796 North American Whitetail With Haynes Shelton

0:00For some people, the outdoors is a hobby. For others, it's a lifestyle. Torque wheels are built for the ones who chase sunrise on the water. Track game through the timber and spend weekends, towing boats, campers, and ATVs to the next adventure. With a full lineup of wheel sizes and fitments for trucks, SUVs, vans, trailers, and RVs, torque wheels are made to match your lifestyle and your rig. Wherever you go, whatever you haul, visit torque wheels.com to find a retailer near you. All right, we have a couple new products from Grizzly in our store right now. We got the pint. This is a double walled stainless steel 16 ounce cup. It's perfect for mixers, you know, at the end of the hunt, we need a nice cold kill bottle. Three different colors. We got black, white tail, and orange, with the WCB logo on there. And we also have the new 20-ounce camp cup. Awesome for coffee, mixers. I mean, whatever you want to throw at this thing,

1:01it's going to keep your drink nice and cold. Or we have that in black and white tail also at wordclassboneer.com. Get yours today. Welcome to the WCB podcast episode 796 episodes. Boy, Haynes from North American White Tail was in this week, and we just had a ton of fun. So it's glad he made the effort to come up and hang out with us. It's been some good quality time in the WCB studio. And really just back up that we are the idiots that we say we are every week. But no, we had a good time with Haynes. Just good old time talking deer, big deer. So anyway, shout out to you guys. If you came out to the Illinois deer and beer fest last weekend, and supported that show and supported us at that show, we moved a lot of merch. And keep an eye out at workingclassboneer.com for some clearance stuff or some sale items. We're working on a whole refresh wardrobe of WCB merch coming your way.

2:04So just a reminder, check workingclassboneer.com at the store. And we have a bunch of stuff with grizzly WCB drinkware. You can get some latitude gear there. Shop around. We're adding new stuff all the time now. A new website that's constantly being updated. So just check her out if you haven't been to workingclassboneer.com in a while. So anyway, yeah, the show was good. I did some tattoo shout out to any listener that let me tattoo them. You guys are insane. And I love it. And it was awesome. And shout out to Ronnie from Black Arrow Tattoo. He came in and laid down. Gosh, I don't know how many tattoos he did all weekend. But just tattoo after tattoo after tattoo at a fun aesthetic friendly vibes. And just a damn good time. That's Illinois Deer and beer fest is about. So shout out to you if you came out and say hello. And yeah, show season is officially over for 2026. And now it's time to get hunting. Shout out to all our partners that support the crazy here at WCB. And yeah, so Rack Hub,

3:06code WCB. By the way, you can get here on WCB or workingclassboneer.com for the last pages WCB partners and find promo codes for all these awesome partners. Rack Hub is a big partner of WCB, the RHE, the RH1, the RH2. Just a very clean and girlfriend and wife approved methods of taxidermy schoolmount, sheds, the buck you shot, if you just want to do a nice clean antler mount, that's completely adjustable. Check out Rack Hub. Doubt archery. I feel like taking over the game and the site market of archery, the cleanest. And I think the best looking site made here in America, dialed archery. Check them out. Latitude outdoors. Man, by the way, latitude is like gone hell on getting our limo rat, which is happening very soon. Like in the next couple of weeks, we drop it off. There's some cool stuff that we're going to unveil with the limo. But you know, Latitude has been an awesome partner. They make premium gear in the mobile hunting, saddle

4:07hunting market. And they're just great fucking dudes along with their grit series on YouTube. Just all around that they're the whole package, man. Good people, good ethics, good vibes, good products. Everything you want when you support a company. And that's what we're about. Bigtime code WCB at bigtime.com. Man, I got plots in after replanting them after a flood, but we're going supplemental feed where you can use it. Get it rocking. Check out big time hunt with gear code WCB 15 hunt worth. I'll be rocking Vertek Camo pattern this fall. Hoid archery, the RX 10 Ultras when I'm shooting. We're giving away RX 10 on episode 800 coming up here. Very, very soon. Loop hold optics. The RX 5000 range finders got precision cut archery and all sorts of badass stuff built into it. It's a rangefinder you can get an update and use and you know, basically grows with you and updates. It's awesome. So you really one of the last rangefinders you ever buy by something like that. Victory arrows. Thank you guys for the interaction.

5:08The episode we just did with victory. I had a lot of people come up at Deer and Beer saying they, hey, I switched from this arrow and I went and picked up some HLRs after hearing that and you know, Steve and Jason are just awesome and they just kind of related with how we are and I think I turn a relation to our listeners. So thank you guys who are supporting victory or reach out to them and said, hey, great episode and it makes us look good and it kind of justifies kind of the connection between WCB and victory. It was a good time. Old barn taxidermy. That's what we're going. Every time we shoot something and we want to put it in our homes in the studio for decoration. Top tier operation along with the G2 taxidermy supply and just everything else they're doing. Same gale Lord and the gang over there. Fort Madison, Iowa. Keep them in mind for this fall. It's coming right around the corner. Even for your mule deer and elk and all that for all you guys that are heading out west here this week and next week. So good luck to you guys out there. Bring all your critters back to Old barn. Aluma trailers, all aluminum, well, the construction. Made in Iowa. Blackgate trail cameras. We got, oh man, the social was great. They were

6:14across from us at Deer and Beer. We have some giveaways on episode 800 with with Blackgate. In my opinion, the most durable and I mean the cleanest functioning trail cam on the game. You want reliability in a camera that got it. Deer cast choice for mapping, weather and deer predictive tools, evolution outdoor broadheads, A A E, Max view optics, Max cam. The Max cam seven is what we're rocking for a point of view cameras on our bows. Cartel custom calls and mountain ops code WCB. Okay, I rambled a lot. I apologize, but thank you for listening because that's how I feed my children and thank you to the partners that allow us to feed our children lunch every day. Okay, episode 800 is coming down the pipe. Be ready. We're going to do most of the giveaways and stuff. We got eight giant giveaways that we're doing every hour. It's going to be like an eight hour show. So buckle up. That's coming down obviously here in a few weeks. If this is seven 96, you can do the math. Eight episode 800 is due to launch on October 1st. So ton of good stuff going. We're going

7:20to focus most of that energy for winners and stuff and Spotify putting back into our favorite platform where you know, we're growing the fastest right now. So just if you don't have Spotify, maybe get it. There's a free version. There's a paid version. Whatever you want to do. It just you know, add lists or whatever. So keep that in the loop. We want to win some cool stuff. We're giving away a ton of shit. I mean, I could probably list off some stuff. I think giveaways from out Grizzly, Hoyt, Rocky, Blackgate Trail cams, latitude, AIE and evolution, Hoyt and Bigtime and Max cam. And probably a lot more by the time it gets here. So anyway, be paying attention. 800 is coming around the corner. We appreciate the support. Enjoy this episode. Hey everybody, this is Mark Dury with Dury Outdoors. Hey AIE, Dear Hunters, this is Jimmy John. This is Jared Mills. Hey everybody, this is Caitlin Moss. Hey guys, this is Jared Shepler from White Taylor's Dr. and Orange. What's up guys? Josh Bargson, Mill is White Tail. Hey, this is Nick

8:22from Bones, this is Chancey Wallars. Working class 400. Working class 400. Working class 400. Hot cast. Working class 400. Hot cast. Yeah, you see me working class 400. Working class 400. Working class 400. You're listening to the working class 400. That's right. This is the podcast for Billy Joe Lunchbucket. The working man just like me and you. My name is Travis T. Bones Turner from the Bones collector. Thank you for tuning in. Most people on that podcast host are a little unhinged. You're listening to my buddies on working class 400. Best motherf***ing podcast on the planet. 796 episodes of the WCB pod. This is Kurt Gires, my voice.

9:22Eric common. That's a lot. Josh Mann. What do you mean? What's counting my fingers? The episode. Oh, 796. Okay. Good. Good. You can count your engineer. I hope you can count. Lee Herr. Guess of the hour, Mr. Haine Shelton. What's up, yeah. North American White Tail in the house. Finally, thanks for being here. Glad to be here, man. We've been talking about doing this for a while over well over a year. Yeah. So we made it happen. Thanks for being here. You made the effort to get to us and we greatly appreciate it, man. Glad to be here, man. Good to finally have you in. I think this could really roll into a lot more episodes and a lot of fun. I mean, I'm just going to rip the bandaid off here. North American White Tail. For me is like the hustler of hunting magazines. The playboy of the deer hunting world, man. Yeah. Not the most appropriate way. But for me, that's why I had to explain it. So what else would you consider it as if they're not going to call it the hustler? I mean, that's it. It is. It's like, it's the king of magazines. I feel like it's one of the magazines we talk to

10:27people. That's what they subscribe to and all that. We'll get into that. But yeah, we met pretty candidly because neither one of us looked at the loophole event roster and who was going to be in. And you and I killed a couple of mariums with bobrooks at Oregon for a loophole range day, range week thing and just hit it off. And it's like, we got to get you in the podcast and then over a year, you're in a half later, you're in here. Yeah, man. It's first time I met you. You know, we were out in Madras or Madras or however is the Madras. Madras, Madras, Oregon. Yeah. That's right. The long range shooting school man. Yeah. Yeah. It's such good buddies with all these guys at loophole. And I'm like, you man, I didn't even really look at the itinerary or the list of who always going to be there. I just sort of showed up. And I saw like a bunch of dudes in the airport that look like deer hunters or like an enforcement. I'm like, well, that's probably the guys. And we're all bored in the same flight. Yeah. And one guy with a shitload of tattoos. Yeah. I might have

11:33been the black sheep. But that's okay. You know, yeah, I looked for I saw a bunch of loophole hats. I'm like, cool, my people. Everybody was awesome. Yeah. That's a good time, man. And I recognize Bo immediately. This first time I met Bo Brooks. But I was like, hey, that's Bo Brooks from Instagram. You know, got out the gap in his teeth. It was like the best turkey collar I've ever heard. And we had not even got our bags and the bags claim. And I was already like, you think we can go turkey hunting man? Like, is there any chance like we're going to have Tom to maybe sneak out and kill a gobbler. And he was like, oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah. No, no problem. It was cool when I saw him because I did the same thing. I'm like, oh, I knew I was like, hey, that's Bo Brooks. And he was like, so down to earth and cool. He looked at me. He's like, oh, hey, let's see your podcasts. I was like, whoa, actually, that's cool. Like you don't have to tell me that it might be feel good by appreciate you saying that. And that might have been what he was doing. But the genuine, like, hey, dude, what's up? I know you're from a podcast. If that's what he meant on a base level, it was cool. Yeah. And then yeah, we all went on a turkey hunt and skipped out on the dinner and

12:34did the damn thing. It was awesome. Yeah. That was one of the coolest like impromptu hunts. I think I've ever been on and bow like shout out to Bo Brooks. One of the like, like genuinely most like impressive and interesting dudes that I've ever met. One of the kind. Natural God-given talent and ability to like speak bird language. Speak bird. Talk turkey. Well, not only that, it's just like the way he treats people is like special. Yeah. He did know me. I don't think he didn't know you really. I mean, and just as like, we're going to go, we're going to kill bird and we killed two mariums like pretty quick. Yeah, man. And like we were hitting him up immediately. Like just met this guy where like, hey, can we go turkey hunting? He was like, yeah, dude, I assumed like, yeah, we're going to go hunt public land, whatever. But he was taking us to like some of his spots that he had grown up hunting and like, we're his little honey hole. Like he didn't have to do that. He didn't have to take us to those places. But just genuinely like, great dude. And I'll never forget

13:40that hunt. Like when we were going out there and trying to route like we were trying to ruse those birds and find find birds. And like it was kind of hard to sneak out because we're there with loophole. And like those are some of my best buds and I think I'm right in a respect of not blowing off their event. Yeah, I didn't want to ditch. You know what I mean? I didn't want to ditch. And and like, they're a great sponsor of ours at North American White Tale. And like I was having so much fun shooting all this targets at 1300 yards and 2000 yards and running long range precision rifles and like really getting schooled by these guys who were pros, man, they're professionals. But at the same time, I was like, dude, it's April or May or whatever it was. Like there's Turkey's God was somewhere. Yeah, somewhere close. And Kurt and I like we're like, I would look at and I can tell you it's like we should go ruse some birds, you know, and then loophole would be like, okay, we're going to do like low light testing. You know, let's go meet on the balcony. We're

14:42going to watch the sun go down and we're going to test the optic ability. And I'm like, oh, we're not going to go ruse birds. Yeah. Yeah. But like that sounds sweet too. Like I'm so excited. It was all cool. Like I'm excited to see these bonas, but like I know there's Turkey's God was somewhere. Yeah. And then bow just disappeared. You know, and he was gone. Then he rolled up and full full camera. Yeah, we're about to eat. Yeah, about to eat dinner. They had like that artisan chef like it rolled in. It was like doing all that like a just shy Habachi like, oh yeah, cooking in front of it. Fresh Mexican food like on like a walk skillet thing like it was legit, man. And I had just made my plate and like the gravels like, you know, bow whips it in with this rental car. He like rented a car from some dude on that weird app or you can rent a car. Turbo. Turbo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can like rent a car for like a day or whatever. Yeah. But it's like somebody's car. Yeah. That you get like out of their driveway. It's not like enterprise like Airbnb for rentals. Yeah. Here he comes in like somebody's car. And he's like,

15:43I got some birds roosting man. Like, let's go. You know, I'm like, okay, cool. Like right now, he's like, get in. So I told Sean Skipper. I was like, Hey, man, like, are you cool if we slip out for a little bit? He's like, yeah, dude, go have fun, man. You boys have been wanting to kill some birds. Yeah. KTV was like, listen, we know everybody, everybody at these events is a hunter. And if it's hunting season, we expect a couple people to leave. Yeah. I was like, I don't know. Fair enough. Fair enough. And you'd never kill the mariums. Never. You know, never hunted them ever. So I knew like from the get go, I was like, curse never killed a marium. I'm like, I'm screwed. I'm gonna have to let him shoot first. Like you sort of like, because I had talked about, I was like, dude, let's go turkey hunting man. Like we'll slip out me and you. And then all of a sudden, curse like, I've never killed a marium. I'm like, oh, man, I'm not gonna kill one. I'm gonna have to let him. I'm gonna have to let him shoot one. And uh, well, it's funny. The way it worked out in the morning, we were sitting next to each other and it was just like, whoever don't let one get away. And I was just around the right side of the tree to shoot mine first. You're like, they're leaving shoot them

