How To Hunt Deer - Where To Put Your Time

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. Hi everybody. This is the how to hunt your podcast. My name is Dan Johnson and sitting digitally across from me, Mr. Jason, is it Mr. Jason today or just Jason? No, it's just Jason. Just Jason today. Yeah, yeah. Usually we're in about 10 different spots today, so okay. Usually I can tell if you're a hat, if you're wearing a hat on the show, then there's no Mr. Jason. It's just Jason. Yep. I had a college shirt. Normally, yeah. Yep.

1:00Cool. Dude, it's March. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. This is a fun time of year. I've just been doing a lot of driving between wrestling, going places for wrestling. There's no snow on the ground and all of the grass is still flat from the last snow storm we had. There's no growth yet. Yeah. And dude, I just, my mind every time I'm driving down the road is get out and start walking. Buffer tips and things like that. So did you see the video I emailed you, the shout out video? I did not because it won't open and I need to talk to you about that after the episode. Okay. Well, so that's kind of where I was the same thing. I was seeing all this mad and grass and stuff and I thought, man, I'm going to get out in the open prairie and I found one that would have been sitting there for probably a year because it wasn't chewed on or anything. You'd just see the discoloration in it, but still pretty cool. Yeah. So this weekend is state tournament for my, my daughter. And then the following weekend, God, I always feel like if I go the second week, if I find

2:05any, they're going to be chewed up. You know what I mean? Like it's too late or someone else's walked the property. I'm going to be looking for antlers that are gone. You know what I mean? Just like they're not there. And maybe they show up, maybe another group of people shows up to shed, honey, maybe they don't, but I just feel like it's always too late if I go. But I also am going the following week because I have my knee surgery in like in three weeks now. Yeah. And I'm going to try to move some tree stands before I get my knee surgery that way. All I have to do is throw some mineral out in July and put my trail cameras back up. And then after that, I just have to show up to hunt. That's the goal anyway. That's the goal. Yep. No, that's a kind of what I went out last, man, it was Friday. Yeah, it was Friday because I thought I had to tick of the flu bug.

3:07And so I laid around for a little while and then I went out Friday and I did some scouting too, not just shed hunting and the neighbor of this property across the road, friends with the last couple of years and we were texting back and forth. And he says, you got you good for next weekend to come out and he was going to let me on some of his properties. He's got thousands of acres, you know, and I'm like, oh, man, I'd love to go, but we got tumbling competition all weekend. So we're gone, you know, and I'm sitting there thinking the same thing you just said, like I'm going to get in there. They're going to be gone. They're going to be chewed up. They're going to be. Which is, I know these deer are there during the winter. So I'd love to get in there, but maybe I can get out this week, but it looks like we're going to get wet here for most part of the week. Yeah. And for me, dude, rain all you want, that's what I'm saying. It's like rain all you want until about two days before. So it's dry enough for me to get out there, but rain this weekend, the whole weekend. Yeah. And that way it's going to prevent people from going out shed hunting. Yep.

4:07I know a lot of hardcore guys, but I don't know many guys who like skip work to go shed hunting. They'll, you know, they'll pop out maybe after work for a couple hours or, or maybe try to get out on a weekend, but they're not going crazy about it. So I don't know. And plus, dude, you know how dry we are right now. It's ridiculous. A lot of the creeks that I was crossing and stuff that would generally have water. I just walked straight across them, you know, so it's, we definitely need the moisture. Yeah. They said, I think we had a total of 14 inches in November, seven inches in December and four inches of snow in January. And I don't even, like in February, I don't even know what we got here in Iowa on the average. And it's not, it's, we're like 20 some inches below precipitation for this winter. And that's, that's not good leading into the, into the spring. No, no, I mean, it makes it easier as far as putting in food plots and stuff, you know,

5:08because it's going to be drier. But you actually want some moisture to soften the ground too. So I, I don't know, I'm hoping that we get the rain this week and I'm hoping for my work wise, we stay warmer, temperature wise and, and get the roadpostings lifted, but it is what it is. It's, it's spring, it's mother nature and, um, one thing real quick, I was with, with the scouting and stuff, we can kind of jump into our commercial with, uh, cold blue sense. I was looking at some of these scrapes and with the, the rope kits, I've, I've narrowed down like maybe something that would be beneficial for people and I, I put a little couple of clips together and I'm going to go through them and I'll send them to you later. But, um, so cold blue sense guys, check out all their, um, the full line of, of synthetic, you know, yearns, but they also have a full line of detergents and sprays and keep yourself clean and, and I guess, you know, deodorize as far as you can, but the, but the rope kits that I've been using, man, I, I started using the, the lure, the, the rack

