop. Now it's around the tree completely. I clip in and then that tag end dangles. You know, a lot of times it's three feet it dangles. So, you know, to think about from where I clip in at my chest or my belly button, wherever, and it dangles three feet. It's just always right at my feet.

‍

Chris (28:52.674)

Right, I gotcha.

‍

Angelo (28:52.756)

So I don't know if maybe I need to maybe get like a little loop or a little, you know, something like a little, some sort of knot at the top that I can move up and down my harness that I can just loop it back up and put it into to kind of hold it in place out of my feet.

‍

Chris (29:09.432)

So, I'll tell you, when we were working on climbing that one day when we were in the woods, you had mentioned to me that, you know, the tag end of my stick rope, I needed to do something with that. And I took an extra 10 seconds per stick and started like kind of figure-ating or wrapping up the rope and putting it back down through the standoffs. So ever since then,

‍

I've been paying attention to it. I've been putting those out of my way and they've been doing a great job. What I'm going to be doing, I think, is I have two different tactical belts. when I say tactical, I mean they're just like a regular belt that like pulls through like the cinching lock instead of, you know, like a post through the hole type of belt. Right now, in a regular stand, when I stand up,

‍

and my back is to the tree, I'm able to put my pouches like on the front, like on my one o'clock and 11 o'clock, right, on my hips. When I'm in the saddle, the few times I used it and tried it out, what I found is that all of these pouches I have get in the way. When you're trying to turn, they really get in the way, but.

‍

Angelo (30:21.012)

I don't even have pelvis.

‍

Angelo (30:25.672)

That's what I'm saying. There's such a difference in between how people do saddle hunting and this and that. That's why I think saddle hunting videos do so well on the internet is because a lot of people have a lot of the same problems that we're having.

‍

Chris (30:32.685)

Yep.

‍

Chris (30:39.79)

And the truth is these problems I'm having aren't just specific to the saddle. The issues I'm having are really getting set up in a timely manner. That is really my biggest issue right now. Because the backpack I have isn't the greatest. I'm working on a budget. It fits everything, but everything isn't streamlined.

‍

It has two big pockets like a main compartment up top and then a small compartment down low. I could roll that top compartment up to make it just like a waist or like a hip bag. But my biggest problem was having a place to put everything and then being able to take it out in order. So what I've really used those dump pouches for are my left side. Everything on the left side is for climbing. So I have my Lyman's belt.

‍

my tether, my extra lineman's belt. Like if I have to go around a branch or something, I have an extra rope for that. I have the two buckles for my tree stand. And I feel like there's something else in there that I'm missing.

‍

Angelo (31:40.826)

saddle everything's already attached to it. My lineman's belt is already on it. It's always on it and never comes off.

‍

Chris (31:42.798)

So... I take it off so it's not in the way when I'm hunting. I don't need a lineman's belt once I have a tether attached.

‍

Angelo (31:51.742)

no, no, no, I'm sorry. I don't even use the lineman's belt to climb. just I have my so exactly like I was saying, I have my safety line above me. I use my safety line. I use my safety line. I reach up as high as I can go. And then when I step up, it's slack. You know what I'm saying? So now it's dangling in front of me. I never have the lineman's rope on me. I only ever use the safety line. And it's because I'm so comfortable in the tree.

‍

Chris (31:55.896)

What do you use?

‍

Chris (32:01.548)

That explains it. Okay.

‍

I gotcha. Now I'm with you. Yep. Yep.

‍

Angelo (32:19.186)

I don't want to feel like I'm stuck to it. I want to be able to move. I want to be able to lean off to the side, to hold on to a branch, to cut this, to cut that limb, to do whatever I got to do as I'm climbing. Because as we know, not every single tree is just perfectly straight with no limbs on it. A lot of times you have to break a limb. No, no, I'm not, I'm not cutting, I'm not cutting. Listen, I'm not cutting a branch off, but I'll trim limbs. Like I'll trim limbs on stuff around me, just stuff that I can crack with my hand, like nothing crazy.

‍

Chris (32:28.13)

Yeah, yeah

‍

Chris (32:35.106)

We don't condone cutting branches on public land.

‍

Chris (32:43.542)

Yeah, yeah. Like a little branch. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. I'm just being silly.

‍

Angelo (32:49.126)

If there's a branch on the tree, I usually will set up my stick wherever I go. Once I'm standing on my stick, I'll disconnect my safety line and then reconnect it on top of the branch with no lineman's belt on. I know my practices are not probably OSHA approved, if that's a thing we should look into. there any type of hunter safety? Yeah, hunter safety organization that they're going to write me a fine for being unsafe.

‍

Chris (33:08.942)

Definitely don't contact OSHA.

‍

Chris (33:18.134)

Listen, listen, we're registered LLCs here, man. We don't need OSHA

‍

Angelo (33:22.612)

yeah, but anyway, so that's the part of my, and we're gonna have to do, I have plans to do a saddle video coming up on YouTube and getting people a little bit more familiar with my process and people being able to see how I do it. And then I'm sure I'll get destroyed in the comments saying like that is the most unsafe way to climb a tree ever. But I get up there and I get down and.

‍

Chris (33:44.13)

Yeah, probably. I will s- sorry. Yep. Yeah. And you're still here!

‍

Angelo (33:50.63)

I'm still here and I've got deer on the wall to say it's effective, so...

‍

Chris (33:54.478)

Guys, when it comes to this kind of stuff, do as he says, not as he does. But that's why I have a second rope. That's why I have a second rope.

‍

Angelo (33:57.52)

Not as I do. I mean, you might need to do as I do. You might be in my situation. You might be slim enough to have your strength to weight ratio in a position where you can pull your weight around and you can hold your weight up long enough to be able to do some of these maneuvers. You might be athletic enough and you might have enough less. Let me see. You might have no fear of heights to where you can pull off some of the maneuvers I'm pulling off. And again, I'm not doing anything crazy. I'm not hanging upside down.

‍

But, you know, there's times where I'm 15 feet up in the tree on my third stick maybe and I'm not strapped in. I'm moving the safety line from underneath a branch to on top of a branch and I'm not at that point if I fall I'm probably getting hurt.

‍

Chris (34:43.736)

So, I will say this though. I used to climb the way you're climbing. I used to use just a safety line, put it above my head, climb, get the tag end stuck in everything I was using, and this is what I was using a climber. The old amicas that we grew up using. So I would be climbing, I'd go to...

‍

Angelo (35:00.7)

I never climbed with my climber with my safety line. I climbed with the climber and when I got up to the top I put my safety line.

‍

Chris (35:03.534)

I go to move my sit right yeah I did too until the climber fucking the bottom fell off on me once the was that what yeah what's that bottom fell out I was like yeah fuck this I'm calm with this was trapped but anyway I used to do it that way and yes you will have a problem with that tag end but if you switch to alignments belt a you could keep it loose so it's not connected so it's on the tree but it's not restricting your movement it's actually easier for you to

‍

Angelo (35:10.86)

I've had a fall one time too.

‍

Angelo (35:30.398)

Well, I've had one. I've re- I- I decide not to use it. I just don't use it.

‍

Chris (35:33.824)

Right, but what I'm saying is next time try the lineman's belt instead of the safety rope. It's a lot faster, it's less restrictive. That's crazy.

‍

Angelo (35:39.73)

I'm telling you, I've tried it. I've taken it off because I don't like it. And for me, the way I climb, just, I'm climbing too fast for it. I don't, I don't like it.

‍

Chris (35:46.988)

You know what you need? I'll tell you what you need. need a, you need what I have. It's called a tender. It's like a rope tender. You have one, the Kong thing that you have. Yeah. Or whatever, whatever company makes it. I made one myself out of like a buckle that came off of a backpack. Right. And that allows me to, you know,

‍

Angelo (35:55.336)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

‍

Chris (36:05.1)

take slack out easy and give slack back. So what I do is when I'm climbing, I give a lot of slack. I'm literally using my rope to pull myself closer to the tree and using that as a leverage to go up. And then when I get to a spot where I need to stop, I just pull it tight real quick, lean into it, and then do what I have to do. When it's time for me to go up the steps again, I put, yeah.