16:45boom. Yeah. And it was like, all right, cool. And both like, I got another spot. And it was like, it just worked out. I was supposed to. Yeah. Oh, I, yeah, I told you to shoot. Yeah. And two big goblers came in. We were side by side. And it was like, just don't let them get away. Like one comes in. But yeah, he's like, like, we have to preface. And I know this we're going to talk about white tails because I'm a white dog ass. We're going to burn up. We get the turkey shit out of the way first. We won't burn up too much turkey time. I'm from North Carolina. I grew up, cut my teeth turkey on, die hard turkey on or like, I genuinely obsess with turkey on it. So like, I love this stuff. I can talk about this for five hours. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, like the coolest part of the story to me is like, we had no shotguns. We had nothing. We had no camo. We had no ammo. Nothing. And so, like, had a buddy in town. He was like, yeah, call my buddy, man. He's like, he's gonna let us borrow a couple guns. So just shows us that over guns came on everything. Yeah. And they got like, I mean, I do. I had like my blue jeans and my cowboy boots and like, loophole solid jackets pretty much is what we're wearing. Loophole hooked us up. They

17:50gave us all the loophole to peril. It's it. It was like green, like green and brown. Tans, greens, browns, earth tones. Yeah. But we had no face mask. We had no turkey calls. We had no, we had nothing. And Beau found he said there was a hardware store in town. He's like, dude, they had one box of shells, man. So we had five three inch number four Winchester super X's and like my gun, the gun I had, like, had a modified choke. We didn't have turkey chokes. It was like old school man. Yeah. It's like we're just going turkey on. Yep. And yeah. And he had this is one of the best turkey collars on planet earth legitimately. And he had one turkey call that was in as a diaphragm call one of the Bob Brooks signature series diaphragms. It was in his carry on like backpack that he had taken on the plane, but it had a tear in it. Like it had a rip in the call. Yeah. He was like, we're good. You know, like I can still run it like decent. Of course, it was like the best turkey call sound like I'd ever heard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, unbelievable. Yeah. That's

18:53the same with a fucked up call. He is still sounding good. He's crushing it. But like, keep in mind, like the dude didn't even need a call. Like I would say 60% of what he was doing was voice calling and natural voice anyway. Which is insane. He was gobbling with his mouth. I mean, we flushed up some ducks from a pond. And he was like, he called those ducks back to us. He was talking to Ravens and you know, it's not crows out there's Ravens, but everything that dude is just a bird calling machine. He's made up. He's a human bird. I mean, he really is. That was just so much fun. It was incredible. Got my first marium. Took some cool like early morning mountain photos. And then went with you and smacked it was like perfect. But when I were hiding in a, what were you like a cedar. Yeah. Then you were just up and we can hear the birds coming and it just gets quiet. Boom. And it's like double up. That's a big. Well, by bird hung up behind that, you know, there was like a loblolly pine or long leaf pine or something in front of us. Yeah. Yeah. And though he had this bird just tore up off the Rouge tearing their tearing their heads off goblin. And yeah. And

19:58I told you I was like, you shoot the bird on the right. I'll shoot the bird on the left. That's right. Yeah. And the bird on the right is just, you know, freaking red blue head, you know, sticking the broke strut when he came out around that pine. And my bird is dead behind the pine tree. I can't see anything. And but again, I'm thinking curse never killed a marium. It's like shoot him dude. Yeah. It worked out great because they were leaving you nailed it. You just hammered him dude. Yeah. And I was like, Hey, great. Hi, we got to be the airport in like an hour and 12 minutes. Yeah. But you know, let's go. But I was like, let's go kill another one. You know, like we can. He's like, not a problem. Yeah. Legitimately was not a problem. It was cool, man. It's like, yeah, we crushed him. He's a pro athlete. He's a pro athlete. Like legitimately, like him compared to me, it'd be like me playing one on one with fucking Jordan. Yeah, that dude, that dude approaching a roosted gobler would be like Tiger Woods T enough of ball on the US. Open. Yeah. Yeah. Like you know, like that's the level that he played over. He's even

21:03saying to think about. Yeah. He's just that good. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Great dude. Like normally, the people that are really good at one things are just kind of sometimes people suck to be around with their awesome at one thing. And it's like, yeah, it's just the trade off you make. Like, all right, you know, like a hot chick. She can be the hottest chick ever. But her person out just sucks. Oh, yeah. They're talking to the court. Yeah. That's not bow. He's like a really good dude. Annie can hunt us ass off. Yeah. There's no lead down when you met him. You're like, that's what the that's the current the smart way to word it mean. I'm trying to make the work of man understand what I'm saying. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm tracking. Yeah. Tracking. There's a lot of truck drivers and welders like I know what the fuck he said. I know exactly what he's talking. Reach brother. Reach. Say it more. Say it again. Say it with your channel. So that's how he met. Yep. And then just got the bullshitting and yeah, kind of rolled into you started riding for me. Yeah. Like that was cool. Thank you for that. And, uh, you know, I pulled some strings and lead killer get decent deer. I was like, let's put them on the cover. And so we did that bubble skim over that. And then, um, yeah. Here. Well, that we should probably we should probably add just so

22:07it happens. You know, I'm riding some articles for you. But also my best bud killed 250. Yeah. It's not 300. But it's like, you know, it's it's up there. It's up there. It's all right. We should talk about that first. And then we'll get into like all the stuff and about you and never. But I mean, let's pull that baby on top of the pile here because there's a North American and a wide-tail magazine. Let me say it. I worked on it long enough. I might as well take another gander at it. Take a long peak. We made the cover North American wide-tail. We here's way to go, man. That's a big dream. It's crazy to have an accomplishment. It's one of those things as a kid. You always are like, man, it'd be so cool. Like, but the percentage of people that it actually happens to is just crazy. Like, growing up my hunting camp, we had a bathroom. And the it was just plywood walls. And I don't know how big it was. Probably half the size of the bathroom in here. And every inch of it was covered with North American wide-tail articles. Just cut out and tape page cut out. A lot of covers. But like a lot of the articles

23:07just taped to the wall. So you didn't have to read a magazine like you were shitting. I could just read the wall. That's awesome. So the whole thing was covered with articles of North American wide-tail. I love that. So like, the opportunity is crazy. That's cool. Yeah. I met you at the I with Dear Classic. Yep. And you had the rack. I think I was just doing the rounds and I saw you all's booth and so you mounted at the classic. Was it? Yeah. I thought. A-T-A. A-T-A. A-T-A. A-T-A. Yeah. That's where I met you. It's just on the skull plate. Yep. Because I remember this. This is where this started started. Yeah. Yeah. Like, that was the genesis. Like, when I, I shook your hand and introduced myself. Yep. And you're like, Hey, here's my dear. I've got it here. And I remember it was on the skull plate. You handed me that thing and I was like, Cali. This deer's bigger than it looks like I had seen some of the photos and and then to see it in person. Like, your deer is so impressive. You know, he's just one of those non-typicals that have the wild factor. You know, not only a tremendous amount of

24:08mass all throughout the rack, but flurries of non-typical points. And one of my favorite things about your deer is those inside like extra beams that come out. And to be like most non-typicals are so different side to side. But your deer really has side to side symmetry in some of the non-typical characteristics. That's just really unique and a big, you know, non-typicals are always weird because they're abnormal. I mean, that's their name. That's what they are. They're abnormal. But yours really is almost sort of has that mirror image quality that not many non-typicals do including those like massive like almost like extra beams that come off the eye guards that are long. They're like 11 10 or 11 inches long on the inside. One's just shy of 13 and one's just over 12. There's like almost 26 inches in just those two. They're big. Crazy. That's insane. I mean, that's like having another set of really long G2s or G3s. You can boost a score so quickly

25:16to just have extra or that's like killing a big deer that's got double sets of 12 inch drop tons. That takes a 220 to a 245. Yeah, that is true. Just different spots. Yeah. Yeah. He's an awesome deer. So as soon as I saw him and I met you and I knew Kurt was starting to write for me a little bit, I was like, man, we got to get that deer in NIW. It just so happens that that particular issue, which is spring, the spring issue, I didn't have a cover story and I was like, dude, that deer, that's a cover deer. He needs to be on the cover in North American White Day. I think Kurt was the one that was like, hey, and he's got some pretty good pictures too. Yeah, yeah, because Josh Sparrow, Midwest White Day took the photos. You know, they're top tier. Yeah, they're beautiful photos. So I hit up Kurt and I was like, hey, can you get me this in nine days? Yeah, yeah, it was quick. We did move it pretty quick. I remember you're like, how much time do I have? Like, what about next Wednesday? You're telling me I got a week for a cover story?

26:16And I'm a newer writer. And you were going to Texas, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You were right. And I was going to ride a live deer, which is kind of like my backup. If I don't have already a deer selected or I know this is going to be the spring cover or the July, August or whatever, like I'll try to plan two or three months ahead, you know, win possible. Yeah, but it just so had like that particular issue, like we're always at the trade shows. Things are crazy. We're traveling. And I had just gotten my job had just changed. I just took over the publisher role for North American White Day. So I was kind of running mad and trying to figure out, you know, all these new aspects of my day to day. Yeah. And all of a sudden I realized I was like, man, I really don't have a cover story. And I need one. And I just met these guys. And he just so happened to kill probably the biggest deer that we're going to run all year. You know, you think we can get them on the cover and you turn that thing around fast. Well, I have to write now when we went to Texas,

27:19didn't you? Oh, man, I get so confused on the time. I'm going to say, I can't remember what, what, but I know I've written a handful of articles. And it's something I like to do a few times a year. You know what I mean? I think to me, it's the same thing like a dream to have an article in North American White tell. I read that magazine. I went to school at elementary school, junior high with that magazine. Oh, we had with a force to get a read. All right, no problem in North American White tell. And I just pictures in here. Yeah, the picture's in there. I'd carry that magazine in my backpack until you couldn't the cover was just so tattered. It would fall off it. You know what I mean? So for me to write an article for North American White tell because I've written for some other mag is you know, in the family of outdoor sportsman group, LSG. Yeah, so you know, I do an article in the saddle issue every year. If I have something to write about, I just did one in bow hunter about the road here, whatever. So I was like, man, my first article in North American White tell on Lee's book that's also going to be on the cover. Kind of a triple whammy. Like my first article in North American White

28:24for a homie on the cover on the cover. Pretty awesome. You came out with a bang. I, yeah, I mean, I tried really hard. I even like, I didn't let you read the whole thing. I didn't want you to know, but you know, did you know, did you know it was going to be on the cover? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I didn't know if that was a surprise. I knew that, but even weird knowing someone on the cover. I'm like, looking at as a kid, like, I'll never be on this. You have been asked for his autograph yet. He won't give it to him. I tried. Great answer. That was clever. That was clever. But no, it was just awesome, man. And then it's like not only that to have a WCB logo on the cover in North American White tell, you know, it's still for me. We've seen our logo a lot of cool places over the years, almost 12 years of doing this. And it never gets old seeing it in a magazine. And it's been in several times this year. Brennan's got WCB hats. I was in twice

29:25this year. I think it was all on 2026. Anyway, I think one of the coolest parts about that obviously me being on it for me is the coolest part about it. But the fact that the North American White tells in WCB green, I think is loud. That was intentional. I figured it was, but she has kids. Yeah, it's loud. And it's like, you know what you're doing. Yeah. I'll tell you this, like, we have, I don't know if you noticed by our bathrooms. This one's a little more like cabin-esque on the other side, but this one's very like tattoo shop hunting camp. There's like, there's art all over the walls, shit plaster in the walls. I remember Billious stuff we've been a part of. Yeah, it's cool, man. I was checking it out. Yeah. So they have a boot day for everyone listening. That's how we say it in the sun. Not heated. We got to get a heated one, but for now. I don't know if that's an ever going to say a boot day. But day, but day or whatever. I've never used one. I don't know much about them. They're awesome. Cleanest button, Mercer County, Illinois. You're messing out. The power washer. The power washer, 5000. But it's, uh, we have the PDF versions of these, you know, I always ask for that. So I'm going to print them out and

30:29we'll do that in there with all the ones from this year. So you're going to get some North American White tell artwork in here, dude. I know. Yeah, for sure. Well, I have a couple like, well, one of my first ones framed, but yeah, we need to get, I'll get some of those on the wall and stuff like that. And I might just print those tonight and go pick them up from ill FedEx, Kinkos or whatever that FedEx office tomorrow. There you go. That's a Jackie Yemi for Father's Day. She took a copy and had it framed and stuff. Oh, really? I get that to me on Father's Day with a Matty and all that. Well, it was just the cover. It was the whole magazine just in a frame. Cool. So you can just see the cover, but it's a, you know, bigger than the cover, obviously. Yeah. Nice. Oh, cool. Cool. Now, man, it's cool. There's just something about it. You know, just a hundred magazine thing is there's an nostalgia to it, especially North American White. Oh, yeah. I agree, man. And I'm the same way, dude. Like I grew up, I remember North American White tell magazine, like being on the console, my dad's truck, like driving to school and, and you know, having that magazine. And it was obvious. It was all around the house too. Yeah.

