Tyler and KC from the Element

On this week’s show Andrew had the chance to sit down with Tyler and KC from the Element!  What a great talk from anything covering white tails, squirrel nuts, gardening, and more.  The guys are professional white tail hunters and have traveled the country doing so.  They share their story of how they got to be where they are from playing football at SMU to driving the Buck Truck.

Paul and Andrew give a couple quick recaps of turkey hunting around the state.  Both striking out on birds, but enjoying the time in the outdoors.  News from around the state includes updates from the CWD front, upcoming trail closures, Picture award winners, and of course the turkey harvest numbers. Spoiler alert, the harvest numbers are WAY up from 2022!!!

Have a great week and enjoy the O2 if you get out into Ohio’s great Outdoors!

Andrew Muntz: [00:00:00] And what's up guys? Welcome back to the O two podcast, the Ohio Outdoors Podcast. Paul and Andrew here tonight talking to you. Let's see. It is Andrew. Yes, sir. Turkey season's over, man. Aw

Paul Campbell: not entirely for Ohio. The few counties left. Five counties left. I don't like it. I got one Turkey hunt left.

That's this Friday and Eastern bar, Eastern New York.

Andrew Muntz: My man, I have to say though, I take like my deer season and it draws out five or six months, whatever it is. Yeah, you take that six months and you pack it into 30 days and it's impressive. It's exhausting.

Paul Campbell: I'm exhausted

Andrew Muntz: this year. I don't know how you do that and be a dad and have a job and everything else.

It's impressive. I'm not gonna lie.

Paul Campbell: It, it stresses every aspect of my area, all of that. It's fortunate [00:01:00] like with the job, I can weasel some of that in, but man it's a lot. It's, I've had a, I've had a good run, saw a lot of turkeys die this year.

Hundred, a couple new states that I haven't before. So man killed some turkeys. Pretty cool, I'll tell you. Good year, dude. You had

Andrew Muntz: a good year. Yeah, man. Hell yeah. And we'll cap it off by doing a little fishing, a little walleye fishing this weekend. How about

Paul Campbell: that? Oh yeah. We got, we all the old Kentucky contingent coming up this weekend.

Hope

Andrew Muntz: Turkey hunting. And yeah. Derrick, you had Derek up last week?

Paul Campbell: I did. Man we had a lot of fun. I took him out to the farm and it was funny, he got here probably like noon. And thanks to go off for the support of our showtime to go wad.com. Find us on there. Oh two podcast.

Find me on there. Paul Campbell, tons of stuff. You getting into land management. Getting

Tyler Jones: ready for deer season. You

Paul Campbell: wanna post your Turkey pictures, ask questions of the community. Go out is the place for the hunter and angler outdoors men or woman in this country. Time to go out.com, find 'em on all the app stores.

But yes Derek drove up and we [00:02:00] went out and the farm it's super small man. There's not a lot of woods. You gotta really gut it out. And I knew that Derek would be able to sit for long periods of time and not move and be quiet. And you like, it's that's hard. That's a hard thing.

And man, we walked into the field, boom, turkeys in this field and we snuck in, got set up. It wasn't the ideal setup, but we didn't wanna blow him outta there. And, did some calling and eventually they just rolled in, man. And we had a Jake that, or not Jake at Tom, it was a long beard, rolled in about a hundred yards.

He came to just a little shy of 70 yards. And just looked and saw the decoy and was like, not today. And just walked right out. And then, so the next day we went in, we got there at four 30 and there's a, there's like a property line and along the property line there's these just honeysuckle bushes, man and honeysuckle, invasive species.

Get 'em out of there if you've got 'em. But I'll tell you what, they make one heck of a Turkey blind. And [00:03:00] so I, previous to that, I'd cleared out like little shooting windows to where, you can get in these honeysuckle bushes and oh man, they're good blinds. And we had nothing for 10 hours.

And nothing. Not a peep, not a gobble, absolutely nothing. And I told him, I'm like, dude, they're gonna be in this field. They're always in this field. We just have to gut it out, man. And we did. And we had a hen come in, It was funny. We heard our first gobble cause I've been calling a lot, not a lot, but just like periodically throughout the day and finally Turkey gobbles suit all the way at the other end of the field.

I'm like, hell yeah. Here we go. Game time, nothing. So yeah, half an hour later, like a hand walks into the field, I'm like, okay, they're still here. And she works her way all the way down to us and she gets about 60 yards from us and turkeys are wild man. Like they make noises that like drumming and spitting that if they're not like right on top of you, I just [00:04:00] don't think that we can hear 'em.

Or if there's like ambient noise, like it's not loud. But she knew that Tom was in the area. She just didn't know where she started yelping like 60 yards from us and he was directly to our left and just started hammering and we're like, oh my God, he is right here. And. I didn't have to call at all. There's there's an actual live wild Turkey doing all of the calling.

Excuse me. And I see this sucker like pull, come into the field, not into the field. He was on the other side of the fence on the proper that we don't have permission to hunt. And I see him, I'm like, Derek, there is. And dude, I came unglued cuz normally like when it's me hunting, like I have to calm my nerves and close my eyes and I'm like, let it happen.

I'm just like, like shaking. I just loving every minute this sucker is gobbling his brains off. And this hen is yelping her brains out. And it's crazy, man. Like when you s when you're, when you see a hen, like the way that their mouths move and the way that they call, and then how like their, the cadence that they have and the sound that they [00:05:00] create you realize that there's not a human on the face of the earth.

That sounds like a wild Turkey. There's not we don't sound like. Anywhere. Like just it, I don't know. It was wild, man. Like when I say close, I'm talking like less than 15, like probably 15 to 20 feet. Damn. That she was calling. And I've never been that close to a hen calling and I'm just like watching her intently and I'm listening.

I'm like, this is amazing. And I wish I had my video camera with me, but sh But she was on top of us before I could really get hit, record or whatever. And then Tom, he's at one point we marked it off. He was 12 yards, or excuse me, 12 feet from us. Wow. It was insane. Wow. Wow.

I've never been that close to a wild Turkey, like a live wild Tom. And dude, when he was, he didn't gobble that close. He gobbled, pre pretty close. And it was just, it was amazing. And he was just low enough that he couldn't see our, like we had a decoy, a hin, decoy out.

He never came over that fence. But was [00:06:00] really cool is he had a bearded hen with him. That she came in. So he just swooped in, picked up this other hand. They met down at the other end of the field and just walked out, man, gobbled a couple more times and just we heard him do the purring and the clucking was insane.

It was super cool, but I felt bad for Derek. Two days in a row, turkeys, and we went out to some public spots. I heard some gobbling and we just, it just, yeah,

Andrew Muntz: no, me too. And he's just, Derek is an outdoors man's man, oh yeah, you were telling me you guys have been out all day hunting hard and this kinda stuff, and you had to come back early for something earlier in the evening.

Yeah. Kids, yeah, kids stuff. And Derek's I'm going fishing like most people are good. Okay, peace. I'm gonna sit on your deck and drink a beer. Yeah. Nope, he's going fishing. Man.

Paul Campbell: So yeah, that was great. It was good having good, having him out. Good seeing him. I, man, I don't know, like I've not taken this many people hunting before in my life.

Different people. And I want everyone, you, like you went out with me, what? Once, twice. Twice. Maybe twice. I don't even [00:07:00] remember. And I want you and Derek and Justin and Brandon and Mason and Kenny and tra all these people to get these turkeys. And I don't care if I shoot one. Like I'm more upset.

Like I, I have a day in the woods. I hear a couple turkeys gobble or they come in and I'm like, it was free and sweet. But I get like just flat out angry when you guys don't get to

Andrew Muntz: Turkey. Let's talk real quick. Good. We'll give the quick rundown of our trip north. So thanks to our buddy Johnny Schwartz who sent over the transferred the Controlled Hunt opportunity.

It was a mentored hunt. And being that I have never shot in a Turkey, I count as a. Mentee and you were my mentor. And oh. So we ran up there to Las Lake Laan and it was one of the units, whatever unit A or one or whatever. Interesting layout, man. And I not, I'm still not sure what to think of the whole thing.

It was a three day hunt, but because of other obligations, we really, we made it a quick trip, right? We ran up there the one night just in time to [00:08:00] roost him. We heard a couple gobbling across the street on private. So that's where we were gonna set up, right? We drove through tr tried to, locate some other stuff and didn't find anything.

So next morning, we stayed in that hotel and then came first thing in the morning out to the woods. Sure enough, right where we left them, they were across the street on the private, just hammering

Tyler Jones: away 3,

Paul Campbell: 375 yards. Yeah. And for arx.

