Tick Talk, Turkey Scouting, and a Youth Turkey Hunt Story

Show Notes

In this week’s [UNCENSORED] podcast by GoWild, we've got two Dan’s and one cup … of Wildland Coffee that is. Brayden and Phil got out for some turkey scouting for themselves and for youth weekend. You think you’ve found a good spot when you find an old natural blind. Have you ever thought of using trail cams for turkeys? Dan and Jacob discuss their plans for opening day. The entire crew will be mixed up on public and private land this season. We’ve also got some plans to access some areas via waterways. We have Dan Johnons from Sportsmen’s Empire back on and he talks about a turkey hunt with his daughter.

We also talk guns. Shooting rifles and daily carries. Dan sent his Sig Sauer through the washer … find out how that happened. What’s the best way to get rid of ticks on your hunting clothes? Word on the street is that it’s going to be a bad year for ticks because of the warm winter–be careful out there. Do you know what to do if you do get bit? We swap some tick stories and share our best practices for preventing and dealing with these little buggers. Are some people predisposed to allergic reactions from bug bites and poisonous plant interactions? We also give a few tips for finding morel mushrooms.

If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a rate and review!!

[UNCENSORED] by GoWild kicks off your week with shameful nonsense, inappropriate convictions, and unfiltered tales from the woods, waters and whatevers. [UNCENSORED] is a behind the scenes look at our adventures, failures, wins, embarrassing moments at trade shows, hilarious tales from the warehouse, and a good rant or three about the most recent tyranny from the Dark Lord of the Sith himself.

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Show Transcript

[00:00:00] Back on the airways for another episode of Uncensored the Airways. Two. Dans two. Dans in the house this morning. Two Dans one A cup. Oh my. Of coffee. Speaking of cups. Cups of brown fluids. I know. I'm about ready. That take my wildland coffee bag out here. Two Dans are really better. One, two, Dans. I don't know about that, Dan.

I don't think we've been on a. On a podcast together. It's good to formally meet you. Yeah, you too man. You too. Did your parents name you after Daniel and the Lions den? Yes, they did. Same here. Same here. Bible. Oh, that's cute. Look at that. Yeah. By Story Boys Daniels coming off Easter weekend.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. That's all brand. My brother's Jason. Very traditional. I need like a spilled a little. That's and just use your shared sleeve. We'll get the production crew in here to take care of it, man.[00:01:00] Great weather this weekend here. I don't know what it was like for you, Dan, but perfect.

It was weather. Yeah. Beautiful, sunny, cool in the mornings. Warmed up in the afternoons, which is the way I like it. I got out a little bit. Did a little fishing yesterday after all the Easter egg festivities, but I can't catch anything. It's longer than my hand right now. So it's been a rough go. Yeah, that's an issue.

Yeah. Me and me and Phil got out and did some Turkey scouting. It was pretty awesome. It's the best Turkey scouting I've ever been a part of. We, so we deer hunted this property. It's a private farm that we deer hunted. It's where Phil shot his buck and. We like had this plan of man, we really think the turkeys are gonna be hanging out in this area, and they're gonna be roosted here.

We think they're gonna fly down here. But we've never seen him do it. Never really heard him while we were deer hunting. We're just gonna go, check this out. And so we got in there, real early and just was, we went back to this back [00:02:00] field that we wanted to check out and as soon as we turned the corner freaking, we just heard a tom fire off like 60, 70 yards away.

And that one never gobbled again. But we were like, oh, shoot. Like I think we're onto something here. So we just tucked in to the woods there and just listened. And we had a owl doing our job for us. We were just sitting there in that thing. We go, that's the bash. Woohoo. And then it would just be like ba everywhere.

And so we, we really, we found one that. We could even, we could see in the tree through the binos. And he's big. We saw where he flew down. We were able to drop a really good plan, got a blind set up. We actually, in setting up our blind, we found like an old chair behind a down tree where someone had set up a natural blind and we were like, Oh, somebody else figured this out a long time ago.

That worked out really well. We got freaking amazing access to the area. And we set up that blind because we're gonna be bringing out Phil's brother to do some youth Turkey hunting here in a couple [00:03:00] weeks and set up a camera on the trail. First time ever, like setting a camera and being like, man, I hope we get turkeys on this.

And we got turkeys the next morning. Being able to do that and have like them moving through the next day we're like, oh dude we're on 'em. If I know anything about hunting though, we're gonna show up and not hear a single gobble whenever we're trying to kill one. But is anyone else hunting that property?