6:08rub, uh, well before I even bought the rope kit itself and, I mean, these, these, these scrapes are an awesome spot, but I found that when I use them, it, it, it's actually pinching them down into certain areas to where I could eliminate some overhanging branches. So that's what kind of wanted to go into, but yeah, check out cold blue sense and discount code HTH20 for 20% off, eliminate some overhanging branches. What do you mean by that? Yeah. So, you know, on, on a lot of field edges, you know, if, if farmers not trimming his edges and stuff up so he can get it, he's got a lot of overhanging branches that are coming into the field and what happens is I, I was walking a point, uh, a finger down into a, a drainage basically off of a buffer strip. And once I got to that point, it was like, this scrapes just opened up and it was like, you know, you'd find a two foot scrape, a two foot scrape, a three foot scrape. And then all of a sudden there'd be a giant like hub scrape. And then off of those hub scrapes, you know, it was just like trails going everywhere.

7:09And then you go a little bit further and there'd be another two foot scrape, two foot scrape. And then you could just tell that maybe a tree was rubbed on or maybe overhanging branches snapped off. So what I found on the east side of this farm, I had already eliminated a bunch of these overhanging branches and I isolated where I wanted the rope and I did this years ago. And basically they hit just that scrape, just that scrape every single time. And not versus on the west side of the farm, there's probably, I mean, 10 to 20 scrapes that come down, but they, they will make their own scrapes too. And you can also use the rope kit in a pre existing scrape. And I think, I think sometimes that actually could be even more beneficial than trying to make a mock scrape in a place that you choose. Right. Dude, I'm telling you, I had a, I had a farm that I used to hunt. This would have been, man, seven years ago and it, I got access to it. And the landowner didn't hunt, I mean, they hunted the gun season, but I was a bow

8:13hunter. So I was a non-threat, you know what I mean? And it was next to a major farm of a major hunting personality. And so I got the benefit of like the crossover, right? And so I walked into this, this property and every, and I mean every single overhanging branch in these fields had a scrape underneath of it. Everyone. Yeah. And next year, they came through and they, like, did some, some work to get. So tractors could get back there easily to the backfields and they, like, removed a lot of trees in the fence rows, except a couple. And I would, I went back that next year and I was sitting in a tree and I was watching the, I was watching this, like, I guess you would call it a, a two track or a tractor crossing. And there was only one overhanging branch. And every single deer that walked by there hit that scrape, doe or buck.

9:18And because it was the only option in the area now. Yeah. And so it's important, dude, you, you can manipulate a lot of things with scent. Well, and I, I sent you a picture last week too of that doe that just got in there and she was just rubbing that rope. And I mean, we're, you know, to end of February when I sent you that picture. So I mean, it does work year round too with it. And I, I think what I figured out with it, with doing the east side of this farm the way I did, I was already narrowing down where they would scrape at, you know, which could put me into shooting distance of that scrape if I wanted to or at least monitor their come and go from it. But now looking at the western side of it, man, I was hard to pinpoint like exactly where I wanted to be. But there was one focal point that they led to and that was a completely different spot. But that scrape that I found was 10 yards from where I shot my buck this past fall, you know, it was like all those scrapes led to that. But when I would sit on the eastern side and I would watch over to the western side, watch

10:19the deer movement, they would sporadically go through the timber, the finger of that. It wasn't like they were hit in just one area. So I feel like if I can take and manipulate that edge and cut those branches down or up, you know, even higher to where there's only one or two, maybe I think you, you can kind of isolate their travel too. Right. And then you pair that with a trail camera, right? And it's going to tell you a lot about whatever's moving through that field edge. Yeah. One question I was thinking when you were talking there and you said something about, you know, you were no harm because you were a bow hunter versus the gun hunters on this property. So it just kind of dawned on me, what is more intrusive, a gun hunter or a bow hunter? Well, that was seven years ago, right? And they were a gun hunter and they were, you know, they're gun hunters. And gun hunters, especially almost like when I first started going out west and I told people I was a bow hunter, they would be like, good luck, buddy. Yeah.

11:19Right? You're not killing shit unless it's a rifle. And I felt like that sometime. Yeah. But even back in the day, before bow hunting took off and before bow hunting was the industry and the popularity that it was, man, you could get access in really good farms by telling people, I don't want a gun hunt. I just want a bow hunt. And then they would laugh at you because they would be like, bow hunters, yeah, go for it, buddy. He's not a threat to me. At least I can say I let someone on my property. Yeah. But I guess, well, I guess my question was was kind of like, as far as like a scouting aspect, you know, or being a aggressive aspect, you know, a bow hunter is probably going to cover a lot more ground. Right? I mean, I mean, fair assumption because a gun hunter is going to shoot from afar. So I mean, they can glass from afar, they can easily creep up to an edge and just watch a field.