Andrew Muntz: Yep. Yeah. We sat there for a while and eventually, oh, the mower came.

So because of the way the layout was, there's a cemetery across the street and it must have been a city owned property or something. It was like a township truck pulls up with a zero turn,

Paul Campbell: just couldn't hear anything, couldn't hear anything, and like it, this Turkey wasn't coming. So I left you at our setup and I went a hundred yards behind you.

Just raising hell, man. Yeah just like I was the hen walking out of his life and he came he cut some distance.

Andrew Muntz: He did. And we think he, you texted me [00:09:00] like,

Paul Campbell: oh my god, in the field.

Andrew Muntz: I thought he was close. I thought he was across the street closer. Yeah, he had sounded a lot closer cuz one, maybe it was once the mower went off, I don't know.

But Then I started to wonder if maybe that we were getting deep by some domestic turkeys. But I don't think that was the case.

Paul Campbell: No, dude, those sucker, domestic turkeys don't loosen the trees. You could clearly tell how high they were. It was funny. Yeah. When the mower started, it just kinda it it really it changed the dynamic of the setup that we had.

It changed the woods. It changed the tone of those turkeys. Like they, they completely lost interest. Yeah. And that guy's just trying to do his job, but

Tyler Jones: yeah.

Andrew Muntz: No. And whatever, random Thursday or whatever it was. So then we did a lot of walking through the woods. I will say, shout out to first light and that trace system, if you guys like are looking for a warm season setup.

That was exceptionally light. I never got hot in anything. I think I got up in the eighties that day. So it was warm and it was hot. Yeah, it was great. We did a lot of walking. Eventually we're like, all right. Let's go grab lunch from town and we'll come back and [00:10:00] regroup As we're driving out, we see alone Tom, big Tom by himself in this private field and he ducks back into the unit that we had access to.

So that was really funny though, cause I'm driving and you're like, oh my gosh stop. And then you're like, wait no, don't stop, keep going. No, you have to turn around. Don't stop.

Paul Campbell: I said Slow down, slow up. You're like in the middle of the road. Slam

Andrew Muntz: the brake. Cuz like with deer, I stop and I like park and I look at 'em for a while and then you're like no, keep going.

So we like, I had to get up the road a minute, turn around, come back, we slam into the parking spot, regroup, throw all of our stuff on. Say we did not, however, wear the same footwear, which has another part to this conversation, but the. We grab all of our stuff, we go sneaking up this gravel road.

We're like trying to sneak in. Now that part of Laan is a, it's public land, like a, anybody can go out there to walk and hike and do other things. I guess we had the hunting rights out there for that period.[00:11:00] But whatever. So like we get up there, we set the decoy, we're sneak, we're ready to go.

And all of a sudden we hear this like talking, coming behind us. A couple people just out walking on the trail. And we had talked to some other people that hunted that, that area before and they're like, oh yeah, don't go, don't hunt over that way because the birds don't go over there cuz people are always walking through.

The birds were actually over there some and somewhat, a lot of them. A lot of them. So as soon as we heard those people coming through, we basically said, all and let's just refrain. All this was in a very safe manner. But, or we said, okay let's like go get lunch and we'll regroup again.

Paul Campbell: The only thing that wasn't safe, we were sitting in those, was it honeysuckle and a

Andrew Muntz: pine tree? And Paul sat in a pilot. Oh my gosh, dude,

Paul Campbell: I, what did I pull off from under there? Eight. Eight ticks. If you look at me and you're like, you ready? Go? I'm like, yes. Get me outta here.

Andrew Muntz: Freaking out. I don't know. I don't know what you sat in, but for whatever reason, man, they were all over you.

And so the shoe, the footwear here's the thing, I'm, everybody knows I'm big on Permethrin [00:12:00] spray. The you had changed your shoes, two shoes that had not been sprayed. And I swear to God that was part of it. Like for what? Dude? They were all over.

Paul Campbell: I had my cross kicks on that I got from Go Wild Moss Oak Bottom Land.

So that worked. I still cameo up, right? But man, they were all over my shoes and then they were getting on my sock and going up my leg.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, it was miserable, man. And I absolutely miserable. I remember seen anything like that. I think I pulled one off there overall. And then the, the wor other worst part was when we got outta the truck the night before to Russa Birds walked through.

We walked through a mode path. And we both came back with what, 2, 3, 4 on us. Oh God. And we didn't have any, we weren't sprayed down or anything. We were in like freaking flip flops. But we were at 16, I believe for the week. Yeah, for the hunt. 24 hours that we were there. They were wild. Yeah, they were and they were like crawling on the ground and or in the parking lot and on the bed of the truck.

It was wild. Anyway, who went to lunch? That was good. Came back had a quick what did we do in the afternoon? [00:13:00]

Paul Campbell: I don't even remember Paul. I took a nap. Oh, that's right. I took that. We went, yeah, I fell asleep

Andrew Muntz: in the Turkey woods. We had a sweet setup, which there was no ticks there. That was weird.

Sweet setup. And then we decided to call it. So we went back in and we got in the truck and headed back. We saw another flock of a mountain in the private land next to us. Made one more attempt there. No luck. So it was a good trip. It was quick trip. We got back late that night. So thanks Johnny.

Appreciate it. And we'll give, it was a blast. Give it hell next year. Yeah, it really was. Let's see what else we got here real quick. Shout out to Midwest Gun Works, Cameron and the boys over there doing work. If you got guys need gun parts, accessories, anything like that, check them out. What is it?

Ohio Outdoors five is the code. Save you 5% half rack, half-rack.com. All kinds of hunting accessories. They should have that meat lug coming out here soon. Keep an eye out for that. The hunter hangers. I see your bow hanging very nicely there. Paul. Looks beautiful. Boom. Professionally done.[00:14:00] And finally, X vision optics.

Thank you to the folks over there with the thermal vision, night vision, all kinds of range finders, that kind of stuff. And let's see. Haven't had a chance to get back out. Do any of the coyote calling or anything like that? I'm itching. I've got a guy up in. Would it be Harden County? He keeps telling me like, we gotta go.

We gotta go. And he sends me all the pictures of the dogs he's calling in the middle of the night. Coyotes, not dogs. Coyotes, my apologies. Not actual dogs. Coyotes and they're, watch it. Isn't that sweet? Get your wets. Yeah, you're right. They're months killing dogs. Yeah. Dog killer. How about Dolly?

Did you see the picture of Dolly the other day? Yeah. That are great. She is just, she's your buddy man. So Dolly your buddy. Check out our go wild profile. But Dolly is the deer that lives the neighborhood deer, who ironically I was getting the grill ready for venison, burgers the other night, and I look over and she's standing right there and I got a picture of her and just checking.

Yeah, man. Yeah. And she came over very cool. Gave her a little pet. All right, let's jump to some news here real quick, [00:15:00] Paul. We'll try to knock this out. There's some good stuff in here. So there is, and there's some non good stuff. Let me get the,

All right, so if you would like to sign up for the Ohio Landowner Hunter Access program, the oap pr program, and become an oap property. It begins on June 1st and goes through July 15th. Since the program's launched in 2021, we have more than 15,000 acres that have been enrolled. So there's, if you are a landowner and you're interested in opening up to, I don't know if it's considered public or pseudo public, or opening up to the public you can check out, let's see.

If you go to wild ohio.gov, they have the Ohio Land Owner Hunter Access Partnership page on there. Landowners can receive annual payments ranging from $2 per acre for crop land and $30 per acre for perennial wildlife habitat, such as grasslands, wetlands, and [00:16:00] forests. So this is a cool opportunity to give back if you've got those kind of resources.

Yeah, it's pretty neat. Yeah. Pretty cool.

Paul Campbell: And we've both used it. We have, yeah. I've used it extensively. So it's very neat program. If you are a hunter check it out. There's a lot of a lot of opportunity for sure.

Andrew Muntz: Let's see. The Ohio State Parks and watercraft has announced the 2023 photo contest winner.

Paul comes to us from Mr. Jason Hammond of Zanesville. So congratulations, Jason, for his first place photo that is titled Early Morning Paddle and an Old Canoe. And it was taken down at Bur Oak Lake bur Oak. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's actually, it's a beautiful picture here in the thing. So shout out to Jason.

Paul Campbell: Good work, Jason. Let's see.

Andrew Muntz: All right, so this is the Unfunded News the division. Of wildlife has confirmed additional CW d cases in Marion Wyandot counties, Marion and Wyandot counties.[00:17:00] So real quick, it's 11 additional whitetail deer tested positive for CW D in Marion and Wyandot. Let's see, seven of the CW d positive deer were bucks.