‍

Angelo (36:25.396)

Again, I do all the same stuff you're talking about. I just do it with the safety line instead of the lineman's rope.

‍

Chris (36:30.412)

Right. Anywho, back to what started this whole conversation, is what I want to do is right now I have all of my pouches, my pockets, everything attached to my harness or attached to the belt that holds my pants up. Now the problem with that is, like I said, the left side I have all of my climbing stuff. My Lyman belt, the straps for my tree stand, anything I need to climb with is on my left side.

‍

my tethered his strap, like my gear strap, and a couple like, I carry a bunch, like one or two small little hooks just in case I need to hold any gear, but I really use it to pilot hole anything bigger that I have to screw into the tree. On the right side, I have my immediate camera gear. I have my battery pack, the wire. yeah, it's on me because again,

‍

Angelo (37:20.084)

But this is on you when you're climbing, this is not in your backpack.

‍

Chris (37:25.638)

A, it takes weight off my back when I'm walking through the woods. B, everything I need, like the minor stuff that I need to set up quickly when I get in the tree is there. So now I climb up my tree. have my, I have the hip strap, I throw the hip strap up real quick. As soon as I have that, I can pull my bow up and hang it. Now my bow is hanging the whole time that I'm setting everything else up.

‍

Angelo (37:45.17)

Well, you know I climb with my backpack on so as soon as I get to the top I have everything I need except my bow That's the only thing so that's that might be the difference is for me That's why I don't mind climbing with the linemen with the safety line because I have my two sticks are already on the tree All I have on me is my backpack and my two other sticks everything else is with me my bows dealing my platforms on my backpack

‍

Chris (37:49.504)

Yeah, can't do that.

‍

Chris (37:58.285)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (38:06.414)

Where's your platform? Where do you keep your platform?

‍

So what do you get to the top, hang your backpack, and then pull your platform off your backpack?

‍

Angelo (38:15.444)

As soon as I get to the top, I take my backpack off. Actually, I don't even have to take it off. Right in one of the side pouches, I have the strap that goes around the tree where it has my bow hook and it has another hook on it where I hook my backpack. As soon as I hook my backpack and the weight is off me, I pull my bow up, I put my bow on, I got my arrow knocked, I'm hunting. Now, slowly and methodically, little by little, I'll open pouches on my backpack and I'll take out...

‍

the camera arm, I'll fix the, well the platform, whatever you want to call it, I'll put, I'm sorry. I have to take my platform off my backpack first. So what I do is I take my backpack off. I have a couple bungee cords holding my platform on. I take my platform off the backpack. I put my backpack back on, put my platform on the tree with my backpack on my back. Then I step up onto the platform.

‍

Once I'm on my platform, I then do what I just said. I take out the strap, I put the strap up, I take the bow up, I bring it on the hook, I have my backpack on the other hook. Then from there, I take the platform off for the camera arm, I put the camera platform on the tree, I take the arm out of my backpack, I fix the arm on, and then I have my camera on, and then now I'm filming. And now anything else I need to do, minor stuff like...

‍

I don't know, maybe put like a face mask on or my gloves on or fix my outfit. All that stuff I'm doing right now once that stuff's done. And then my camera platform has something similar to what yours has. It has a little screw on the bottom that was supposed to be one of the leveling things. I use that as another backpack holder. So you've moved yours, but basically underneath the spot where my arm

‍

plugs into in the platform that goes for the camera. Underneath it there's like a little screw.

‍

Chris (40:18.087)

So does your base go on the tree first and then you attach the whole camera onto it? Or is it all one piece?

‍

Angelo (40:26.972)

No, yeah, so my, have a base, like the thing you've been modifying. It has a base, but my arm doesn't, isn't always connected to it. So then I take, yeah, then I take my arm and I attach it to it. And then it's, so it's, it's broken up into pieces. So those are the things that I set up. And then once I set up, I get all my quality of life stuff going on. Maybe I trim a couple limbs if I need to.

‍

Chris (40:36.802)

I got you, yeah. Okay, that's how my old money was, yeah.

‍

Angelo (40:52.626)

I take my range finder out, I make sure it's set in the right spot so that I could easily access it. I make sure my grunt calls are out in the spot that I can easily access them or whatever else I need. So all that stuff, once I'm done with, like I said, everything's on my back as I climb. Climb up once, I pull the bow up, and I'm hunting.

‍

Chris (41:02.466)

I gotcha.

‍

Chris (41:11.65)

I gotcha. the reason I can't do that is because I, so my bag, so my tree stand platform, the XOP platform I'm using, you can lock the seat in a way that it makes like a right angle. So this part is like the platform. It's on my back and I have like a transportation system on it. So it has shoulder straps, a waist strap and everything, and that stays on the platform all the time. And then I put my backpack on that shelf.

‍

and then my sticks are attached to my backpack. So that's how I'm walking into the woods. When I get to my stand, I take the whole thing off. I take the bag, I put the bag on the floor, I take the sticks off, I put the, and I set the first stick up. I take the rope and attach it to the top step of my first stick. And that's ready for me to pull up when I get to my first stick. Then I put each of the second, my third and fourth stick, one on each side on those belt clips.

‍

and that's how I climb. So what I've done now is I climb with the platform on my back. When I get to the top, I hang the platform. Right, I get on the platform, exactly. So the first thing I pull up is my backpack and in the backpack it has the pull rope for the bow. I bought retractable pull ropes that I can reel up. Those have made a huge difference, huge difference this year.

‍

Angelo (42:18.973)

Yeah, then you pull up your backpack and then you pull up your...

‍

Angelo (42:32.436)

All

‍

Chris (42:36.938)

So I pull the backpack up first, I hang it on the his strap. What I probably should do is pull the backpack up and immediately pull my bow up, hang my bow. And once I...

‍

Angelo (42:45.552)

I don't do anything other than stand on the platform. I have, even though I have my backpack on my back, I still think what you're about to say is true. You should pull your backpack up, then immediately pull your bow up.

‍

Chris (42:58.998)

I'm going tell you this shit happened to me this past weekend. If I would have had my bow up.

‍

Angelo (43:02.834)

Well, talk about all the stuff that happened to you this weekend, your whole hunting experience, because we're getting kind of long on time.

‍

Chris (43:09.922)

Yeah, we're 40. Honestly, I don't have a success story. This year, I have been so humbled this year, I have been doing nothing but talking about how I see deer most times I go out. It's been two years since I've been out, haven't seen a deer. I've been out... Well, in New York, I'm only hunting one deer. I can only hunt one buck, which I haven't hunted PA yet. Tomorrow is actually... So today is...

‍

Angelo (43:14.42)

Well, it doesn't have to be a success story. Just tell your story.

‍

Angelo (43:27.282)

In your defense, you're only hunting one deer.

‍

Angelo (43:32.23)

And in Pennsylvania, you can only hunt bucks anyway, so...

‍

Chris (43:39.38)

August, October 8th, tomorrow is the first day I'm getting out into PA. The season has been open since this past Saturday. It's Tuesday today. Tomorrow is the first day I'm gonna get out. when I climbed on, so backtrack real quick, I'll give you a real quick back story on our property. The property, our family property for the most part is just hunted by myself, my dad, and my brother. This year, my brother isn't doing too much hunting.

‍

Angelo (43:39.454)

day.

‍

Chris (44:08.33)

His daughter's in cheerleading and they got a lot of stuff going on, so he's gonna hunt when he can. But early season for sure, he's not doing much hunting. And my dad, he's in his mid-60s. He has a hard time kind of moving around these days. And we have a shed on our biggest food plot that he uses as a blind.

