How To Hunt Deer - Shed Hunting & Treestand Strategy

0:00This episode of the sportsman's empire is brought to you by interstate batteries. Since 1952, interstate batteries has been evoking compassion and a trustworthy spirit into the surrounding communities. Interstate batteries is a mission driven company fueled by purpose and guided by their values. If you need help locating a specific battery, stop into your local interstate batteries retail store and speak with a battery specialist. They even offer cell phone repairs. Interstate batteries outrageously dependable. If you're a podcast host, listen up this one for you. My name is Ally Jackson. I'm the host of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now, sharing my positive and practical approach to dating that's built on my own life experience. And I wanted to share another experience that I've had, my secret behind monetizing my show. It's called Red Circle. And I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform. With Red Circle, not only am I getting a seamless hosting experience, but I also love the support I receive in ad sales.

1:00It's not just typical ad sales either. It's targeted opportunities based on my show and my life. And the platform is super simple. You just set your preferences and Red Circle matches you with sponsors that align with your show. You can vet every opportunity and their platform gives you great analytics. More recently too, my Red Circle team has brought me opportunities outside of my podcast on social media to really augment the podcast partnerships, bring them full circle. I just can't recommend them enough. If you want to give it a try, go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. It's redcircle.com for free trial. All right, everybody. This is the How To Hunt Dear Podcast. My name is Dan, his name is Jason. And real quick, housekeeping before we get into the meat and potatoes of today's episode, if you guys could do us a huge favor, go to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen or download the How To Hunt Dear Podcast, we would appreciate a five-star review. Let everybody know that this podcast is both entertaining and educational. On top of that, we do have the How To Hunt Dear YouTube channel.

2:01If you could go, if you'd like to listen to your content on, or listen to your content on YouTube, go to YouTube and subscribe to the channel. That would help us out dramatically. Jason, dude, this weather is bananas today. It's crazy. Did you, did you get snow? Yeah, we got snow. Yeah. We look like we got a ton, but just when I say that I look in between the houses and there's like five-foot drifts. Yeah. That's what it looks like here. I didn't go outside yet, but it looks like there's a lot of snow. Yeah. I know that, like, Eastern Wisconsin or according to some of the reports that I saw on the news today, there was a ton of snow, don't you? Yeah. I went to bed last night. It said seven inches last night, and then I think three between the next two days. So I, I mean, we were just in shorts the other day. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know.

3:02I guess it is what it is. So now it can melt. So do you have to do snow removal? No. Because of this? No, I don't. I, I did for 20 some years, but I haven't for probably six or seven now. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, it's crazy out there, man. The temp's dropped, and we're going to eventually talk about it today. But the temps have dropped. I'm glad I got out and get some shed hunting when we did, because shed hunting in this would have been brutal this week. And so even though I've done it before, man, I used to shed hunt so you're crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Any weather doesn't matter. I'm going out, going out probably too soon or too late. Dude, we had, you know, some good weekend weather. And did you, did you accomplish anything this, this weekend? My son and I went shed hunting Saturday, and we went to a property that is in a straight line. It's about a mile from my best piece. Yeah.

4:03And I've had permission on that for probably nine or ten years now to shed hunt. And it's been hit or miss, you know, as far as finding them, well, we, we hiked probably almost three miles and then on our loop back, my son happened to find his first shed, which was really cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll tell you this, man. I took out, I took my boy and his best friend out of school early. And we drove three hours, three and a half hours to a farm that I have access to in West, Southwestern Iowa, and we spent the night in a small town, Motel, the dude, it was so much fun. Yeah. I had, I had so much fun hanging out with those guys. They were so excited to get out and find sheds. I think they were more excited that they got pulled out of school early on, on Friday. And then when we got there, we instantly started finding sheds, which was, did you really? Oh, dude.

5:04I think we found one, two, three, four, like 11 sheds and two deadheads in a, like a day and a half of looking and then stuff and I'll get into where we found them and stuff like that. But, man, we had so much fun and we went out for pizza that night to a small town, you know, pizza, pizza joint, really good pizza. It's crazy. You go to a small town. And I'm used to paying, like, bigger city prices, dude, we got a large pizza, a large cheese stick. I got a side salad and three drinks for 30 bucks. Isn't it crazy? And like, I was just like blown away. That would have cost me 50 to 60 bucks in, we're around where I live, but the small towns, you know, they got to be competitive and it's amazing, like places like that still are able to exist, but shout out to outlaw pizza is what I'm, what I'm going

6:05to say, shout out to outlaw pizza and dude, it was, it was, it was delicious. It was good. And I was just like 30 bucks. I might have to drive an hour just to, you know, drive three hours just to come here or whatever, three or four hours just to come here. So, yeah. So, so now this place you want shed hunting, is this a place that you can hunt then? This was your main farmer? Yeah. Okay. This is my new, the newest farm I have access to and this will be my, this will be my upcoming fifth season here that I've had access to it. And so, I tell you what, why don't we do our commercial? Yeah. Let's get that out of the way and then we'll get into the, to the story. All right. So, Code Blue Sense and they have a full line of sprays from, you know, detergents, your body sprays, they have synthetics, they have the urns, everything that you could possibly use. And we used, so I didn't talk about it too much, but with my scrape kits, I used a little

7:10bit of that gravedigger and that gravedigger stuff. I think really actually did trigger something too, you know, you're supposed to take half of it and dig a little hole and then bury half of it and then pat it down with dirt and then sprinkle the rest on top. And it was like an instant here, especially at home. I noticed I had a buck like hit one of my main scrapes there. So, that, that gravedigger product might be a new one to check out this coming fall too. And I think there's a couple different powders that they have. They have a dough and estrus and then they have like a dominant buck or something maybe. Yeah. I made the, I made the mistake last year and they called me out on it or well, they didn't call me out. To me, I was using the dough and estrus too early and they said that, you know, use the gravedigger or that the, I don't know, whatever it is, not the, not the dough and estrus version of it because I was using it in September or too early. Not a lot of doughs are an estrus at that time. So the best thing is to, if you're going to use those scents to use the non estrus scents