Nope. It's just you guys just legally just us anyway. You got, I don't know, we've seen some signs of, folks being on that property. It's a big farm property, so I think there's, the monitoring is pretty loose, so there could be folks that are sneaking in and out of there. We've never seen one in person.

And hope we don't. But yeah, as far as we know, it's just us. Did you set up cameras out there? Yeah. We set up there's like actually right where Deer shot or where Deer where Phil shot his buck. There's like this just absolute highway of deer and turkeys and everything else that runs through the property.

So we got a camera on that. Like. Dual reasons. We wanted to see are [00:04:00] there deer moving through here? It doesn't matter as much right now, but and then, are we gonna get turkeys running through this area? And confirmed, we had three Toms come along through, and the last one in the group had an absolute, giant beard.

That's huge. Dragging on the dirt. Three, but that one would be sick. What you got, Dan? Was it dragging on the dirt? Oh yeah, dude. It was swinging Thick and swinging. Yeah. So Youth Weekend, is that next weekend? Or the following? Following. And then you guys will get together the next, the following weekend.

26th. Okay. Yeah, which I think is a Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday if I remember right. But I don't know, might be taking off work. We'll see if Phil can get off. We'll go out there together. So we opened up this coming Saturday. Yeah. And I plan on getting out. Are you gonna get out opening day or you have to wait?

I don't have to wait. I haven't, are we still gonna try do public with Chris? Yeah. See, I'd like to Yeah. Figure that out. Opening [00:05:00] morning. I'm gonna do my farm. Yeah. But we can go later. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I got this Vegas thing coming up and I'd like to get this shower done. Dan. I don't know if how many uncensored you listen to, but my fall deer season, I got skunked, but I went out a lot and that was just putting off the honey-do list for quite a while and it built up to me in January. So I'm in the middle. I'm wrapping up in the final stages of a big master shower remodel. Okay. I thought you were gonna say divorce. Oh no, this is to stave off the divorce is I need to build a master shower. So I'm trying to get that wrapped up before this trip to Vegas at the end of the month.

But I don't wanna miss Turkey season, so I'll probably talk with you and Derek and see if I can tag along to one of the two guys' things and then we'll just have to set some time to. Look at public with Chris? Yeah. Yeah. The one place that I was looking at I'd love to get Derek's [00:06:00] input on it cuz I know he is familiar with it, but it, there's a lot of land that.

That borders a lake. And so the w m A borders the lake, that's our private property. In between that and the bordering. So getting in there where we'll go. There's a lot of people that hung out there. It's close to the city and so that it gets a lot of traffic. But it'll be fun just to get out in the woods with you guys.

And from what I've heard, not a lot of people are going out there to Turkey hunt really. Yeah, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's, you don't need as much distance, with your shotgun as you would like a deer rifle so people have more options on, five acres of personal land or whatever.

But yeah, I've heard it's not super duper pressured. The thing with, cuz I think we were talking about doing, going up on boat, right? I think with those is. With all these Kentucky, there's no natural lakes or all reservoirs, like the water level changes so much that is probably good right now with all this rain.

But you can hit five foot just like sheer up [00:07:00] banks, on the good spots. But there are some natural kind of beaches there we might be able to get up into the woods from. Yeah, and you know the other, I've seen a lot of turkeys when we've been fishing out there. And around, close to the water, within 25 yards or so at the lake.

If we could get to one of those spots, there's a lot of those creek mouse that come into that lake. Yeah. And those would be lower slope. Just wedge a boat back in there. I don't know about leaving the bass boat out there. So we'd probably wanna paddle. Yeah. Paddle our kayaks. Oh no. Where'd the boat go?

Yeah. Pull it up into the woods a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, cuz we just ordered our shotguns on Friday. Went out to Derek's farm and shot some guns. I got to shoot my suppressor. Oh, was that your first time? First time. Oh first time. It was very scary. Why's that? Just cuz it's a lot of pressure, oh. And not only that, but you're, it's probably spent $800 on it and waited a year to get it. Yeah. And I'm like, Ooh, is it going? Am I gonna get baffle strike? Do I have the right size [00:08:00] end caps on? I thought the over pressure, I had a, I have this charging handle that doesn't have a latch.

It's just got two de 10 springs on the inside of the port. So it's like friction locked against that. Yeah, that channel. And I'm like, is this thing gonna blow out into my face? Jeez. So it was scary the first time. And the way the gun is set up, it's a nine millimeter ar pattern rifle, but the hand guard goes out past the barrel, so the suppressor's kind of inside the hand guard.