12:19You know, they don't have to be in a certain tree or whatever. And I guess that's where, you know, if we're talking about like hunting pressure, a bow hunter probably puts more hunting pressure on a property than a gun hunter does, right? Is that safe to say? I'm guessing throughout the course of a year, yes. But in Iowa, the farms that I, the farms that I hunt on, they do deer drives. Right. Yeah. So that's the ultimate pressure, right? Yeah. Just push and deer. At the mark. Yep. And so I guess, let's say, let's just compare maybe a muzzle loader. My assumption is that muzzle loader guys don't do, don't do deer drives. Right. And so they just sit and they wait. And so I'm just sitting here trying to figure out, you know, where a guy is in the muzzle loader season as opposed to the farms that I hunt once shotgun season hits and they start doing their deer drives late season on that particular farm. It's over. Yeah.

13:19Yeah. There's no, there's no point of going back to that farm late season because number one, there's not a lot of deer and number two, they've, if it's good weather, they've driven that farm a hundred times and they, they don't go out and scout throughout the year. Like I do. Like I go out in my shed hunt and I go out and I hang my trail cameras and I do a little scouting looking for this year's hot spot, that kind of stuff. But outside of that, I'm, you know, I feel like, yeah, bow, bow hunters take it a little more serious. That's just a guess. Yeah. Bow hunters take it more serious. Therefore, they want to get closer and they're going to be boots on the ground more on their farms and in public property looking for the best spots. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of things that I kind of noticed this past week too was so on Friday, I hit two different properties and I, I walked like about six miles. So it was pretty even between the two of them. But the one property is about 50 acres and the other property is about 435 acres. Yeah.

14:20And so I moved a little bit quicker through the 435 acres, but I only hunted a couple times this past fall because the sign wasn't there. Right. Now, however, I did find a hot spot on that property. Now, I'm going to go back to last spring when, you know, we did this hunting small properties segment and how I've gravitated towards that as a hunter. I find that, me personally, I am struggling with these bigger pieces as far as isolating that deer movement and pinpointing travel and everything. Do you have like a level of which you could speak on on that as far as how you dissect something say 400 acres or more? You can't do it in a year. I honestly don't think. I've had this property nine years. Yeah. And you know just, okay, so the farm that I hunt, it I'll be, I will have hunted it my main farm 20 years, okay. The first time I've ever stepped foot on it was 2006 during the turkey season.

15:24And then I was able to hunt it with a bow the first time in 2027. Okay. So it's four total of the total acreage on this one farm is 480, all right, lays out kind of funky. But I can't, you can't do it in a year. You can't hunt the whole farm. I mean, you can litter it with trail cameras and I even, even, let's say I'm going to get how many trail cameras do I have on it, one, two, I'll tell you the year I put, had the most trail cameras on it, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, I had nine trail cameras over 800, or excuse me, 480 acres, they didn't tell me too much to be honest with you. Yeah. I mean, you're not even that one to 50 acres basically, right, right, they didn't tell me too much. I got, I got good enough deer on trail camera to where I was able to go out and start,

16:29you know, patterning some mature bucks, but they come through and log it somewhere around 2014. Yeah. Now you have a completely different environment, right, the tree tops are in there, they're, they create a different type of habitat. It's opened up the canopy. So now there's more light down in there. So now there's areas that are thicker. And so now we have just a completely different environment, the deer are moving through it differently. And so it's like every year, I have to go in or I used to go in and walk the whole property shed hunt, the whole thing. And now I just don't do that anymore, just because of time, right. But outside of that, I'm just like, I just take it a little bit at a time. I know what the terrain is telling me. I know what the pet like his, I have historical data. I think, I think the travel corridors stay the same, but the bedding changes when you

17:31do that. So. Yeah, I just, I don't know, I've had a problem with hunting this property. And I don't know if it's because it's, it's not like a big solid block of timber, you know, but it's got the draws and it's got, you know, buffer strips and it's broke up into, you know, basically the north side of the farm is, it's corn this year, it's beans this year and then they rotate opposite. And so a lot of it's, it looks like there's pressure from the west and the north. And then there's a roadside on the east and then the south side is well manicured and they hunt and everything. So that you know, there's pressure, but they also have a good food source. So it's, it's been a difficult thing, but back to what you were saying about logging, it must have been the third year I was hunting this property. He logged his property, which changed the dynamics of that was their bedding right along the south border. And then they changed the entrance to their property and a lot of things changed with it. But I mean, I've struggled with this piece more than I've ever struggled a fence line or a small piece. And I just, I don't know, maybe I'm hunting just the perfect small pieces.