Four were do testing was performed on deer harvested by hunters during the 20 22, 20 23 season as well as deer taken through targeted removal efforts in February and March. Post-season deer removal is meant to slow down, slow the spread of C W D by reducing deer numbers in the areas where the disease has been detected.

So since the fall of 2020, there's been a total of 22 wild deer that have tested positive. All of those are coming in, in Wyandot in Marion County 16 in Wyandot, six in Marion. So the state continues to keep Try to keep the thumb on that and see what, what's going on. Let's see. So sampling for C W D will continue in 23 to 24 deer hunting season.

Special deer hunting regulations and hunting opportunities will be in effect in the [00:18:00] disease surveillance area of Harden, Marion and W dot counties. So more information to come I'm sure on that. Yeah,

Paul Campbell: it's interesting. I'm sure TOK and those guys and, Cleon they've got their finger out the pulse of that.

I, there's a lot of really smart people taking, with an eye to that.

Andrew Muntz: Great. Let's see. This is a quick one. Temporary forest road closures are scheduled during the southern Ohio Forest rally. So the department natural resources will be closing some state forest roads for the Southern Ohio Forest rally on June 6th, the 10th.

And that will be on Syda Trail and Shawnee and Zelensky State Forest. So if you're heading down that way and that's not your thing just keep that in mind. Maybe check out their, they have maps and all kinds of stuff Exactly where all this will be happening. All right, Paul, I know what you've been waiting for Wild Turkey season results through [00:19:00] Sunday, May 21st.

Paul Campbell: Yeah, I saw the number. I didn't look at the county on purpose. I didn't look at the county breakdown.

Andrew Muntz: Total number so far harvested 15,555 birds, lots of fives. So let's just take that, compare it to 2022, where we had 11,770. So you're up almost 4,000 birds this year. That's gotta be good, man. And that's a lot of percentage, isn't it?

What is that?

Paul Campbell: That's pretty good. And you're almost at, so 22, it's

Andrew Muntz: almost 33%

Paul Campbell: increase. Yeah. 22 was the one, the first year, the one bird limit 21 was our last year with obviously with the two bird limit. And there was 18,000 roughly, give or take turkeys harvested in the state during the spring season.

So you're, we've, we almost equaled that with just a one Turkey limit. I talked to Mark Wiley, I sent him a text. I said, how do you feel about the numbers? And he said the the PU survival numbers must have been accurate because,[00:20:00] we had those two or three really good PLP numbers, pulset survival numbers.

So yeah, I think there's a lot of, there's, I've said this before here, there, there's a lot to be optimistic about the Turkey population in the state of Ohio. So it's still a long way to go to recover and get it to where we all want it. But it's definitely, I think it's trending in the right direction.

And there was what, 50,000 permits sold yep. That's great. That's pretty good. That's a lot. I don't, I can't remember, I can't recall what the permanent numbers were in the past. That seems like an awful lot for Ohio. Yeah. With

Andrew Muntz: one bird. And the spring Turkey season has concluded in the southern zone.

We've got the five counties up in the northeast zone that remain open until May 28th. So you should, if you're up that way, good luck last couple days and let's see, Paul, number 10, Washington. Nine. Jefferson, eight Adams, seven Kak. Kak. Do you know what it's like to not be on top? I don't know if they do over there.

Six Belmont. Five Tuscarora. Four Ashtabula. [00:21:00] It might be the first time we've seen them up there, isn't it? Maybe not. Oh

Paul Campbell: yeah. Cuz they just opened up. Yeah, but they're, they're the Turkey killing capital of Ohio, man.

Andrew Muntz: There you go. So they still got time. Oh yeah. All right. Top three. You ready? You wanna guess?

Yes. I'm gonna

Paul Campbell: go and I don't know what order Muskingham. Gallia. Oh gosh. I don't even know. Tu you already said Tusker, ROS, right? Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Here you go. Ready? Number three, Monroe. Number two. Muskingham. And pulling ahead for number one is Gallia. There you go.

Paul Campbell: So that's

Andrew Muntz: the new attorney numbers down there.

Yep. That's the news from around the state. I do wanna apologize cuz we didn't really put a show out last week. Life gets busy and we didn't wanna just throw something out there. But this week we've got I had the opportunity to sit down with Tyler and Casey from the Element. So these guys are man, they're deer killing machines and they are very down to [00:22:00] earth, super humble.

They are part of the meat eater team. So we had, oh, I don't know, about an hour just to bs with 'em and learn a little bit about where they came from and how they got to be where they're at. We don't get super into whitetail tactics or anything. You guys know that. I'm not good at asking those kind of questions, but I think it's a pretty good, it was a pretty good talk and it was a lot of fun and look forward to seeing what those guy, those guys continue to come out with here down the road.

So

Paul Campbell: I really I really was looking forward to talking to him. I just couldn't, I couldn't make it happen. So way too much. Good guys. Great. Great podcast. Yeah, I'm glad you get a chance to talk to him. Hopefully you guys enjoy the show,

Andrew Muntz: Yep. Okay. Before we sign off here couple shout outs and reminders.

Archery hike.com 3D Archery Hiking event. One day, two day, three day passes. Available it's down in Hawking Hills, July 7th to ninth. Awesome event. Get on that website, get yourself registered, go down, shoot some 3D targets on an awesome course. [00:23:00] Justin does an amazing job setting that up. And the benefits go to farmers and hunters feeding the hungry.

Super good time. And then Paul, remind me the BHA event,

Paul Campbell: BHA Muster in the mountain. It is in July 23rd, 24, 20 fifth. He can go to backcountry hunters.org for more information. And I was corrected. Our good friend, listener of the program, KA. Connie, Oz. Thanks Justin. This is Ka Ohio.

Thank you Justin. So there you go. That's gonna be a great event. We're gonna sit down with Cal from me, eater little little podcast, little entertainment. So I'm looking forward to that. So be

Andrew Muntz: a good time. And yeah, we are going fishing this weekend, so we'll have a, maybe we get a show up there.

That would be fun. The old Walleye Festival up there, I think in Port Clinton. So anyhow, someone

Paul Campbell: asked that. They're like, are you gonna drive? Are you gonna drive home on Saturday? I'm like, dude, I'm hoping to have be so full of walleye and alcohol. There's zero chance in driving a car home on Saturday.

So [00:24:00] Uber. Oh, there you

Andrew Muntz: go. All right, thank you guys for listening. We appreciate ya. If you get a chance check us out on Instagram, D oh two dot podcast, the o two podcast.com is the website oh two podcast on Go Wild. Yeah, whatever else, reach out to us and tag us and stuff. So thanks to listening.

Appreciate you guys. Take care.

All right, so let's see. Today we've got some real special guests here. The gentleman from the Element Wild Tyler and Casey. Guys, how's it going?

K.C. Smith: It's going good, man. Just getting the Workday started. Spent some time in the garden this morning. Ooh. And now we're here inside. It's a little misty outside.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, that doesn't get much better than starting the day off in the garden. Our listeners know, I didn't tell you, but my background's in horticulture, so [00:25:00] anytime you get to deal with plants and stuff, that's up my alley. So we might talk about that today instead, what we do. That sounds good.

I'm interested. What, first of all, where are you guys at? What staters? Currently

Tyler Jones: in Texas. Texas. That's where we grew, born and raised. And we just came back from a hunt in New Mexico, but we are in our hometown right now in

Andrew Muntz: Texas. Gotcha. So what is in the garden this time of year in Texas?

Everything.

K.C. Smith: Everything. Yeah. We're pulling out the the cold season stuff. I still got some radishes I need to get out. I got some cauliflower to make cuz I got it in too late. Onions will be ready in about two weeks and then Yeah, tomatoes are just a couple, like a week or two from putting it off.

Squash is already putting off a little bit. Peppers are putting off, so it's rock and roll time here

Andrew Muntz: for garden stuff. That's crazy because in Ohio, so we just yesterday May 15th is our frost free date. And that Wow. At that point it's okay, now you can put stuff out and you're pretty safe. Now you still need to watch and make sure that nothing happens, but I know, yeah, mother's Day weekend is huge in [00:26:00] the garden center world and they were cranking last week, weekend getting plants out, so

K.C. Smith: yeah.

That's cool. Our last average, last frost date is April 1st or third ish, but We push that a lot because it averages don't, aren't just a bell curve, right? Like we have a couple of like mid-April frost every decade that kind of push that frost date back. So like I put in, I gambled this year, I put in cuz I had time at that point in time that I put in my stuff like March 20th through 23rd, something like that and got away with it.