‍

It's easy for him. could ride relatively close to it within 50 yards of it. Park RUTV. Walk into it. Once he's in there, he's got three windows to shoot out of. The windows have burlap on them. He's got, you know, like a buddy heater in there. he is everything he needs to be able to hunt throughout the day. He has there, but it's also what's that? That honestly brings it with him. Pack in, pack out, you know what? What he does have in there is a bench. There's like a

‍

Angelo (44:45.3)

Snack bar. Snack bar.

‍

Snag more. All he needs is a bartender.

‍

Chris (44:55.692)

That's right, a snack bartender. But there's like a bench that we have in there that is like maybe two feet deep and he even takes naps on that, you know? So like, I mean, do you man, you know what I mean? But anyway, yeah.

‍

Angelo (45:09.554)

Yeah, he's enjoys being out there. Enjoy the wild, experience the wild however you want to enjoy it. There's no rules.

‍

Chris (45:14.888)

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. And man, the truth is like the older I get and the older my parents get like the more I just want to spend time with them whenever I can. I know that's ironic saying since I just moved out to PA but the opportunities I can now I try to make the most of them. I try to argue with people a little bit less, you know, and move on with the good with the great things, you know. Anyway, my dad was planning on hunting that shed the day after I hunted. So

‍

It wasn't the perfect wind to hunt there, but our target buck, we call him posts, his inner points reminded me of field goal posts. That's where he got his name last year. But I sat on it. It wasn't the best wind, but it was the same wind that had been there for three days. was south eastern wind or a south, no, I'm sorry. It was a southwest wind coming out of the southwest. And it was a just off.

‍

Like the wind was just good enough to sit it. It was like the least okay wind, I guess you could say. And as I climbed up, I climbed up the tree, set the platform up, got up, pulled up my backpack. And as I'm setting all my shit up, I turn around, I hear like a bunch of, I hear like, I turn around, a six pointer is bounding out of the field, or a seven, I think he is. Beautiful deer, not something I would shoot, so I wasn't too upset about it. He bounded maybe like 30 yards.

‍

and then just walked. His tail never went up. He just kind of like turned around, trotted a little bit and just kind of walked off into the distance. No problem. So I turned back around. I'm setting my stuff up. And as I turn around again, there's a freaking coyote sitting 30 yards, 29.8 yards away. I mean, maybe you might, you could be, you could be very right. Cause I, at the same time, I feel like if he would have seen me, he would have been in freaking East Jibid. But what, what, You're...

‍

Angelo (46:53.108)

I mean, let's just hope that they already got spooked because of the coyote and not you.

‍

Angelo (47:03.924)

I mean, but at the same time, they haven't been hunted yet. It's the first sit that anyone's even sat on your property. So they saw you climbing. I mean, you could have been climbing for anything. You know what mean? So they're, you know, don't be too hard on them.

‍

Chris (47:08.747)

Yeah.

‍

Yeah? Yeah, you're not wrong. But the point I'm trying to get at is, if I had my bow up right away, when I saw that coyote, I could have grabbed my bow and taken a shot. He was 29 and a half yards. I can make that shot.

‍

and he watched, he sat there, watched me move around a little bit and then stopped paying attention to me. He started looking around. He was there for like a good three or four minutes. But the way I set up, my bag is on my seat. And last year I dropped my whole bag out of the seat with my old camera in it. Luckily that camera wasn't broken, but I'm not doing that with a thousand dollar piece of equipment, you know? So those of you who are thinking of getting into self-filming, maybe you're self-filming, you're looking to upgrade your equipment, honestly, I love it. It's a lot of fun.

‍

Angelo (47:27.528)

Hope so.

‍

Chris (47:56.762)

It keeps me busy in the woods. gives me something to do and something to mess around with. But it also adds a little bit higher of a level of... Cautiousness, I guess would be the right way to put it. So what I started doing now to sit after is I attached the carabiner to my backpack through my bladder hole, like where my bladder...

‍

hose goes through and once I get up in the tree I clip that to my my gear strap so if the backpack does fall off my seat it's not going anywhere so from now on I'm safe with that. Done a lot of talking here so I'll get through the rest relatively quickly. I took a sit the first sit I sat was right on the food plot our target buck didn't show up but I feel like I saw like a good majority of the other deer that we've seen on camera.

‍

I mean, I saw a young doe. She came behind me. I was trying to locate her because I could see, I could hear her. And I saw her on the left. Like I saw, like I heard her like, kind of like running through the woods a little bit. She came around back at me. And when I turned to see where she was, she immediately darted, snorted, ran a little bit further, snorted again and took off. And old school thought would be if you get, if you get blown up by a deer, your hunt's over, right? Well, this hunt proved that wrong.

‍

That was, I guess counting the six pointer, the seven pointer I saw, that was the second deer I saw. After that, I saw a spike, a four pointer, a six pointer, a seven pointer, and an eight pointer. And they all came in from behind me. They all were downwind of me. Now I don't know, they all crossed my footpath 100%. I watched them all cross my footpath. They didn't really care too much about it. One of two things happened. Either,

‍

I had really good scent control and there's no part of me that thinks that you could cover up your scent completely. It's never gonna happen. You're not gonna beat a deer's nose. What you could do is make yourself smell like you're 300 yards away instead of 30 yards away. That's kinda how I view my scent control regimen. So luckily no deer smelled me that I know of and the only one that blew, well two blew at me, I'll get to that in a second. That doe.

‍

Chris (50:16.076)

Definitely saw me move without a doubt because she never stopped. ran, blew, ran, stopped, blew and then just took off and she just kept going until I couldn't hear her footsteps anymore. She was gone.

‍

Later in the evening, I had a four pointer eating and this is when I realized I had an apple tree behind me. Somehow I didn't see this apple tree. It was literally 10 feet behind me. Had I known that was there, I probably honestly wouldn't have sat there. Maybe I would have rotated around the food plot just a little bit, picked a little bit of a better tree, whatever the case is. But I said I've been sick for a little while and this, I want to say he was a four pointer.

‍

but he was eating on the apple tree and I was like turning around, I was trying to film him through the trees and all of a sudden I like choked on my own phlegm and like if you ever like had that where you go to breathe and all of a sudden like you're coughing otherwise you're gonna die like choking. That's what happened and he ended up like eating another two apples and then all of a sudden just stopped, blew and took off and that was that. And that was the last deer I saw for that day. Now the next day comes in, my dad sits the shit.

‍

That's why I hunted that food plot that day. If I knew that my dad wasn't going to hunt that shed that day, I would have gone and sat a very low pressure stand and waited for a more north-eastern wind. The north-west wind for that food plot is the best wind, both from where they're coming from and once they're in the food plot, they're never going to smell you. Well, the next day, north-west wind, my dad goes out, he sits the shed.

‍

He went out first thing in the morning, I think he got to the stand by like seven ish, six forty five, seven. So he got into the shed just after last light, but it doesn't matter. first light. Yeah, my bad. I've never in my life in all my years of hunting ever had a deer this pattern. I mean, this buck, I could tell you what wins he would be in this food plot. I would tell you what wins he wouldn't be. I could tell you both in direction and speed. This buck did not show up in a wind over eight miles per hour.

‍

Angelo (52:08.116)

Firstly.

‍

Chris (52:29.038)

He would only, would majority of the time show up in the afternoon. We had two different days where he showed up 11 o'clock or earlier. And I just, and he never showed up five days in a row. It was always two days and then a break, three days and a break, four days and a break. He never showed up five days in a row. The day I sat was fifth.

‍

So I took a chance sitting there, but I felt confident that where he was coming from, he wasn't going to be boogered up or anything like that. So I decided to take a chance. So my dad sits there and at about 3 15, he says, you know, I think I'm going to take a nap. said, don't you dare four o'clock on be ready. He's coming. Four three or five. I'm sorry. Three fifty three.