18:34I don't know. Yeah. And here's the thing when I, I used to overthink everything, I used to get extremely frustrated. But here is the basics, like we call this the, the how to hunt deer podcast, right? Right. Trails do not lie. They are the absolute road map and a trail can tell you a lot, right? I can walk on to any farm in the United States and I can see a deer trail plain as day. If they're using it over and over and over again and historically, they are. I mean, right now you can go see where the deer are crossing roads. It's the, the soil is a little moist. So you can see them where they jump the fence a lot. And you can go in and you can find these dead set trails. The trails are still going to be there in the fall, right, or in the late summer. And if you're, if you're confused of where you should set up, step number one, find

19:35a trail. Yeah. Set up within shooting range of a trail with your wind blowing away from the trail. That's like deer hunting 101, okay? And assume that they're coming from the timber or from the thick stuff to a destination food source, whether that's an open wide open oak flat, whether that's an ag field or a food plot mornings, try to find a different way in and hunt that same trail with them coming back into into it. So that's the basics of it. And so anytime I ever get lost or confused of where I should go and I'm trying to locate a doe group or a big buck, I am going back to the basics of just finding a popular trail. Yeah. That's it. Well, and if you use your mapping devices too, I mean, right now, if you're looking at a map from a winner time frame, that map will show you trails if you zoom in on it.

20:40I mean, even out west, you know, we've looked at, you know, a winner map when they took the pictures over winner and the vegetation's down and everything. You can see all these trails that these deer use. So that's one thing that I've done in the past. If I don't have the time to get on a property to identify, maybe at least a spot to try to sit or scout if I have, you know, an opportunity, but no, it's just, it's just been something I was thinking about because I covered a lot of ground quick, you know, but, you know, and I narrowed down that farm to basically going back nine years where I thought the best deer movement on that farm was. But now figuring out like they use other pieces of this property, you know, how to make a A, B and C on this property of like what I prioritize and what I make, you know, my go to spot, you know, where do I spend my weak rut hunt at? Yeah. Yeah. And the way I look at that is I feel like where I'm spending, that's what I'm doing not this weekend, but next weekend, right, is I'm moving, I'm micromanaging my tree

21:46stand locations. One, I'm literally moving 10 yards. That's it because there's a row of trees that I can't shoot through. And so I'm moving my, I'm moving, I'm moving, I'm moving my tree stand into that row of trees. I'm still going to be able to shoot the crit crossing. That's there. I'm going to be able to shoot this little other area behind me. But then I'm going to be catching a ton of deer movement that I couldn't catch previously. So I'm going to be doing that. And then what the goal is is micromanaging all of those to put them into very hot travel corridors during the rut, because there is some places that I missed this year that I should have moved, but because of my knee, I didn't. So now before my knee surgery, I'm going to move them and hopefully just walk into the, walk into the farm and hunt. Every single year, I have to make minor adjustments though. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that's what I was getting at too, is like I have stands, pre-hung stands

22:48on this property. And I could hunt. I don't know. There's probably one for every 25 to 50 acres on this property. But like focal point wise, like I don't have stands where I really feel like they should be. You know, I need to make some adjustments. So you know, I need a day of doing the same thing, pulling some stands down, moving them because as we see with kids and with life and work and everything, you don't have the time to necessarily run and gun at our age, as you used to maybe. Yeah. Well, I still run and gun, but I would rather not run and gun. You know, like 45 years old, bad knees, bad shoulder. I'll do it. Yeah. I'll do it. But if I can put in two days, like I'm going to go on a Friday, I'm going to spend the night, come back to the farm the next morning. We're all going to do like a big shed hunt. I'm going to let the boys go crazy. My boy is probably going to bring a friend, my oldest boy, and I'm just going to say, go wherever you want. Don't cross any fences, go wherever you want.

23:50And you can go look for shed antlers, stay away from the pond. And then I'm going to go do my stuff and then let them go have their fun. And then we'll walk the farm together looking for antlers. So. Yeah. That's a great idea. I mean, I wish I had more time to be able to do it, you know, because with all the kids, they love shed hunting. And normally we try to get out at least once or twice all of us, all seven of us will go and we'll do it. But this year, I mean, you know, she's already that far pregnant and everything. I don't know that she's going to walk that far. And we're not taking our trip to Iowa that we normally do. We're not going to do that this year. So there's a lot of things there. But there was something I was thinking about when we were talking about the stands and everything. So we were moving stuff around out in one of the barns this past weekend. And when we're moving stuff around, all my hunting stuff and decoys had to get moved to a different area. And I stumbled upon the one of the ears for my doe decoy. And it just took me back to this past fall, talking about this running gun style of hunting.