It's so cool. So where you put your hand is right at that joint between the end of the barrel and the suppressor. So I was like, I'm like, I'm gonna hold it like back here at the magazine in case this thing explodes. But it was fun. You use a rifle. During your Turkey season? No, we were just out shooting and I had gotten this, our office is next to a large regional gun shop, like directly next to, so they'd called me like

I don't know what, two, three weeks ago, maybe a little longer. And we're like, Hey, [00:09:00] your, your paperwork's in. So I went out there and ran and got it and I just haven't had time to go shoot it and I didn't really wanna shoot it at a public range get your beautiful face in that shot, my man.

Sorry. I was leaning back. So yeah, this was just an opportunity to shoot a gun and I had two or three guns that I've never shot. I still haven't shot my. Daily carry my, you should probably do that sake. I should probably know if it works. I did. I should know if it works. I did send it through the washing, you know the triggers out right to the washing machine.

Yeah. That's one way to clean your gun. After a scouting trip, I had all my hunting apparel on Yeah. A big winter jacket and my gun in the jacket and it's so ticky that. I have to strip as soon as I come in the door. Oh yeah, man, it makes me strip same room, go shower. And then she just gathers up all my stuff and I thought I'd gotten everything out of the pockets, but whatever.

So she washes the hunting clothes and she's pulling it out of the dryer and she's pulls up my coats, loaded. She's just oh, what is this? And I'm like, that [00:10:00] be my pistol. There's a little miscommunication on. Who's, whose job is it to check the pockets? Yeah, usually she's pretty good. I tried to blame it on her.

I was like, you should have checked the pockets better, yes. One does. That's dangerous. Yeah. The, I've heard on the getting the ticks outta your hunting clothes, you're supposed to dry them first. It kills 'em and then you wash and then you dry again. Like you have to do sustained heat for a long period of time.

Otherwise it'll survive. The other thing is a lot of the hunting apparel, you're not supposed to dry on high heat. Yeah that's true. Point it up. We have a steam cabinet. That we do a lot of our heavy stuff in, so maybe that's the steam 'em to death. Cause just you just hang it in there and it just raise the steam.

Yeah. Word on the street is, it's gonna be a brutal ticker. Oh. Because the winter was mild. Man, I, I can attest to that from this weekend, man. I went out and I pulled two ticks off of me yesterday. And then knocked some off of my daughter's clothing. And we were even slathered in tick repellent before we went out and still You said [00:11:00] permethrin stuff?

I don't know what it is. It's a, it's an off brand, it's the brand off. But it's mosquito, my bad. It's the brand off. And they have a tick repellent as well. So we just layer, we just doused each other with that and. And I still pulled two, two tick bites. Dude, I'll tell you this.

I pulled two tick bites off and I had a tick last year on my body when I was went out to go set some tree stands in mid-summer, and I had a sore on my body from that tick bite when I, after I pulled it out for probably six months. No joke. These tick, like these tick bites are no joke, man. Once they get, oh, they're horrible on you, and they last forever.

Yeah. On your body. Yeah. Not to mention, get freaking allergic to red meat for the rest of your life. Yeah. Did you, when you had that mark on you for after a month or two, were you like I better go to the doctor, see if this is Lyme disease? That's the thing, like I, I didn't feel any different.

[00:12:00] I, I didn't feel sick or anything like that, but the, and so I was, I got a little worried about it and I said maybe I should, yeah, maybe I should go check this out, but I haven't. I've been in the woods almost my whole life, knock on wood. Haven't had anything like that yet, but like I know some guys who.

Exactly what you just said. He got bit by a tick. He pulled it off, he got Lyme disease from it, and and now he can't, he doesn't eat red meat anymore because it tastes like rotten flesh in his mouth. Yeah. I think it was Bomar tonic. I'm sorry if I'm getting this wrong, but I think it was him that got bit kept the tick.

I think he got it tested and got himself tested and like sure enough had it and was able to beat it by like quickly getting I think it's like antibiotics. Yeah, they do antibiotics and if you can detect it quick, like you have a much better chance of being able to counteract it. But if you do it at our boy Dan J here Yeah.

Did you might find yourself up a creek. And Lyme disease is one of those things where it's like if you [00:13:00] try to Google it, Like symptoms. Oh, it's like cancer. Everything. It's like everything. Runny nose juice tastes funny. Lyme disease, your armpits start to smell sometimes. Look, so the my second spring hunting turkeys, I.

Yeah, I went out on a Saturday and then I'm at the office on a Wednesday. I'm like, man, I just don't feel right. My, my joints are aching. I feel feverish, like I'm just sluggish, tired, don't know what's going on. And I was talking to my buddy who had been pre-med, and he started asking, peppering me with questions.