Tomatoes got in a little bit early for that and so did the peppers. So makes 'em do pretty good as long as you don't have those cold nights, but you know the stuff right? Your horticultures like as long as you don't have those series of cold nights that just really delay growth and.

Tyler Jones: You're good. So yeah, and our stuff will burn up so quick. So it's a gamble we want to take is to get that stuff in early, because it just gets so hot and muggy around here and our tomatoes will be toast by, end of July a lot of times. Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. And that's just when ours start to take off, but, oh [00:27:00] man. We could go down that rabbit hole for a long time. So I have to show you guys one thing before, and I didn't tell you about this before we get started, and I'll have to post this on our social media, but can you guys see this right here? So what I'm showing these guys is my, my wife's grandmother and grandfather passed away recently, like in the last couple years.

And they're cleaning out their house and they've got this little decoration thing and it's got some some leaves and then these two fuzzy brown things, right? So they're going through all the things in the house and they're like, you guys want this? Or whatever. And they, I said what is that?

What is this? And they give this big, long, elaborate story about how allie's grandfather who he was old school, world War II, vet, like always was fighting with, some rodent in the yard or something. He had a squirrel that lived in their chimney or whatever and was burrowing in the house.

And he eventually trapped it. And it was this ongoing, massive fight that he had with this squirrel. So his way of Honoring it was to take the squirrels nuts and to put it on these [00:28:00] leaves to make a decoration. So me being the hunter in the family I was gifted this set of what is supposed to be squirrel nuts on leaves as a decoration for my office.

But these are not actual squirrel nuts, cuz those would be absolutely huge. But it has a fun story to go with it, so I'll make sure to, it's hilarious post that picture up there kind of stuff. So you guys are, man, you're rocking and rolling. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I, there's so much content out there in the YouTube sphere and social media and every, everything I really personally became introduced to you guys and your work through when you started doing the Rut Fresh Radio stuff last year.

And it was awesome. Loved it. But I want to hear more about your, your story of how you guys got to be where you're at, because it's obviously, there's a lot there and I think it's always unique to see how people get where they go and decisions they make along the way and that kind of stuff.

So I don't, you guys where does this story all start? [00:29:00] The whole element idea and introduction? How did you get into hunting? Is it something you grew up with or, yeah.

K.C. Smith: Why don't you start Okay. Since you have a little bit more with the

Andrew Muntz: like production

Tyler Jones: experience stuff. Yeah. Both of us grew up hunting.

That's just it's not something that was, it was literally just something I did, it's something I do. It's not so much let's make a big deal about this. It's more this is, I, if I had a chance to have a gun in my hand every day, I was gonna, Walk around the yard and do the thing, that was just, it was like the same, it's not we're making a big deal about, going to school or, waking up in the morning.

It's just something you do. And that's what hunting was for me. And I think KC as well. Just something that his generationally, his family has done. It's it's something that's very natural to us. And maybe what was a little more unnatural was the filming side of things, but I have a creative artistic.

Side, I enjoy creating things. And I always liked the arts as well. And so ended up long story short, I carried a camera [00:30:00] in, into the woods or filming ducks or whatever for since I was little, probably like before I was 10 maybe around 10. And then can just, like I used to have one of those vhs like over the shoulder cameras, that my parents, I, jacked from my parents and took with me.

And eventually when I was in college started to entertain the idea of, Wanting to be a little more professional about things, and try to pursue this. It's always been something, I always, my dad had a fishing lodge. He still does. He's had it for 30 years. Growing up that I always thought I wanted to be in outdoor space, right?

I wanted to be a fishing guide or something like that. I'm very thankful. I'm not a fishing guide right now because I understand it a little bit more than I did at the time, and I don't know about some of the clientele and how much I would enjoy being with them, but that was something I wanted to do growing up.

And anyway, I, once I started to pursue a little more of a professional video mentality caught up with a, with some kind of [00:31:00] newer friends and had networked and started filming some stuff. Really tried hard to do like high production stuff.

And then along the way, met this guy and started to morph into a more it's cool. It's really cool to make a season long video, cuz you can spend so much time on it and you can really create beautiful imagery, but it's not the greatest of business propositions to, to do one video a year.

Sometimes, or it wasn't in my opinion at the time. So essentially made some compromise between the artistic side and the business side. Tried to meld that together best we could. We started podcasting in. We really had a couple of trial runs in 2016. And first week of 2017 we actually put out our first podcast and that was Hey, we're official now, we're gonna start doing something.

And we had filmed in 2016 as well. So we got some videos from 2016 way back in the Element channel, YouTube channel. And yeah, we've just [00:32:00] developed things as we've gone over the last seven or year, seven years, now. It's a long

Andrew Muntz: time.

K.C. Smith: As long as I've been married to my wife. Yeah. As long we've been doing these things.

That's right. So it's kinda crazy.

Andrew Muntz: That is nuts. But you've come so far in that. Seven years really in the big scheme things isn't that long. But do you ever go back and listen to your first podcast or watch your first videos and man,

K.C. Smith: seven a while. First video? Some, yeah. But the first podcast is embarrassing, man.

And and I'm not a guy who gets embarrassed, but that's embarrassing as bad.

Andrew Muntz: It's bad. It's bad. We did that one day and I was like, these need to be deleted forever. But I think they're still hanging around somewhere, but yeah. That's part of it,

Tyler Jones: man. You learn. Yeah, and people understand that too, and you connect with people For instance, just a random kind of reference here, but like when Taylor Swift wrote her first single she probably doesn't really going back and listening to that, but I do.

It's way better than me. I'm not sure I like any of it really

Andrew Muntz: well. That first single probably made her a lot of money too though. So can't hate.

Tyler Jones: She, her audience was, at the time her audience connected with that. It's the same thing as like the Harry Potter [00:33:00] concept where when Harry Potter first came out and we were all in like sixth grade, that's that was, they were our age, we grew with them. So it, it's one of those things where like people, for us, people grew outta their twenties maybe relating to us and now, into their thirties, still relating hopefully

Andrew Muntz: a little bit. And if

K.C. Smith: you wanna be a successful storyteller Whenever you can anchor yourself to a generation like that, but then also reach in the other directions.

Yeah. That's when you really, you're getting something done. And that's, I think where this turns from just documenting what we do into like real storytelling is whenever you can be multi-generational like that and something, we try to do some, and it's tough, because you're, you are restricted to your own confines, because it's just who you are.

So that's one of the reasons we've got a guy over here named Michael, who's 23, who works with us and he's saying words that we never heard before, and we're like, oh, okay. Gen Z, let's figure this stuff out. Stuff like that helps.

Andrew Muntz: Like the term sus, I, that was one I learned not [00:34:00] too long ago, and I was like, what are you talking about?

Tyler Jones: But yeah. He barks like a dog a lot too. I don't really understand that one either, but Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah. Tyler, did you go to school for video production? No, sir.

Tyler Jones: No, I actually went to SMU in Dallas, played football and got a degree in economics.

Andrew Muntz: I think I did read that. Yeah. What position do you play?

It was a safety. Oh, okay. That's a fun

Tyler Jones: one. Yeah. Oh, it was a blast. It's not super fun when you're playing against guys like Michael k Crabtree, and, I went against Emmanuel Sanders every day of my life there's there's some stress involved with that. In fact, I had a lot of stress while I was there.

That's yeah we were on a podcast recently talking about stress and dealing with the moment of truth and in a whitetail hunting situation. And. I think that has helped me deal with those moments pretty well overall. Cuz I, I have dealt with big, like as a safety, if you mess up it's six points in front of like potentially 60,000 people.

And then maybe if you're on s espn, 2 million [00:35:00] people or something like that. And they all look at you, right? And it doesn't matter what the defensive lineman did or the linebacker in front of you and how he didn't chip the guy or and the guy that was running a four two right at you and no chip, it's like, it doesn't matter.

They don't see that they see you. And that's a stressful situation to be in. And I think I'm actually really glad that I went through that and stayed with it for four years and Got my degree and all that because it just helped it helps me in the moment of truth in the deer hunting woods.

And that's important to what I do now as a, career you'd say,

Andrew Muntz: Isn't that really interesting? And I have two little kids and there's times where they're, I don't wanna do this. And I'm like, look, in life you have to do things you don't wanna do. Or, they get put in a tough position and it's so hard to teach somebody who's seven years old Hey man, you gotta, and I ain't seven he's not going off the plate safety right now.