24:55That's what I had to do to make this happen. You know, I was running gun hunting. I was two decoys. I was dragging them both in the sled. And I had one day that basically I made everything work that day and everything happened to work for me too. So it still does happen. But yeah, convenience and luxury wise, man, I'd much rather just go find my perch and sit and relax at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I feel you. I mean, it's all about time, really. Yeah. You know, time is what makes people successful, whether it is time put into food plots or time put into scouting or time put into actually hunting, right? You know, there's a, I'm sure there's some kind of bell curve or some kind of triangle. Like you could have time and days off versus, I don't know, like time spent in the spring versus time or scouting in March versus time in the hunting or throughout the fall.

25:56But what I'm getting at there is you can be successful without scouting if you put a ton of work into like hunting, right? Like I know guys, it kind of in your line of work where he's on a construction crew for a road crew and he works probably starting in March and he won't stop until October and then they lay him off mid October because that's usually when the weather gets bad. So he'll be working his 80 hours a week on a road crew all, all spring, all summer, all through September and then October hits, they lay him off and he is gone, right? He hunts every single day of October. He hunts every single day in November, he hunts the gun season and he just goes. And so that's where he finds his success because he's able to scour the hunting season. I know other guys who they get there four, five, six days a week off or a year off.

27:00And so their time is spent in the spring, like a day here, a day there, going out scouting, looking for terrain on public, then there's the other guys. They don't scout at all but they plant food plots and they do habitat work and they own their own property and that's where they put their time and that way when they walk into the stand and they've done their off season prep, they can just wait. They show up in the deer already there, you know what I mean? Yeah, so I'm going to just ask the simple question with that. What would you rather have you personally? If you know you have to work that whatever job it may be, what would you rather have? Would you rather have the time in in the hunting season or would you rather be able to put the time in into scouting and then not as much during the hunting season? Scouting, more time scouting or more time hunting. Basically, yes, let's ask it that way. Any expert, quote unquote expert that the public land running gun guys look up to will tell you

28:01scouting is more important. Okay, they'll tell you that everybody's like, dude, I spend more time scouting but there's a difference between scouting in March and scouting in season because now you're looking at data that's more real time, I guess you would say, but they're also hunting while they scout. So I'm sitting here and I'm going to go, if I had to pick one, I wish I had more days in late October and the first two weeks in November or a gun season or whatever it is, I'd rather pick more hunting days. I think so too, because you can do both. Yeah, I 100% agree on that because I love the post season scouting. I love the even summer scouting. All that stuff's great, but it's not the current data. It's not the current situation. I mean, deer fall by the wayside, crops change, you know, maybe there's a deretio or a tornado that comes through, wipes corn fields out or something, changes food sources. So there's a lot that changes there, but it was just a thought I had like, you know,

29:04if a guy's really struggling with finding time, you know, where do you put your time, where do you take your time off of work? I think it's a great idea just to maybe invest that time into into the fall itself instead of burn invocation time in the spring scouting, but when you said the expert like public land hunters and stuff, it brought a question to my head that I was thinking about when I was shed hunting the other day, I stumbled upon this. It was like a thermal hub and there had to have been six helium balloons in there, okay? I mean, like somebody had a birthday party in the woods and there was six helium balloons in there and they were kind of scattered along this ledge, you know, but it was like when I stood in there, I could feel like why a buck would bed there. Wasn't there a thing several years ago that used to be like, if you found a balloon, it was like a buck bedding area, wasn't there? Yeah, in fault or somebody said something about this. Yeah, yeah, basically wherever you find

30:07balloons out, you know, people would use to let them up. Now I think that might even be illegal. It's illegal. Yeah, yeah. So people would let balloons in the sky and then they would they have to fall somewhere. Right. And wherever they fall, that's where you should hunt because that's that's where a thermal hub is or a buck bedding area or something. I have no idea, but yeah, that was kind of like a fun thing from, you know, the internet. Yeah, I couldn't remember what it was, but all I remember was that there was six helium balloons in there and I'm thinking, man, I'm a perched up, you know, over here thinking this is going to be a great spot, but the odds of finding that many in one spot, I don't know something fishy maybe. Yeah. Lots to think about between now and next season, you know, obviously we're coming up on food plot season. I did, I did drive by a farm that was for sale yesterday. Okay. And man, I know a lot of guys have these conversations internally with their family.