He's you went hunting, didn't you? And I was like, yeah. He's did you check for ticks? Yeah, I'd check for ticks every time. That afternoon when I go home, I realize I have one that's been attached Yep. Since Saturday on like my love handle. Yep. That I didn't catch. And so immediately get it off, go into the doctor's office, give them the rundown of everything, what's going on, and they went ahead and prescribed me the antibiotics for Lyme disease.

They're just [00:14:00] like, here, take this. If it, if that's what it is. Knock it out and I didn't have any issues and haven't had any recurrent issues cuz no Lyme disease can cause problems forever year after year. Yeah. So I haven't had any issues since then. But that was a little bit of a scare. Cuz I just felt off in my bones.

It was a. He mess you up, dude, it will absolutely mess you up. But yeah, try to use tick repelling as much as you can, folks. And make sure you check yourself. Check yes, have a buddy check you sometimes too. That's what I call Turkey there. Turkey ticks are like the, the little tiny one. Ones.

Ones, yeah. I've sat down in. Next to a tree and been covered in those things. Oh, dude. NPH tics. Yeah. You ever I stepped on some, I think I've done it twice. And I was wearing tennis shoes at the time. Those, like Adidas, they had like mesh material stepped on like a nest, and they went through my shoe, onto my feet and like up my legs.

I never felt them. And so I'm at home. I had I stripped all my clothes in the garage like I always [00:15:00] do. Went in, took a shower and was sitting on the couch and I just look at my barefoot and there are pepper. What did I step in? It looked like there was like pepper on my foot or something. And then they were moving and I was like Seth, don't freak out.

But also may or may not be ticks. Everywhere. So you get the bleach. Yeah. Not good. That's, and it took forever to get 'em off. You can't just run water like a ru like you have to like individually pull each one off yeah. Yeah. Oh, good. Miserable. I don't know what's worse. Ticks or chiggers.

Ooh. I don't know. I'd say probably ticks cuz of the disease element. Chiggers suck. I've had, I had a really bad case of chiggers mid-summer when I was biking a lot, and so I put spandex on and it was miserable. Yeah. But chigger is something that. Is like poison ivy where you can be genetically not susceptible to it.

Yes, cuz I was, because I think I'm bad. Two of us, I've never had a bad, I've had bad, there was four of us all together in this backyard sitting on this deck. [00:16:00] Two of us got chiggers, the other two got nothing. Yeah. And so unless they were like literally focused where I was sitting, that I think some people are just predisposed.

Yeah. I'm the same way. Be attracted. I've had like maybe a bite or two, but it's like a mosquito situation. But I know people that just get literally but you get the poison ivy. I get poison ivy every single fall on my face in my eyes. But I don't get that. Maybe I don't get either. Oh, you don't get either.

Yeah, I'm the freak. Perfect man. You're what male performance looks like? I've been put in the hospital because of poison oak and poison ivy before. Really? In your lungs or mouth or whatever? In high school we had a party. Out in out in the woods and it was at one of my buddies houses out.

He had a farm out in the country, but he had a swimming pool and all of a a couple guys were driving four-wheelers and they were just like doing donuts in the intersections and, hauling ass down the gravel road. Someone called the sheriff on him. They [00:17:00] saw the sheriff started chasing him.

They came back to the party. So we're in the swimming pool and we see. All these four-wheelers come down and then three sheriff cars behind them. And so we hopped the fence and I'm just in a, I'm in a swimming suit in July and I'm running through the woods and la later that two days later.

And I was in, I was running from the cops for eight hours in the woods. It got dark and they were using spotlights to try to catch us. It was nice. Goodness. Yeah, bro. And look, I didn't get caught, but I made it back to the party later that like way late at night, got back in the truck, drove home and didn't take a shower, and I just, went to bed.

And then the next morning I was like, oh, something don't feel right. And two hours later, I looked like someone injected me with. Air, like I was just like, I mean my forearms and I had poisoned sumac as well. My forearms looked like I had gummy [00:18:00] worms on 'em, just like streaks of this puss and stuff.

And it was in my eyes and dude, like I had to this, I'm gonna say something extremely gross right now, but I had to pop. That's what this podcast is for. Viewer discretion is advised. I had to pop a blister to go number two. Oh dude, that's, I had a good way to get a serious infection. Lemme just break my skin.

Oh man. They had to give me painkillers and like sedatives to keep me from going. I was itching so bad. I was, something was wrong with my brain. Like I, I was going crazy, like literally crazy cuz I was itching so bad. Man, maybe you should have just taken that citation. Yeah. So what was the story you told your parents as far as how you got covered head to tone, poison ivy, something stupid that they probably wouldn't have believed anyway.