31:32And my granddad was the same way. I mean, that was really the magazine era. He, you know, subscribed to everything, man. I mean, there was bow hunter guns and ammo, American hunter, the NRA publication North American White tale. And the fish and publications too, in fishermen, Florida, sportsmen, all that stuff, you know, it was kind of part of my life. I don't know, man. I mean, my, my story is, is wild of how I even got to White tale. And yeah, so right now, what's your current title on North American White tale? And then talk about how you got to North American White. Yeah. So I got a lot of titles right now. So I'm, I'm the, you wear a lot of hats. Yeah. So I'm the associate publisher of North American White tale, which is my sales and marketing role. So I sell advertising and manage our sponsorships and, and the revenue for our publication. I'm also the editor in chief, which is the job that I've held the longest. And in addition to that, I'm the producer of our television show North American

32:38White tale TV. And so, you know, just brief background. N.A.W. magazine next year will be our 45th anniversary. So this is currently our 44th year of publication, which is a long tenure for a print magazine. It's been around, I think 1982 was the premiere issue, which was a one off. There was just one issue that was published that first year. That's a long story too. You know, we were a spinoff of game and fish magazine. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, published in Marietta, Georgia. Okay. That was the original office. And, you know, Gordon Whittington and Dick Idol and Steve Vaughan and those guys were, that was the OG crew. And, you know, they met with Dr. James Crowe at the Dixie deer classic. I guess it would have been 1980, you know, the year prior to the magazine. And back then, like I've read, there's a, there's a story published somewhere online. I'll

33:38have to find that I remember I've read it years ago. And it was sort of like the table at which North American White Tale began. There was a dinner conversation, like a round table discussion amongst these guys who are now literally all legends. And the, the question that they wanted to answer is, do you think there's space for a magazine and interest for a magazine that was only about White Tales? Yeah. It's comical now. You know, because you had, you had game and fish, which is everything. That's a, it's a catch all. And that was a, that was then a very regionalized publication. That was, you know, if you were in, if you were here outside of Peoria or, you know, Malena, Illinois. Malena, yeah, yeah. Every Southern boy calls Malena, Malena. I love it. D-bones did the same exact thing. It, whatever day. Yeah. I love it. I love it. It's like it just, I love it. Remember T-bone with Malena? If you think about that though, like my dad grew up, he started

34:41hunting right about the time North American White Tale came out. Yeah. There weren't a lot of deer at that time. Well, that's true. I mean, like my dad's first buck is a forky, right? And it was during shotgun season and him and the neighbor both shot at it. And it was the only deer our group killed that time. Yeah. So they actually every other year, they flip flopped the skull plate. Oh, yeah. He keeps it for a year and then he sends it and still to this day. And that's like, they shot it in like 83 years. That's cool. That's cool. That's cool. That's a different back then, man. And the 70s were even worse. I mean, my grandad was really trying to kill deer back then. And I know he has excerpts from magazines and Moxville, North Carolina, which is my hometown. And like it, it would make the hometown newspaper back then if someone found a deer track. Yeah. It was like, whoa, like this is wild. There's deer out there. But my dad said growing up, there wasn't a lot of people didn't deer hunt. There's all like fagin hunting and bird hunting. Small game, lot of small game, trapping, fishing, all that stuff. And that's where your publications like Game and Fish were, I mean, they were game changers, man. And so what I was

35:44rambling to is if you were, if you're in my lane and you want to know if the crappy were running up whatever creek, you know, you would read Game and Fish magazine. And somebody locally would have a field report, you know, to let you know if stuff was biting or when they projected would be the best days of the rut, et cetera. But it was very similar to like your field and stream or your outdoor life magazines that were general hunting lifestyle publications. Right. And still are. I love those magazines. Those guys do a great job. But they're at that point, you know, that was the question is, do you think we could do a magazine that was only about white tail? Yeah. Yeah. And those guys thank God, they all said, oh yeah, definitely. And yeah, 45 years later, here we are. I'm biased, but I like to think that we're the dominant, you know, we're the dominant white tail magazine in the space. And, you know, to the extent that the guys who really, really

36:48are ultra passionate about trophy white tails and and record trophy white tail records. And the biggest deer, the state records, the world records, the elite heads, yeah, really changed the history of deer hunting. They've all been in this magazine. They've all been in North American white tail. And it it truly is. And it's an encyclopedia of trophy white tails. Yeah. So yeah, that's that's kind of how NAW started. It does carry an aura with it too. Yeah. I mean, for me from my childhood, you know, I guess if it would have been in whatever magazine, it might have the same. But I feel like like you said, dominantly, North American white tail has the aura of that's like what you think of when someone's like a honey magazine to me. Oh yeah. American white tail. Yeah. If you're a deer guy, yeah. If you're a deer guy and you want to be in the NAW, and you know, and so much has changed, man, but back in the day, like in in that era, in the 80s, I mean, now before literally before a deer's gut at her field dressed, most of the time

37:52it's on Facebook. Yeah. You know, it's on Instagram. Not crazy. Yeah. But in the day, like in that era, when these magazines, if you know anything about the publishing world, like in that era, when these magazines were published, they're, they're sell through, which is the number of copies that are printed and hit newsstand. Okay. Routinely sold through 80% are close to. That means 80% of the copies that were printed were sold. And it's because nobody knew what the biggest deer that was killed. If it was 1984, they wanted to know, well, man, what were the best deer of 1982? Because I ain't seen them. Yeah. And unless they went to the Iowa deer classic or whatever, they would have no way of knowing. Right. You know, it was last year good or not. You know, and that's why so many people subscribed to the magazine because when they got that in the mailbox, that would be the equivalent of today. I got to check Instagram. Yeah. I got to check all, I got to check all my favorite

38:57hunting pages and see if these deer, you know, if, if last year was good or if they're killing big bucks, right. You know, and that was, that was really part of the genesis of, you know, we're always, we've broken the news on so many legendary deer back then, we broke the news in the mailbox, which is wild, you know, because that means, that means a lot of these stories were taken six months, eight months, 10 months. And no one knew about them till the publication came out. Yeah, to break that, but that was the print era, you know, it's, I say, but at this time in the 80s, was there hunting television at the time, like, when did the TNT, the ESPN start airing hunting? And I know that's not the same as what would be featured in the magazine all the time, because that's going to be like your personalities, like your Tom Miranda's were in the early 90s or whatever. But yeah, you know what I mean? I was gonna say early 90s were really when that that that wave started. I say early maybe late 90s. Well, because yeah, I think

39:58like monster bucks was like 90 to 92 in that era. What's this one right here? This is a, this is the real drill out doors monster bucks. Is there a date on it? Gotta be. See, it's 96. That looks way older than 96. I remember. So I was born. And this is where it gets, you know, it gets wild, like it predates me. So I'm the editor in chief of North American White House born 1993. So like I was literally magazine was 11 years old when I was born. Yeah, you know, amazing dollars everyone here. Yeah, it's, and that's like, I take that very seriously. Like, I must do I have to be a steward of this publication nowadays because it's something that I, you know, want to take care of and carry on to the next generation. But, but yeah, man, and like, like you said, T and N and ESPN, those hunting shows, they predated the outdoor channel and the sportsman's channel. North American White tell TV. This is our 23rd season on air. And the cool

41:06Dr. James Crow are biologists. He, he was the one that realized this and it's such a freaking cool stat. But he told me this year, he said, well, we've officially eclipsed gun smoke. He's not kidding. Yeah, I think gun, he said gun smoke ran either 21 or 22 years on air. It was one of the run, like longest running TV shows of all time. They still air all the time right now. Yeah. So North American White tell, we're still live and kicking, you know, so we've been on longer than gun smoke. And I think that doc told me that the only two shows that have been on longer and somebody will fact check me. This, you know, please do. But from what Dr. Crow told me, so it's on doc if I'm wrong. But he said the only two longer running shows on, on national television or law and order in the sense sense. The sense is gotta be up there. Yeah. I was gonna say either ER law and order. South Park's gotta be up there now. Yeah, ER is long gone, man.

42:09Yeah. Yeah. But I don't, I'm a babe. I guess I'm your age. I feel like a baby. I mean, I just remember my whole life watching ER. You know, so to me, it seemed like a lot of, you know, law, we're still going. Yeah, it's been all forever, man. I'm here to disappoint all of you. I watched minimal episodes of the Sipsons and that's the only one I've seen out of all those shows. It's fun. Yeah, it's fun. You're great. You're one of the magazine though, right? But I know North back in white too. So whatever, whatever that was, that'd be 2003. 2003 would have been here. We launched on outdoor. I should have brought this in. But I was obsessed with the weird white tail series you guys did. Yeah. I still have how many were there was there three of them total? There were two or three. I have two for sure. And that was all before me. That was Gordon Whittington, who was my predecessor. That was my mentor. You know, Gordon, Gordon was at white tail. And he still is. He's our editor emeritus. See, I like to think he's our historian. Yeah.

43:09That remains on staff. But Gordon officially retired in 2020 is when I took over the editor in chief role. But yeah, Gordon published the weird white tails. And like you so many people still tell me they're like, dude, I love that magazine. I got ripped up in my backpack. And I still have the the one the bluish cover with that one buck that in the article I read at the like the guy. This is what I remember about the story. And we've all seen the deer. He just, I don't remember what the years call. He thought it was a goat when it walked in. Yeah. Right. When he saw the rack. Something like that. But I the bottom of the covers ripped off because I was cramming at my backpack with all my books. And it got ripped up. But I still have it. It's awesome. But yeah, they're legendary. Those were like, you know, special issues that we put out. Yeah. So when you guys, I mean, gosh, do you know, how would you ever know? But maybe you do or maybe you could find out how many Matt separate editions or what do you call them? What would be like this? Issues, issues,

44:09issues. How many issues has North American watch? I'll put out since the beginning. It's a great question. It's got to be insane. I would love to know. And so if you look, I mean, if we're going on 45 years, which is a pretty special number, you know, you have that first year was a one off. That was a single single issue like an annual, it was a test to see if it was worth doing. And it was like gangbusters. Yeah. So like wildfire. Yeah. And then Gordon would know, like I would so love to do this podcast with Gordon, Weddington. Yeah. That's awesome. Like and I full disclosure, like I'm the editor in chief. Yes. But Gordon was the editor in chief for literally longer than I have been alive on planter. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I never, people ask me like so often I run into people and they're like, man, you got big shoes to fill. You got big shoes to fill. I'm like, it will give me 30 years. Yeah. You don't know that. They're so funny. Man, like he, those

45:12guys, and there's guys like Gordon, like Cam Cobal, who he said's going to be on the podcast here soon. Cam's like that. He's an encyclopedia. Like he, the stuff that guys like him and Gordon just know and have committed to memory. Yeah. Like if you ask Gordon, like, you know, what, what was the date they found the Illinois roadkill? You know, or, or, you know, what year did they were the general sheds found in Nebraska? Yeah. He just automatically knows. Like it's autopilot. And I remember when he hired me and I was 23 years old and been on a college for like two months. And yeah, the ink was drying on my diploma, man. And like, yeah, so young, he hired me as an entry level editor and associate editor to this just dream job. And it was so intimidating, you know, having conversations with those guys where they remembered, like if you could probably ask Gordon right now, like how many issues have we published? He very well could know. Yeah. Yeah. He just knew that stuff. You know, I didn't, I didn't really expect anybody to know that,

46:16but to think about it is crazy. Like, it's a lot because for years and years and years, we've published eight issues annually. And we, and we have as long as I've been here. So I've been here 11 years. And so I guess that's 88 issues right there. So the, is, you guys keep one of everyone? Like, is there like a roll, like a, a file cabinet where they're like, this is every issue, physical, hard copy issue of North American White tail in an office somewhere in a vaults. I mean, maybe Gordon has most of them. Like, yeah, this is actually like, this is actually like a very layered onion question. So like, yeah, you would think that we're more organized than we are. When we, when we, yeah, but I know how things are. Like, when we were in the Kennesau office, which we were when I was higher, we were in Kennesau, Georgia, just north of Marietta, outside of Atlanta. And that office had been there for a long time. And I love, I love that I was

47:20hired in the era that we were all still in a physical location. We talked about this earlier. Yeah. I feel like I got to work in a, and probably one of the last times in the print era that this was really happening. But I was hired into a publishing house. So we had a, you know, brick and mortar building in Kennesau where there were publishers walking up and down the hall. And they were selling ads and they were on the phone and they were cutting deals. And we had boardrooms and where we had every page of the magazine plastered up on the wall. It's a wolf a wall street of white tail hunting on the magazine. For sure. Yeah. And it's like, man, we want to run, we want to run this 220, you know, with this really good sunset photo. But we got this 250 with this night shot. It's not quite as good, but this deer is so impressive. You know, it's like, we were like debating on photos and debating on color schemes. We brought our designers in and you know, that office was legit because we had, you know, full photo studio. And then we had an archive room

48:24that literally did not only did it have every single paper magazine of white tail that it had ever been printed and catalogued from 82 to present. But we also had literally every photo that it had ever been sent into the magazine. And the vast, vast majority of those were on 35 millimeter film slides because that's that's what so many of them were taking that to awesome. So you had all the, you know, contact sheets or whatever they're called of guys, you know, every deer that's ever been in the magazine, all those that were taken on, you know, co-deck color chrome film, whatever, you know, we had, we still got all that stuff. A lot of it said, I got it in my house, I got it in my garage. Gordon's got a storage unit that he kept. We've got some of it in Peoria, Illinois in our office, not too far from here. And but yeah, we, when we close that office, during COVID, like so many other businesses across the country, we'd never return to the workplace. You know, I work from home now and I published the magazine from home and, and so do the majority

49:30of our editors for the other hunting titles that we own at OSG. You know, we had to consolidate that archive room. And I remember spending hours in there with Gordon when that office was closing and going through everything. And, and organizing full sets because most of the time, like Lee, your magazine, when I got it in the mail, I get four copies a month is what shipped to my house. When we were in the office, we used to have like 200 copies a month. We're sending a big box and we would distribute them anybody who needed a copy or a writer or an advertiser that we wanted to send copies to. We would mail it out. And then, you know, we would discard excess, but we would always save, you know, archives, magazine for the archive or for like the mother load. Yeah. Like the, the chronological, here's every issue of Whitetail ever. And luckily, we saved enough when that office closed. Gordon kept a full set. I kept a full set. And then we sent a full

50:35set to Peoria, Illinois, which is in like a safe location. Like a, my house burns down and Gordon's house burns back up. We know there's a backup somewhere on planet earth. Like we've got every, we've got every issue of Whitetail, which it would blow your mind. How many people on planet earth have every issue? I bet it's more than you think. Yeah. And like collect them. Yeah. And like shrink wrap them and have them in their closet. Or like I've talked to guys who throw playboys dedicated, dedicated Mahogany shelves that they had custom built with their North American Whitetail collections. Like that's crazy guys are out there, man. And like God love them. Thank you. Appreciate you guys. Everything one of you. Well, there's something to hand me one of them. Bad boys doesn't matter which one. There's something to this because this is going away and everything else in our lives. You know, I hope the physical copies in North American Whitetail never go away. But like, this is my childhood and a nostalgic thing that you can still get and touch and flip through.

51:37It's kind of funny. My daughter has to read every night for homework just last time. I'm like, Hey, you want to read one of Dad's articles for your homework? No. No. I'm like, yeah, I'm playing me. But this is cool. Yeah. And it's cooler the older they are. And it's like, I eventually did get a stack of probably North American Whitetail and all the other magazines that I subscribe to. And when I didn't have money, I could still fork aside under 20 bucks for a year subscription on magazines, whatever. And did I end up tossing some moving from living with my parents to get in my apartment to moving houses? Yeah. A lot of stuff got thrown away and I hate it because it's so much cooler later. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? We got somebody gifted us a bunch of old archery cat. We bought some old archery catalogs. We found an eBay and I go into those old early 1992 catalogs. It's like something cool about it. Yeah. Well, so we've been talking for what a half hour already. And like we've had North American Whitetail.com pulled up the whole time. Yeah.