‍

I get a text from my dad, just missed the big tent. But I didn't see it, because the spot where I was hunting on the second day was down in like a gully, down off the road, down by the water. It's a low spot, really bad cell signal. Like text calls didn't go through very well. Sonny called me, he said I just missed him. And on one hand, I was real bummed out. Because I mean, like you said, you and I talked on the phone, I mean, I put that deer on a silver platter for him.

‍

He go here this day, this time, this wind, you're going to see him, period. But on the other hand, man, the way he was talking about him, he was like, I've been hunting since 1990. I've never seen anything like this. He said, the way the antlers just came around and wrapped, and he was just so tall, and just standing there, he goes, I didn't know what was more impressive, the antlers or the body, and the word he used was majestic. know, so short of the harvest,

‍

I mean, what more can you ask for? know, my dad got to go out, enjoy the day, saw quite a few different deer, enjoyed himself, got a shot at our target buck. And not once did he say, I should have done this different, or I should have done that different. He just enjoyed himself. He made the most out of the experience. And I think there was a little bit of a learning experience for him. He didn't have a chance to range it. The problem is he was in a food plot.

‍

Chris (54:37.356)

and it's all grasses. So what are you really supposed to pre-range there? You know, like when we hunt, when we saddle hunt or hunt out of a tree stand or still hunt, you can range specific trees and say, okay, that tree is 20, that tree is 30. So I have an idea. You know what I mean? He couldn't do that. So what we talked about now moving forward is...

‍

Angelo (54:50.729)

All right.

‍

Angelo (54:55.156)

I mean, if he was prepared in the season, you go in the food plot and you arrange the shed.

‍

Chris (55:01.612)

Well, did, well, he, what he did was he ranged the perimeter of the food plot. So he knew like this tree on the edge, this.

‍

Angelo (55:07.272)

No, you know what I'm saying though. You know what I mean? You're not going to shoot clear across the plot with a bow. You know what mean? What I'm saying is you go to a couple different spots. Maybe you put like a little flag, like a green flag here, like a red flag there, just a small little like landscaping flag that nothing will ever even mind that it's even there. And you know those are your different yardages. That's something that we might want to implement.

‍

Chris (55:18.496)

Yeah, but yeah.

‍

Chris (55:25.005)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (55:29.976)

Well, what I'm probably going to end up doing is just simply putting out like say three or four stakes and having a white stake, a red stake, a white stake, a blue stake, and then, you know, whatever. Yeah, exactly. You know, and the truth is I've hunted that stand before. My dad has hunted it for this is our fourth season here. Never once did we ever think about that being an issue because it never came up and it's just like, right. Exactly.

‍

Angelo (55:38.376)

Yes, I'm saying something that can be out there all year. No one knows the yardage is always there.

‍

Angelo (55:55.272)

We've never really hunted food plots before. So this is a learning curve and anyone who's thinking about hunting food plots, there you go. There's an idea for you before it becomes a problem.

‍

Chris (56:03.028)

Exactly. long story short, mean long story long, I guess I've been talking for quite some time now, but that's pretty much it. We had the target buck, we had him patterned. What more could you ask for on your first sit of the season, man? You see your target buck, you get a shot. I mean, again, just short of the harvest, I mean, all of these little successes came together to make that shot possible. know, so I haven't shot a deer on our property in...

‍

This is gonna be, I think, the third season that I'm hunting this prop, fourth season I'm hunting the property. I shot a buck, a six pointer, my first season there, haven't shot anything since. And sometimes I get a little down on myself. I feel the pressure. And even before the whole podcast and the YouTube and all that stuff, I always felt like, okay, I haven't shot a deer in two years. I need a deer this year, you know? But then I sit back and I think like, okay, this past week I passed up four different deer I could've shot at.

‍

Last year I passed up five different deer I could have shot at, mainly on our property. And I have to remind myself very often that I'm giving up the short-term successes now, so that way hopefully within the next few years we have a beautiful property set up where we have a lot more opportunities to go out and enjoy ourselves and find those big successes. So I'll give up the first few years, first four or five years.

‍

to make the future beautiful. And with that said, I pretty much said everything I need to. So tell us yourself, man. You've had some success this year. We've talked about the first year you shot.

‍

Angelo (57:42.824)

Yeah, so I mean, I'm hunting a property. There's nothing that really needs, you know, there's nothing special about it. It's just they have a property that's overpopulated, right? They're inside city limits. They've got a really nice wooded area. It's a town that's got, you know, houses spaced out and there's a lot of woods in between all the homes. And then there's a patch of woods that's kind of linking it all together and there's tons of deer in there. So, you know,

‍

I haven't really had to go out on a limb and do anything special this year to try to locate specific deer. I'm not hunting. Now that I've located deer that I know that are deers I want to target, now I am hunting specific deer. But to start off the season, we didn't really know what we were getting into. We weren't allowed to go scouting until... I forget what it was. I think it was Labor Day. It had to be after Labor Day.

‍

there was a holiday that was this most recent holiday and then after that we were allowed to go in because people recreate in this area. So, you know, I went in, I was able to find a couple deer. was, you know, located a couple small doe groups. As you guys know, we've already talked about the Tri-State Trifecta update. I was able to harvest a doe that we donated to help hunters helping the hungry. And then most recently,

‍

I was hunting over the creek that I told you I just recently set up a hang on stand on. So I was first kind of getting in there. was doing my first couple of observations sits in this spot and I observed a buck that was a really nice buck. I'm calling them road rash because as I came through the parking lot that I that I access, there's a big lawn for a couple of businesses that are out there. And a lot of times

‍

Throughout the night the deer will go out onto the lawn and they'll eat and bed down and they'll hang out in the open. And I saw this really nice tall deer. He was out there and as I was pulling in in the morning, it was like 4am or something like that, he started sprinting back towards the wooded area, the wooded lot. And as he's coming down off of this property that while business was there, it has a steep bank and he kind of lost his footing and he skidded into the parking lot.

‍

Angelo (01:00:03.092)

onto the blacktop and that's why I'm calling him road rash. So I observed where he kind of went into the woods. I'm assuming that when you're stressed out and you kind of sprint off into the woods that's kind of like an area where they know that they can be safe. So I did a little bit of scouting in there, saw a bunch of rubs and scrapes and stuff like that. So I did a couple observation sits and the second or third sit I think the first sit I had it was really, I mean talk about observation sit, I didn't observe anything but

‍

Chris (01:00:33.006)

What?

‍

Angelo (01:00:33.232)

I was able to see a little bit about the property and then I switched. Yeah, I saw the property exactly. And then I saw that that's not where they're going to be during daylight. So I kind of switched up my tactics, spun around and I kind of came in from the creek and I was able to harvest a piebald dough, which was really nice. It was really cool. The only thing is

‍

Chris (01:00:38.146)

you were able to see that you didn't want to sit there again.

‍

Angelo (01:00:55.954)

you know, I'm 0 for 2 on getting deers on camera. So at this point, was like basically literally there might have been seconds left in legal shooting light. And I had already had most of my stuff packed away and this deer came out of the bedding area. And I wasn't even going to shoot because I had a wedding to go to the very next day. And I had a lot of stuff that I needed to do to get ready of, you know, I had some yard work I still needed to finish and then some stuff I needed to do to get ready for the wedding. was a...