Oh, we were looking for mushrooms. Oh, in July, no, I bet. With no boots on or no [00:19:00] shoes on and in shorts with no shirt on. My mom felt no sympathy for me. She was like, I know exactly what you're doing. And it, you were probably at a party and she knew exactly what was going on.

She thought you got what you were saying. Did any of your did any of your buddies get as bad as you did running through the woods? They, no. They I got a buddy who's similar to you, man. The dude could roll in it. I look at it and get it. He rolls in it. He could roll in it and wouldn't get it, and so he didn't get it.

A couple other people had it around their ankles, but I. I don't know. Maybe I was the first guy through the weed patch. I was the was the, you were displays In the trail. In the trail and they were following, I don't know what it was, but it was not good, man. And I had it for a week and then I had I had scarring for such a long time after that because it, it stopped ditching, but then I had all these scabs all over my body.

Dude, I looked like I was on crystal meth. It was gnarly. Brutal. Hey you were telling us about Ticks on you and your daughter this weekend? You said you got out Turkey hunting, right? [00:20:00] Yeah. This week, this weekend was Iowa's youth season, and this was the first year that I actually bought a tag for my daughter during the youth season.

So usually she would just come with me and I would be the shooter. So on Thursday? Yeah. No, not me, you guys. You're trying to catch me in a trap here. Next thing there's gonna be like memes on with me on 'em. Yeah. Really? Thursday night I took her out and we shot the shotgun at an old decoy that I had that was, just broken up.

And so I, we took, I don't know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and I. I, she was sitting in between my legs and I was, we were trying to work out a way to where I was helping her hold the gun, putting it against her shoulder. And we were using like this Mossberg 20 gauge pump. And I was going through, Everything with her.

Hey, this means the safety's on. This means the safety's off. Always treat a gun like it's loaded, [00:21:00] don't touch it if you don't know. Let dad handle it, that kind of stuff. And so we walked away Thursday and she hit the target at about, 20 or 30 yards, something like that all three times or four times that she shot.

And so I was feeling a little more confident that she could actually do it. Lift the gun up herself. And then Friday it was a story of and here's the thing. Like at, she's a 10 year old, so I don't wanna push her. Okay. I don't want to, I don't wanna be like that, dad. It's we gotta stay out till dark and we gotta do this.

And we're, this is, go with the flow. Let her have her fun. If she starts to get tired or she wants to leave, we're gonna go do something different. And then ultimately on Friday we went fishing. But. Friday morning or it was Thursday night, I texted some of the other people who hunt there and I go, Hey, just wanna let you know I'm taking my daughter out Turkey hunting.

And their response back to me was, Hey, we're gonna be there too, listening for turkeys, and then we're gonna start cutting wood. And I'm just like, oh, [00:22:00] Jesus. So at whatever, right? They have access to the property just like I do. Not a big deal. So we, I went to a different part of the farm, of course, when we got set up.

All the turkeys were where I wanted to go. And so Friday was a we made a, we made some moves around, I took some trail cameras down let my daughter do some calling, that kind of stuff. We saw a lot of deer. She had fun, but it didn't last too long. And then we went back, I think we were outta the woods by nine 30 or 10 o'clock, right?

And so that was that whole day next morning. Those guys weren't there. And man, we were in 'em. If you've listened to me talk about turkeys on any of the other podcasts that I've done in, I say that the Turkey population was in a huge decline over the past, seven to 10 years. This year, man, something happened.

Whether all the turkeys in the area were on our farm or the, or. Or the actual population is slowly rebounding, [00:23:00] man. I heard Saturday morning, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 different times in on, I would say within a 300 acre piece, man, sounding off, responding to my calls. And it was beautiful. I just was like, I was just happy to hear that many gobbles like quote unquote the good old days.

And so I ended up we walked down to the bottom, to the river bottom ground on this field edge. Got into a fence line. We're setting up on some gobbles, and I thought th there was some turkeys gobbling closer to us and ultimately that's what I thought was gonna fly down and come to our decoy set.

But then I look outta the corner of my eye and I see a strut. And Tom, in the timber. I wanna say a hundred yards away. And so I had to have my daughter stand up, I had to rotate, and then she had to sit back down and two, two hens popped out down this this like logging trail or this two, this farm trail that goes back to another secluded field [00:24:00] and two hens were coming.