But these are the little things that help build you into the person that you're gonna be. And is, and not dumb as it sounds, but even into the point where you're about to harvest an animal, like that's huge. And you don't think about those little things [00:36:00] that, you know, that time at practice when learned a lesson the hard way or whatever.

Those are the kind of things that I think. As the older I get starting to reflect on some of those things and how they shape you makes a big deals. Yeah. That's

Tyler Jones: awesome. Oh, absolutely. I have no, no doubt that especially now I've seen some of the like, hard things that I went through in my twenties just situationally.

And some of the times I just didn't understand why I was failing or why I was dealing with this stuff. And it's, undoubtedly in my mind I said undoubtedly with a B. How about that? Undoubtedly in my mind it's God preparing me for certain situations. Man, I just a hundred percent think that there's always something in there that I'm being taught and I'm always searching for what that is what that lesson is in that moment.

Now it's like when I, in the quick reflection what am I learning right here? And I may not even learn it for. Two years or whatever, but I'm trying. And so just to think about the what of the situation you're going through gives you a lot of confidence to know that even when you do fail, you mess up on a big buck or something like that, despite all the [00:37:00] comments you're gonna get on YouTube or whatever, like it, you're still being shaped, like you said into something that potentially is helpful to you down the road, but is definitely helpful for bigger reasons than just yourself.

Andrew Muntz: And that message and when you make mistakes and learning from 'em, that's the key, right? If you go out and keep making that mistake that we hear that all the time, whatever, you gotta learn from your mistakes. But personally, last year I had a couple gaffs in the woods and it was one of those things that I, I go back and I replay it and replay it.

Okay, how are we gonna fix this next time? The next time it rolls around? I might have made another gaff, but like at the same time, the first one was fixed. So eventually it's gonna, like all this stuff's gonna line up and it works out. But you gotta learn from those mistakes.

Tyler Jones: We just released a video on me Eats YouTube channel.

We're doing a series right now called Buck Truck and it's a seven part series. Basically just documenting our whole season of whitetail deer hunting. And this past week, I shot a deer really far forward. It was a [00:38:00] really close shot and just made a bad shot. He was in Willow's real thick.

And so I just kinda lost sense of where the shoulder was shot real far forward. And, I gotta deal with that in front of a lot of people now, it definitely it makes you think even on a deeper level about what you're doing, what you're putting out there.

And I just, I still feel very confident that we did the right thing by putting that on video because there are guys out there every day during the season that are messing up a shot. And you can feel alone if you watched, if you grew up watching hunting TV from the nineties, you could feel like you're the only guy messing up.

You know what I mean? All my buddies killed the deer this year. Guys on TV don't ever miss. And it's man, th there's guys doing this a bunch. It's hard. Bow, hunting's

Andrew Muntz: hard. Thank you. Thank you. We just have this little piddly podcast here in Ohio, but we took some flack last year.

I I made a comment exactly like that bow honey was not easy, I think was my exact terminology, which of course that got construed on social media that I was saying it was hard. And there's some people that were saying it was hard and different things, [00:39:00] but the big scheme of things, there's so much it has to go right.

And it doesn't always go exactly as you expect. And I think any nor any ethical hunter, normal hunter is not going out trying to mame deer or not trying to, you're not, you didn't walk out there and say, I'm gonna try to shoot this one on the front of the shoulder just to see what happens. It just, you hit a twig or, got thick in there, whatever you're still trying to do what's right.

But okay, that's a whole nother story we could get into and perhaps we will someday, but Casey. Let's talk about your background besides gardening what do we got? Where'd you start with everything out? You mean you guys both started with small game or something out in the Texas?

K.C. Smith: Yeah. I'm trying to think about some of my first hunting memories and they surely involved trespassing for sure. This is the East Texas growing up story, right? But so the first stuff I can remember doing is going back and quail hunting with my granddad. Crossing his [00:40:00] back fence into just some land that nobody ever went to.

And that was the nineties and just a different time. I'm not condoning it by any means, but I can remember going back there quail hunting, calling for foxes and seeing some deer. And I was probably like three or four, and it was pretty cool. The, and I can remember, and I've never really told this on a podcast, I don't know if Tyler even knows this, but one of my first remembered

Andrew Muntz: memories

K.C. Smith: of like being in the woods with deer and having an interaction, we were blowing on a.

On a rabbit call and this dough came up. I think she thought it was a fond ble, and was like kinda looking at us trying to figure out what was going on. And then I dunno, ever since then it was just Marty Stauffer in that geo and that kind of stuff. Just fully inundated with the animals.

I wanted to be a marine biologist. That's what I went to college for originally. And then transitioned into wanting to do stuff with wildlife because that's like the role the government sticks you into, oh, you like animals, you're gonna go be a game warden, or you're gonna be a wildlife biologist.

And it's really not what I wanted to do too much. But and just being [00:41:00] bad at college and drinking too much when I was young and dumb kind of sent me down a different road. They asked me to not come back after about a year and a half. But I ended up working for a government agency being a Wildlife Damage control specialist, which is a county trapper, is what that means.

So my job was to be the interse between humans and animals that were causing them problems. And did that for a little while. And that's how I was scratching the itch to work in wildlife at that point in time. All the while not getting to hunt deer as much as I wanted to.

But I got to shoot a lot of hogs. I got to do a lot of trapping for coyotes and nutra and all kinds of stuff like that. So really good time. As far as production stuff goes, I didn't I didn't dabble in that stuff too much because I had the starry eyes whenever I went off to college and was like, oh, I'm gonna go do my own thing.

But growing up we had a video camera and we filmed some hunts and I actually, my [00:42:00] mom was in the tree stand with me. When I shot my first archery buck and filmed the whole thing, it's cool. I was 17 and shot a deer that was questionably within the antler restriction standards, but I was losing my mind.

I was so excited, and no arrange finder 35 yard shot. Just ripped him, I just, wow. Just full fledged 17 year old, testosterone confidence. I can do this and did it,

Andrew Muntz: wait, so you and your mom is in the tree with you? Yeah,

K.C. Smith: We had a ash tree that had two trunks and we both had a climbing stand and we both climbed up the.

The adjacent trunks and she filmed me shoot this deer. That's awesome. It's pretty cool. That's awesome. It's a good memory. Yeah. She dropped my bow outta the tree whenever we're getting down too, so I always pick at her about that and maybe that might see the lot today. One of these days we were trying to get that cuz it's on that old eight millimeter or whatever it is small cassette video thing and I need to get that converted to a digital format so that it's preserved.

But I might see the lot today on the channel at some point in time. It's cool.[00:43:00] But yeah, then I didn't really mess with the production stuff too much until I met Tyler. I liked to joke that we met on the internet. But him and my wife are from the same hometown and he had made a fly fishing film and I also enjoyed fly fishing.

I, I was on the Texas coast living down there, being a county trapper and I was on the weekends, I was just spending all my time on the base kitchen, redfish, funder, and trout. Those are speckle trout. I don't if they're ocean fish. They're in the croaker family. But anyways I got connected with Tyler through that and he was gonna try to come down and go red fishing with me.

Then I proposed to my wife and decided I was gonna move back to East Texas, where she lived and where I was from. And then Tyler and I never went red fishing, but we did go do a lot of hunting and fishing otherwise together. And he was like, Hey man, do you mind if I bring my camera? I was like, sure, sounds awesome, man.

What can I do? And our first date, Tyler and I, we went we went to a kind of a local fishing hole where I'd caught a really big striper on [00:44:00] fly. And we caught a couple small ones, caught some carpent stuff, and talked the whole time and, realized we got along pretty good.

And then we decided we were gonna go on a crazy One day drive, one day fish, one day drive home trip to Arizona to catch Apache trout. And did that and made a video which was for sure more on the what would you say? I guess less refined scale potentially at that point in time.

I did film a little stuff while we were there, but Tyler just did all the stuff with the camera and handed it to me, and I just pointed it in the right direction. And then he did a lot of cool stuff with the camera while we were there. And then on the way home we talked about doing a podcast and Tyler's man, I wanna do a tel podcast.

And I was like, man, I don't hunt Whitetails very much, but I sure do elk hunting, so maybe we could do some stuff like that. And then now here we are hunt live and breathe whitetails. And I grew up doing that too, but just living where I did, I wasn't getting to do a whole lot of whitetail hunting, but.

That's a very pinball way of telling you how I got to where we [00:45:00] are. But yeah, Tyler was like, let's do a whitetail podcast. And then we started filming together and here we are.

Andrew Muntz: So Tyler, your whitetail background, that's, that was your bread and butter your passion?

Tyler Jones: Actually my passion was waterfowl growing up.