31:13One of my dreams, Jason, is to be a landowner. All right. I think it's 27 acres. It was for, I don't have it up, but I'm going to pull it up real quick while I talk. It's 27 acres. I believe it is for $168,000. Okay. And 162,000 for 24 acres. Okay. It's not much, man. I mean, what I mean by that, it's not much. I mean, it's, it's a strip of timber along the road and along the creek. And now there's trail camera pictures in there that say that there are deer come through it. I used to shed hunt the neighboring farm years and years and years ago. And there was always, you know, big deer in that area. How do you, how would a guide justify spending that type of money and average Joe? Let's talk

32:14from the aspects of an average Joe. When, and this is more of a social conversation, not necessarily a strategy conversation, my wife doesn't hunt. Right. She doesn't care about the things that I care about, right? You know, we talk about going on vacations and we talk about spending money on a new bathroom or doing, you know, spending money on the kids' activities and stuff like that. And all of that, all of that takes away from the savings eventually, because this is kind of what I'm going through. Could I afford this property? If I didn't have to do all the other stuff, I probably could, but I also am trying to make other people happy. And you know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to make other people happy with their lives and their goals. And this might be like a deeper conversation than just hunting. But I, I, I'm like, I, this is like the perfect beginner farm

33:21for me. I just want to, I just, I just don't see land ownership anywhere close in my future because of the way that our family is. I don't know what any other way to put it. So my personal thing on that is, so 14 years ago, I approached my two brothers with buying 10 acres low and behold, we ended up having to buy 11 because we had to buy access to it. But we, I mean, that was enough money. Let's put it that way. That was enough money for three of us to afford. And we, we formed an LLC. We did it all legal wise. We have insurance on it. All the things, right? Right. We just paid it off last summer. So basically now our investment is, is, is there. And we have to maintain that investment by paying the LLC fees, the insurance, the taxes on it and all that stuff. Now we can enjoy it. But everything that gets done there is divided by

34:22three of us, right? So if food plots get done, or if there's, hey, I want to rip out a row of trees, or if I want to put a food plot here, there, there's a question, you know, of like, okay, guys, are you cool with that? And then just so happens that only one of the, well, one of the brothers does not hunt. He does not eat deer meat. He has no interest in any of it. He bought it just for the investment aspect. Now, now fast forward a couple more years, nine years ago, I bought the, the house I live in. And it was an older farmhouse. And there's 12 acres here, but only five or six of it is actual, honable, you know, the way it lays out with buildings. And it has a pond and everything. And so I took the happy medium, right? And like, I realized I'm not going to be able to afford another 10 to 20 acres of just farm, or just hunting ground on my own. I'm going to have to live and sacrifice something here. So I live in the house. I know that there's, this is not prime deer

35:27hunting, right? So I've had to develop it. And in the process of developing it, I've watched farmers take down fence rows and trees and kind of ruin property around me to where now it's kind of dismal. So, so finding that little honey hole, do justifying that money, it is hard because I mean, we're putting this addition on the house. And I'm thinking the same thing you are, like, I could take that hundred and some $1,000 invested in some property too. Yeah. But, but what are real realistic expectations? The property you just mentioned, it's 6750 an acre. So, are you, are you doing this by yourself? Do you have silent private investors? Are you doing this as a group? You know, there's different things aspects to look at. Yeah. No, it would be, I mean, I just want to get into the land game. But I also want to accomplish a goal of having myself, I don't even give a shit about big box anymore. To be honest with you, when it comes to this, it would be in a decent neighborhood.

36:27I know that there's quality deer there in the area, maybe not on this 24 acres, but it's just, I look at it and I go, this would be something to get into. The price per acre is okay. But, like, I could probably do it by myself, but then I would also like, and I hope your wife can't hear what I'm about to say. No, she's there. But, okay. All right. But the, I'm sure guys go through this, there's a lot of guys that go through this every year. And they, they know that they have to, like, their life just isn't hunting. It's just not all hunting. And they have to make other people happy, right? So if I went through and made this purchase, let's say, and then I would have to be, I couldn't justify the vacations or some of the other stuff we spend our money on, which would affect other people in the family. Right. And that would cause a little bit of a rupture. You

37:34know what I mean? Well, you got your farm. Why can't we have a vacation? You know, like, you got your thing. Why can't I have my thing? And I'm, I'm almost positive a lot of, a lot of guys go through that. And, and it's a dream of mine, but it's not everybody else's dream. And I'm not, I don't make enough money for all of that to happen. You know what I mean? Yeah. And like, to just go out and blow money on a 24 acre farm, I can't do it quite yet. But I just keep, I just keep saving away and saving away. And then maybe when I'm 75 years old, I'll be able to buy 10 acres for five years, then die. I mean, it's realistic. You know, it's like, you know, you spend 30 years on paying a mortgage, you know, and then it's like, okay, the mortgage is paid off. And we, our vehicles are finally paid off or, you know, you've traded the vehicles in every accident of years or whatever, but you get to that point where your quote unquote debt free. Oh, I'm 70. I'm going to go buy my recreational ground. Ah, odds are, you're probably not.