8:16in that, that's going to be more realistic for you. And so, I mean, that's exactly what I did this weekend too, right? So we freshened up our roped oat mocks, crepe kits. We put some of that gravedigger on the scrape itself. I moved some branches out of the way so that the only thing hanging over it was the rope. And man, one thing I'm going to tell you is they're still scraping. I've never seen it so like, like, it's standing out now. More than I ever have. But when you have some scrapes and we put more of the rack rub on our ropes and we freshen them all up, dude, I'm telling you right now, I truly feel not only does that keep deer on the property in some way, but it also keeps them actively trying to communicate with each other through scent. And so, I don't know. I think one of the things too that I forgot to, I maybe talked about it before, but

9:18they also offer a bracket that you can cut some branches on. And if you have one of those spots where you don't have low branches and you need to create a scrape, you know, one of those brackets works pretty good as far as getting a scrape exactly where you want it. Exactly. Exactly. The bracket, so that would be like even on a field edge where there might not be any overhanging trees or maybe some small bushes and maybe you find a wooden fence post, you drill it right into that and you can hang it right up and now all of a sudden or what a lot of guys do is they'll drill a hole in the middle of their food plot and then they'll put a wooden stake in there. And I don't know, I have to do a little more research if you can hang it on a metal post as well somehow. There might be a way to hang it on a metal post as well. So I hung mine on a cedar fence post that I have in like middle of a scrape or a middle of a food plot. I'm sorry. Yeah.

10:19And so then I angled the branch up and everything and I found that the best branches to use are anything, you know, evergreen wise, they work really well or an oak branch that still has leaves on it. Yeah. Something that can hold the scent on top of it but it works well for putting a scrape exactly where you want it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So codebluescents.com discount code NFC20 for 20% off, you know, like they say, like they say, the best time to put out a mock scrape was yesterday, the second best time is today. So I fresh mine up and you know, we have a ton of months until season even starts. So I want to be active in that aspect of it. And I still think that between now and the season starts, I'm going to act like try to create another one within shooting lanes of some of the, the, some of the stands that I moved around and we'll get into that too. So yeah.

11:20First, I want to say we beat me and you, we beat the snowstorm and we got out shed hunting this, this weekend, talked to me about your shed hunting experience. Yeah. So we went to this property the first time we were on the property this year and it just happened to be my, my son and I and you know, in years past, he's, he doesn't want to walk as far or he gets worn out, you know, he's, he's 10 and so, so I kind of know what to expect. You know, this year, he was really amped up about going and he put some miles in. I mean, like I said, we probably hit that three mile mark and it was some hilly terrain. And we saw good sign, but we didn't jump anything, you know, there wasn't a ton of fresh tracks and like I say, on our loop back, he's like, Dad, are we getting there? I'm like, yeah, we're going uphill, you know, I could see he's getting tired and then just ahead of us, you know, it was probably, I don't know, 15, 20 yards, he picks up his first shed and he's just stoked about it, you know, right away, it's in his room and it's, he's got, I got to, you know, take a picture with it and it was good.

12:22So as far as like anything beyond that, I didn't get any shed hunting done on any of the other places. I tried to reach out to one of the neighbors across from my good farm and he wasn't out there. So he wasn't able to get on there, but hopefully maybe after this snow melts, I'll have a couple hour window or something, but yeah. So now when we were talking about yours, did you have any up and comers that you found sheds from or big ones? Yeah. Okay. I got the positive in the negatives. Okay. So on day one, so I pulled them out of school, we drove, you know, three hours. We didn't get to the farm until like four o'clock. And then the, and then we started walking the easy stuff first, right? We walked like the field buffer strips. I was able to glass one up. I saw this little white thing sticking out of some grass. And so I was like, all right, boys, I think this is how excited they were about shed hunting.

13:23I go, hey, you know, I saw it. There's like this ravine that drops way down and then it comes right back up. And I was like, Hey, guys, we got to walk all the way around this. You think they listen to me know they will be lying straight down. They dropped down this big ravine. They came back up. There was a fence that was kind of like laid down. They had to like climb up this cattle, cattle, great fence is hog, you know, that square hog fencing. They climbed up that and then my son's buddy went and grabbed it. He's like, Oh my god, jacked up about it and my son was jacked up about it. I'm like, Hey, guys, if there's, you know, if there's that one in here, there's got to be more. Sure. And so then we, we started walking all the buffer strips around this field and they found one more mat or it looked like it could possibly be the match set to that antler and do they were jacked. They were so jacked up and I didn't, I really didn't have to motivate them at all, which

14:27was crazy the entire time. Yeah. I was telling them like, Hey, listen, guys, they're here. They're here. We just have to find them and they're, I, so we walked that field buffer strip. I found a really big, unique, like three by three deadhead that looked like a couple things may have happened. Maybe it got hit by a car. Maybe it died a, uh, EHD. It still had some velvet on its antlers, but the, there were points, right, it was point so it looked like it died early in the, in the process, but the, all the antlers tips were fully developed, but you can tell it died in the early August, maybe late July time frame. And so maybe it got hit by a car, maybe it died of, EHD. And so we found that buck and they were jacked up about that and we walked around the pond and then we started walking like CRP trails just because it was easy.