52:42We ain't talked about it one time. We've talked about this magazine the whole time we've been chatting. We're drilling. We should. I do want to talk about this. And if that's the time, let's talk about it. I was going to bring it. We'll get into all of it. But I do want like what you're like what you're prodding at a little bit. Yeah. You know, I'm in the magazine world. I'm rooted in it. It's been my whole career since I was, you know, fresh out of school, man. It's the only industry that I've really been in. And yeah, I'm in linear TV and I'm in advertising sales and I do all that stuff. At my heart, I'm a magazine editor and I'm a publisher. And this is the industry that I've been trained in. And I'll tell you, man, there's probably not a lot of magazine guys that would want to go live on the air on a podcast and like really get in the weeds with you about what's happening in the print world. But I think it's a conversation worth having. And like if you want to like, you want to know like what's really happening in the print world, like let's talk about it. Well, it's

53:44something we probably for the good of it should talk about for the sake of this, you know, legacy publication. Yeah, it's a protein around. I was going to bring it up as a call to action. So like and this seems kind of lame to say, but we none of us want this to die. You know, I mean, the physical copy of it. It's so cool. It's so nostalgic. And like when this article dropped, I mean, granted a lot of the people our age had already seen it. Yeah, you know, from social media or whatever. But I had probably, I don't know, 12 or 15 people text me a picture of it. And every single one of them was like 55 plus like my dad's buddies. Yeah. And that is cool that they had a hard copy. Yeah, they got a hard copy in the mail that said something to me. And like, I think it's so cool to get the physical copy, to keep the physical copy like you can pick this up at any random time. Like the bathroom when I was growing up, it was all over the walls. And like you can pick this up at any time. And on the digital side of it, you're going to read it one time and you're never going

54:49to see it again. Yeah, right. Yeah, more than like. And it's just so cool to me to have that physical aspect of it to be able to like my kids five, you know, yeah, I've got a few old ones. And I'm like, oh, look at this. And he's like, oh, that's cool. You know, you can't do that if it's digital. Well, I mean, you know, it blows my mind, man. And like I said, I'm like North American White tell TV, for example, and our website and our Instagram and our Facebook, our social media pages. We monitor all those analytics and the data. And I can tell you every single thing about our reader and our viewer of everything we do digitally. And I know that that's the 25 to 45 year old demographic. And I know that there's five million page views a year on our website. And I love that. Trust me, that is a stat that is like so cool. Yeah, because it's bigger and comforting. It's bigger than anything we've ever done in print. You know, it North American White tell at

55:51its absolute peak when we really were selling 80% of these copies, you know, our high 70% of these copies that are printed. Our subscriber ship, yeah, it might have exceeded 200,000. But never did we have five million people subscribe and are buying this magazine off the news to an versus five million page views on our website. Does that mean that five million individual people are going to our website? No, but that means that we've had five million people have been on the website at any given time. Yeah, interested seeing it. Reign growing, reading our content. Yeah. And yeah, so crazy the stuff that you can track on there, man, like time on page, you know, and it, yeah, like people are so interested in big deer. Like, and I'm not an expert on other websites and other types of content. I can't tell you how long people want to read a political article or an article about a, you know, a car and auto or how to get six pack abs or whatever. No freaking idea.

56:56Not here. And no one's reading that shit right here. No idea, man. But I know that on our big deer stories on our website, the average time on pages over five minutes. The read that's good. That's like, if you can get over one from what I've been told, if you can get over one minute, you're like, it'll eat. So to have people reading and being on a single page on the website for over five minutes, that means that like somebody looked at Lee Hurst 245, whatever net and pass it to his buddy. He was like, Doug, look at this freaking deer, man. Pass it over and he was like, air is this deer? Hi, man. Long enough to either. Good. Long enough to either drill. Drill about it or talk shade or whatever. Hopefully all shade. The phone's going around the room. That's right. Yeah. And that's great. I love it, dude. I love it. And I just say something. The what it did. What's crazy is like nowadays, you know, somebody that wants to advertise or they

58:01want to sponsor you or they want to invest in, you know, in your engagement or your audience. That's really all they care about. And they want to know all those numbers. And hey, you know, God bless them. I'll tell you all the numbers. You want to know them. Just call me. You know, and thank goodness, they're good. Thank goodness, they're growing. Thank goodness, our pages are, you know, advancing. But to, you know, Lee's point and what you're saying, I can't give you the data on this paper product of how many people put their hands on it or the impact that it has on them or their life. I can't tell you the percentage of people they're going to read this magazine and and see a loop hold out or see a browning at or whatever. But then call their buddy intent or text their buddy and be like, dude, did you see this deer? But I can promise you it's bigger than you think. And I was thinking about that while you were saying your, your digital numbers, it would not shock me if your impressions or whatever you want to call it are similar with the magazine in

59:05a yearly basis. Right. I agree. I totally agree. It's just not as trackable. Right. You can't, as some of the more modern media, which unfortunately has led to the detriment of print magazines at large. Yeah. And we do, and I know, I know about as much about my print reader as I do my digital guy. And I can tell you that like our, we do reader surveys, pretty in-depth reader surveys that people actually fill out at very high levels. And I know that our average reader is a mid 50s white male, $100,000 average income or 150,000. It's somewhere in that range. A hundred acres of land, 90% gun hunt, 80% bow hunt, one tractor, one chain saw. I know the index scores of how many people on a pickup truck, how many people on a UTV. I mean, I know these guys like the back of my hand. And that, and that's great data. But the interesting thing is if he says, says 55 or 56 years old this year,

1:00:10next year is 57. If we're sitting here and we're doing this podcast in 2027, he's a year older. If we do it in 2028, he's a year older. And it's, it is amazing. The number of people that subscribed to North American White Tail, our readership is to be very transparent. It's a plateaued readership. And it's a plateaued business model to a certain extent because our readership is very, very stable, very passionate. It's almost a religious reader that, hey, they're going to get this every month and they're going to read cover to cover page, page to page. Yep. You know, but we lose, we lose readers every year to mortality guys that started subscribing to this magazine in 1982 and they were 40 years old and, you know, they're in their mid 80s now. Yeah. You know, and so a certain number of subscribers that we lose literally died. And that's more, but I know, but it's, but it's a fact. It's true. So in the time that you have been

1:01:11with White Tail, has it, does it pretty much creep up a year on average? Or do you see a slight decrease every year or? Yeah, it, no, it creeps, man. The print magazine continues to creep down versus the digital creeping up way more rapidly, way more rapidly. It's just the same thing as our YouTube, which it's really only been two or three years that we've really given enough of a crap to invest in that and to pump content on there. But she's starting, she's starting to rip now. I mean, it's a proven algorithm that all these guys who have done YouTube, they don't have magazines, they don't have all these other arenas of business that I play in on a daily or a legacy brand. Right. Right. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. I'd be really scared these like in today's era, I'd be really scared to create not scared, but it would be, it would be an overwhelming task to create a brand new brand and start from the ground floor and try to grow a massive and

1:02:16impactful YouTube program or podcast or Instagram page or just a brand at large. Anybody who does that and does it well, like my hat is fully off to you, like props, dude, you freaking did it. You did something difficult. For sure. And if you use AI for all your shit, that doesn't count. Doesn't count. It's there deep into the camera while you say that, Kurt. It doesn't count. If you, if you're up, I'll speak at what our expertise is. If you are a hunting podcast and you're using AI, we use this joke, but if you use an AI seriously for your cup of arts and your show arts, that's not cool. Don't do that. That sucks. Again, dude, I grew up in the, in the, in the world with, you know, true illustration artists and the, the guys who designed, you know, our logo and drew it from pencil sketches from the ground up and yeah, and try to try to put these magazines together with film photos and slides and project them and create. Imagine, imagine how the, like,

1:03:19well, I don't want to get asked too far. Imagine, imagine, imagine, dick idle, like in the field in Canada, in an Indian reservation and Saskatchewan riding on a yellow legal pad, a story about a deer that he just discovered and snail-mailing it to the North American White Tilt office. To Gordon Whittington and being like, Gordon, you need to publish this or, hey, man, I just wrote this article about rub lines. It needs to go in the September issue in four months. Okay. So, okay. I just got a horse. Versus now. I'm like, hey, Kurt, I need this in nine days. Yeah. Well, for fuck's thought, I love that. Yeah. Email it over to me in 10 seconds. By the way, on that, and then I want to get on kind of what you just mentioned about the legal pad thing. I was like, anytime it's been an article like the one with to you or if I'm sending one to Christian Berg, I'm like nervous that I seem like a freaking dumbass. And I probably do look like a dumbass because I can, right, but I'm still just tattooed Kurt Geyer that just wants to go hunting. You know what I mean? Like,

1:04:22all my motivation for hunting is my nostalgic upbringing with North American White Tilt, my backpack. Yeah. That's like my main motivator anyway. So I was very nervous submitting it. And I was nervous Lee would hate it. But either way, it was, I think it was fine. I don't know how much you guys edited it. I tried not to look. We're not, we're not that, we're really not that publication, man. And I think if you look back at like the old school and probably filmed stream out to our life, you know, whatever, back in the old days of the Jackbredding hamster, you know, the OG dudes and even really the dick idols and those guys. By the way, I bought all his VHS Jackbredding hamster. Oh, yeah. I had them in farm king. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, and there were guys who were, they were writers. Yeah. You know, and that was their living and they had the credibility and you knew when you got it. Yeah. Like to college for journalism type of thing. Yeah. It'd be no different now than if I wanted a polished article on the, you know, the Y30 out six spring photos

1:05:24still relevant. I had Joseph on Benedict write that for North American White Tilt instead of guns in ammo magazine. You know, those guys are legit. Yeah. We'll do stuff like that every once in a while. But North American White Tilt, one of the things I love about this magazine more than anything is I'm going to say with the exception of a small handful of staff writers, you know, guys like Dan Cole or Clifford names Josh Honeycutt Steve Shirt guys who write routinely for the publication. Jason Bowserman does a lot for me. He's a writer by every means and definition of the word. Aside from those guys, everything that goes in our publication is written by a carpenter, a mechanic, you know, a dude who works at the paper mill who's never written anything in his life. Maybe he's got a GED but 90% chance he didn't go to college. I guarantee he's not an English major. I guarantee he's not a, he didn't go to J, he didn't go to J school. You know, he ain't a journalist.

1:06:28Yeah. He might not even own a camera other than his smartphone. He's not a photographer. Real relatable people. He's not submitting a photo package to me that's at, you know, eight to 10 megabytes and 300 DPI resolution in A. Hapman. Yeah. The guys who write stuff for me, it needs to be edited. I'm the editor. That's my job. Yeah, you kind of need to have that otherwise you're like bored. But I would rather and I don't, all you guys and gals listening, and I feel like you feel the same way. And that's the reason why we've continued to do this. But I'd rather read an article from a guy who was in the tree stand when he shot that 200 inch deer, or that 180 inch deer, whatever. And he knows what it took when that buck hung up or spotted something and froze. And he was at full draw for three minutes. And it was, it took every fiber of his being to keep that bow at full draw and make that shot when that buck finally cleared that limb.

1:07:32And the vitals, you know, cleared and he had a shot. Yeah. And he was the one that had to deal with that ungodly amount of adrenaline and kill that deer of a lifetime. He's literally drained about since he was a kid. You guys know as good as anybody on the planet, the emotion that comes with that. That doesn't come across as well when you do a recorded interview with somebody over the phone and you're telling them how that felt versus if you sit down after work one night or you go out in your garage and you write that and you tell me how that felt. That's a real deer story. For sure. And that's first person, not third person. It's not quotes. It's like, hey, this is what happened to me. You know, and this is how I found this deer. This is how I patterned him. This is how I figured him out. It's how I played the chess match against this buck. And somehow I won. You know, and I, that's North American white tail. And those are the types of stories that are

1:08:35impactful to me. And I think they'll be impactful to anybody who reads our publication. Yeah, I think that's bad-ass. It's like, it's the, it's the deer hunter's magazine. What's the white tail hunter's magazine? Do you? Yeah. Do you find a lot like, I don't know, like let's say I shall like, leased here and someone's like, write it out. I think in my head, like, I would write too much to think, I don't know. Like, that's the one thing like my dad said about the article. I had such a hard time writing him. He was like, well, it's kind of short for what all happened. And I'm like, well, dad, you can't, the magazine cannot be about one article. You know, you have to kind of know how to shorten it up and where to shorten it. That's true. And you know, you could, we could write a whole magazine about your deer. And that was going to hurt the whole thing. That's what I was stressed out about because I never done that. There was probably that level of detail that went in to figure that deer out. And what are the impact that it had on your life or all, you know, everything that had to go perfectly correct for you to kill that deer and find him and recover him and tag him legally. And you know, that story probably needs five or six

1:09:37or 7,000 words, not 1200 words. Right. You know, so it is very hard to condense these. Yeah, I was trusting. I've seen him very, I've seen him from, I've had guys write articles that are six or 7,000 words long. And it's like, whoa, dude, you just like, you just sent me a 36 page word document. Like, this is great. That's great. That's longer than my college thesis when I was presenting my class on to the English department. You know, like, that's a big story about a deer. You know, but, but I read that and I'm like, this dude loves it. Yeah, this dude loves it. And then I've said, you know, like my buddy, Camcobal, love the death. One of the greatest dudes on the planet. Doesn't own a computer. He bought, he told me he bought on Amazon, like a keypad that he can plug into his phone. Oh, really? Boy, can't write a lick. And he, but he writes more for me than most anybody. Yeah. But and I told him, I said, dude, I don't care. You, you are more connected to the guys killing these deer. And he's a boon and crock at measure. And he is, he becomes aware

1:10:41of these big deer at such a fast rate of blow your freaking mind. How fast? Yeah, you guys think I'm a rainman. Wait till that mother. I can't wait till they haven't come in. I can't. The first time I met Cobal, somebody told me they were like, he's an encyclopedia. Yeah, they were like asking any county in the state of Iowa, he will tell you the largest typical and the largest non-typical killed in that county. What we got to do, I already have this idea, Bruno, my head on things I want to talk to him about. But I'm going to tell him to prepare a couple things. But we, you got to, what you got a walk like freestyle. Well, no, no, no, but I have an idea that will make sense. Like, and even though I know he can do most of the top of his head, I just, I got a couple things that's going to be, I got it my head. I don't even know my county. I won't make him read anything as like a script. I got a thing I want him to do. You got to add, you got it. But you also need to like wing it with him and be like, oh, did name the top three net typical and say because they hear this and that was you know, what you can change the state. But you need to be like, you need I want to hear the top three net non-typical and net typical killed in Adams County Ohio,

1:11:46date of kill and the score and the hunter's name. I feel now it. That's what I did when I met him. I know it. So the largest deer killed in the county I grew up in. I have a shed too. That's the deer I missed like my first year bow hunting. Then the next year the neighbor killed him. And I knew it was the largest non-typical ever killed in the county. And I was like, hey, what's the largest non-typical killed ever killed in so and so county. And he's like, uh, duh, duh, duh, killed it on duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, this is kind of how where he shot it, how he shot it. And I was like, hmm, shit. Slightly overcast bear, my impression. Yeah, that's a special type of wet autism, man. He'll tell you. There's just no more. A drizzle. Yeah, the guy was shooting a Remington wing, eight, eight, 70 wing master. Full bear. Yeah, he was like, he shot it with a Matthews bow with a, uh, that's insane. Muzzy Broadhead. I was like, you got it, but you got a nitpicking. Be like, was that a three-blader or four-blader? There you go. You don't really know. You

1:12:48don't know all the little deal. Yeah, you think I'm the rainman. He's the right man. I know, I know that he is because we hung out with him at some deer shows and know on, but I've been wanting, he's been on the to book list for WCB for a while. Was it rubber boots and then tide boots? Is that a Z71? I have a Duramax. Yeah, was he wearing Hanes underwear or fruit of the loom? But I'm done. I finally had an opening. I hit him up like, hey, can you be here this day? Yep. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. And it was good. So, that's coming up. But I remember like, when I was first hiring, I was like a young gun, dude. I grew up deer. I made killing deer since I have little time in North Carolina, man. Yeah. So like, I was born and bred in the deer hunting culture, but I was not necessarily ingrained in the trophy white tell culture to the level that those guys are right. This is just a funny aside, but I remember being on the phone with guys like that early in my career and literally I had on my desk, I taped it with clear tape,

1:13:49and I wrote out all the B and C typical and non-typical, you know, records their net score, their gross score, their data, their kill. I made a cheat sheet. I said you got your cheat sheet. I taped it to my desk because I'd be on the phone call with somebody who was a rain man. And like, dude, I'm, you know, at that point, I was an associate editor at North American White tell. I'm like, brother, you better be able to walk the walk. Oh, yeah. Talk to talk here. You wait to learn it. Just tear it on your desk all day too, you know, but yeah. And it's funny, but now like somebody kills a deer now. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, Steven Tucker, you know, killed, you know, at that 312-inch, non-typical and Tennessee, I think of Sumner County, you know, shout out with a muzzle layer. I'm like, I remember interviewing him for three hours. Yeah. You know, like I remember that stuff because I was there. Right. I was a part of that. Yeah. Once it's, yeah, it's a part of your career. But yeah, it makes total sense, you know, I mean, hot. It's like, you don't have a history there. And you're the a part of this like legacy, big deal thing to everybody that you talk to.