38:41You're probably going to move a little bit further south. And I mean, at least that's how I see my life playing out as I'm going to work until I die. And there's not a, there's not a quote unquote retirement period. You know, so, so for me to enjoy it, it's, I need to enjoy it through the whole process right now. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I guess we figure that out, right? We try to, we try to figure it out. We try to just keep looking at things and planning and like, this 24 acres, it would not be the best place in the world to do this. But like, because it's got road frontage, it's off of a big. It's like, it just has a little bit of cover on it. There's deer that are on it. I don't know how many deer are on it during the hunting season. But either way, I, I'm trying to figure out a way to get in there and like, make something like this happen.

39:42Yeah. And I mean, to that point too, you know, you say maybe it's not in the best area, you can make even a small piece just enticing enough just for the rut even. You know, it's like here at home in nine years, I hadn't had a deer encounter period. You know, I know the deer are there. They're just, they're not turned all through my property. Well, this last fall, I had a really nice buck that was in there. You know, he's on camera, but he would play cat and mouse and he was on one side and I was on the other side. And you know, going back to the whole big buck topic too though with that. Yeah. Man, if, if a, if a spike buck walks by, you know, I'm going to be entering my, what is this? The ninth 10th fall of, of hunting here. He might be the biggest trophy I ever shoot, you know? Right. Right. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Hopefully someday we have enough money or to do something like that or to make a dreamer reality. And I know, you know, you talk to, you talk to people and they say the best time to own land was yesterday. The second

40:46best time is today, right? Yeah. And so I get it. Prices go up. But that's not, that's not a realistic and especially in today's economy. How much things cost? Having kids like, I don't want to jeopardize my kids. Future or my relationship with my wife because I want to be a landowner. I understand the investment part of it. But it just, I don't know, it's a, it's a dream I have. It's something I want really bad. I could probably like make some financial adjustments to try to figure it out. But then I would be, I know, you know how it is being a, someone who makes their money. And it's, I have, since I've started doing this full time, the podcasting and the sportsman's empire, I have never made the same amount of money two years in a row. You know what I mean? Yeah. So what I mean by that is it fluctuates. Some years I make more money. Some years I make less.

41:47Some, you know, I could have a down year, but then I have it up here. And so it's never like my sal, it's never a salary position of like $70,000 a year or whatever. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know what I mean by that? Yeah. I, I would say like for me, business wise, gross, I'm very consistent. My gross is very consistent. What changes from year to year is the amount of, amount of materials. Yep. So, so I mean, that changes the end, end game too. You know, when, when my taxes are done, it could be like, holy cow, that's it. You know, it's, it's huge on some, some years. There's, there's huge hits. And, and with what I do, there is a ton of extra expense with fuel and all that stuff. Materials. Yes. It's, it's, it's, it's very expensive. You know, so to try to justify, like for me right now, to try to justify with my wife, hey, there's 10 acres or there's 20 acres down the road, man, that'd be very hard with six kids. Yeah. Yep. Yep. 100%. 100%. So, so I don't know,

42:50it's just something I, I think about a lot. And, you know, you drive by it, it just seems so out of reach sometimes those goals, especially in a state like Iowa, right, where it's becoming harder and harder to find ground to hunt because everybody hunts deer, everybody wants, you know, big bucks, non-residents are coming in all the time. Private is overrun. And it, or excuse me, public land seems to be overrun during the best times of the year. And I don't know, I guess I just got to find ways to adapt. Yeah. I mean, I think if, you know, it's, if it's a dream, you know, you always make those dreams happen somehow, right? Yeah, you adjust somehow. So if it's a property like this, you know, is there something that you can make some money on? Is there CRP? Is there Tillable? Is there Timber Harvest? Or I don't want to talk about like an outfit or type situation, but you know, for you, if you want to make this hunt or if this property is a dream for you, you could also say, hey, I know a couple non-residents that, hey, they're putting in

43:55points. And I could charge them 500 bucks or a thousand bucks to come hunt my farm this fall. You know, and make money that way too. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I don't know, man. We'll see. It's some, you know, again, it's just one of those things I think about. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a great topic to think about because I mean, there is only so much land and there's only so much time. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And so I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what happens in the future. I am, I'm optimistic. The pessimistic. So I don't know what that means. Okay. So is your glass half full or half empty? It's half. That's what it is. It's just half. It's half. And it's your choice to fill it up. Exactly. I got to figure that out. Maybe I'll just, maybe I'll just buy more scratch scratch off lottery tickets at the gas station. Yeah. And that's, that's a, that's a, that's like a slippery slope in itself. You know, I, you know, back in the construction days,