Just grew up hunting public lakes around here and with my dad and stuff and then as I got into high school and can drive with buddies, and we deer hunted a bunch too. I deer hunted a bunch and my dad loved deer hunting. Still does. And but just waterfowl was, if I had to choose between, it would've been waterfowl when I was in high school.

And then coming outta college is when it started to be more of a thing that I probably focused on more than waterfowl because, mainly because back home, We just saw, I've heard theories, but who knows? But I've heard that the Flyway has shifted. But I have a theory that we had a really bad drought during those years.

And basically the water receded every time the, our [00:46:00] hydrilla and coontail moss would grow up, the water would recede over it, dry it out. And it did that all summer long to the point that like when the water came back, there wasn't really the hydrilla in Kotel Moss that we had growing up in Lake Fork, which in my opinion, affected the fishing.

It's a world class bass fishery, and then also the waterfowl. We just don't, we absolutely, it's not just a old, boomer sentiment that I have, but we don't have the birds that we used to have around here. And so I think that might've helped the shift to a more, I still love waterfowl hunting.

I just don't have the opportunities as easily as I do with whitetails. And people like watching big deer go down too. It's all, it all plays together.

Andrew Muntz: So the pieces are falling together about 2017, is that when you said you launched the first podcast and all that? Yes, sir.

So what was that like six years ago in that time? You guys, if you're in Texas, all I've ever, and I was down in Oklahoma about six weeks ago[00:47:00] hunting hogs, actually not far from Texas just across the Red River. But the you, I hear about how you guys are basically all private land, not a whole lot of public land down there.

So growing up in, in Texas, is that what you guys were hunting, was mostly private land then? I hunted a couple

K.C. Smith: deer leases. There's this culture of deer leases down here, and there might be a little bit of that going on in Ohio some, but like in Texas it's a thing. If you live east of I 35 and you like to hunt, there's like this.

And I 35 kind of splits Texas on the one third line. There's two thirds of Texas to the west of that's considered kind of the western portion of Texas and East Texas is east of that. It's funny how that works, right? But if you live east to I 35, there's this sentiment of and you like to hunt, you go to West Texas or central Texas, somewhere western of here and have a deer leaf.

And that's like just culturally what families would do. And so I grew up doing that. They have day leases where you come out for, paid by the day for a couple week or for a weekend or

Andrew Muntz: season leases. [00:48:00]

K.C. Smith: And we had a couple season leases going up, going on throughout my life. But if I ever wanted to like, have attainable deer hunting, we had a little bit of public ground close to home, just around some lakes and stuff.

And really, we were deer hunting and shooting pigs is really what we were doing more than actually killing deer. I didn't kill a public land deer in Texas until 20 January 1st, 2019. I guess that was the first one I killed. You did a lot of hunting. Not a lot of seeing, so it's not great opportunity when it comes to public for sure.

So a, if I shot deer, it was on private.

Tyler Jones: Yeah, same. Same for me too. For the most part, I grew up the, all the duck or a lot of the duck hunting. It was on public. But cuz reservoirs tend to be public a lot of times. But I know, we talk about this a lot but cutting our teeth on public land in Texas for deer has helped us tremendously when we travel outta state.

And because we've been a lot of places now and feel like still, our hunting here at home is [00:49:00] very tough. I'll say that. I'm not gonna try to like necessarily compare it as being the hardest or whatever. People like to say that.

Andrew Muntz: I always hear about how Michigan is the hardest place to kill deer.

Tyler Jones: Yeah. That's what people say, right? That's at least what they say. There's a, I don't know. We went up there and hung a camera and had a one 30, like the first. Couple of days up there in Michigan one, one time. So it seemed definitely the deer had the capacity to grow bigger up there than they do here.

But yeah we have also a very strong culture hunting culture here. And there's just, there's a lot of hunters here too, and and the land, the public land opportunity is a lot smaller per capita per acre than a lot of places we go. Yeah, it helps us to go other places, being that we have learned here.

Cuz you, we've got small deer to, they don't make as much sign and you just, you learn to see signs so much better here. And when you go, you can apply that differently in other places. And really, especially with him, he is super observant and sees everything in the woods, man.

Andrew Muntz: So is [00:50:00] that, besides the sign making, is there other things that you think you picked up from Texas that have helped you when you get to other states and I guess w.

I have some more questions as far as where else you guys have hunted, but Texas' Terrain versus Kansas and wherever else you've been. Like, what are some of the challenges that you see when you moved to those other states?

K.C. Smith: Growing up this is a funny thing, right?

But until I was probably 10 or 11 and reached like at the age of accountability or whatever you

Andrew Muntz: wanna call it I,

K.C. Smith: I wasn't smart enough to realize that deer ate other stuff besides corn. That's and it's a childish, funny thing, but I can remember being seven or eight and just not having the wherewithal to be like, oh, those

Andrew Muntz: deer are leaving the corn feeders

K.C. Smith: and going out there and eating stuff, right?

And That kind of developed as you start hunting more public ground where there aren't any corn feeders or you hunt states where there aren't any corn feeders. And because people like to poke fun at Texans [00:51:00] about feeding deer and stuff, and it is somewhat deserving depending on where you're at now.

There's places in the southern portion of the state that if you didn't put out food for deer, you would not see any deer. Cuz they have ample amounts of stuff and ample amounts of cover and you're just never gonna see a deer. But I think that kind of came full circle traveling out of state to where now it's like second nature to just think about a bed to food pattern and find deer according to that because we grew up hunting deer eating corn a lot, and so it sounds kinda remedial and it sounds dumb of course you look bad for bed to food, but I.

There's like this this deeper look into it where like we go to a state like Illinois and we're like, okay, the, there's corn beans out there and they're gonna go eat, but what are they browsing around on in here and how can I figure out how to kill 'em in the daylight over here when they're eating in those beans at night?

Stuff like that. I think that is just a, maybe a, it's probably not a different [00:52:00] way of looking at things, but just something that I can emphasize some when I think about hunting

Tyler Jones: in other places. Yeah, it's definitely when we really started to focus on public in Texas and becau it was because of.

When I moved back after college, I spent two years calling people and writing letters, trying to get permission to hunt. And you just can't get it. You literally cannot get it in Texas unless you pay for it, or, somebody who owns land. Nobody in my family owns property. And so I, I would ask people when they'd be like my nephew's hunting it, or, my cousin's on it right now.

And I, I just don't think so, and so you get you, I struggled for two years, so we started hunting public land and what you learned is just like most states, you can't feed on that public land. You have to come up with theories. And in, in Texas where we at least grew up hunting a lot together was just, it's a, it's like a, it's hard to explain.

It's almost like big woods, but not big woods, it's like the trees are po, it's the post oak Savannah. So it's not like huge tall trees, but it's very much a monotonous [00:53:00] looking landscape at first glance. So you really have to figure out. Like how edge can happen in those areas and where you can pull two different variables that, that are advantageous for you into the same small 40 yard area.

And then really go okay, that gives me confidence because these two things or these three things match up. And another thing that, to answer your question about, what helps, has helped in Texas is honestly something that people don't get very much that we do as being guys that grew up hunting feeders is we got a lot of time within bow range in front of deer.

And that has helped tremendously learn what deer do, how they interact. We can listen to audio or auditory noises that they're making together in, in close range. We get to learn how a deer that may have caught you moving is gonna look down and act like it's feeding and go right back up and check you again.

So don't move as soon as it looks down. Those things are the things that help us [00:54:00] when a buck's coming in and you go to grab your bow and it catches you and you're not hunting a feeder anymore, but you still know that when that buck looks down, he's gonna look right back up. So don't move until he has done that at least once.

These are like small things that translate over and there's even more than just things I can actually like things that I can narrate to you right now, but more there's things that are almost a gut instinct thing that I've learned from being in proximity. Dear. For such long periods of time over so many years.

People hate on feeders, but it's taught us a lot

about

Andrew Muntz: deer for sure. Okay, kc, before we go any further, I have to make your comment on the deer. Only eat corn. Now, I did not grow up in a hunting family. And for the first couple years that I was out in the woods, every time I saw deer, they were moving at about 85 miles an hour.

And I remember asking, and I was half joking because obviously I knew deer didn't always just sprint, but I asked one guy that I, was learning from, I said, these deer ever just walk [00:55:00] in the woods. And he looked at me and he's MUN, are you stupid? Yes, they walk in the woods.

Cuz every time I saw 'em, they were just booking it. It was the same kind of thing with the corn. Yes, they will slow down. You just have to be, figure out where to be and all that kind of stuff. When you guys are talking about Texas and I don't think this might be a stretch.