1:14:49One thing I'll talk to you. So you mentioned like, guys right now on legal pads, like before, you know, word documents in the ease of just like sending stuff in. What did most people do? Would they just write on college rule dope pads and mail it in? And like, here's my article. And then it would just get re typed out some like, yeah, I don't work in the pre-computer era. Yeah. I mean, type riders were the jam day. Right. I mean, guys would write stuff on type riders and get mail that stuff in and Gordon Gordon was retyping that. No kidding. 17 page. Yeah, like I hit the wrong button. I started. Oh my god. Number number two led Tycon to roga, baby, like writing that stuff in and mailing it. Yeah. Yeah. And our hall of fame, you know, it's our hall of fame page is running every issue of the magazine since 82. I mean, it's in the back. It's reader reader submitted photos of their big deer. And we still get there it is. There's hall of fame right there. Just yeah, there's some big deer that people can read our magazine, send us photos. We get these a lot now in our email. But every month,

1:15:56we still have somebody will will mail us photos. That's cool. That's awesome. Okay, we've printed out a photo of this buck. You know, my dad shot this deer. So back then and the, I mean, maybe you don't know, maybe you do. I'm assuming you know, a little bit about like 80s, 90s, and the early 2000s before Instagram and the Facebook groups and the fit, you know, easily accessible social media, how would someone get on the cover, get in the magazine with their big deer? Was it all like, Hey, I killed this deer feature me. It was all mailing stuff or how did that somebody go about that? I was wondering. Did you guys have scouts? Yeah, there's always been like I said, like I mentioned, some of those riders who, you know, have always been kind of part of our stat, not necessarily like employed by our company, but, but trusted riders, guys who we know, like they know, like if if Ron Wilmore calls me, you know, from Illinois and says,

1:16:58like, Hey, this, this deer's legit. Like it, like Ron Wilmore wrote four stories for me this year. And he wrote for Gordon for years and years and years. He's still cranking these things out. It was the same way with Dick Eidl, a lot of the original guys that were trusted contributors. They were sort of evenly distributed across the country. Yeah, some guys that were more Westernly located, some guys who were key in the Midwest, a few key Southern riders too. Like they kind of had that geographic distribution. And those guys had the reputation, I'm sure, and like, yeah, and it could be deer that they were hearing about through the grapevine or deer that they saw at check stations or sort of mouth pretty much back then. Word of mouth or a dude went to the Dixie deer classic in Raleigh and saw like man, somebody shot a, somebody shot a 200 in North Carolina. The impacts of deer shows then had to have been like massive. Huge,

1:18:02for amazing. Yeah, huge man. Isn't that with your dads? Wasn't that how the way that worked? Yeah, with then your dad was in North American White Tale. I don't think he was in North America. I just met like a word magazine about traveling within North American White Tale. I don't think I think it's a different magazine. I want to find it. How do you not know, bro? Within three days, just someone showed up at his door because of one in North American. Yeah, boo this man. But with the three days, the door asking about his deer. Like a rider or something? Yeah. Takes your mom's, he would, she's probably, I got the copy of it. She keeps everything. Oh, no, yeah. There's a copy for sure. If it's North American White Tale and you don't know that, you're, you're kicked off a WCB. This is the end for him. I don't think it's North American White Tale. He should know. He wasn't cool enough. This is the end of Doug. Do you think that if your dad killed a, I get 200 plus and steer and he was featured in a magazine with your child, you remember what magazine it was on just around the table? You can't talk. Lee, would you know? You know the answer. Eric, how about you? Absolutely. Yes. Would you know? My dad shot a 180-inch

1:19:06typical in Kansas and I published this story at North American White Tale. So you do remember? Uh, I think I would remember the guy I buck made a magazine in 2004 or 2005 with my dad killed it. I'd remember what publication it was in. You need to still have the magazine? That's still have it. Doug didn't have one. Oh, it's out my parents. No, but you know how one yourself? I didn't have a copy because they have it framed. You could have bought a copy of it from where? He was like six. If it was North American White Tale, I will print you off a copy and have it framed and mad. All right. Can you go back and just get anything out digital and like call someone right now? Yeah, we got all that. Call the vaults. Awesome. Call the vaults. The vault guys. One guy in the vault. He's just there all the 247. That is a troll. Yeah, it is me and I'm sitting right here. So I'll get to see you next week. They like the library letter that slides. There's a full time North American White Tale guy that looks like Danny DeVito that's with the vault. He just said

1:20:11you look like Danny DeVito. No, I didn't say that. You said there's a full-time guy that looks like Danny DeVito. If you're out there, please send me your resume. I could use you. Full-time troll actually lives under a bridge. It's a tie brighter. Yeah. But I was just curious how they would do that and get their article in in the day. I guess any means necessary, right? As long as you get it. There were a lot of mail-in, photos of deer that we're sending and stories to. So I'm sure back in the day, it was like a shotgun day. It came in from everywhere. The whole family, you probably had a thing in there. If you can have a big deer or mail it to us. That's another thing you can ask Camcobal like the level of just obsession that this dude has. He knows he would tell you if we called him on the phone right now and 752 pm or whatever, you're like, hey, Cam, what issue of North American White Tale had the five highest grossing scored White Tales in the Hall of

1:21:14Fame page? He did. Should we call him real quick and see? I wonder if he's available. You're gonna put him on blast. Should I try? I'll text him if he's available. We'll try it. Freaking call him, dude. I've seen him. I've seen him post about it on Facebook before. I just call him. Just shoot him a brain of hell. I want to give him a courtesy text. Man, your guys' mail day must be crazy. So you never know what you're gonna open up back in the day like. I can't do that, man. I mean, even now probably is it. Do you still have people do that? It's probably more email-type stuff now. Lot of email now. And in the DMs, dude. The DMs are wild. I'm gonna start sending Polaroids to this address here until I get featured in this motherfucker. Send it all, dude. Send it all. You never do. It's amazing how old. Like we talked about the 70 or 80% of copies used to be sold. Like, so I've been here 11 years and I've seen the change that has occurred. And again, the massive positive is the fact that, whoa, millions of 25 to 45-year-old guys are interacting

1:22:19with us on our social media and on our website. Freaking solid, dude. That's great. But I know, so I was hired. It would have been 2015 was my first year. And I remember right before we went to the ATA show that year, we had just put out, we published that last magazine. I want to say it was like 168 pages. It's big. I mean, but that was common. Like, I think all the magazines we put together that year were all like 120 to 150. So this issue I have right here, this is 96 plus cover. And this is a pretty good size. I think it's beefy compared to the. Yeah, fortunately, I have not had to use this. Oh, we haven't used that in a long time. I know it's a good thing because it means we care. Okay, give me a second. Is there a date on all these? Oh, yeah, September, October, 2020. Yeah, I don't tell you on the folia when it was published.

1:23:19So that, you know, that shows you that in general magazines are getting smaller. The issues that we published 11 years ago, we said guys that were right in, we keep track of our ad to edit ratios every month. And that's the number of pages that are editorial versus pages that are editorial, you know, bald advertisements. And the magic number in the magazine world is 50%. You want you want a majority editorial content. And then those days, if you ran a magazine that had say 52 to 53% editorial, like there were there were literally more ad pages than edit pages, which was fairly common because it actually costs us a lot of money to add additional edit pages. If I want to increase this package size, like I just looked at a package size yesterday for the November issue and I'm looking at adding some pages in there. If I want to tack on another 30, 40, 50, 60,000 dollars to add pages in, you know, you got to sell certain number advertisements to make

1:24:21the bottom line profitable for those magazines. Oh, for sure. And, you know, it was very routine for us to run, you know, edging on that mid hundreds to 200 pages and just be crammed freaking full ads. And, you know, there's not as many now, we keep the we keep the ad to edit ratio that solid because we want the reader experience good. But it used to be like, Hey, you ran 52% ass. Somebody's going to write you a letter and be like, Hey, there's too many ads in your magazine. Yeah, I can't take this. I'm writing them. Have you seen a decrease in the amount of people who will advertise in hard copy magazines? At not not on a page rate as far as how much the average the advertisement is actually causing the value that is there. But just in the the sheer number. That's what I mean. Like the number of people who will like if you reach out to them and they're like, Hey, I've got an open spot in this issue. Would you be interested in having a? Yeah. Do you have a

1:25:23lot more people that are like now? They're they're nowadays they shift their advertising budgets. And what happens is most companies because the industry is very strong. And the products that they're selling do sell and these companies are doing very well. And the industry thrives. And so their marketing budgets don't necessarily change. But if somebody calls me and they're like, Hey, I've got I've got $300,000 that I want to spend on advertising across your 16 publications. But I no longer want to allocate 80% of that to print advertising. I want to allocate 60% of it to digital. I want to run banner ads on your website. I want to run pop up ads. I want to run a social media campaign where you you know, deliver three posts per month. I want organic. I want reels on Instagram. I want YouTube shorts. I want to be featured in the television show. I want to brought to you by, you know, a lot of the purchases now are just.

1:26:27Cady corner towards the digital side. Yeah. As opposed to like, Hey, I want to schedule that gets me on the back cover of North American White Tell from spring through January. Okay. Hey, Doug has a magazine that is a big buck. Also, what a title. One of the coolest things I think about that. And this is, that is a giant. This has probably changed a lot in recent years, also with people taking more trail photo or not tro camera photos. But field photos. I love how the old school magazines have the shoulder mounts into pictures like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Email that to me, Doug, because I want to print those. That's that's great. Like bathroom wall art. So cool. I just think that's so cool how that is changed. Here's the thing. Do you guys have questions for Cameron? We don't want to go to Chris. He's going to be on soon. Are we getting ready, Colin? Yeah, he said, but I just got to make sure I know how to work this damn call thing still because I haven't done it for so long because we only do in person podcasts. I'll just ask him a couple random counties and I wouldn't see this. Let's hit him up here. I said, be in a quiet room. So this is awesome. Let's see if you can go first with

1:27:29your pictures. Doug asked me about that issue. A big bug. Hello, Cameron. What's up, man? All this relaxing, doing some laundry. I got a wet. Well, damn. Okay. So we're doing a podcast, Haynes Shelton, some North American whitetails in here. We talked about you a little bit. We know you're like the rain man and we know you're coming on in a few weeks and we don't want to give too much away. But we had to call you and Lee, her here. Lee, her is here as well. Stop, Cameron. So I want to go first. All right. Haynes wants to go first. Cam, what year and county was the hole in the horn buck found? What state? Give me some general details about that white tell. 1948 and some change net. That correct. Ohio, county.

1:28:35Isn't it my hunting county? I just know. Portage County. Portage, it's up by the outside. I got to say, I'm about to say you're three out of four. I think I think I know like the typical's better at times. I don't know. Some of them, I'm just, you know, because that there's so known, I just don't know all the specifications on it. It's too mainstream. Look at that. Wow. Damn. Cameron, you got to keep some of this for the podcast. Don't be spouting up. I was going to message you and I was like, you know, I'm just going to go into it. It's more fun. No, when I think what I've done these. Well, I had some stuff for you. I was just telling the guys. I wanted to talk about a few things, but we're going to do that mostly. But I got a few things I want to touch base with you on anyway. Pretty good. Lee, wants to go now. I'm going to throw a wild one at you and see. I know you know, Iowa very well. I want the, I just want the name of the hunter. First name of the hunter who killed the largest

1:29:38non-typical in Iowa County, Iowa. Iowa County. I've scored some big deer out of there. Nothing like super super big. What big 200 by scored one. Iowa County scored a big like a 210. Well, he grossed two. I think him. That a 200 non-typical about three years ago. A guy shot the gun. I can't think of his name right now. You guys are putting on the spot. We did this on purpose. He's doing his damn laundry. No, I scored some of the deer in the past couple of years. I'm trying to thank the kids name. The first time I ever met you, Cameron, I asked you this exact same question and you were like, boom, boom, boom, spout it it off the guy who killed it. The biggest non-typical ever in the county. It was recently like the one that was 2009. Out of Iowa County, 2009 would probably kill

1:30:44County Terry Club. No, Iowa County. It was his name's Kyle. His first name's Kyle. It was 227 and then changed net. Are you sure? Iowa County? What's his last name? Blankin Horn. I don't even know that deer. You told it to me when I first met you. He did it at some point. Man, I'm terrible right now. I don't want to be blanking all these, but gosh. You got a few weeks to redeem yourself. You better start studying now. You won't be doing your laundry when you're sitting here at our table. So you'll be fine. I'm just blanking on now. Kyle, I'm going to look now when I get off here. Blankin Horn. Blankin Horn. I don't even, God, it's like deer don't even ring a bell. You knew it five or six years ago when I met you. Leaves wrong completely. Yeah. Exactly right. This is real quick camera. Let me get back to your laundry man. We're looking forward to having you in here in a couple of weeks. How many deer do you measure a year real quick just to leave the people with this? Oh, estimated. Man, probably

1:31:50I don't know 80 60 80. I don't know. Okay. Hi, it's man. I used to chase a lot more from around, but I'd rather people enter them and just go give them a number. I don't like doing that much anymore. They just want to get a number. I say, well, if I'm going to score, then you better enter it. Fair. Yeah, it's very fair. Bucket's on the frame too. You know, so that makes yeah, he's one of these older guys I'm getting around or they say, man, don't ever go measure. They're not going to enter them and it's not that I don't want to. It's just we'll waste our time for. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you're volunteering your time. The clubs got to benefit the program's got to benefit. Yeah. Well, you've been talked about in high praise on this. So we've already just give you a quick ring. I mean, I felt pretty mentally well. You guys should ask me some different ones. Well, the thing is if anybody's doubting you, you're going to be sitting right where hands is in a couple of weeks and it'll be just fine. Dude, I literally I'm definitely look up. I'm definitely look up. But I would count it. You're not going to like, can't think of any bigger

1:32:53deer out of there than that. That's what's boggling me now. Well, I literally pumped you up, can't to the point that I told them that you would you know so much about North American Whitetail that you would know what issue of our Hall of Fame had the highest grossing deer, the five deer that we ran in our Hall of Fame of all time. I know since 1991, the biggest one, I think in the Hall of Fame was that Illinois is a 236. Yeah, that's correct. I think yeah, I just because I could never figure out why isn't there just a Hall of Fame? Why was it in a store? Should have done a whole feature article. Another big one was in the Hall of Fame was that Wendell Propsman bucket of Henry County 1988. Yep, that was in the Hall of Fame. Giant broken. They shot an 11th kind of on a deer drive. Was it Henry County, Illinois? Yeah, no Henry County Iowa. Okay. County Iowa. Yeah. Cool. Well, dude, sorry to bug. Go back to full.