15:32We dropped down to all the spots that were, that took little to no effort to get to and basically spent as much time like scrubbing, scrubbing this. And then we walked around this pond. So this pond is planted with all these oak trees around it. So whoever, whoever did this did it like 15 years ago, so you got all these 15 year old oaks and they're probably 20 foot high now and they, they just circled this pond. Hey, the cool thing is is we found like three sheds in that, in this like strip of oaks, like it's like four rows of oak trees. And dude, we found, uh, we found this buck that was, I'm guessing a four year old this year. He was probably in that one, one 50ish range, but because he broke off his antler, I said he's a no go for this year. He broke off his G, uh, G three, yeah.

16:32And so I was like, I was like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to let him walk if he comes by, he never came by and then he all, he kind of disappeared. But we found his, all these boys were looking on the ground and I, I have a little more experience them so I can like notice the differences of what's a branch, first, what's a shed. And I look into this bush and I see this pedicle and I'm like, Hey guys, look, start walking that way. They walk right by it. Yeah. So the, the shed that was in a bush, uh, and so, you know, I don't know, uh, we call that a hanger. Yep. You know, and so I was like, boys, I don't think you understood like I was trying to hang them up. I don't think you understand what we just saw because, you know, they're in their football card. Yeah. Yeah. So they're like, this is rare. This is rare. So I was like, dude, this one's a hanger, you know, how rare that is. And so my boy walked over and he picked it up and I was like, Oh my god, it's a hanger. And like, yeah, I don't even think they knew what was going on and I was like, I was trying

17:34to hype it up. And then, um, so we found three in there. And then, um, you know, I could, I saw most of these sheds before they even did. Yeah. So I was like, Hey, guys, I, my gut tells me you should walk this way and my gut tells me you should walk this way. And so we got into this CRP field and, uh, I found two antlers and I played stupid and I was like, Hey, come this way. I, you know, there's probably one in this little area and then they would find it. Yeah. So they, they would get jacked and, uh, and really the, like the first day, the first night we were there was just walking CRP in really easy places to, um, you know, and hoping we would run into the, the ones that we didn't necessarily have to look real hard for. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. So the bad news, you found two dead heads. So the one, the one was a big did his bases were, his bases were probably like this coffee

18:36cup. Holy cow. I mean, he was huge. Yeah. But he was only like three or four scoreable points, but he had all this junk around his bases and he had like a big kicker coming off the back of his base that had, it was like, it looked like a mace. It was crazy. Yeah. But he had really long, he probably had a 24, 24 inch main beams. Wow. But he was only like a three by three. It was crazy, giant, giant deer. I don't remember getting him on trail camera. I have to go through and look. Maybe I didn't, uh, velvet, but you could tell that antler had been there since, you know, the next morning we go out and we walk this CRP field and, uh, they found like two more sheds, smaller sheds in this CRP field. And then we get into the timber and that we, I don't know if you remember my, any of my Instagram story from this past year, but I found a, um, I passed this 145 inch three

19:40year old dude who, he had a split G three, he, he had gigantic, written all over him if he would have got, you know, two more years under his belt. And all of a sudden I hear, oh my god, oh my god. And the, my, my son's buddy, it's like, look what I found, look what I found, pulls him up. And I'm just like son of a bitch, right? Like he's a giant and it's crazy because you never, whenever you pass a deer, you, you never know, right? You never know if he's going to make it. It's a leap of faith. The sun shining, birds are singing and all feels right in the world. Until the season changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact, one in five people experience some form of depression, no matter the season or time of year. At the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, our vision is to build a mentally healthy nation for all because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year

20:45round. Visit mentallyhealthynation.org to learn more. If you're a podcast host, listen up this once for you. My name is Ally Jackson. I'm the host of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now, sharing my positive and practical approach to dating that's built on my own life experience. And I wanted to share another experience that I've had, my secret behind monetizing my show. It's called Red Circle. And I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform with Red Circle, not only am I getting a seamless hosting experience, but I also love the support I receive in AdSales. It's not just typical AdSales either, it's targeted opportunities based on my show and my life. And the platform is super simple. You just set your preferences and Red Circle matches you with sponsors that align with your show. You can vet every opportunity and their platform gives you great analytics. More recently too, my Red Circle team has brought me opportunities outside of my podcast on social media to really augment the podcast partnerships, bring them full circle. I just can't recommend them enough. If you want to give it a try, go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. That's redcircle.com for a free trial.

21:48But we found him and there he was. I couldn't tell. He's too far away from a road to think it was a road hit. My gut tells me he was a firearm, not during the firearm season, like shotgun season. Someone hit him, couldn't find him and or lob something at him from a long distance and then didn't follow any blood. I don't know. He wasn't too far off of a fence line. Really. Hey, it's sad enough to hear your neighbor shot it with the vatenda come up on him and find him dead. And you don't know the whole story to it. And just I don't know. It's just a bitter, bitter ending to it. Yeah. He was completely healthy around that November 5th timeframe or excuse me, November 10th timeframe. I even got pictures of him all the way up until Thanksgiving. And then I'd have to go back and check my cameras because then they started to all wear out around, you know, the shotgun seasons. But it was very odd, very odd finding that dude, we found a lot of dead dose too.