Right down this lane and behind them two struts. Okay. And I'm like it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen right now. And so my stepdad, I brought him along so that when I. I was calling, and then I told him, listen, once the turkeys show up, I'm gonna stop calling. And then that's when you kick in and it, so it seems like the turkeys are moving away from the Toms or from the other turkeys.

And then that way I can focus on the shot. I don't have to try to call and do that. Anyway, because I had to adjust to the left. Now the turkeys are heading right between me and my. My stepdad. And the first 10 kind of walks by us hops on this log that my stepdad was sitting on. And then I heard the, the, basically it's the warning call, and then it was o and then it was Yep.

And then it was over.[00:25:00] The Toms came outta strut. They turned around, they ran away, the hens ran away, and then about at a hundred yards, they stopped. And they just we stayed still. And the tom started gobbling again, but the hens man, they weren't having it and they started working away and I kept trying to call and then every time I got 'em to gobble, it was further away and further away.

But that man, that first strutting Tom was at about 35 yards and behind a tree. So if he would've stepped out, maybe, I don't know, five more feet, we would've had a shot. And I would've told her to take the shot. So that's how close we were and it ultimately didn't work out. And then we had to come back home for Easter.

And so now it's, yeah, now the youth season is over and it's the, it's Iowa's first shotgun season, and hopefully this week I'll be able to get out and do that. Yeah. So what'd you think? Yeah, how'd your daughter feel about it? Man, she was like, you, I could [00:26:00] feel her heart beating through her back on my chest, and it was she was jacked up. She doesn't get, she's not the one that gets too terribly excited about anything. But I could tell number one, she was tired, but then, and she was dozing off when I was calling, but when those Toms showed up and she could see him in strut, and there's.

From a distance standpoint, you listen to a gobble at a hundred yards and then you listen to a gobble at 35 yards. Yeah, it sounds completely different. It is loud. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Yeah. It's really intense. So she was wired after that? Yeah. But then they worked their away.

We went to go set up on the next group of turkeys, and then after that she's I think I'm ready to go home. And I was like, are you sure? You don't wanna tough it out just for a little bit. And she's no, I think I've done enough Turkey hunting. And so for a re a youth tag, a 28 50, 20 $8 and 50 cents[00:27:00] I call that money well spent on entertainment.

So Oh yeah. She got her money's worth. Yeah, for sure. You find out why they call 'em thunder chickens whenever they're one within 30 yards. Man. It's different. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And you could hear 'em, you could hear 'em spitting and drumming boom. Oh, she could, oh dude. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man.

My absolute favorite thing about Turkey hunting is when they may not necessarily be gobbling, but you're calling it a setup and then all of a sudden you can hear, you don't hear any gobbles, but you hear that. You hear that noise and you're like, where is it at? And it comes up from behind you, or one goggle's, like 20 feet behind you and you there, there's nothing you can do about it.

And then you can hear them dragging the tips of their wings into the leaves and things like that. Yeah. Oh man. That I used to, a couple if you would've asked me. Maybe two weeks ago. Hey Dan, what do you think about Turkey hunting? I would've said, ah, Turkey hunting bad. Who cares? Nobody, it's just a dumb Turkey.

But after this [00:28:00] weekend, man I changed my mind on that whole thing. I think I want to be more of a Turkey hunter. Yeah. Oh, let's go. I wanna be a Turkey hunter again, dude. But do you think that's partially because you had the opportunity and if it was a drought season, like past seasons, you'd still be like, this is a waste of time.

I, I think you're a hundred percent correct there. I think I got jacked up because the population had rebounded and not necessarily because we saw two strutting Toms come in, but we heard a lot of gobbles and a lot of gobbles means there's a lot of turkeys and so it was that, we saw a lot of hens driving around last night closer to home, man, last night we went on a drive and I saw five strutting toms and about.

30 hens on the public here around my house. And so that got me fired up just from I don't know if the right word is conservation standpoint, but just to know that there's been a [00:29:00] rebound there. There's been some rebound in the population and so that also got me fired up. But I think it was just this perfect mixture of what I just mentioned and being with my daughter.

And seeing how much fun she was having, that kind of led me to. Man maybe I am a Turkey hunter too. I don't know. That's awesome. We had our boy Paul Campbell down here this past week doing some videos and stuff and we were, we definitely were talking about how old Dan Johnson hates turkeys and Turkey hunting and he's gonna be very happy to hear that you've maybe turned the corner here.

I've never hated them. Okay. I've never hated Turkey. Maybe we exaggerated a little. Yeah, and that's fine. That's what you have to do in media, right? Yeah. You exaggerate everything. But but it's not that I hate turkeys. It's that I like deer hunting or bow hunting for whitetails. So much more Yeah.