1:33:54No, you're fine. You're fine. I'm definitely going to start clean up a little bit on these the most of them. People ask me some of these. I'm like, damn it. I should know that one. If you're so this is just your four warning, man, when you come on, you better be ready. Yeah, we're going to have some brain lunch for you. Dotch your eyes and cross your teeth. It's going to get real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gonna get real. All right. Cool, man. Thanks for letting us bug you. Do you have a good night? We'll see you here soon. Yep. Later. Later, brother. But that's a lot better than I could have done if I was just on. Oh, dude, he's like trying to get shit done on a Wednesday night. He's probably having a beer. He's just trying to relax. You want to hear something crazy? Would I want to know scores on my own, dear? I asked Lee saying he knows more about my dear, dear than I do. Yeah, that's kind of like such a good point. I mean, I do. I mean, I don't keep track of it. Like most people do, but I've never I've actually wild fact. I've never scored a single. Dear, I've killed. There's something to that, man. You know what we quit doing? Well, Lee's, I don't know if we ever did post.

1:34:54If I could get in there like on social, I would love to know because the deer's so big, like I would love to know we did not ever kill of your dear. We didn't know we said it on air, but we never we quit doing that because we were on the score sheet in the magazine. Well, for WCB never posted it online anywhere. We used to never like officially had a deer scored for Pope and younger Boone and Crockett and entered it. Not to say that I haven't killed some deer that probably I know I've killed several deer that would be Pope and Young. Yeah, I know I've never killed a Boone. You know what turned me off on a killing a deer that was 200 inches. Yeah. Yep. Only all the, no, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. I'm like, fuck you then. It's not. I don't care. Like I hit my personal like long goal for white tails and I know he has a lot of points. He don't look like it. He don't have the frame of one. That's fine. Yeah. I mean, I just, I don't know, man. It's something about again, I'm from rural North Carolina, Moxville's my hometown, David County, Piedmont area.

1:35:56Yeah. Dude, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt, there's probably a 90% chance. If I only hunted David County for the rest of my life, I'm gonna say I probably would never kill a deer that truly netted 140. Really? Yeah. And maybe 135, 130. You know, and but that doesn't mean that I don't care kill five and a half, six and a half year old deer. That's what I cut my teeth on doing. Totally. Was killing these old deer that I had tons of history. But I've killed five and a half, six and a half year old deer. And my county there were cow horns that had no points. You know, they just literally had never heard that before. Cow horns. That's what I'm gonna start using with that. That's a southern thing. Y'all've never heard that. I've never heard that. I found a dead head this last spring that was a cow horn. What did you guys see? Nothing but cow horns. Yeah, cow horns. That's what we call a big deer if he's just got main bames. You know, like, you know, if he just got, and a spike to spike, you see a young buck that's a spike.

1:36:57Yeah. You see a big old deer? Like, I mean, I've killed staying down from their hawks all the way to their hooves. They've got that black line solid down the back leg. You know, that's a six and a half year old white tail. Big 200, you know, 200 plus pound white tail where I'm from. You kill one, this legit, like my dad killed one two years ago that was 204 pounds. That's a giant. Yeah. Big deer. But we've killed deer that were edging up on 200 pounds that were, I guarantee you, there's six and a half years old that literally had cow horns. Yeah. I don't know. I never heard that. That's funny. You know, and that's just, that's just a poor genetic tray, you know, that's there. Yeah. But I've killed that same thing. I've killed deer that, you know, there's kind of like that, that coos deer that's in there, hanging that we talked about earlier, you know. Yeah. I've killed deer that, they probably don't score 100. Yeah. They were studs. Just big body roll. Like they, like they ran the farm. Yeah. They ran. Sometimes the smaller like the one here, like you get a 120 bully, heavy-bodied old bug, shy of a cow horn. Yeah. Or a little better than a cow horn.

1:37:58Those are problem deer. Yeah. We're all the ruse. They will be the shit out of a big old bug like. So like that plays into what I'm saying. I think it's part of the reason why I haven't had like a, like a truly huge motivation to have all these deer scarf kills from the great deer. I'm so blessed, man. I get to go to all the, these incredible places and destinations all across North America, not just the United States, but Canada. And, you know, I kill, dude, if I kill a deer that I know is 151.60 class, regardless of whether I ever lay a tape on his rack or not, you know, that's, I've achieved something that I never, ever, ever would have had the opportunity to do aside from North American white tail. So like, yeah, there are, like they're so special to me. Yeah. I look at them and I'm like, wow, that was a lifetime deer. Like totally. That was a, that was an experience. Well, I think that's something, first of all, I love how you like explain that. Because I think, you know, we talk about score here on the podcast, right?

1:39:00And then like we put posted on social and I find that got like more engagement. Because it's like, you guys can't handle what the score is because you're just going to argue it that's anyway. We're not going to put it on there because all it does is it kind of just like taints. It kind of can affect how you feel about your deer and all that. So we just don't do it. We started doing that like the last couple of years. But we'll talk about it on the show because we're just having boy, we're having the boys talk. The dudes talk about our deer. And if you don't believe us then, but you're two hours into our episode, then don't believe us. That's fine. You wasted two hours of your life listening to us talking about what we're doing. You know, whether you want to listen or not. But, um, you know, I think that's great. It's like, have your goals. Do your thing. Interim or don't. I think it's cool. Bucky's talking me entering a lot of my deer. Since I killed my big deer, I haven't entered any deer after that. I've killed some other big deer. I just called my big one the big deer. And then, um, but you know, it's like, I think what you just said is so perfect. It's like, you know, be thankful for what you can do. The opportunities, what you can shoot in your area or not. One thing I am getting burned out on a little bit as of lately on the internet and clips and all

1:40:04this stuff is, um, and first of all, I hope we never come off as like pompous that we're like, oh, yeah, we live in Illinois and we're trying to shoot the biggest deer we possibly can. And we're fortunate enough that Lee killed a 250 sum, whatever gross buck. That's awesome. It's cool. But if that deer was that deer and he didn't score that, you'd still be just a stoked. That was just the bonus of like, oh, neat. Now I can say that's my, my PR, you know? But then you have like other people on the internet. If you can't kill a three year old buck in Ohio, then what are you doing? Something wrong or that hunter podcast said that and I, I'll just say the names. And then Leo Kosti goes on a podcast and goes, I can kill a three year old deer and I, one 30 minutes easiest buck to kill. You just shit on the majority of your audience of, and I think about how I was when I was a kid, wanting to come up and read an earth American white tail in high school when I'm 16 years old. And now I can drive myself to the stand and I can hunt more now because I don't have to rely on my dad. He would have taken me anyway. But you know what I'm hunting that are big bucks to me?

1:41:04Three year old deer. Yeah. Are the biggest bucks that I have a chance of killing at 16 years old with my bow. Trying to climb the ladder of bohunting, reading the magazines, watching the shows, a podcast would have been a thing then. I would have been listening to the podcast. Just get shit. And then your idols just come in and do this. It's like, boys, what are you doing? Don't you think a better way to talk about it is like, yeah, we had, we had a chance to kill a lot of three year olds. It doesn't mean that if another guy can't do it, doesn't mean he doesn't know what the Ellie's doing. Well, like climbing the ladder, you look at it like watch, I was watching one the other day, an old jury video. I mean, that's what they used to shoot when they started. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For a lot of year old, 130 inch, 140 inch deer. Yeah. And now they don't shoot. TV deer, man. And now they don't shoot. Unless it's 5, 6, 7 and whatever. But yeah, like we've talked about a million times. It's about climbing the ladder of bohunting. Yeah. You know, I have what I have to try and reach out. And a lot of those like back in the day, like, especially the guys who, like, the juries, North American wide tells the same way.

1:42:06A lot of those shows, dude, they were 26 episodes a year. Okay. Easy. All right. So the vast, vast majority of guys who deer hunt, they got a target buck or a big deer they're trying to kill. That's, that's the deer they're having for if they might have a couple other deer. Like, hey, if I get a shot at this buck, I'm going to shoot him. Yeah. So let's say they got two or three deer, you know, they'll spend how many days you got in the season, 90 days, whatever, 100 days. Yeah. It's a pretty good amount of time. But you're committed to those deer. Okay. Imagine if you didn't, if you're the average listener and whatever, you know, okay, you don't have to kill one deer this year. You have to kill 26 mature bucks. Okay. It's possible to bizarre. It's hard. Okay. And it's not like you got 26 guys out there on your staff. You don't, you know, you might have like North American white tail. So the heyday, you got Gordon, Whittington, Stampots, Greg Miller, Dr. James Crowl, Mike Clark and you get a little bit further down the road.

1:43:08You got Pat Hogan, you got myself, you got Blake Garlis, Colton, Bonnoli, whoever, you know, but at any given time, you got four or five guys who need to kill 26 deer. Yeah. We do 13 episodes now. And then they air 26 times. We air 13 episodes on outdoor channel and 13 episodes on sportsman's channel. So like the last, we killed 21 deer in 2024 and we killed 19 deer last year. That's still that's a lot of freaking. A lot of deer. A lot of deer, man. Like, so yeah, you get somebody who I don't do. You're killing you kill 130 inch mature buck. However you define that, four and a half year old deer, five and a half year old deer, three and a half year old deer, whatever. And he like trips your trigger. And that's like, that's a good deer for me right on. 100% because you know me four year olds I've killed. You know me three year olds I've killed. And you know how much I care if you judge me if I kill a three or four year old.

1:44:12Brother, I don't give a shit. Well, that's just like at least a climb ladder like we're all different runs right here. But dude, even now like I didn't have to kill like if we wouldn't have kill 13 deer year, like trust me, dude, how badly do I want to find like a Booner? Yeah, you know, like dude, I would I would kill to have 100 and a 100 days to find a 200. And that's like my deer here. Not everyone here is going to kill that deer. I mean, I'm not sure if everyone's here, but it did mine because I'm at the different parts of the ladder than everyone else here. Well, it's like you love that. I would love that because you know, you think about it like dude, I hunt like this year. I will hunt Wyoming, Ohio, South Texas, Canada, Oklahoma, maybe Illinois. That's a lot of different places. I'll hunt in Canada for like 15 days. That's like my longest hunt of the year. I'm up there for a while. Everything else, 45 days. Okay, so everybody listening, you got that deer, you got trail camera photos of them right now,

1:45:15you're honing in on them, trying to figure them out. Do you think you could kill that deer if you had four days? That's about how long I've got to devote to any deer I kill. Like any single deer that we kill for North American White Tale. So that's where it's sort of like, whoo really. It funnels down. It really funnels down quickly to like, okay, I'm in North Western Saskatchewan for this amount of time. You see 160, yeah, there might be a 200-inch deer that's hitting that bait pile. He may or may not daylight. You see 160-inch, 6.5-year-old deer, you think you're not going to throttle him? He's dead. He dead for sure. He didn't. And I just think like, parking ticket, you know, shout that Blycy, you know, he had Leon, Lee said that like that, that clip he got was crazy. Like, you know what clip I'm talking about, but he's like, I could kill that deer in 30 minutes. Oh, I thought you were talking about me. I'm like, what the fuck? No, he had me on the long go time. I was like, what did I say?

1:46:16Go make the three-year-old combo. It's like, could Lee 30 minutes, not 30 minutes. But like, the way he should have word it is, like, that's a great deer for a lot of guys. I've been doing it a long time. I have all this in. Yeah, I could kill that deer pretty quick in a day if I had to, whatever. I just know these deer that well. It's pretty confident. Everybody's different. I know, and I love it. And maybe we've said some shit that sounded pompous or like a butt, but in just conversation of like, just not thinking about it, it's like, we're hustling for deer. Big deer, you know, if we can. But I just see those guys like, cut them clips, and maybe they're just doing it. Because they know what we're getting engagement. Here's the thing. This is just the bottom line in the hunting space on social media. Sorry, I'm starting to go on a rant. I'm trying not to ruin your episode here. Haynes, but I'm in for it. It's like the more you can do shop your content, the better it does on social media. Yeah, because it gets engagement. So is that, do they sacrifice the big picture of what their audience thinks for the clip? Because like, do you really think, if I said Lee,

1:47:17if you can't kill a three-year-old buck and Iowa, you're just, you're doing something wrong. It depends on the person, it depends on the property. Right. You can't blanket statement, hunting. Nothing is, there's no absolutes in hunting. It's a different than string bean. You can't kill 170, if there's not 170 in here. That's a lot of stuff. Oh, there's other guys in hunting content. Oh, so I've heard it in the day. If you're an Iowa, you can spend around on a baseball bat and get up, grab your bow and shoot an air in one direction, hit a 150. Not true. Correct. But not true. Everybody else thinks that. Well, yeah, because they see Blukowski, you know, that type of thing. So it's like, it's weird. But it's funny. It's like, we know a lot of people that come from out of state that hunt with us or stay here, passing through. They're like, I'm like, man, you know, you might see some good deer, but you're here for seven days as a good hunt. Ten days is like a long time to be here to hunt.