22:57Like these looked like gun type of, you know, just from the amount of decay and how much meat and or fur was still left on their body, they looked like wounds, like bow, I don't know, it could have been bow, but I'm the only guy who hunts that farm. Yeah. The property we found like one, two, three dead dose that were fresh and then one dead buck that looked fresh from the, the gun season. So I'm not really sure what it was, you know, I'm not a forensic, that forensic scientist, but I'll tell you this, it was, it was weird finding that many dead deer between November and now. And so yeah, that's, that's a little alarming in a way, you know, I mean, because those are obviously numbers you're not accounting for. Right. Right. And so other than that, you know, we, the cool thing about this was I got these kids outside,

24:01right? Every single thing they found, they wanted to pick up and take with them. So they had like a dose call from like five years ago, they would find a dose call and they're like, oh my God, there's this count because it got, it got kind of competitive. Yeah. Where they're like, I got, you got how many? I got, okay, well, I got, I got more. You know, it's like, I found this dough head, I found this bone, this counts as one, right? Does this count, Dan? Hey, Dan, does this count? Yeah. And I'm like, hey guys, usually we're not picking up dough heads. You can do whatever you want, but usually we're not picking up dose calls and carrying them around with us. Right. We're kind of here to look for shed antlers, but if you want to carry around a dose call all day, you go for it. Well, that's, that's a, yeah, that, I mean, that's a nice thing about, you know, if a kid has a buddy with or something like that, because it turns into a competition. Yeah. You know, with all the different bones and skulls and everything, they're getting their eyes trained for finding those antlers, you know, and to do like you did, I mean, there's nothing wrong with like, hey, guys, maybe over this way, you know, I mean, that's, that's

25:04how you get them into it. I didn't plan any either. I did. Like in the past when my kids were younger, I would throw out one or two sheds, like, that were just obvious, right? Yeah. And I'm like, let's walk around here and then they'd find them, they'd get all jacked up. But this time I didn't, you know, I didn't do it, the, um, but they, the cool thing about this, why I think shed hunting is really cool is whether you find sheds or not, you find something, because, because we had conversations about things like this is a fox skull or this is a raccoon skull or this is a, a femur or, you know, a bone for a deer. This is a rib cage for a deer or, hey, don't touch that plant. That's poison oak or, you know, like, just a whole bunch of different conversations that are good for, I'm just going to say like woodsmanship, right? Like at one point, I can remember stopping and moving a tree stand. Yeah. And so I made them pause for about 10 minutes while I moved the tree stand about 30 yards.

26:08And then I sat there, I put it up and then I asked them, I asked them the question, why did I move this tree stand here? I want you guys to look around and think about that. Why did I do that? And so, you know, my, my son said something like, well, there's a lot of tracks that cross this creek right here. I'm like, good observation. And then the other kid would say, well, look, there's a rub right there. I said, good observation. And so, and then so I would pull them into this where intersection where two trails met. And I'd stand at the intersection. I go, look at this trail. From this way high, look at this trail come this way low. Now, when I sit in this tree, what direction should I have the wind blowing so that it doesn't spook any deer? And they would look around a little bit and they'd go, you want the wind to blow that way? I'm like, bingo. Yeah. And I need a west or northwest wind. And this, this stand's going to be amazing. And so, having those little conversations as well were, I don't know, maybe it stuck

27:13with them, maybe it didn't, but it's just like the beginning of something, you know what I mean? 100%. I mean, we were doing the same thing, you know, because when we first got to this place, I kind of know exactly where to look as soon as, you know, we hit the ground, we take off and we go into the beds. I mean, that's where we're identifying beds right away. And I'm trying to get them to distinguish between, you know, a doe bed and a buck bed. And, you know, why is facing this way or that way? And then, and then when we had down a trail and we see a scrape and, and why the scrape is in this position, and then if there's any rubs leading into a certain area, you know, so we talked about a bunch of that too, as far as, you know, the white tail woodsmanship. But then, just the overall woodsmanship, like you were saying, you know, we talked about those dead blue jays, you know, so those two j feathers all over, there was turkey feathers all over. But then this farm, it's also cattle grazed, you know, so we got to the end. And, well, down to the bottom before we have to make our halfway turnaround.

28:14And he's like, do you think it's because of the cows, you know, in his observation of like the cows being in there in the last several months, maybe pushed the deer out and they're not dropping antlers. And, you know, so a lot of that stuff, I think, you know, they, they observe, but I think they're also learning too. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I kind of learned about my one son today is about how hard to, or this weekend was how hard to push him. And some of the reason is he's not very comfortable being alone, if that makes sense, quite yet. And so I was sent, I was trying to send him, I was trying to test him this weekend, to be honest with you, and send him on some trails where I would disappear out of sight for just a little bit, right? And he always, he was always like, this is more of like a dad thing and less about hunting thing. But he was always kind of wanting to know where I was at.

29:14He was unsure of, of being alone. And I, you know, I had to keep reminding him, like, if you, if I yell, you'll be able to hear me just because you can't see me, doesn't mean there's nothing, you know, there's anything wrong. And so there were times where I was trying to, I don't know, like, ween him a little bit if that makes sense. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And try to get him to be comfortable by himself in certain scenarios. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to walk on this side of this finger, you're going to walk on the other side, you're going to be high, I'm going to be low, you won't be able to see me for a little bit, but we'll meet at the point. And you could tell he was a little bit uncomfortable about doing some of that, but then towards the end of the day, he started getting more comfortable and things like that. But there were the conversations from both boys that were like, are there bears in Iowa? Well, I see a coyote or a mountain lion. And I'm just like, dude, don't worry about it. Like, there's not that nothing like that is you're not going to see anything like that.