44:56when I was paving roads and stuff, we'd always stop and get our coffee in the morning. And, and I'd get the Illinois lucky day lotto or I'd get the mega millions or whatever. And then I'd throw in a couple scratchers, you know, and then you know, you hit 20 bucks on a scratcher and they think you just hit it. So then you just go blow that 20 bucks on 20 more dollars worth of scratch offs. I, and I stopped. You know, when I started my own business, I pretty much stopped all that stuff called Turkey. And I changed, I changed so much of my lifestyle because I knew that the money coming in was my money. Like, I think that's it. Yep. Yep. I feel you. I feel you. I feel you. So what else do we need to talk about today before we shut it down? You got to, you got a crew coming in here pretty soon. Yeah, drywall guys. I don't know. It's, it's, yeah, that the GC's on vacation. So we can't even expect too much. But there's a guy coming to do the interior patching and right now, Dan, if I could take my camera and I could show you. So like, to my right, there's a little walkway and then there's our kitchen. And so our kitchens being opened

45:57up into like a mudroom area. And then off of that will be like our master bedroom and stuff. Well, the kitchen wall has, has been torn off the side of the house, right? Okay. So, so the whole additions built, the whole outside is done at the house. The whole inside is drywalled. But the part it, the opening from the kitchen to the mudroom is that one and a half inch foam board right now. And it has been this way for over two and a half, three weeks now. So it's, it's just stand in there. One solid wall. So our kitchen is like a third smaller than it was. And, and we can't even walk all the way around the island. We have to like, there's only one way in one way out. And we have seven of us moving in here. And then they haven't finished the HVAC. So like, none of the heat is going in there. So we got these gigantic industrial electric heaters that are just sucking my electric bill right to the ground, you know, and they're noisy. But yeah, so I don't, I don't know. I'm hoping the end is near, but the worst part of this is I'm doing all the finish work in there. So like I'm doing the flooring, I'm doing the trim, I'm doing the doors, I'm doing

47:02all of that stuff. And I'm going to be starting to work here in probably a week or two. Yeah. So I had a buddy. Here's a, here's a story. I had a buddy. He had a full time job as an electrician. And then him and his wife built a house. So he was, he, he almost built the whole thing himself, right? He did the framework. He did the drywall. He was the electrician. So we knew how to do all of that stuff. He did him and another guy did the plumbing. And then he did all the finishing stuff as well. And he's like, dude, I almost killed myself building that house. Like having to go to, you know, work eight, 10 hours a day and then come home and work five hours, six hours on a house, get three or four hours of sleep. And then because his wife was pregnant with one of their kids at the time. And it was just a nightmare. You know what I mean? And he's like, I almost died building this house. So I think we'll end it here. Jason, I hope you don't die on this extension. This,

48:03this home extension, I mean, I could elaborate more on this. So when I bought this house nine years ago, this is 150 year old house. So I completely gutted it to the, to the walls, to the studs and everything. And everything was updated plumbing, electrical, HVAC. And I did all that. So like, I was working all day long and then coming out and working on the house till midnight to a clock. We owned another house. We rented a apartment. It was a catastrophe. And I literally did this in six months time to get us moved in to sell another house and to make everything closure wise work. I did about kill myself. That was about nine years ago. So this was, I'm going to hire a GC. I'm going to leave it up to you. And now we're approaching. We talked to them a year ago in March about doing this. So it was a year ago in March. So if we can, or April, I'm sorry, if we can make this happen before April, I can at least say, I guess I had a year of him doing it, not me. Yeah. You just better be like, dude, I gotta, I gotta need, I need a place to hang a turkey fan. So hurry the F up. Yeah. It was exciting because I started getting the like the new podcast area,

49:09like ironed out the other day. Like I took deer heads down and they're in the basement and everything. So the podcast thing will be in the basement now. And I think it'll be pretty cool. But time, time, money, time and money. That's how you kill big bucks, right? Time, time, time, money. One thing I did want to hit on real quick, because we never talk about it. It seems like is, is equipment. Guys, make sure you're checking your equipment. And man, I miss my bow. I don't know about you, but I miss my bow. I love shooting my bow. And I have not shot that thing since I shot my deer or so. No, same, same. I haven't pulled it back. I'm trying to think, I'm trying to think about getting new, a new bow this year. I say that every year, but I don't need it. So I have a, I'll tell you what, the next couple of warm days I have, I'm going to be in my garage organizing shit. I just have piles of shit that need to be put away. So, you know, all right, everybody. Do us a huge favor, go to Spotify or iTunes, wherever you download the how to hunt deer podcast, give us a five star review, leave a comment, let everybody know that this is a good

50:14podcast to listen to. Also, we have, as soon as I, as soon as we get some more information about, or not more information, as soon as we get some more video recorded, we're going to start putting more video up on the YouTube channel, the how to hunt your YouTube channel. So go subscribe to that. I would appreciate it. Outside of that, good vibes, everybody. Have a good rest of your week, and we'll talk to you next week.