‍

me, my wife and I were going away so we spending the night out of the home. So I needed to get some stuff together. And the only reason why I ended up shooting is because I could tell just through my eyes, we're able to see more light than the camera was able to pick up. But I could see that the deer had had a unique pattern to it. And that was the only reason why I even pulled the trigger and I was able to harvest that doe. It's a really cool hide. It's not like completely white. It's not

‍

really checkered throughout the whole body. It's kind of just around the outskirts on his leg and stuff like that. it was enough to where I'm actually going to be doing a YouTube series on me preserving the hide. So after that, the next day, even though I was pressed for time and I had the wedding, I butchered the deer and I even actually fleshed the hide and then salted the hide. I have some footage of me fleshing it and we're going to put together a little

‍

video of me preserving it. Hopefully we can. ordered some while I was salting it. I saw when you do the process just quickly when you salt the hide, you have to leave it so that it it drains water out of the hide from it. You use the salt to to draw water out of the hide. You leave it for like two or three days. So that's what I did. And while I was gone for the weekend at the wedding, I did that. I had ordered some taxidermy chemicals, hoping they were going to be back in time.

‍

They weren't so I ended up freezing the hide. I'm hoping that that doesn't Hurt my process anyway But I think it'll be okay, and I got the chemicals now I'm gonna thought the hide and in the next coming days or weeks I'm gonna thought the hide and I'm gonna start that process and we're gonna document it and If not, I'll probably do the same process to another hide if something does go wrong with this one, but

‍

Angelo (01:03:19.678)

We're going to do that. So it's really cool. I'm happy to be off to start. finally have meat for my own in the freezer. As I've said multiple times, I donated the first deer to Hunters Helping the Hungry. So a little bit of pressure off, got some meat in the freezer. Now we're targeting road rash specifically. I sat two nights ago, not last night. No, I'm sorry, three nights ago. I sat on Saturday and I hunted in that area. I hunted in a moor.

‍

I hunted in that hang on stand that I told you I hung and I saw that there's actually three other bucks that are in that area. One of them is a short seven. As we get closer and closer to the end of this initial bow season in New Jersey, we have two bow seasons. We have a fall bow and then we have an extended bow season. It's two different licenses. You can shoot two different bucks in those seasons. Not in each season, but one in one season and one in another.

‍

You do have to buy a separate buck tag for the permit bow season if you intend to shoot bucks. If on the last couple days of the season I'm still seeing this seven, I'm probably going to maybe take a shot at it just to have something to not let the tag go to waste. But we're targeting road rash, so we're hoping to get in there. We have seen him on that. We have seen him in the very first sit that we had in that hang on stand. We did see him very close to last light. No shot.

‍

This is first time we've seen them on the hoof in daylight hours during hunting time and during the hunting season. Nothing came of it. So we're hoping now I've crossed the creek. I just recently told you, think before this podcast started, I got waders on, I crossed the creek. I'm going to be hunting just past that and right outside the bedding area where I've seen him, road rash, and where I've seen the three other less mature bucks.

‍

So I'm hoping that we can get in there the rest of this week. We got our podcast out of the way. tomorrow night and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we should be in there. So hopefully one of those days we can get road rash down.

‍

Chris (01:05:27.276)

Yeah, man. mean, I'm pumped. I'm right outside of my school. We've talked about it. think maybe four podcasts ago, five podcasts ago. I'm not sure. but literally right outside the school I teach in there's,

‍

like thousands of state land or state forest that is huntable. So what I'm going to basically be doing is there's a pull off about a tenth of a mile down the street from my school. So I'm to be parking my truck at that pull off, walking to the school. And as soon as I'm able to get out, walk right back to my truck, drive to my spot, get dressed and go. So I'm really excited about that. this is my first year hunting.

‍

deer in PA. I did plenty of upland like pheasant hunting with Hunter with my dog when I was in college. But I found out the hard way that you really got to get on the doe tags early. I didn't realize that you get no doe tags in PA. I thought you got like one buck and one doe for the year. And then if you wanted extra doe tags, you can get them. That's on me. I did not do my due diligence and reading the book ahead of time.

‍

Also, my wife and I, when we moved into this house, we got the house in April. We couldn't move in until June. I spent the summer trying to find a job. to be honest with you, outside of recording the podcast and kind of getting this stuff off the ground, the hunting was kind of on the back burner as a whole. I I still did my 3D shoots. I still shot my bow. I'll always find time to shoot, but finding that time to really do the scouting I really wanted to do and

‍

get brushed up on the regulations as I should, you I just, I didn't have the time to to dot my T's and cross my I's, I guess you could say. So we'll come into next season prepared for that. Real quick, said you were concerned about freezing the hide or, you you hope that there wasn't any issue. I don't know. I mean, yeah, maybe.

‍

Angelo (01:07:23.304)

Well, because it was salted. You know what I'm saying? The fact that it was salted, I didn't know if there was going to be something that was a problem with it. I just, I don't know. I'm sure it's

‍

Chris (01:07:31.874)

Yeah. I mean, maybe the reason I'm the reason I'm going to say you're going to be fine, though.

‍

is because when I shot this buck up here, I don't know, eight years ago, nine years ago now, I had the entire one. So I dropped the buck off to the butcher and I said, I want to have it, I want to have it mounted, know, do whatever you have to do to preserve the hide. And when I went to pick it up, basically all of the hide from the very front of the legs, all the way around its torso and then up into his head, where basically he took it and dropped it in a box and just left the antlers hanging out.

‍

with the skull and the antlers and the whole hide, frozen, solid, and he just gave me a whole box frozen. So yeah, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Even butter, mean, butter's salt and anything. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Sorry.

‍

Angelo (01:08:12.055)

yeah, that's how they do it. I've seen, yeah exactly, I've seen them how they do that.

‍

Angelo (01:08:18.228)

Again, my thing was just, I didn't know if it was salted. And again, I know you're talking about salted butter, I mean, this is really salted. I I poured, so funny story. I actually went to go, so I was driving home. We're gonna wrap up here after this, but so I told you had the wedding to go to after I shot the dough. That morning, I had to drop my wife off at work.

‍

Chris (01:08:40.482)

Mm-hmm.

‍

Angelo (01:08:43.346)

because I had to pick her back up after work so we can go to the wedding. It wasn't the destination wedding, but we were staying overnight. We wanted to take one car. I had to take my dog over to my wife's mother's house to drop the dog off so it wasn't home by himself. On my way back, I had to stop to get the salts because I knew I was going to preserve the hide. When I got out, I realized my wallet wasn't on me. I didn't have my wallet on me.

‍

I had drove 20-25 minutes past my house to go to this store that had the salt. So I'm already 25 minutes into this more than I... It's not even like it was on my way home. And I get there and I realize I didn't have... By the way, I wish I knew the guy's name. I don't even remember the name of the business to plug it. I ever tell a story again, hopefully I remember and I'll plug it.

‍

He was like, know what, just call me when you get home and you could pay for it. You look like a trustworthy guy. Don't worry about it. You know, take it and go. So I ended up being OK with the salt. I come home and as I'm trying to open the salt, the salt's in like a brown paper bag, kind of like a cement bag. Anything else that's got like the plastic line. I went to cut the bag and it cut down the side and I lost some of the salt. I mean, it was a disaster. was a disaster. So.

‍

Chris (01:09:58.4)

i saw it as you're telling the story i see it i see it unraveling in my head as you're telling it bro i just picture you go to open like you know you go to open a bag of chips and some of them are really hard and you fucking open it and the whole bag of chips is gonna fly

‍

Angelo (01:10:00.68)

I mean, good thing it's only $11, though.

‍

Angelo (01:10:06.078)

Just the whole bag crumbled, it was just like...

‍

Angelo (01:10:15.036)

Yeah, and pops out. But it wasn't like that, like I had to cut it, right? So I cut it. The only thing is when I went to pick it up, the weight from the salt, because as I grabbed it, the weight of the salt shifted around where I grabbed it because it went off to the side and it ripped like the top three inches of it and I spilled salt all over my yard. So it was a whole thing, but.