30:19Yeah. And if you do, it's going to be running away from you. Your son's 10 or 11 somewhere. Yeah, he's 10. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we did the same exact thing. We switched to get in, we crossed through the gate. And then as soon as we crossed through, you know, I'm like, you're going to go over this way. I'm going to go over this way. And he does that whole thing too. You know, where he just kind of follows in your footsteps, you know, but then you get that separation. It's like, oh, no, you're OK. It's, yeah, I'll hear you and I'm not that far, but yeah, I think it's part of you know, letting go a little bit on our end, but also like them being able to take that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, because there was a lot of times where both boys started following me. Yeah. Instead of staying on the line, like, uh, uh, shed hunting is all about like trying to find your own line. And so you're not walking in front of someone or behind someone, you walk your own line. And I kept trying to tell them that. And it just wasn't like, there were times where it

31:20wasn't sinking in. I go, Hey, boys, real quick, just to let you know, I've, you're walking behind me. And that means that I'm going to be the first one to see it. And then it's going to be my shed. Yeah. So if you guys want to find your own sheds, you have to walk your own line. Right. And and try to educate them on that too. And that worked, you know, that kind of worked when I was you know, there were a couple of times. I'm just like, guys, I'm going to find all the sheds. Like you're going to have to spread out. So I'm going to leave it up to you. But I'm, I'm going to go this way. And I was walking like places where I knew sheds probably weren't going to be. Yeah. But I would see, I'd see them if they just would have walked to their line, they would have seen them before, before me. And so well, I had to go through all that whole thing too. Yeah. And I think whether you find sheds or not or, you know, whether they can separate from you or not, hey, they got outside. They did some hiking. You know, I remember my son telling me on the way back, he's like, oh, this hill. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, you'll

32:23feel it in your calves a little bit, your quads a little bit. And he's like, it's a good football workout. You know, we get back to, we get back to where he found his shed and we're pretty close to the truck by then. And he's like, oh, it was well worth it. And I'm like, see, I told you before we even walked like sometimes it takes walking that little extra bit, you know, and I try to correlate that with everything else. Like it takes that little extra bit, you know, just to get what you, you know, desire. But I think it's great. But it's so in a nutshell, you've had this property for like five years. Now, now you go scout with your kids and everything like that. Was there anything that you took away from it that you haven't already known in five years? Well, uh, yes. Now, I told you about my knee issue, right? Yeah. The end of last year, I twisted it pretty bad. It was very difficult for me to walk climb up a tree stand by the end of November. And so I, my knee's feeling better now because I've had an injection. And then next week, I have my knee

33:25surgery. So what I was doing or what I was, um, really trying to, I knew where I needed to move a couple tree stands. Yeah. My goal was to do some hinge cutting. I didn't get to it. Um, but I did get to observe what my hinge cutting looks like now, which I want to talk about. But, um, I moved a, I didn't, I took a tree stand down and I put it in. So I, it's where I missed my buck this year. Tons of movement, but it was just on the other side of this terrain feature. And so I moved the tree stand closer into this terrain feature and created a ton of shooting lanes for it. And so the cool thing about this is I needed to get it in there. So I had a shot opportunity on these trails that were coming in right in front of me. Um, it, it looks really thick

34:27when you get in there. But then once I got the tree stand up, I cut down one huge Osage Orange branch and then an entire tree, Osage Orange tree and, you know, dropped it. Um, it's, it's going to be a money tree stand. The cool thing was that the boys helped me do all the cutting. Like they would help me pull away. They were, they were, they were wanted to participate. Because of that, I'm like, so it like we live on a street. Yeah. They both live on the same street. So we named that stand the street, our street name. Oh, cool. So this is the street, you know, art is the stand. And they're like, Oh my God, you got to tell us when you're going to hunt it. So I, I would tell them, I'd be like, Hey, like if I'm my goal this year is to kill a deer out of this stand. Yeah. This year. And, um, and they were, they were pretty excited. They were pretty excited about that. And they, they loved cutting trees and, and pulling them out of the way and, and using a saw and branches and, hey, what can we do to help? What can we do to help?

35:30I'm like, you guys can do two things. You can keep looking for sheds over in this area. Or you can help me here and we'll get done faster and we'll go look for more sheds. And so they decided they wanted to help. And they had, I think they had a lot of fun doing it, man. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I would take something away from what you just said. And then then you can tell me about your him's cutting. But the, um, the name of your stand and stuff, it had me thinking about the naming deer. So, so obviously you used to maybe you still do a little bit or you kind of used to. Yeah. Okay. I used to a lot. So, so I used to a lot also, you know, that was like a big thing. That was how we identified our deer. Well, when we're out there the other day, my son says he's like, yeah, you remember, you know, such a such buck. I'm like, yep. And, you know, he refers to that buck. He was four years old and we found his sheds, you know. And so to me, maybe it's not a, you know, maybe it is an age thing. Maybe it's not an age thing. But either way, what I took out of it was his, he enjoyed knowing which deer that was by that name. You know,

36:33instead of saying, uh, that, that, that big 10 pointer, that big eight point, you know, he, it was able to identify it from pictures and, and sheds. And yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. And well, well, one of the bucks, that buck that they found in the bush, the hanger. Yeah. I have now named him the hanger buck. Yeah. And so I'll be able to share stories with that, you know, when I start getting pictures of them and velvet and all that stuff. So it'll be, it'll be interesting to see what, what he grows into. But I had a goal of, you know, trying to find sheds. That's important. All right. Um, the other goal was to move the tree stands. Um, and then I wanted to get, I had one location where I wanted to get a trail camera put up for to basically in a location where turkeys would strut. And I couldn't get this damn bolt undone with my hands. So I had to like take this bracket apart to put, uh, and bring it back

37:34in the truck. So I didn't get a trail camera put up. No big deal. Uh, and then I wanted to do some hinge cutting. That didn't get done. So of the three tree stands, I wanted to move. I got two of them moved, um, found sheds, which was the main takeaway for boys. Uh, the trail camera stuff and the mineral stuff got put on, uh, got put on hold until probably, I don't know, maybe I'll drive down there in May or something to freshen it up. But I got an, I got an opportunity. One year ago, while I was down there, I cut down like 22 different trees. Okay. Um, a couple of realizations. One, my hinge cutting on some of the trees worked. Yeah. Okay. So the tree fell over. There was still enough juice in it to where I started to see some vertical, vertical growth, which was, which is awesome, right? And in that, some grass and some multiplier rows and, and other vegetation grew