1:48:19So it's August 19th right now. You tell me right now, Kurt, or anybody at this table, one day this year in November is going to be the cold front. We're the barometric pressure. We have some kind of weather system moving in that the deer are going to be rolling. Like if I had to take a stab at the first one, or in November specifically, pick me a three day window. When I'll, you don't know. You don't know. But if I had to like roll the dice for you, I'd be like October 25th through November 12th. Yeah. That's a big window. He's a big window. Okay, so imagine when you're like, okay, all right, book a cameraman with a day rate and find me an Airbnb or a hotel or whatever that I can stay for that amount of time and find the property where I can get permission or the outfitter that would let me stay. And I'm looking for 165 or better. Yeah. Ooh. Woof. It shows you. Now Dr. James Crowell knows better than anybody breathing oxygen today. Yeah, yeah. And he'll tell you that of all wild whitetails

1:49:23that are alive and walking the planet earth for the season 2026, 1% are 160. 1% are 160 of all the whitetails breathing air. That's nationwide. Nationwide. Yeah. Okay, good luck. A lot of percent. Is there a you kill 160, but do you accomplish something? And I hate that. That's a mind-fucked that. I would not guess the... I would have guessed... 10%. 80% of mature whitetails want to be like 135 to 140 inch eight point. Yeah, it's like how we all like the average male and that's a great mature main king of the woods, tearing trees up, dominant type bucks. Isn't it only like 5% of all whitetails born get to be a buck that are five years older older? I feel like it's like 5%. Oh yeah, it's rare. It's rare for a deer. Age alone. Just age alone. And obviously you're cutting 50% out right away with the buck to doory. You know, I feel born buck to doory. Yeah, and you factor in like all natural

1:50:25and in natural mortality. If you factor in all deer that will die of hunter killed, you know, deer shop before they turn five. Or deer that die of disease. Hit by car. Or hit by a car. Or deer that gets struck by lightning or a freaking limb falls and kills them. They're just trying to die. Just not by us. Oh yeah, man. I mean, imagine, imagine if you lived in a cornfield or a wood lot and you had zero access to modern medicine or a doctor, you had nothing to ale, anything that would ever come to kill you. And that's what the human brain try to live on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kill a mature 160 inch white tail. You killed the literal crème de la crème. Literally everything is trying to kill them. Yeah, everything. Cars, disease, injury, lightning. That's a truth. It's a true, trophy. Yeah, true, trophy, man. That's awesome. That's crazy stat. 1%. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's just it's so everybody's so different, you know,

1:51:26like I've got a deer. I've decided to call string bean the big framed one. And I sent a picture and it's pretty confident it's a four year old deer. And I sent a picture and I was like, I think I'm going to pass him, but it's my situation where I'm at, you know, I've got the ability to potentially let a deer get to five six seven where I'm hunting. And Kurt was like, you fucking moron. Yeah, I'm like 10 runs below you on the ladder, where I'm trying to climb. So I'm like, you're not the air. I find every someone more credit brother. I think. All the things. And that's totally fine. If you everybody's situation, where they're at, it's different. Every farm's different, every circumstance is different. Every access that people have is totally different. Like I have run so many stories from guys, you're like, yeah, living southern, I'm zone five zone six, I'm van Buren County, whatever. And like, hey, man, I shot a 192 inch buck with a recurve because I got really bored. I'd shot so many deer, you know, 170 plus with a compound that, you know, I needed to do something different.

1:52:29That's great. And it, yeah. And it's like, dude, I cannot relate. Yeah, I cannot, I cannot relate, you know. And but I think I'll ever relate to that. Part of that thing is like our normal crew band. I know. I know. Yeah. Do I know what you're saying? Yeah. Do I think you, but it happens. But it happens. But it happens. Cause out there, it's the same thing. And, you know, you did, you go to Saskatchewan or Alberta. You go up on those Indian reservations and God forsaken nowhere in the boreal forest that goes from, you know, that part of Canada to freaking Russia. All the way clean up through British Columbia and Alaska. Like true wilderness, one of the last untap wilderness of the white tail range on planet Earth. Like truly, there's no trail cameras. Those deer live and die. The majority of them die, never seen by humanized. You know, and those, like, okay, guys who routinely hunt that,

1:53:30and they know, you know, if I put in my time and I have all season, yeah, I'm hunting booners. Okay. I'm living in a different place. You live in a place where that's possible. Yeah. You know, and it's, it's not uncommon for 150 inch white tails, mature white tails to come in on those bait piles and bump those or chase those or whatever. And you have the luxury of passing them. You know, but if you're in southern Alabama, you're in Choctaw County. Yeah. And it's February 10th and 90% of deer seasons in the country are closed. And you see, you know, mature 115 inch buck is chasing a doe. And you haven't punched a tag all season. You kill that deer, freaking celebrate it. Big ol' cow horn comes out with every fiber of your being. Dead. Yeah. Cause you did something. Oh yeah. You freaking did something, man. And here's the thing, I hope people don't ever put this on. It's like, even though we're from like some

1:54:32of the white tail mechestates, we're not gonna look at those guys and be like, why did you shoot that? Right. I would be like, where'd you shoot that? Oh, you don't know what I mean? Like, that would make sense. Yeah. Like we get it. It's a great deer. We get it. You know, I think it's easy to paint us like, stuck up, you know, they live in Iowa, Illinois, do this. They're passing deer. Which is because we're passing here. It doesn't mean that we're stuck up. It just means we're shooting for a goal. Yeah. And we can here, you know? And then also we get the invite of like, come to so and so and shoot them deer. I'm like, no. I won't like, hey, I get what you're doing, but we live where we live and we hunt. We're we hunt because of what? You know why? I don't have to explain. Yeah. It's like one of the coolest segments we ever did for North American white tail TV. And I, I'll never forget it. I just loved it. It was right before like some of the OG guys, like really stepped away in retired. Like Greg Miller was about to hang it up

1:55:32and Gordon Wittington was about to retire. Stamposs is still trucking kills. I can literally I can cash in money in the bank, check will cash every time. Stamposs is gonna kill like at least two, if not three big mature deer for me. This season for North American white tail TV. He's gonna kill one. He's gonna kill one with a bow. He's gonna kill one with a gun. Might kill two with a bow. Yeah. But you can take it to the bank. That do Jordan's killed the or film the last couple years of him. Yeah, until until stand literally calls me and he's like, Hey, I'm done. Like he's North American white tail OG founder. Let's go. Oh dude, North American white tail TV. I'm sitting up that desk is like engrained into my brain. Give me a second. Give me a second. Give me a couple. But in 10 minutes people, like yeah. But when some of those dudes were stepping down, we did, we did a segment. And you know, we do segments on our TV show on target and from the stand. They're always like gear reviews, product reviews, new stuff coming out. They're always good. But we did one that was different.

1:56:34We're like, Hey, what's your what's your one tip for, you know, if you had one tip to give a white tail hunter, you know, for them to hold on to to benefit them, you know, and everybody did it. And, you know, and yeah, like we all went through, I went through, I have no idea what I said. I'd have to look back and stands was legit. You know, he was like, it had to do with, you know, set up wind direction, you know, patterning mature deer and being there on the right weather conditions. It was all 100% tactile info. It'll help you. But Gordon went up there and you know, it was like the last one we shot. And it's so relevant to what we're talking about here. But it was like mic drop man, Gordon, it was like, Hey, my one tip for anybody, listen, and if you're deer hunting and you know, you're coming into the season and yeah, there's so much stuff that goes into it. You want to kill a big deer, you got a target buck, you get it up, you know, you got all these plans.

1:57:38My one tip is have fun. No matter what you do and what all goes into the season and the preparation, don't forget this year or any year that you're ever out there, you know, have fun. Enjoy the moment. Remember why you're out there? Remember the escape that it is from the day to the day, the nine to five, the eternal in the news and his terrorism and his bombings and it's, you know, it's the world and the world is loud and the world is scary and there's bad stuff that goes on. We go out there deer hunting. Well, that's our primal instinct, our escape. It's what we love. It's the passion. It's what we look forward to all year long. And it goes by so fast. It does. Don't put the pressure on yourself. Don't make it a negative. Don't compare. Don't open your Instagram and feel like man,

1:58:38some influencers killing a bigger deer than me or everybody's punched a tag and I haven't punched a tag. Whatever none of that matters. Okay, you go out there, have fun. Enjoy God's creation, the creator of this world and there's unbelievably special animals, the white tail deer, the animal that has changed the hunting industry, 86% of all, every dollar that's spent in the industry is all geared towards the white tail. We're all out there. It drives everything. If the white tail goes away, the hunting industry goes away and the blink of an eye. Do you're jacking me up right now? No. I was just gonna say, I'm gonna shut down more of that because. Half on, half on, man. Enjoy it because it's here and it's gone. And you never know when's your last season, man. And you never know when's your last opportunity to go out there and live it up and just watch it. Just watch it. One of my more fun seasons I ever had

1:59:39was that year I killed the whoopsie buck. That 130 that I thought was 155. The cigarette buck? The cigarette buck. That's my favorite part. That's what it really should be. I was probably like this so much. That was smoking. Probably my most fun season I've had in the long time. Leetested a live theory. He volunteered himself for a live experiment. He volunteered as long as. Talked about it a million times, but my dad, it's worth talking about a year. Hunter for a long time. He's a smoker, about a smoker's whole life. So he started smoking and he was like 13. Nice. And he always told me he was like, hear that kids? I always asked him, oh, you know, like, where did, how did you hunt with this wind in this area? Cause we grew up on the same areas and he goes, I didn't worry about the wind. Yeah. I'm like, what the hell do you mean you didn't worry about the wind? Smoke cigarettes in the tree. Yeah. He goes, they don't give a shit about it. If you're smoking a cigarette, they'll come right downwind. And I went to hunt an area and I was like, Dad, I don't know what the wind's gonna be here. He goes, take a pack of cigarettes with you. He goes, I'll give you one. I was like, your kid to smoke. He was like, that's the only time I've heard him curse my kid to smoke. Right. But it worked.

2:00:40I mean, yeah. I'd hear one coming downwind. I'd, that's insane. Dad hadn't seen it. I mean, they'd picked their nose up a little bit, but they'd turn the walk away. Yeah, if you're coming in and like beating yourself up or dude, I was hunting, I was hunting the North Stand and the deer showed up on the South Stand or he was hitting that clover plot and I was hunting the soybeans, you know. Man, I suck or I should have done something different. You're doing it wrong. Yep. You know, go out there and be like, kind of sunset with beautiful tonight. Yeah. You know, man, it sure was nice to turn off my freaking email, you know, and go out there and just sit in a tree. You know, I mean, that, that's deer hunting at its grassroots, man. Oh yeah, and that's, well, this here like, and that's like, I'm saying that as the guy who publishes the magazine, and this literally full cover to cover of deer that are all over 200 inches, you know. So, hey, we all love this deer. We celebrate them. They're special. They're incredible animals, but that ain't it. That ain't all of it. That's what gives you dream about it.

2:01:41Yeah. You dream about it. Like what could be? Yeah. Well, that's like, I remember a lot of stories, but this year I killed a doe with my kid. First time in the, in the blind with me, the first time out, you know, and I'll make, we're sitting there playing rock paper scissors, having a great time. I will always remember that moment, and it stands out more than, and like, I shot the doe. I'm like, hey, but do you want me to track this? And he was already in trouble. He's like, no, I'm just gonna stay in here and I'm like, all right, cool. That's fun. That should stand out to you. You know, we're having fun. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah, you're like, I don't remember that, but that's hilarious. He's like, no, I wouldn't track with you. I'm like, no, bro. No, you went into the trade-in. Yeah. Yeah, you're on the, you're on the, I found you know, the deathbed someday and like she's ticking, you're getting ready to red line or whatever. You get to relive a hunt, you know? Yeah. What do you really go back to? Like you go back to the, you know, the, the 250 or, or what? And maybe you go back to the 250. You only go back to the 50. Yeah. Maybe really hard. I don't know. When my son kills his first era,

2:02:41it'll be, no, I had to, my son never mattered. I'm sure. That's everything. It changed your whole life, man. You have a, you know, kid and everything's different than it was before. But yeah, I think about, you know, like, we're going down memory lane. But like I've, I've dude, if I had to go back, like I remember, like vividly sitting with my dad in North Carolina, we have one of our stands called the Death Stand. We've killed so many deer. That's a good name for a stand. That is a great name. The Death Stand. Yeah, it's perfect. It's like, if we could tally marks on that thing, it would be like, yeah, all the way down the tree. We killed so many deer and I stand, man. And yeah, I've, I've known it the whole time. I was, I mean, a 10, 11, 12 something, who knows? But we were hunting together. And we always, when I was little like that, we always hung double sets and we hunted together, you know? And we'd have, my stand was always like the one facing the action where we anticipated the shot. And almost like a cameraman stand, we'd hang my dad off the back. Yeah.

2:03:42And like, we both took rifles. It was rifle season in North Carolina. And I shot a cow horn like we're talking about, you know, just rock, rock, and man with a big weather, be magnum and just a laid him out. And then I don't know what it was. 4.3 point, doesn't matter who cares. A white book, that's what I call him. Another, another buck came out. And my dad, you know, he's, he's killed boon and crockets. He doesn't, he could care less if he ever kills another deer in North Carolina. But I remember begging him in the stand, I'm like, Dad, shoot that deer, shoot that deer. Let's, let's double up. Yeah. You know, let's double up. I was little. And, and he shot, you know, and I just remember everything about that night. Like I remember going and getting a Honda 4 track four wheeler and loading up those two deer and strapping them with ratchet straps on the back and riding, you know, on my dad's life and taking them back. My great-grandmother was alive back then. Mama Owens and to go show her those deer that came on her land, you know, and she's just almost in tears about how special

2:04:44she could see the lineage passing down of that. You know, and I remember the photos, you know, that's cool, man. It's freaking deer hunting, dude. We can't remember what we did two hours ago. We can remember that, right? I remember everything out of it, man. I remember everything about it. It's amazing. It's the culture. It is a culture and I think people, people who listen, if you're listening this long, you know what we're talking about. But it's like, it's a culture. I mean, God, I don't, we don't think about, obviously, we don't think about anything else, you know what I mean? Like, this is kind of a derailment here. Yeah, derailment. I want, I've always wanted to ask this question and I just never have. I want you guys round table quick to tell a quick little story of like the most from your childhood, like the one hunt that maybe you didn't shoot anything or something silly happened or whatever, but just something that sticks out, and it can be a kill day. It can be a kill something like that. But like mine, I don't know why I vividly remember this. It was during you season. It was my first year youth hunting and I was,

2:05:46I was 12 and I was mildly sick. So I had a cough and dad and I go into the timber onto this oak flat and we sit down and you know, the bedding ridge is 150 yards away. And I'm just, I've got a cough and I'm just like, and my dad, it kept going on. And for some reason, I don't know why I remember this, but my dad is like, if you don't quit coughing, we're leaving. We're not getting to see a single deer. He was like, he's like, he's like, he's, he's like, he knew by that point. I was coughing and it was getting progressive and louder because I couldn't control it. He was like, if you cough one more time, we're leaving. Now I just remember we were just sitting in front of an oak tree and I just remember feeling a cough coming and I'm like, I'm trying to hold it in and find it. Finally I go and my dad's like, we're leaving. We're out. Just throw just, I just keep, I'll give you a little bit of dad. That's it. Just throw just hands in the middle of this honey goes, we're leaving. He stands up. He's like, get up.