I don't think Ohio's that much different. We don't have a lot of public land. Most of our public land is focused in the southeast part of the state. It's very hilly. Gonna, it's on the edge of Appalachia, so we're getting into the, some of the rolling hills and stuff outside of that. It's a lot of ag land and if you don't know people with land to get permission on, it's very difficult.

We don't do the leasing that I'm aware of, like you guys do, but we are a bait state, so you have feeders and if your neighbor is feeding the hell out of 'em, then you gotta figure out how to work around that. And yeah, there's, so some of your challenges are also I think things that we deal with that some other states don't, but Casey with your horticultural background, do [00:56:00] you guys, do you feel like when you move north checking different plants and stuff and you talk about bed to food and what they're browsing on through the woods and all that kind of stuff, Have you had to learn different, species Yeah.

And plants and all that kind of stuff. This is the stuff

K.C. Smith: that him and I both like to geek out on. Let's go. I'm ready. I love this stuff. So like around here, natural brows is gonna be greenbriar, which you'll found, find throughout, all the lower 48, pretty much from what I understand.

Maybe not west of the Rockies, I don't know, but there's not many whites out there anyways, sorry. Rabbit hole. So Greenbier, you're gonna have all the Forbes ragweeds, a really big one, a giant ragweed, and whatever the other one's called. And then you're gonna have a lot of common ragweed.

That's right. And then you're gonna have stuff like soft mask, hard mask, or Simmons are a big deal. Honeysuckle pt. Yeah. See those are the ones that are the non-natives that you start running into where, you got Japanese honeysuckle down here, which is the yellow and whites. And then you're gonna have Chinese pt, which is actually a really good late season food source around here because it's evergreen.

And then as you move [00:57:00] north, you don't see that stuff anymore, but you start seeing new stuff like Jewel weed. We figured out isn't that the one that we figured out in

Andrew Muntz: Illinois or

Tyler Jones: wherever, Browns in Illinois.

K.C. Smith: Yeah. And there's stuff like snowberry when you're up on the northern plains that isn't a thing down here, but the deer just hammer.

Yeah.

Tyler Jones: Whenever it's a good year there's also like plant species that are throughout the us like goldenrod. It doesn't get browsed down here. I have like never seen it get browsed down here, but, if you were listening to I don't know, Don Higgins or somebody, maybe somebody who's from up north, they would tell you how big goldenrod is for, crude protein or whatever in the deer eating it and this and that.

And it's just not we have such a. And it's cool to travel and see this all for sure, but we have such a vastly different I was talking to a friend last night, he was asking me about an investment property and if I thought he could increase Deere and maybe even, big buck at least trail camera pictures on this property in case he wanted to sell it.

And we're talking about it and we're just like, we're both like he's a good deer Hunter knows a lot [00:58:00] about it. I grew up with him hunting a lot and he's just we're both coming to this consensus that like, deer here is just so weird compared to what in common deer media, practices and those kind of things.

It's just, it's hard to, it's hard to figure 'em out cuz they won't deer here if you plant wheat they may, they, there's a high likelihood they won't even hit your wheat the first year. And maybe not after the second year even sometimes. And so we talked about different plant and stuff that we could plant and those kind of things.

Yeah. It's just, it makes it, you have to for us to kill deer, we have to really learn this stuff. A lot of guys are just like, oh yeah, they're oaks, or whatever. And we're over here oh, that right there is like a, that's a sand oak or whatever, and that's not really a good food source.

You have to learn

K.C. Smith: that stuff. Yeah. We don't go with the red and white oaks designation down here. We go into shards, nut alls water oaks, willow oaks, post oaks. There's hardly any actual whites you can run into some swamp chest nuts. And knowing all [00:59:00] these things and when they may or may not drop and if they're actually, this is what comes in beneficial for scouting because like you can be running up on this oak tree oh, this is awesome.

There's a red oak here. And then you realize oh, you know what? That is a southern red oak. It's gonna drop a ton of aprons. So there's gonna be a ton of aprons in these acorns. For the Ohio listeners here there's gonna be a ton of aprons in these woods. The deer are gonna have more food than they want.

And by the way, they're highly tannic so that deer aren't gonna eat 'em until later in the year. So it's not, it's a red herring when it comes to

Andrew Muntz: actually being good deer food. There you go. You heard it from the pros that you need to know your trees and your shrubs and all the horticultural things out there.

I've probably forgotten more than I remember at this point. It's, but it is amazing when you go out there, there's so many avenues. When it comes to plants and how they can affect, obviously bedding, food source and that kinda stuff, but even what tree you pick out, right? To hang in. Yeah.

One time, and I about kicked my own butt for this one, but I had a climber and I went [01:00:00] up a sycamore and anybody knows anything about sycamores, they don't have any barks. So when I got up there and I turned around, I had just clipped in. And there was nothing for that thing to bite on. That was a bad move cuz that climber went halfway down and then I'm sitting there straddling trying to hold it up with my legs.

So I didn't f Yeah, it felt like a wind chime hanging up there in the tree. But but those are the kind of things like not picking out a cottonwood because if you get a windstorm, it might snap in the middle. There's just so much there. Yeah. Yeah,

K.C. Smith: for sure. There's like rigidity to trees that matter where we have these things we call river ash, which I don't know if that's actually what they are.

The true common name is, but there's a lot of them in some of the low land stuff and they're, they have smooth trunks, decent bark to climb. It's, they're pretty nice, but they're really wiggly. They're just not very rigid. So if it's a very still day, you can't function in that tree hunting because you'll have a trunk that's 12 inches in diameter.

But, and you're 10, 12 feet up. But as soon as you move at all, the whole thing goes, and moves around up there. [01:01:00] And willow trees are like that too. They're really noisy cuz they have a lot of little things coming off. All those SCS or whatever from the last year are just breaking and making a ton of noise

Tyler Jones: and then barks peeling off and stuff.

Exactly. They're hard. I actually, that same buck that I hit in the shoulder that I was talking about earlier in South Dakota this year, in that video, we were in a willow. And you can, I think there's footage of me putting a stick on the first stick on and it's it's so loud. It's so loud.

So

Andrew Muntz: what's your favorite

Tyler Jones: tree to climb? It's hard to beat just a big old, oak tree man. I mean it not always the best for cover. Because they tend to not really crown it out till they're pretty high, it's really, I really, I don't hunt super high most of the time. Like I feel real good hunting 10 to 15 foot, and usually you'll get in a lot of trees, hackberries elms, you'll get these crotches that eight or 10 foot that just, you can hide in that stuff really well, you know?

And so the hackberries are not super great for [01:02:00] climbing, but for cover they're really good. But elm trees are awesome, man. I love it. I love elm trees. They're quiet to climb usually. And they grow everywhere in the US they'll grow in the desert and so you just, you can find them usually anywhere.

It's just, but really, The tree is not as important as the spot that the tree exists. A hundred percent You have to be as a bow hunter, at least gotta be in the right tree, man. But

Andrew Muntz: if you can ideally pick the right tree in the right spot you're going to, they can help. Okay. Elm

Tyler Jones: would be pretty hard to beat probably.

K.C. Smith: Man, man, I I think that my favorite trees are those ash trees when they're bigger, cuz you don't hang very high. But a lot of times they'll be multi trunked. I love hunting a multi trunk tree because you just get a little extra cover. It's almost like a little bit of a blind

Andrew Muntz: up there.

Do you guys, if it's an ash, is it, did it get the ash board? Do you guys have that down there? Did it ever make its way down? Not too much. Man, that, that's another one to know your trees up here this direction. At this point they're all for gone, but really you climb a [01:03:00] bad ashs tree and cuz we had the boar that it just girdled the whole thing from the, and the inside, the cambium.

But it would yeah, those trees were falling and it was bad, but yeah.

K.C. Smith: No we there is a specific species I know called the Texas Ash, which is real pretty tree, but it's more of a not a lowland tree. It's more of a upland tree. And but yeah, ash are very prevalent down here.

We get a ton of which I think that the box elder bug is a host on that ash tree down here. So we get some of those, but they don't affect the trees too

Andrew Muntz: much. Do you know if it's in the genus fraxinus? I don't. Okay. I don't know the genus stuff. I'm sorry that cuz I know the white ash and the green ash are the ones that we had that went really bad.

But yeah. My favorite's, the black walnut, I don't know you guys have those down there very much, but did, man, I've killed more deer out outta walnuts and I, it's not a food source. You have to watch your head, especially if it's got a bumper crop cuz you get knocked in the nogging. But the way they branch, I and I, they're just structurally really sound.