38:37up. And to me, to be honest with you, that is exactly what I wanted. I wanted lower stem count. I wanted it to be thicker through grass and maybe create an area for them to bed in. But what surprised me is cutting down those, or cutting or hinging those 22 trees did not do as much of a thick area as I thought it would. So you think it would take, it would probably take 60 trees to, to make the thickness level increase to where I actually wanted it. Okay. So I was going to say either more trees or a different tree variety. I mean, it could have been like a bigger tree. I mean, obviously an osage orange tree and these black locusts, um, this is old cattle pasture, right? So imagine hitting fast forward on a cattle pasture by 30 years, 40 years. That's what, that's what

39:41is going on with this place. Okay. And so the, maybe it was the direction of the sun, maybe it was what was already in there. I would say that the true impact of that area is, I don't know, like a hundred feet by a hundred feet, 22 trees and the, the true impact of that area that grew up, the thickness, the, the lower stem count was really like a hundred feet by a hundred feet. Did you see beds in there and stuff? Do your beds are, I mean, I'm sure there were, there's a, there's a lot of deer sign. Okay. In this area. But the actual size of that is, impact of that was pretty small. So that, that told me that the next time I do something like that, I'm going to have to dedicate more time and energy into hinging more trees. Yeah. Yeah.

40:47More trees and more trees. So now, you know, I always hear, you know, when we're, we're doing this habitat improvement and stuff like that, you know, guys are always wanting to get rid of cedars, wanting to get rid of multi-flower rows. And, you know, I'll be honest, like, I like to get rid of some of that stuff too. But man, those are some of my favorite places to look for deer and look for sheds and hunt. I mean, cedar thickets and multi-flower rows. That's where a buck is going to put themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to tell you this right now. Dude, I don't know what it is about multi-flower rows, but it's almost like they just love living it in and around that stuff. It's thick. It's low to the ground. And like, they can nestle up right into it. And if they can find a path into it, that's not going to restrict them. They'll, they'll be in it. It's always the worst possible places for humans to go is where these deer love to be. That's just kind of what I've

41:48seen over the years. So it's almost like if you are going to, if you are going to build your own farm, it'd be like find out where the cedars, multi-flower rows, and black locusts are. And that's where you're going to find the deer, right? Well, and I think so much goes, goes by the wayside with, you know, I mean, deer live at five foot and below. You know, it's like we put so much emphasis on all this, you know, making the farm look just so that actually, I mean, I've seen some beautiful farms get destroyed because people have taken out, you know, the cedars and the multi-flower rows. And then, I mean, yeah, sure, they're going to get deer back eventually with their food plots. I don't know. They're just something about, there's something special about walking a good cedar thicket with a CRP out front or something and then dropping down into, you know, some multi-flower rows. You know, it's not fun stuff to walk in. You know, obviously it must just be a back scratcher for them, but yeah, I don't know. It's just, you know, it's weird because where do you want to put your time? You know, you know, you know, you did your, your hinge cutting and stuff and I'll go out

42:50and I might knock a tree or two down, but the woods that we have is the woods that we have. I don't really want to take too much away from it. So I'm going to put my efforts into either making scrape mocks, scrapes or food plots and try to adjust my stands according to each year crop rotations. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So I, I need to do a little bit more of that. It's going to be too late for me this year. I don't, I'm not going to get down there before the surgery happens. And then once by the time I'm able to start walking again and carrying a chainsaw around, it's going to be too close to hunting season to do any type of habitat work. But I am really excited about like I kept going, the boy thought I was nuts because I climb in the tree. I put up the two tree stands. And I was like, oh boy, this is a kill set. This is a kill set boys. They're like, what are you talking about? I'm like, a big buck is going to come right where you're at or right up here. And I'm going to smoke them. Right. And they're, they're like, God, you're crazy. Like it's just a tree stand. Like

43:55what does it mean? I go, someday boys, you're going to understand of things like this are going to get you excited if you take it to this level. Yeah. Right. And so I was like, I was going like, and they were just like, they were like, God, this guy's crazy. He's talking about trees. Like why there's trees in the right spot. Right. Fast forward 10 years. And that'll be them. I mean, this is, you know, it's going to be, I mean, he's he's half yours. You know, so yeah, exactly. Exactly. I was telling him like, I was telling, I was saying to him like, God put this, God put this tree here just so I could kill deer out of it. Yeah. So, so just be just be ready. Yeah. I'm going to call you when it happens. So I, I could go back a couple weeks when I was out at my, at my favorite farm to hunt. You know, I, we talk about moving stands and I've done this several times, several years. And there was, there was a streak that I had like, I don't know, seven years in a row that I'd shop bucks out of like a, a, a 20 yard radius. Like I would just

44:58be back and forth, you know. And so now I'm like, I'm pushing the envelope. Like I move a little bit further. I move a little bit further. And so I've got a stand that's probably 150 yards from where I originally started, you know, and I'm still having success with it. Well, when I'm out shed hunting a couple weeks ago, I noticed this tree that to me just looks dynamite. And the only problem I have with it is like, how intrusive do you want to get? You know, because I know that like if I leave that western side of this piece alone, that they're going to travel that, that they're potentially betting in there and that they will filter over to the eastern side of this piece. You know, it just, I don't know, something to think about. I may dabble with it, but we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about it is I really, I really found a lot of other locations where I could possibly put a tree, but because of a tree stand, but because of access routes, I'm not sure I want to

46:04because of limited access routes. You got to go through something, especially in a morning hunt, you'd be going right through like the transition from destination food to back to betting. And I feel like I would be something, there would be something there that would hinder me getting to a tree stand, unless I got access from a different location, but I didn't. So, yeah, so you're getting surgery in the 29th, is that what you said? One week from tomorrow, the, yeah, 25th, I believe, or something like that, yeah, 25th. 25th, 24th. Okay. So any preparation for that that you have to do, I mean, you got to go. That was this. Yeah. That was this. And really, the other farm that I have, I just don't have enough time to get there. All the old stands, you know, I've been hunting that farm since 07.