‍

Chris (01:10:28.0)

Yeah. my gosh, how old-

‍

Chris (01:10:36.482)

That's hilarious. So yeah, mean, to wrap up here, I don't know what I'm doing this weekend, man. I mean, I can still hunt. When's the last, when does fall bow or regular bow end in Jersey? Yeah, so I'm only hunting one deer in New York.

‍

Angelo (01:10:49.388)

I don't know. I can look it up. Don't mind my clicking here, but finish what you're saying and I'll see if I can tell you.

‍

Chris (01:10:58.54)

I'll be honest with you, towards the end of my third sit this weekend, I was like, you know what, if a doe comes out, she might be getting it. Cause I started going through it in my head, man. I haven't shot a deer now in three years. I had the deer I shot at last year that I hit and couldn't find. And part of me just wants to get that monkey off my back, you know? So from a management standpoint, I don't want to shoot doe on our property.

‍

But I also recognize that we have probably 15 doe, like a herd of 15 doe on our property and then whatever, you know, non-resident doe that come in and hang out from other areas. So if I start getting later into the season and I don't have anything under my belt and a doe comes out, there's a good chance she might get it. Now will say this, if my dad shoots a doe or my brother shoots a doe, even if I haven't shot a deer, I probably won't shoot one.

‍

Only because like if you take a dough off the property like whatever what's one dough gonna do you know what I mean? But if they get one then I get one then they get another one later in the season We have property so my dad gets an extra dough tag now all of a sudden you have four you have four dough like that's a that's a quarter of the dough we have almost you know what I mean? So like I don't know I really don't know but

‍

Angelo (01:12:14.132)

October 25th, three Saturdays left if you're hunting New Jersey and only hunting weekends in the fall bow season. And then the permit bow season starts on the following day. Actually, no, I'm sorry, the 25th is a Friday. So you only have two Saturdays left in New Jersey for fall bow. And then the 26th is a Saturday. That starts permit bow. And that goes all the way to December 24th. Obviously that's...

‍

Chris (01:12:16.994)

Okay.

‍

Chris (01:12:32.163)

right?

‍

Angelo (01:12:43.07)

Christmas Eve, no hunting on Christmas Day, and then you can hunt again December 26th until December 31st. So you can hunt all the way to the rest of the year with the permit bow, but you know, as far as fall bow goes, you're limited. know,

‍

Chris (01:12:59.692)

Yeah, and then once January 1st comes around, can buy your license for next year. Yeah. So basically what I'm getting at is...

‍

Angelo (01:13:07.08)

And the only thing, and to be honest with you, the only real benefit to the permit bow is if you just, if you just bear with me for another second while I bring up the firearm regulations, permit muzzleloader starts November 25th. So you really only get another month to hunt. So it's not like, no, no, you can hunt into February, but then it's a winter bow and you have to, starting January 1st, you have to get a new bow permit.

‍

Chris (01:13:26.188)

Right. But in Jersey you can hunt until February though.

‍

Chris (01:13:35.916)

Right.

‍

Angelo (01:13:36.302)

and your bow permit for winter bow is good until the... I think if you buy the winter bow it's also good for the fall even though they say in the regulations that doesn't show that they're together when you buy the license for the winter bow it does include your fall bow season with the same tag

‍

Chris (01:13:40.992)

is also good for fall. Yeah, it is. Yeah.

‍

Chris (01:13:57.187)

Right.

‍

Is there also, we don't need to go into detail, but I think there's also a gun, like a winter gun also, right? Isn't there something in January or February where they reopen gun for deer?

‍

Angelo (01:14:13.802)

no they stop it it's the same tag they stop the season for the same time they so it goes november twenty fifth and twenty seventh and then you can't hunt on sunday and then you can hunt i'm let me let me be sure here so if you do get the permit you get an extra one two

‍

three, four, you get an extra four Saturdays. So if you're a weekend hunter, you get the extended bow permit, you get the permit bow, you get an extra four weekends to hunt. You get an extra four weeks if you're hunting during the day. Then for the gun, get November 25th, which is a Monday, up until the 27th, so it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're not allowed to hunt

‍

Chris (01:14:49.217)

Okay.

‍

Chris (01:14:55.373)

Okay.

‍

Angelo (01:15:07.016)

Thursday because I believe that's Thanksgiving. November 28th is Thanksgiving this year. It's the last Thursday in November, correct? So that's Thanksgiving. You can upland bird hunt in New Jersey on Thanksgiving, but you can't gun hunt on Thanksgiving. Then it's open again on the 29th, but it's not open on that Saturday. So, which is weird. I don't know why it does that, but it just, you know.

‍

Chris (01:15:13.939)

And then the weekend before that opens Rifle of New York.

‍

Mm-hmm.

‍

Chris (01:15:33.134)

Is that six day? Is that six day shotgun?

‍

Angelo (01:15:36.422)

No, no, no. Six-day shotgun starts on a Monday, so I'm guessing it's the second. It's December 2nd. Let me see. Spermint shotgun. Either sex or six-day shotgun. It's actually the second. So it's December 9th. So it's the second Monday in December is the shotgun season. So it's December 9th. But yeah, so then it stops on the... So you get that week. You're not allowed to hunt the Thursday for Thanksgiving, like I said. You cannot hunt the 30th. It was a Saturday.

‍

Chris (01:15:41.528)

Gotcha.

‍

Angelo (01:16:05.362)

And then you're not allowed to hunt all the way up until the 9th. So 6-day shotgun, you can hunt either. You can hunt with your muzzleloader or your shotgun. then from then on, it's kind of spotty. It's got some random dates. It's like the 9th through the 14th. It's just antlerless.

‍

Chris (01:16:22.659)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (01:16:26.842)

those late season hunts are tough too man, cause like I would hate to shoot a deer I think as a doe. The next time I know I go over and they just got these massive pedicles on the top of their head you know, and like you find that you shot a deer that dropped early. Like a buck that dropped early. You know, like... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

‍

Angelo (01:16:41.364)

I mean, you're talking about like winter bow maybe not. I mean, who's hunting winter bow really? I mean, we heard a couple of states, they had some incentives to hunt winter bow to try to lower the population. Yeah, I mean, if you're hunting for meat and winter bow, you're only eating deer. You know what I mean? Like that's because that's your lifestyle and you're trying to get as much deep in meat in the freezer as possible.

‍

Chris (01:16:51.16)

Yeah, I mean if...

‍

If you're out there for meat though, like you know, you're someone who...

‍

Chris (01:17:00.782)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You kidding me? I got my wife up my butt now. She's like, we need meat. I want a steak. Go shoot a deer.

‍

Angelo (01:17:09.948)

I'm telling you for two, for two, right? You're going to be eating for two. Me and my wife having having venison two days a week, we we consumed about three and a half deer last year. I shot four deer last year and I gave half of one away. So, yeah, there you go. You need four deer. Get on it. And then you don't need to buy red meat. I mean, we did buy some red meat as a treat here and there.

‍

Chris (01:17:31.97)

I mean... Yeah, mean, we'll see. I mean, hold on.

‍

Additive a treat or whatever and and you know what though the thing is like we're spoiled man when I say spoiled I mean literally five minutes down the road. We have a farm they have they have beef they have They have bison. They have a bunch of different red meat. It's all locally grown

‍

Angelo (01:17:40.916)

and flaming yawn into me.

‍

Chris (01:17:55.458)

You know, so luckily the meat we get is legit. We pay a little extra for it, but it's worth it. But my thing is, I'm at a little bit of a crossroads here. PAA, I can only shoot a buck. It is what it is. I didn't get my doe tags in time. New York on our property, the only deer I'm hunting is posts. He's the only deer I'm there for.

‍

So if he doesn't show up this week on camera, I don't know that I'm forcing an early season. If it was the rut or, you know, pre-rut deer starting to run around chase.

‍

Angelo (01:18:27.848)

I'll tell you what, if you're gonna take a dough on your property, take it during the bow season. You don't want to shoot guns off, you know what mean, if you don't have to, because then you're really educating them. I mean, if you're shooting at a dough and you miss, or if you, like your dad shot at post and he missed.