Than I do the Turkey but I just feel like. After this weekend, I've been cutting myself short because there's nothing to do really. [00:30:00] Whitetail related. Their antlers have just fallen off. I'm done shed hunting. It's nub season, so my trail cameras are showing nothing but little nubs. Yeah. On the whitetail.

And you can't really tell which deer is which yet, unless they have a split ear or a scar on 'em or something like that. And so I worry too much about that and say, man, I should be out doing stuff for turkeys and yeah. And now I think I'm gonna start doing that. Awesome. So is your daughter gonna go with you?

Are you gonna talk her back? I don't think she's gonna, yeah, like the only time I'm gonna have is this week, Iowa's this first season is until, man when is it? Thursday. So Monday through Thursday this week. So it's a four day season. And so I'm gonna get out hopefully tomorrow morning and Wednesday morning, and then I gotta be back by nine o'clock in the morning on some of those for meetings, but try to catch 'em off the roost.

And outside of that man, it's just for me Turkey season in the past and I've, I prepared for it. This, I [00:31:00] didn't prepare for it this year. I prepared for youth season, but the. But now, I think next year is gonna be like, okay, vacation time, like no scheduled interviews, no meetings, prep everything for that week and really play it serious.

And if my kids wanna come with me or my wife wants to come with me, that's the best thing about Turkey season is if. If someone moves like this weekend, I wouldn't care, but if it was 150 inch whitetail and my daughter moved, I might be a little upset. Little push out of the tree. Yeah, exactly. Like, all right, you're walking home.

And but with turkeys I don't care. I've killed enough of them in my life in the past, and I don't know, I, but this, but something about this year got me fired up again and love it. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Excited to hear how it goes for you, man. Yeah. I'm ex I'm excited to get out. I've had too many season and I haven't been as serious about it as probably should have been, but too many seasons of getting birds closer, bumping birds, running gun, [00:32:00] bumping 'em out the way, so I'm ready to, you've paid your dues, man.

I'm ready to get a bird. This is your year. Hope how long have you been to Hampton Turkey? I have Turkey hunted, probably six seasons and with no luck over the last 12 years or so. With no luck. No luck. Small private property. For the most part. So not hunting a high population of birds.

Yeah. Like we were talking about earlier, I'm gonna try and get out on some public, but I've never attacked it like I do deer season or fishing for that matter. It's it signifies spring. I like hearing the birds talk and gobble and all that kind of stuff. I it's more of a fun little hobby versus something I really put a ton of time and effort into.

Yeah. So I have myself to blame for not shooting one. Yeah. Yeah. The strategy and stuff on the, we were talking about Paul's podcast, the how to hunt turkeys or whatever it, it bumps you up a level. Like it, like the way I think about Turkey hunting and stuff like that, like on my own is not very sophisticated.

But then listening to these guys tell, like some [00:33:00] of their most complicated stories of how they're handling things and all that, it I don't know, just like deer hunting podcasts, like you're learning through somebody else's experiences and. Hearing somebody like Paul explain, like how break it all down of this is why we did X, Y, Z at this time.

I don't know. It's got me thinking about Turkey hunting, how I think about deer hunting. Yeah. I've been reading some of the books that they recommended on one of his earlier shows too. And I'm drawing a blank on 10th Legion. Okay. This is one of the first ones. Yeah. And it's, there's a little bit of tactical type stuff, but small, and it's almost in the mindset and the heart of a Turkey hunter and why they love it.

That's cool. And that whole book is just making me jacked up, like getting me excited to go and, yeah. Actually try a little harder. Awesome. Yeah. We're, me and Phil are taking our first crack at private land this year for turkeys, and that seems to be, Around us where people smack most of 'em.

So I think we're gonna have a better chance. We got a really good setup and I dunno, hopefully we get several birds between us. Talk about 'em. [00:34:00] It's gonna be a fun season. Yes, sir. Close us out. Dan Hood. I got a question. I got a question for you guys. Okay. Mushrooms. Yep. It's that time of year.

I mean at, by the end of this week, there's a good chance, we're looking at eighties. In the high of the eighties, we're looking at the lows at night of the mid forties, which means the, to soil temperatures are gonna start creeping up there. And over the past five years, I've really fallen in love with going out and looking for morels and pheasant backs and some of these other oyster type mushrooms that are growing in the spring.

Do you guys do that at all? Do we do that, Jacob? Yeah. I feel like there's a story here. Yeah. So one of the, my mother-in-law has two farms. She lives on one of them, it's 20 acres, and she has another one that's an old cattle farm that's 55 acres, but on the piece where she lives a 20 acre spot. Last year, I every year since she's lived there, about five years I've looked for mushrooms, was looking in the totally wrong spot from [00:35:00] where I found them last year though.