2:06:46I don't know. I don't know why, but that, that memory just sticks in my head like crazy hunting with my dad. Yeah. That's a dad moment. Oh, that's a good one. Don't you go first since you hate your dad. Now I just hit him around. I was dad. Yeah. I remember the magazine you were in dad just doing that piece so much. It was second season shock and I had been like 15 maybe and we're set up in this, in our big corn field in these, these deer come running out. The neighbors are driving. It sounded like World War II back there. It's like, get ready. They're coming. I'm like, all right. In this little, all right, this little four point runs out. It's like, get on. All right. He does, wait, there's a bigger one. And by the time I like turned a look, I just boom. He drops it. He runs out there. And he's like, that's a pretty big one. That's like your dad shot. Yeah, my dad shot. He's like, oh, you were fast enough. I've got a story exactly like that.

2:07:50That's a typical, like, does not surprise me at a mar. I remember he dropped him. I just remember him running out and shooting it again. And just like, I'm just like, what the hell happened? And he's like, weren't quick enough. Now I'm gonna think of something funny. He always plays, he's like, we're gonna lose him. You try to shoot it. I've got one just like that. And I give my dad shit all the time for it because it was a hundred and eighty inch deer. Oh, I'm glad I didn't shoot it because I was young. But we were on a drive. I was sitting with my dad. And he's coming and coming and coming. And we're benched on like a log. And this, it's a hundred and eighty inch, six by five, giant typical. And it's coming. He's like, get on him. Get on him. And I'm like, trying to get on him, trying to get on him. And I'm like, young. I'm like, 10 or 12. And he gets it. The deer runs like five yards past us. And my dad's like, he basically is, I hear him whisper under his breath. What the fuck? And just turn around and boom. And shoot it because it ran past because I couldn't get on it. And to this day, I'm like, you shot the deer. You shot one of the biggest typical I've ever seen out from underneath me. Dad, thank you. See if I was so funny.

2:08:51How old were you? I was 10 probably. It's got to have been like, good job buddy. You got it. Yeah. Didn't even shoot. It's my, well, I guess if you would have shot out of it like, yeah, you got him, you know. But now I got to think of something funny. I was going sentimental. There's some controversy with my first deer like that. My dad and I both shot at it. And he's like, you did not hit that fucking thing. And I'm like, no, I hit that thing. I can't kill that thing. I'm trying to remember. I got a funny one about my dad. Then take it away. You got one, if you got one primed up. Yeah. So it's not whitetail. We're going back to Turkey. But so like, and again, it's kind of like similar. We talked about white. They're used to not be that many deer in North Carolina. Turkey is the same way. You know, when I was a kid, like Turkey, I was pretty new. Like there were not many people that were like Turkey hunting and you know, Turkey populations were just starting to grow. We had to end up ETF chapters and like, but we were sick with it. My dad and I even I was like a little tired, you know. He'd take me out and sitting like right there on his lap,

2:09:52trying to kill Turkey and like really hunting my tail off, man. And I remember like, I love calling birds. Now I'm no bobrox, but like I'm freaking obsessed with calling turkeys, man. And back then I had another bout calling his little kid. And my dad, you know, blesses already. Still like push button box call. Yeah. Just a call. A cadence. Whatever is the easiest call that he can yell upon. Yeah. That's my dad. And I remember like when we were really getting into, we had both killed like some jakes. You know, we had never killed a big Tom. And we had some, we always had big Tom's down in our creek bottom. We're on Bear Creek, North Carolina, which Daniel Boone, his parents, Squire and Sarah Boone are buried fun fact. They're buried in downtown Moxville, North Carolina, Daniel Boone's parents. So Daniel Boone actually grew up right there in Moxville. That's awesome. Yeah, he's killed Bear and deer and also down on our creek bottom. So more than likely like where we were turkey on,

2:10:54Daniel Boone used to run them that creek. And I remember like after turkey season, you know, whatever it takes to mount a turkey about 12 months. Yeah. Like we were in my parents house and this delivery truck rolled up. And like he unloaded this giant box. And it's like OSB plywood, you know, the works, two by fours framed in. And I was like, man, this is something substantial, you know, in here I'm like, what is this? I said for daily on it. Yeah. It's a leg lamp. Yeah. It said, it said hazel creek taxidermy. Yeah. Which is one of the world's best turkey taxidermists on the planet. Yep. And I remember like back in the screws, it wasn't until we back the Phillips head screws out of that thing. And we took the plywood off and I saw this full strut, 12 inch long beard, inch and a quarter inch and a half spurs.

2:11:55My dad had gone out without me and killed the boss Tom that was on our farm. And like he was like at the brink of tears that night when the Tom got delivered to the house. And he was like son, I went out one day and I killed that bird, you know, and you weren't with me. It was so big I didn't have a mounted. But I called him in with the box call and he came right in full strut and I drilled a man. You know, and I got a mounted, you know, and I don't want you to be sad, you know, I, you know, I did this. He felt like he had like cheated on you. Totally betrayed me, you know, like his little boy that he had been hunt with all season and he went out and he killed long beard. And you tell like it broke his heart, but it was also like one of the most. Not enough to not get him mounted. I did. We'd never killed a freaking long beard. Okay, we've been hunting our tail off. Okay, I'm trying to kill him.

2:12:56And so he got it mounted by the best tax nervous in the freaking world. I got it delivered and like that's how I found out. I had no idea. I had no idea even a year later. You tell me. I didn't even know he killed a turkey man. That's hilarious. I said he sent it off in total secret, you know, punched his tag, got the bird mounted. Freaking bird gets delivered to the... Praise the thing hole and shipped it off. Shipped it off and that's how I found out that my dad killed, you know, this big trophy Tom gobbler, long beard. That's awesome actually. But I was not like at all. I said I was like, Dad, this is awesome. How old were you during that time you think? I was probably 10. Yeah. 10 or 11. A little bit. It's a giant. You know how to be mad, yeah? See now everyone says a classic like father son story. Like dad, but like dad felt bad, you know? Yeah, a little bit. In the same way if you shot a big, you know, big deer that you were hunting with your son and you like you want your son to kill it. And he killed it. Totally, yeah. I'm trying to think, and now I got to try to think of something funny. I mean, I told this story.

2:13:57I just thought about my own. It doesn't have to be funny. My very first buck, I was, you know, back in the day, deer drives and everything. We had this awesome spot where we set up for, you know, people pushing, we'd set up and it's on over this little trick that froze over. So if it was froze over, the deer'd run right across it. It was awesome. And by the time we got set up, you know, you had about 10 minutes before the deer came. So I'm like, I gotta take a piss. You know, I'm probably 13, 14. So you're in car hard, it's colder, shit. You're trying to find everything, trying to find everything. You know, guns are laying against the tree. And my dad's in between me and the road kind of. And also he's like, eh, get him. Like, I'm sitting there with my dick in the wind, literally. That's all I said. Here comes this little forecourt. And I don't know how I got everything tucked back in, but I grabbed that gun and shot it right in the neck somehow. And it slid across the ice right to the bank at my feet. No way. I'm like, damn, that was kind of cool. Yeah, I heard that story.

2:14:57I told it, I told it on here before. That's like the old panoramas day where the guy's like, you know, taking a dump or taking a leak. There's a bugle bug or something. But you brought that picture from some antique store thing. It's just a print of a guy that beard recent first going on a deer's behind it. And the kids always laugh. Like always my neighbor and I'm taking a dump out there. Yeah, I saw that in the bathroom a big day. Yeah, my kids always say, oh, when they were younger, Santa Claus. Oh, yeah, yeah, Bunkle Doug got that dropping present. Man, I don't really have like, I'm trying to think, I bet if I like another time you catch me, I could find a funny one. But I know I have some fun like young ones where back before phone, like when I was, I killed this buck when I was just turned 15. But you remember like you didn't, couldn't text. So you had like, all right, at this time, turn on your radio and we'll talk. Well, fuck, I didn't know the time. How the hell did we do that? Well, it makes sense why I sat in the stand forever. So I shot this buck like early. I was 15, never go to the buck of the bow as my goal. And I had, remember those grunt tubes where you like safety pendant one of the bottom of your jacket

2:15:59and it was a tube and you inhaled. Yep. And there's a buck out in the field and I went, it's a worse sounding grunt tube thing. Sound probably just like that. Probably work. And I remember watching the deer like always not coming in. I always thought then when you grunt a deer or just beeline straight to you. Like on TV. You know what I mean? Just right to you. Well, he like looped around. He's like, he's not coming to me. Well, what he's doing and trying to get my wind. Yeah. And I had no idea because I was never seen it. When he comes up on the field edge. Now I was in an API, we called it the telescopic stand. It literally was like a hang on stand and it like, click, click, click. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Like you pull, I don't remember what they were called. API something. That's what my dad got me for me to be mobile. That was our mobile deal. Yeah. And it was probably like 12 foot off the ground maybe. And I shoot this deer quarter in a way, which I've never done either. And I'm like, oh, I hit him way too far back. I'll never find him. And he runs off and I'm trying to radio my dad

2:17:01and no response back. And I don't know how long I sat there. Cause he didn't know what to do. Well, I wasn't gonna get down without my dad because I like, I was unsure about this. Yeah. And then I'm just sitting there waiting. And I'm like, I can't get ahold of my dad. I don't know how long I'm gonna, it felt like I sat there for eight hours. Because I don't know how long it was. My dad comes in like, hunts done, suns all the way up, you know, and he's like, you didn't see nothing? I got to try to radio you. I don't know how long ago I shot a buck. He's like, oh, fuck, you shot one. And then we went and found him. I got the like I sat there forever. And he was just taking advantage of me, not being able to get ahold of him. Cause I always want to get down early, you know. He had the radio on the whole time. He was like, that little bastard shot down. Yeah. The sun just came up and, you know, it's prime time and he's trying to get down already. Yeah, that's, and then we found it, you know, but that's the thing I always, I sat there forever. I felt like it probably, honestly, it probably wasn't that long.

2:18:02Yeah, it's probably like 20 minutes. But for being 15 and shooting a buck and then having to sit there your first buck ever, it was crazy. And we camped, we camp hunted. We put a 10 up and then I remember all the meals we made. My dad just brought raw hamburger meat, potatoes and vegetables and carrots and we put it in foil and throw it in the fire. Throw the whole thing on there. Yeah, that we camped in November that way. Cause I killed that during November 11th. It's all good, man. It doesn't matter what you do as long as, like Gordon said, you're having fun. Having fun, yeah. It all matters. Do you kill it? You killed 250, please call me. We'd love to have it in November. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's, yeah, we're all about that. That sounds fun. 100%. It is. But if you're a lesbian and you never are in North American White Day and you kill a deer that makes you happy, God bless you. Yeah, absolutely. No kidding. No kidding. So it's about, dude, this is a blast. I mean, it's just easy, you know, it's awesome.

2:19:02One, I think it's very apparent how proud you are to be a part of North American White Day. I can tell you take a lot of pride at your passion about it. That's refreshing. Because the worst thing ever is someone in your position who thinks they're too cool for school and doesn't appreciate it. You definitely do. I've watched you interact with other people that I would do your classic in ATA and you definitely rock North American White Day with pride. It's really very apparent. Like, and it's awesome. So I just want to say I appreciate that and appreciate you making the effort to be with us in person. For this season, I think we're all going to have some good luck. We want to give you a bottle of Killbottle whiskey to take with you. So when you do kill some stuff, you can open it well before then if you'd like. But the cycle we have it tonight. We can open tonight. But when you kill, hopefully there's a little left that you can have a couple drinks. So we'll give you that bottle. Thank you, man. Appreciate that. All of you. Yeah, we only have, honestly, that's one of two bottles left before the new label drops and there gets some more for 800. We're, oh, whoa.

2:20:03Oh, that's a bit telly. We might have to hold on to that one. That might have to be bottle 800. You might go ahead and open it now. Oh, you are. Do it. Crank it open. And, but no, man, it's really cool to have you here. And I know we've talked about it for a long time, but we appreciate it. So thanks for, thanks for trusting the degenerates of WCB to give us a chance with North American White Tale and write articles and be on the cover and all that stuff. So we're very grateful. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate all you guys for what you're doing. Your, your audiences are extremely commendable and what you guys are doing. You're reaching so many people who are avid about White Tale on it, just like I am. And all of us sitting at this table, and I think you guys have accomplished such a tremendous feat. And thank you. So, so many guys are stoked that I was going to be on this and they're like, dude, I'll listen to that every week. You know, that's my favorite podcast. That's awesome. Yeah, it's just like I hear, you know, hey, that's my favorite magazine. I hear about you guys, that's my favorite podcast. So, you know, my hat is off to all of you at this table.

2:21:06You know, you guys are killing it. Keep killing it, man. You guys keep making this podcast. I'll still, I'll keep making this magazine. I like it. That's a deal. And if you have me back, I'll write another article. Write on, come on. If I didn't screw it up too bad the first time. Doug, closing thoughts. Thanks for coming and thanks for continuing the North American White Tale. You bet, man. It's awesome. Thank you all. Hopefully this magazine's the actual paper copy sticks around. Yes, sir. Forever. Doug, you think you'll ever be on the cover or in it? Maybe in it. I'll probably never be on the cover. We'll see. I got a spot for you, man. Oh, hell yeah. Maybe. I bet you like me. Please. Please. I was kind of going to say the same thing about, or about, but that Doug said. Yeah, thanks for coming. I mean, obviously, thank you tremendously for the opportunity to fulfill the childhood dream of being on the cover of North American White Tale.

2:22:07Period. You bet. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Thank you for being so passionate about it. I love that. And I will have to admit, I did not subscribe to the hard copy, but I'm going to now. You know, guy. Yeah. You get you on that complex. Right. Oh, no, no, I'll pay for it. It's all worth it. By the way, I go to Barnes and Noble and I buy them out. I'm last in my did that. Guys like book club. Yeah. I was like, I was in the Barnes and Noble. We just walked in here. I'm like, whoa, book club. I grabbed every copy and just bought it. Book club. Mm-hmm. You should have had magazine. You mean me, Mr. Neck tattoo. Yeah, book club. Our favorite thing to do is any news stand nationwide. If we see North American wide down, we always put it at the very front of the news stand right. Like in front of like Southern living or like men's fitness

2:23:10or what it is. If you see North American wide, move it to the front. All right. Yeah. I'm doing that. That's a mission. WCB listeners take action, put it in, put it in front of LGBTQ weekly, put that North American wide to our end in front of it. By every copy you see. By every copy. Support it. If you don't, man, you gotta get with it. If it's not a part of the nostalgia of your hunting. Because there's a lot of people that didn't have it. You know, it wasn't part of their hunting camp and stuff. But check it out. Get a physical copy. Have that experience of what that is. And we appreciate you listening. Go shoot your bow. We love you. We'll see you next week. Peace.