Seems to be, that's my favorite, but man, what do you guys, I wanna know, what's your [01:04:00] favorite state to hunt that you've been outside of Texas? You

K.C. Smith: shipping this to whitetail or other Yeah.

Andrew Muntz: Yeah, let's stay with Whitetail since we're on that. Okay.

Tyler Jones: I hunted Iowa in 2019 and it's is

Andrew Muntz: it as good as everybody says?

Tyler Jones: It's awesome for sure. I shot maybe 115 inch, eight point, nothing special, but I, we we've grown a lot as hunters since then. And we've also, we also had we couldn't really focus on a specific area very well. We had this access that was potentially really good, that didn't quite pan out like we wanted it to.

And just and also it was private. We had some private land that like, it was harder to get into than the public land. But it w it's a place that would harbor like Boing Crockett type of deer. They, it was cut bean fields up top and it all funneled down in this huge creek system in the bottom.

And you had to walk forever cuz we couldn't drive our trucks in on the bean fields cuz it was so muddy. And they didn't want us tearing up fields. We. Like I said I would walk [01:05:00] farther going into that than I went on public. And overall I didn't see like a ton of giants. We also, we hunted a really just boxy old deer, and we kept squeezing in on his bed, and he busted us setting up the last day of the first trip.

And so he, I think we called him in by making racket coming up into the tree, and anyway, that was our first trip, a eight day trip. I didn't have any money. We were broke, man. We were trying to, this is it's the typical dream story you hear, trying to live a dream.

But we didn't have any money. We had somebody help us. They gave us a little bit of money to get to Iowa together. We f we did the thing for eight days, came back we had, we hit ice on the way back. Totaled my truck on the way home. No, sorry, didn't total it but put it outta commission and had to drive it back with broken brake light and mirror.

And we had the what was it? The tire broke. The tire rod. Tire rod broke. We had broke. They have

K.C. Smith: A six hour layover in Missouri getting that thing

Tyler Jones: fixed. We we went 200 yards off the road, dude, when we were, when we hit that ice. And oh man, it was bad. But then, so [01:06:00] we, I get my truck fixed, we get home and, probably two weeks later I left, I played I played music a little bit and I had played a couple gigs and had a couple hundred bucks cash, just acoustic gigs, and I was able to pay for my way to get back to Iowa. I, I had like almost zero money in my actual bank account and I'm married at the time and so things are not great. But. We get, I go back up there and that's just like I'm sleeping in my truck in a Casey's parking lot and just, it is brutal.

And I was very thankful to take a ho a deer home after that third day. And it was really cool. It was a cool experience. He came in grunting. I thought it was, I literally thought he was a dirt bike. When he was coming in, I thought, I was like, oh no, somebody's riding a dirt bike in.

Yeah, they're gonna mess this whole thing up. And then I realized it was him grunting following this dough. It was really cool man.

Andrew Muntz: So that's awesome. You know what that just reminded me of Casey, back to that corn thing about the deer eating only corn was when I was first learning this, I thought I heard a butt coming in and [01:07:00] he was grunting.

And so I'm sitting there until I realized it was some cows in the field next to me that were just sitting there mooing at me and I was like, wow, I feel like an idiot. But yeah,

K.C. Smith: the ones can do weird things to your ears, man. It probably really did sound like a deer. I'm sure you knows. Like just a weird cow.

That's it. Yeah. For me, as far as like states that are my favorite, I kinda like challenges. So it's hard to say what's my favorite. Cuz I like shooting big deer too. But Colorado, I hunted wa town Colorado last year and just got my booty handed to me, so I'm interested. I'm not going back there this year.

But I just intrigued by that. Just, I kind of wanna, I hate to say conquer because it's not really conquering it, it's, I want to achieve that

Andrew Muntz: at some point in time. Take that, check that off your list, right? Yeah, exactly. What's next for you guys in the big scheme of everything?

Hey, lemme ask you a question.

K.C. Smith: What's your favorite state you've been to [01:08:00] since we're doing

Andrew Muntz: that? Ooh. So like your Colorado thing. I've been to Pennsylvania numerous times and never come home with a buck. So that's probably one. The Big Woods is a, definitely a different it's way different than Ohio.

Conquering and challenging the as, as, as challenging as that, I would like to conquer or check that off my list of Hey, I succeeded here. I'm very goal-oriented person. I like to have my list of things to do. And it's one of those things like, all right you've seen it you've had a little bit of success.

I got, on, on do one time. But that's probably the one, cool. Yeah. Yeah.

K.C. Smith: Makes sense. That we've scattered up there in Pennsylvania a little bit. It's a cool country. It's very cool. A lot different than here. Yeah.

Tyler Jones: Yeah. So when you say what's next? You mean from hunting

Andrew Muntz: For the element, man.

What's what's what's next on the agenda? It's coming.

Tyler Jones: We are currently putting together our season ideas. And that, that's a tough thing [01:09:00] because we can kind of plan September and then it's literally just haywire after that. Pretty much. We just it's really more of a matter of like, all right.

Here's a handful of tags that we, you can get and go and hunt, and then whatever you haven't tagged, whoever has a tag left, you're going there and there's a camera guy going with you. And it just gets nuts, man, in November especially. And it's actually really fun. Like I said earlier, I played some music.

I, I've toured in two bands for about 10 years and traveling and that kind of thing is I love it. It's a really, it's a thing that I love to do and enjoy doing, even when it's tough. I just don't mi mind because, I slept on hardwood floors in Nashville and, couches all over the place.

And so it's just, it. It's not something I wanna do all the time, like as far as like sleeping on, without a bed. But I can do it for a time and I do love traveling and seeing things. So we're putting all that together right now and still releasing these episodes on Meteor.

The idea this [01:10:00] year, KC has a really good elk tag that he drew this year, and I, I would like to, I'd like to shoot elk at some point too. So really the, that would be probably the elements things that are coming up. I don't know if we have any other big Events or anything that we're doing.

Yeah.

K.C. Smith: It's just reload time right now, trying to think about that kind of stuff.

Andrew Muntz: Oh, off season, right?

K.C. Smith: Yeah. Yeah. What's next for us you wanna talk about off season is spending some time with our families. Throughout the summer because the fall schedule as much of a blessing as it is, I still like my family more than these guys, so I want to like, go hang out with them some too. That's, they're gonna be doing

Andrew Muntz: a lot of that. I'll tell you what I've had a lot of ideas rolling through my brain and fi, family time management, all these different things that you guys deal with. Maybe we'll have to try to get together another time and do another show on that, because I think it sounds like you guys really have figured out a way to, to handle a lot of that.

And I, Tyler, when you're talking about, this kind of fly by the seat of your pants idea in the fall, That's gotta be the [01:11:00] exact opposite of what football was like, where everything was very structured and very much on time. And if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late and all that kind of stuff.

And now it's maybe we'll go here, maybe we'll go there. Depends on what you know and I don't know about you. Real quick, my, that's how my life has always been very structured and stuff. And then like when I've gotten into my career now it's nonstop put fires out left and right. So it was a major turning point for me to try to adapt to that.

So I know the challenges it can be to just go from that really structured side of things to whatever. But anyway guys, I appreciate your time. It's been great. Yeah man. And no doubt man, look forward to everything you guys are putting out and where can everybody find you? I'm sure they already know, but just go ahead and hit 'em with it just in case.

Yeah,

Tyler Jones: Andrew, we appreciate it, man. And the opportunity to be on this podcast is definitely a blessing, man. We're glad to get to hang out with you this morning and talk about this stuff. And thanks for the opportunity to plug this stuff here at the end. We've got like I said, the Buck Truck video series.

We've [01:12:00] still got five episodes probably by the time this podcast releases, which, who knows when that is. It'll probably be four episodes. That we'll have left and there will be three episodes up. So seven total on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. You can find our podcast, the Element Podcast weekly.

We're doing episodes. And that's just at any, pretty much any podcast app that you might use. And you can also look at the Element YouTube channel where we have a seven year back catalog of videos. Anything from, catching redfish down in basically Mexico to catching, Weird little native trout in California and elk hunting and this mule deer that Andrew's looking at in the background here, Colorado, bunch of wide tail stuff hog videos we like to get after the hog spot and stalk with the bows and that kind of thing.

We're blessed with opportunity to do that in off season two. So we got all kinds of stuff there. It's been going on for years and if you run through the Buck Truck series on media [01:13:00] and you want more, it's on the Element YouTube channel as well. So thanks man. Yeah. Appreciate it guys. Take care and we'll

K.C. Smith: talk to you soon.

Sounds good.

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