And we probably found 12 over the, the season out there last year or so. It wasn't a ton and. My wife had been out there on Wednesday of last week and was looking for mushrooms. Didn't find anything. We were out there Thursday with Paul and I walked into the spot, the exact same spot that she was in the day before.

I. And found six of 'em. Almost kicked a giant one. Yeah, there's a big one. Come to find out, her uncle was telling me that he has one, he has a picture of it somewhere where he has one laid up next to a foot ruler, 12 inch ruler, and it's almost as long as the ruler. Holy God. Wow. And he's from It's like a small tree, southeastern Kentucky in the, in the mountains and stuff.

And he's we used to get big ones down there. Whoa. So my little, five inch one or whatever is nothing. So yeah, like I've, I'm started figuring out where I find them here. They tend to like moss. There's. Recent [00:36:00] disturbance of trees falling over the last couple years. It's on the backside of a pond and so South Slope, isn't that right?

It's, yeah. Point south. So I don't know, like I've lucked into 'em last year when I found 'em, and then this year I've just. Been trying to find spots similar to that. And then once you see them, once you find some, your eyes kind of dial, it's like looking for deer and Turkey in the fields when you're driving down the highway.

Yeah. Once you see 'em, your eyes kind of dial in for what you're looking for. So I don't have a ton of experience find them. I have zero tips other than I tend to find mine around moss or in moss. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I just, once I started finding a lot of morels over the years, I really started like reading up and doing research on what else out, out there that you can eat.

And so I messed around with some pheasant backs. They call 'em. Those are like a it's a shelf mushroom that grows on trees or dead trees or things like that. They don't grow outta the ground and they're [00:37:00] okay. They might, you don't want to eat 'em at a main course like you would a morrell.

But I'm telling you, there is another mushroom out there. They are. They're golden oysters, I think is what they're called. And they grow in bunches on dead trees. And they are absolutely delicious. And so I wanted to make sure, I did my research so Hey, let's eat these mushrooms and then see what happens.

And I didn't know if I was gonna get poisoned or not, but But those two mushrooms, man, if you can get a mess of those and it's awesome when Turkey season aligns with that and you can hunt turkeys, the gobbles stop, then you can hunt mushrooms, and then you can go catch some crappy or some blue gill and then you can have a fish fry.

That is, that's an ideal spring weekend. But but yeah, mushrooms, man I love, I just love eating them. Yeah, I'm funny enough ordered, I had done this before, but I ordered this like coffee replacement mushroom blend that you just pour [00:38:00] hot water into this mix. And it's got like lions main and a bunch of other ones.

It's called Rise, like r y z E. And so I'm gonna be trying that now working mushrooms into everyday diet mushroom teeth. Yeah. Yep. Micro, thes, what they call that. Yeah. Hopefully not. If that happens, I'm gonna stop. I'm be a little unproductive at work. I would imagine I'd drive by myself or you could be the most productive at work with your creativity.

I might have a hard time driving into work if that trip tripping out on the side of me. Did you all see that purple elephant on the island? So next week we'll probably have a couple more Turkey. Conversations. We're probably, I don't know what's the plan? I know you guys are drawing today the winner of the utv.

Are you gonna reveal it on Uncensored or are you gonna post something separately? Yeah, we'll see it, it all comes down like we gotta talk. So we've already drawn 'em. We know who it is, we checked 'em out. And we're gonna be talking to them hopefully soon. I'm not sure. [00:39:00] We'll probably ask them if it's okay if we share that.

And we gotta make sure, like with a con contest like this, you have to go through like a series of things to make sure that it all works out. We don't wanna reveal anything now, but if they're cool with it, I, we'd probably announce who won and do that whole thing. We've got some other announcements I bet we'll make about who referred the most and all kinds of stuff like that.

Yeah. It'd be cool if we did some, like runner up prizes. Yeah. Yeah. So if you haven't heard from Go Wild by the time this airs, you probably didn't win. There's a good chance. Yeah, there's a good chance. There's a few weeks in between. We're probably two weeks away from this one dropping, so by that point I would imagine we've Okay.

Effectively given it away. All right, cool. This was fun. Dan Johnson, thanks for joining us. We got Braden Ware, Jacob Knight. I'm Dan Hood. Lock this show, hit that plus sign and get your rewards. Leave us a review and buy something from the store and shoot a Turkey in the face. All right, thanks you guys.

See ya. See ya.[00:40:00]