‍

Chris (01:18:32.898)

Yeah, well the other thing too-

‍

Well... Yes... Yeah... Yeah...

‍

Angelo (01:18:45.522)

That's probably not a season ender. You know what mean? I don't know what your dad did after to educate the deer, what he did this, that, the other thing. Did he move? Did he make noise? Did the deer know it came from the shed?

‍

Chris (01:18:49.44)

I'm hoping, I'm hoping that, yeah, yeah.

‍

He did come back. We saw him come back. He doesn't look injured. It was definitely a clean miss. But he went from being on camera six out of five days in a row, almost within the same hour, on the exact same food plot coming from the exact same direction, to in the last three days we've gotten one picture of him and it was only at 1, 1.30 in the morning. So.

‍

I don't know if he sent him nocturnal now, I don't know if he's afraid of that food plot, I hope so!

‍

Angelo (01:19:22.418)

I think he'll settle down. mean, the rut's coming and everything else, and if you're gonna shoot the buck, like I said, you could shoot them all year if that's the only deer you're hunting. But if you're gonna shoot a doe, maybe go into a part of the property where you don't see him and see if you can get a doe in one of those areas.

‍

Chris (01:19:28.716)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (01:19:38.1)

bro, I go on that property on any south, any wind, any wind that has a southern component to it and I sit where we set up that camera down low, right on the power line, I'll shoot a dough. They're on the camera literally every day. Literally every day.

‍

Angelo (01:19:53.384)

Yeah, I mean that would that would be something I do maybe even hunt them morning since you're really not wanting to hunt them in the morning Maybe hunt the morning somewhere where you think you could get a doe Get the doe get in get out and then you know, let the area settle down because you guys aren't there all week. So

‍

Chris (01:19:59.49)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (01:20:05.454)

you know no well that's the thing I mean they say that the best days of the week to hunt are Wednesday through Friday Saturday they feel the pressure Sunday they're reacting on the pressure Monday and Tuesday they're recovering from the pressure Wednesday through Friday they finally start to feel like okay I can move around again you know so

‍

Angelo (01:20:21.16)

Well, I hope that's possible because, you know, I didn't really spook anything on Saturday when I saw those deer, but hopefully Wednesday is settled down,

‍

Chris (01:20:26.892)

Yeah. You know, so we got, we got our cousin Joey's wedding coming up on the 18th. that's a Friday. That's the same weekend last year that I saw the big buck in New Jersey. So I plan on going to his one. Yeah.

‍

Angelo (01:20:39.864)

yeah, I forgot about that. we don't even have, I mean, fortunately right now I'm able to hunt during the week, so I'm okay. But we have this weekend and then we have next weekend we can't hunt. So for us specifically, and to anyone here who's listened this long, God bless your heart. One Saturday left for New Jersey.

‍

Chris (01:20:55.394)

Hopefully everyone's listened this long.

‍

no, bro, I'm hunting the day after his wedding. If you wanna...

‍

Angelo (01:21:03.068)

No, no, you're hunting the day after his wedding, but where? okay.

‍

Chris (01:21:06.03)

Flanders. shit, I gotta mute that out. No, it matters, I'll mute that out. 100 % is getting muted. Yeah.

‍

Angelo (01:21:09.97)

It doesn't matter. You can mute it. All right, mute it out. Anyway, cut all this out. But for people who are hunting, I'm sorry, not for people who are hunting, for us as it pertains to us with that wedding coming up, can you hunt that property on a Sunday? So you can't even hunt the day after his wedding. no, I'm sorry. The day after, it's a Saturday. His wedding's a Friday. OK, so yeah.

‍

Chris (01:21:19.949)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (01:21:34.806)

It's a Friday. His wedding's a Friday. So I'll, yeah.

‍

Angelo (01:21:38.524)

So then, so then if you're gonna hunt, then good for you, but I'm probably not hunting the day after. I'm just gonna take that off and then.

‍

Chris (01:21:45.58)

So I'm gonna take an L for the team. I'm gonna not drink at the wedding. I'm gonna wake up at a relatively decent time, probably head up to my parents' house, take a quick shower, because it's on the way, and then just head out to the woods. I'm gonna plan on getting to the woods somewhere between 10 and noon, set up like an early afternoon sit. I'm not far from the road. I'm literally, what, a five second walk, literally, from where I park.

‍

And I'm just gonna go throw a sit at it and see what happens. If I don't get anything down on Saturday, I'll go to the woods that we grew up hunting on Sunday. And then head home after that, you know, so we'll see. Yeah. yes and no.

‍

Angelo (01:22:25.972)

And then that's it for New Jersey probably for you. You're going to get the bow permit, the extended bow permit.

‍

Chris (01:22:32.844)

well here's my thing, if I'm only allowed one buck in- one deer and it's a buck in PA, and I only have one-

‍

Angelo (01:22:36.872)

What I'm saying is in Pennsylvania, you have to locate one first. That might take some time.

‍

Chris (01:22:41.132)

Well, think I've done, I did some scouting early, like in September. I did some decent scouting after work. Right, no, but that's the thing too. Like the beautiful thing about hunting state land is I dropped my standard a bit, yeah. Cause on my property, I'm putting in the time. I'm putting in the money. I'm giving up deer I would shoot on public land to grow the deer on my private land.

‍

Angelo (01:22:47.092)

Yeah, but you only saw a sign, you didn't see an actual box.

‍

Angelo (01:22:56.372)

standard of buck.

‍

Chris (01:23:09.762)

But on public, there's no cameras. I haven't really had a lot of time to scout. It's all woodsmanship. know, so the prize for me on public land is finding deer that I didn't know were there. The prize for me on private land is putting the time and the energy in and seeing what I could get out of it. You know, so it's really cool. Different places, different scenarios, different expectations. But man, I'll be honest, I'm feeling the pressure a little bit. I am, I find...

‍

Angelo (01:23:36.03)

Don't let it get to you too much, then it'll mess with your choices in the woods, that's the worst thing.

‍

Chris (01:23:40.59)

100 % 100 % and it's like it's like it's like the devil on one side and the angel on the other you know and it's like On one hand. I'm like man. haven't I haven't shot a deer yet I haven't had a chance to shoot a deer yet What's going on and then the next second? I'm like man. You've only sat three times You saw a deer two out of the three times you sat like what more could you possibly want you know so?

‍

Angelo (01:24:01.172)

Yeah, I mean, I'm really hoping to get one of those bucks down this week and then that'll kind of help my sit to buck, my sit to deer ratio. Yeah, I mean, this guy promoted this property to me. He was like, yeah, you're going to see deer every time you go out. And he's true. If I wanted to just shoot does and young deer and whatever else to get deer off the property, I could. But, you know.

‍

Chris (01:24:09.634)

to your ratio, yeah.

‍

Chris (01:24:23.043)

Yeah.

‍

Angelo (01:24:25.512)

I want deer for the future. The program's not ending anytime soon and you know, I'm not gonna say like hey I'm just gonna leave the deer there. They've been doing this project for 15 years. So, you know, it's something that I learned about so I'm getting involved in and I've had a couple people already, you know, talk to the powers that be there. Specifically the guy who helped me track the deer. He's also a member that I didn't know and he had raving comments about me to the guys there letting them know that he thought that

‍

Chris (01:24:35.15)

For sure.

‍

Angelo (01:24:53.726)

you know ethical hunter that I was and this and that so so that's good so we're hoping to be part of the project for a couple years going forward if not indefinitely and you know we want to keep good quality deer there especially the bigger bucks so you know I've already shot two deer you know I'm supposed to shoot for every buck I shoot I have to shoot a doe I already have shot two does so I can shoot two bucks without having to shoot yeah I can shoot two bucks without having to shoot any more does so I can I can sacrifice you know having to get the

‍

Chris (01:25:06.776)

Yeah.