47:05So the tree stands that I do currently have there are in pretty good spots, right? And so, I've killed deer out of most of them. I don't need to do too much. I'm sure I'll have to move some tree stands around, come October, November to get into the best possible spots. But I'm not, I'm not too terribly worried about, you know, I'm not too terribly worried about getting in and out of these places. I've got everything I feel. The only thing I'm going to have to do is this summer put trail cameras out. And then maybe a little mineral, and that's it, man. I feel like I kind of missed an opportunity. I think I missed one opportunity to maybe frost seed some clover. But outside of that, I don't have like a standard food plot. So it would just be kind of a guess to do that. You know, it's basically mixed clover in with grass and things like that. And so I,

48:06I don't know, maybe I missed that opportunity, but I feel like I got enough done this past weekend to set me up on that particular farm for something really good. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you, I mean, you already know your farms well enough to, to where you should be in good position either way. But no, I'm not, and I know, I know you've mentioned this before in the past on years, but I'm not getting knee replacement, but I will no longer be able to reproduce after April 17th. So we have that coming. There you go. Well, the good news is, is that there's no surprises. No, there's no more surprises. No, although I will say this that I know a guy who had a vasectomy. And then I think he was like in his late 30s when he got a vasectomy. And then 12 years later, God is wife pregnant. Wow. So, so now he, so he, so he had the vasectomy, but then did he, did he have to go test it six months later or whatever?

49:08Yeah, well, no, it's not six months. It's like three months, three months. Okay. You have to give a, you have to give a sample. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but and the doctor said, you're, you're good to go. So something happened. Nature found a way. 12 years later. 12 years later, he had another kid. That's what the joke was. Yeah, well, sure. Dude, it looks just like him now, right? And so it's crazy having a, it would be crazy right now for me to have a baby in the house. And I'm sure you're getting ready to walk that really. So we got, uh, Wednesday is 31 weeks. So nine weeks. Yeah, nine weeks. What's crazy is I was sitting, I'll be, I'm going to, I'll be vulnerable here a second. I was sitting at church yesterday. And there was a baby behind me, just cooling like a little, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like a little baby, probably like, did I think it was nine weeks old, right? Like one month or just like a baby,

50:08baby. And I look back and I'm like, man, I miss those sounds, right? I miss all that. Uh, and just kind of as, I don't know, with the, the stage that I'm going through in life, I just was like, dude, it sucks that I'm past that stage. You know, and, but I don't miss waking up in the middle of the night anymore. I don't miss having to clean up shit all over the place. Like I don't barf and shit and spit up and, and the baby, as I'm, as I'm looking at this baby and telling the mom how beautiful the baby is, it's like projectile spit up all over the floor and the chair, my son was standing in and, and I go, I don't miss that though. Right? Right? Well, I mean, to your point, you know, time, time is a thief. Yeah, I mean, it really is. You know, when you blink, your kids are as tall as you are, you know, and my kids are standing that shoulder height and above, you know, and I'm gonna pass by all of them. But, um, yeah, I don't know. I'm looking

51:08forward to it. Uh, I really, I think it's gonna be fun. I think it's gonna be a fun time to see, you know, like what this one gets into, you know, and, and what this one likes. It's, um, yeah, a little, uh, nervous, I guess, with, you know, thinking back, like, how did I do that before? What was that like then? You know, because, I mean, like, my, my son was my, my youngest at that time and he was, he was 10 years ago, you know, 10 and a half years ago almost, you know, it's, it's crazy. But, um, now, now watching them do stuff that I've always enjoyed to want to watch, you know, and now I get to start all over. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It'll be good, man. It'll be good, it, it'll be crazy, but it'll be good, man. Um, and it's just another opportunity to, I mean, get kids into the outdoors. I mean, that's just one more outdoors, man. You know what I mean? And it's going to be crazy because by the time he's in 10 years, when 10 years, when he's just

52:10starting his journey, he's gonna, he's lucky because everybody else will be out of the house. Oh, you know what I mean? Yeah. And so he'll get spoiled because he'll have one, you know, he'll have an old dad, but that old dad will be able to focus on him, you know what I mean? Well, yeah, and so we're having a girl. Oh, a girl. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to be well outnumbered here, but, um, yeah, it's, it's kind of funny because you know, she'll, she'll be daddy's little girl, you know, for the longest time, she'll, she'll want to do that stuff. I hope, but you know, she'll also look at me like, there's my old man. And then they'll come to the, the teenage years where he's embarrassing. And I'll be that much more embarrassing because not only will I have changed her diapers, but by that time, she'll probably be changing my diapers. Oh, yeah, old dad, I thought about it. So my son in 10 years, he'll be a senior in high school, my youngest son. So that means I'll be 55 years old. And my mom, this is crazy. My mom was 43 when I was a senior in high

53:18school. So that, that's, that's crazy. So my mom had all her kids out of the house when, by the time she was 46. That's nuts. That's nuts. I'll be 46 in August. And I'm going to have a newborn here in May. And my mom actually graduated college. The year I graduated high school, you know, she, she had four, four kids. Um, it's just crazy. And there's still, I mean, my mom was 19 when she had me. And then, so my sister's 13 years younger than me. Well, between my wife's oldest and our baby, there's going to be over 13 years between those two also. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's going to be crazy, but I'm looking forward to it to be fun. Right, right. Cool, man. So any plans for the woods or anything this week or no? No, well, I can't do anything in this weather. Yeah. I'm not, I just got to focus on trying to catch up on some work.