‍

Chris (01:25:15.992)

Two bucks? There you go. Yep.

‍

Angelo (01:25:23.176)

Convenient and the guy that's hunting with me. I mentioned him I think before a guy Brian. We did a scouting trip He's shot three does already so together him and I we've taken five deer off their property ready in the first two two and a half weeks Like you said, so we're doing our part, you know what I mean?

‍

Chris (01:25:31.384)

Good for him.

‍

Good. Nice. Nice. I think, yeah. And I think it would be pretty cool, like, you know, if I have a weekend where the wind's not right for me to sit or, you know.

‍

my New Jersey tag runs out and I can't really, the wind's not right for me to hunt New York or whatever. I would be so open to coming out and doing like a joint sit one day. Like I know that I don't have the permit to hunt in the same woods you're hunting, but to just bring the camera and to be able to set up together and kind of do a sit together kind of, we've talked about how you hunt before, but I've never seen how you hunt before.

‍

Angelo (01:26:07.22)

Yeah, I mean, we're going to probably do something like that anyway, probably in the late gun season in New York, because if God willing, you'll have your target deer down and then you're not going to be hunting New York on your property anymore, probably. Maybe you'll hunt it down, but you're probably not going to want to put too much pressure. You're going to want your property to be a safe haven for the deer to kind of get away from the other hunters that are hunting in the properties around your property and save, you know, hopefully one of the other nice, mature up and coming deer for next year for yourself.

‍

Chris (01:26:11.608)

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

‍

Chris (01:26:17.728)

Right. Well, yeah, and we'll...

‍

Chris (01:26:26.86)

Right. Yes.

‍

Chris (01:26:36.45)

Yeah, and probably the biggest victory for me this year, unless you have anything else to add in for today, I think we could wrap it up with this. My biggest victory so far this year, we touched on this in an older episode we did, but throughout my life, I kind of lost touch with religion and the creator.

‍

I've made it a point to spend at least 10 minutes every time I'm in the woods to just have a conversation with him. And so far so good. I've been true to that. And it's enlightening, I guess would be a really great way to put it. So that's just my own personal thing. I'm not trying to push that on anybody, but...

‍

Angelo (01:27:16.03)

No, I'll add on that real quick. mean, you know how I feel. I'm a born again Christian. So, you know, I have my relationship with him as well. You've mentioned it more than once for yourself and I've never really said anything about it. But, you know, that is a time for me to where I really get the time to kind of slow things down. We all live in a world where, you know, we're going a mile a minute and things can kind of get away from you. you know, sometimes that's the only time that we have to ourselves to be able to

‍

confront our darkest thoughts and stuff like that. you know, one of the things, sorry, this is mic's doing this thing again.

‍

Angelo (01:27:57.436)

Is it can you stop so yeah, so I mean that's one of the best things you know for me You know sometimes if I if I if I'm in the woods early in the morning and still dark and I can't do anything You know sometimes I'll pop a sermon on for the next 20 30 40 minutes and just listen to that or I'll listen to some worship music and you know sometimes I'll have Scripture with me, and I'll do some reading. I told you this year. I'm hoping to write a little bit not necessarily about scripture, but

‍

Chris (01:28:23.95)

Mm-hmm.

‍

Angelo (01:28:27.2)

Yeah to anyone out there who's looking to maybe rekindle their own relationship or even just look for something to enlighten themselves or enrich their mind. know using the outdoors and using hunting, using fishing, using know hiking, whatever it may be that you like doing even camping. know just spend time with yourself, get your mind right. You know what I mean? Especially as men in this country. There's an attack on men in this country. I'm not going to go into my thoughts on that.

‍

specifically but I think we all as men can agree that there is. We need manly men in this country and you know as someone who's been to a lot of men's gatherings that have spirituality in mind, a lot of men feel like you know they don't have anywhere a safe place that they can talk so you know find one if not we're always able to be reached. We've given our tags here before.

‍

Chris (01:28:57.176)

Yeah.

‍

Angelo (01:29:23.132)

our handles, our social medias reach out to each one of us. that doesn't necessarily mean that you're soft, right? I want people to know when we talk about God, we talk about Jesus, a lot of them, so many times in the world he's portrayed as the lamb, as this soft, gentle character who's loving and embracing and wants to love everybody, but he's also portrayed as the lion.

‍

Chris (01:29:26.477)

We'll add it at the end again.

‍

Angelo (01:29:49.656)

He's the warrior, he's the savior, he's the... It doesn't necessarily always have to be this soft image that people come out and think. We can be warriors, we can be warriors for God, we can be warriors for our families, we can be warriors for ourselves, we can be warriors in the woods. That doesn't have to be a derogatory term. It just means strength, it just means confidence, it just means honor.

‍

I hope that for you, I'm trying to embody that myself, and I hope that for all of our listeners, and if anyone needs help trying to find themselves on that journey, getting to that point, you can always reach out to us in any way.

‍

Chris (01:30:30.498)

For sure, you know, to just top it off for me, was always, I was angry with him for really long time, just for what I didn't get that I asked for. And we'll just leave it at that for now. But I've spent a lot of time as of late thanking him for the stuff that he has given me. You know, and I'm just trying to change my perspective instead of being selfish and wanting more, just being thankful for what I have and what's to come.

‍

So with that being said guys, we want to thank you so much for listening this far in. Hopefully you got some value out of it. We're really trying our best to bring you real life content. You you turn on the outdoor channel, you see guys pushing products and using this, using that, you know, and sometimes it's really hard to know if is what they're doing, are they doing it because it works or are they doing it because they're getting paid by someone to do it or to say it? And that's not to speak ill on anyone at all.

‍

We all know, you know, what works in the West doesn't work in the East and vice versa.

‍

Angelo (01:31:32.34)

I'm sure that when we find products that we trust and we like, we're going to let you guys know. I mean, we're not going to let anyone dictate our, you know, how we speak about things. I mean, if we find products that we like that we think you guys will benefit for, we're going to speak about them, but we're not going to let any of these companies dictate to us how we talk on this channel and what we talk about.

‍

Chris (01:31:37.761)

Absolutely.

‍

Chris (01:31:44.781)

Right.

‍

Chris (01:31:56.654)

Exactly, you know and what I was getting at with there was you know we share a lot of our successes but we also share a lot of our failures and hopefully us sharing what works for us and what doesn't work for us maybe some of those like minute details that maybe you didn't think of hopefully that helps you

‍

Reduce that learning curve and maybe helps you avoid making some of the mistakes that we've already made And hopefully we make them for you. So we really enjoy getting together weekly I've said in the past like this is really the like This is really the one day of the week where you and I really get to spend time together and kind of hang out and talk We chill a little bit before we record sometimes after you know But I really look forward to it and I'm really looking forward to building and growing

‍

this team, whether it's between the Wing and Taleboys or just the gathering of the listeners and everybody. And I'm really looking forward to some success stories and hearing people tell us what worked for them, what didn't work for them, and really.

‍

building this as we go. With that being said, if you like what you heard today, I know this has been a little bit of a longer one. I think we were trying to keep it around an hour and we went a bit over here, but it is what it is. But if you like what you saw, if you found or heard some value out of what you heard today, please feel free, leave a written five-star review on Apple Podcast. If you're listening on Spotify, just a good old five-star review.

‍

will do. If you have anything that you want to hear, feel free to leave it down below. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you like. Let us know what you don't like. Help us help you and bring you the content that you're looking for. And you got anything to add? All right. Yep. Remember guys, success is just a commitment away. Have a great week. We'll see you here next Thursday. See it.

‍

Angelo (01:33:37.406)

That's all, we'll see you guys on the next one.

‍

Angelo (01:33:44.692)

Peace.

‍