54:18Yeah. Because I don't know what the knee's going to be like in the next couple weeks. And I'm kind of behind on some of stuff. And I got a, I got to figure out how I'm going to get up here. I might have what they call the couch sessions where I'm going to be recording a, recording a podcast from like my bed or from a locked room in the house from my laptop. So the quality will be okay. It's just the, the background on the video might be a bed frame or might be and whatever. Right. And so my bed frame is right right there. You know, and my closet is right here. And then behind me is a dresser. And then there's a storage of just junk papers back here. And I've been able to hide most of it, you know, but we're, we're closing in on the end of that too. So hopefully, you know, maybe I'm not even going to throw out a date. Let's just, let's just say down the road here. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I'm, I'll tell you what, with all that said,

55:22the, my, my biggest, the biggest thing that's happened to me in the last week is, I got excited about the upcoming season in a way that I haven't been in the, in like the last three or four years. Right. The last time I got excited about like really this early on about hunting is when I got access to the new property, this, this, the property that we went and shed hunted. And I was like, Oh my God, I got a new farm to kind of figure out. And it's a good, it's a good little deer farm. It holds decent deer. And I was excited about it. And then like just through coaching and football and all that stuff, I, my mind was so focused on work and my kids that I didn't really have any time to get excited about the upcoming season where I chose not to. But what I will say is that I put, when I'll put these two tree stands up in their new locations,

56:26it reminded me of the olden days where I would like the olden days, right? Like 15 years ago, where I would go out on weekends and just like scout and put up new tree stands and scout for trees and mark it on on X and things like that. And I did that again. And dude, I don't know why, I'm saying this, but it made me feel young and it made me excited for the possibility of what could happen this upcoming year because of the trees, because of two tree stands. Well, I was going to say, do you think it's because of the tree stands or do you think it's because of the youth that you had in the boys with you? Probably a little bit of both. Yeah. Right? Probably a little bit of both. And they, you know, it wasn't just the shed hunting aspect of it. As I was setting up a tree stand, the first tree stand, they started to wander around a little bit. And I pretty much gave them the rule. You can be, you can go wherever you want, just do not cross any fences, right? And so they

57:31made their way down to the creek. And you could just hear them talking like, check this rock out. Oh my God. Like, I checked this tree. Look at, look at this crazy thing or whatever the case was. And I just was like, this is a good thing because they're not in front of an iPad or on a device growing YouTube or whatever like that. They're not playing video games. This is what it's all about. Right. It's not about like chasing down some big deer and making sure they have strategy. It's this foundation of appreciating and getting excited about the outdoors, right? And that's what I think I was the biggest takeaway. Yeah. And I mean, you just said it, you know, you kind of went back in time, you know, you got that fresh excitement, you know, and I drove past a couple farms that I used to hunt a week ago or whatever I was, I was past them. And it's that same thing, you know, you can remember walking in such and such morning, crisp fall, you know, and you can

58:32remember every single hunt. But the thing with what we do now so much is time is a thief. Time goes fast. And we need everything at right at our fingertips. And we just don't slow it down. I mean, we just do everything so rapid all the time. Right. Right. Yeah. It's bananas, man. It's bananas. Any any final thoughts on on this episode today before we shut her down? Not much, but if you're here in the Midwest or wherever you got snow, hopefully it melts soon. And you can get out and find some sheds here before. Scout. Yeah, or scout. Any one of those two things before greens up too much. So yeah. Yeah. One thing I wanted to touch based on just real quick was the locations that we, and I'm going to run through this real quick. The locations in which we found the deer antlers. And all of the deer antlers we found except two were in CRP were in tall grass like like warm season grass or cold season grasses like

59:36taller CRP, you know, in some type of transition between betting and food. That's where we found all the sheds. The two sheds that we did find were on trails leading from betting to or, you know, could have been back to betting, but from betting to like what I would say is a staging area or like a trail leading to destination food like in the in the timber though. Yeah. So that's what crit crossings too. Yeah, that's that's where my son found his was on a trail from bed to food. I mean, that's that's kind of what it's been. Yeah, it's just been so hit or miss with this weather that we had this winter not having a snow pack and being warmer that I think deer were just more spread out and they haven't had to go to those general winter home ranges. So right. Right. Right. And this will throw a curve ball for for them for about probably I'm guessing two or three more days until it gets warm again and starts to melt. But everybody really appreciate

1:00:38you guys taking time out of your day to listen to this podcast. Thank you very much for that. Also huge shout out to our partner code blue scents. If you guys could do us a huge favor go check out their website code blue scents.com go leave us a five star review wherever you download this podcast and go check out our YouTube channel. Thank you guys very much and have a good rest of your day. If you are a podcast host, listen up this once for you. My name is Ally Jackson. I'm the host of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now, sharing my positive and practical approach to dating that's built on my own life experience. And I wanted to share another experience that I've had my secret behind monetizing my show. It's called Red Circle. And I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform with Red Circle not only am I getting a seamless hosting experience, but I also love the support I receive in ad sales. It's not just typical ad sales either. It's targeted opportunities based on my show and my life. And the platform is super simple. You just set your preferences and Red Circle matches you with sponsors that align with your show. You can vet every opportunity and their platform gives you

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