N.F.C. - Washed Up Bowhunter

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. Our yoga instructor challenged us to find interpeace. I found it faster than anyone. After four seconds, I stood up and screamed, I found her, Fonda, I win! They asked me to leave. I guess they don't respect winning. Bet365 does, though. New customers get $365 in bonus bets just for betting $10. I must stay losers. Bet365. Winning is everything. If you're a podcast host, listen up this one for you.

1:05My 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 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. And give it a try. Go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. That's redcircle.com for a free trial. Ladies and gentlemen, of the jury, I haven't done, I haven't done one of these in a while.

2:09Remember back in the day when I used to go, whoa, get everybody fired up, dude. I don't do that as much anymore, but I feel like doing it today. I'm actually in a really good mood. You know, a lot's happened in the last 72 hours, man, I'm pretty jacked up today is, I'm recording this on Tuesday, March 10th at 1.35 pm. I spent all morning like the shitty part about working for yourself is I have to be disciplined all the time. And this morning I was not disciplined. It took me like four hours to do something that usually takes about 45 minutes. I was just like lost and I don't know if any of you guys, like the last time I remembered being that much of a procrastinator was when I actually was sitting in a cubicle. And that was, and then it made me think like, holy shit, how long have I been self-employed like doing this podcasting thing and like not necessarily doing the podcasting thing,

3:11but actually being self-employed, making enough money from this to do the, you know, to make a living off of it. And it's been, it's been eight years. I've been self-employed eight years. That blows my absolute mind that I've been able to do this for eight years. And so anyway, I was thinking a little bit about that today. I was thinking about this past weekend and I know I'm probably repeating myself here, especially if you have been following along on the nine finger chronicles, social media pages, especially the Instagram page, you know that we're kind of like a wrestling family. My daughter's a wrestler. She's taking it very serious. I have two boys who are also, they're more into baseball right now, but they're still in wrestling. I don't know where they kind of stand at wrestling. They're in it right now, but they're not like, it's not their favorite sport. No big deal. And it's crazy.

4:11This past weekend was our AAU state tournament here in Iowa. My daughter went in with the goal. The previous year, she said, I want to make the podium and she got fifth place. This year, she said, I want to be top four and she won the entire thing. She won the championship. So at the time, my daughter weighed in at 104. There was 19 girls in her bracket and she got first place. So she went from the, I don't know, she went from a goal of fourth to actually winning the whole damn thing in there. You could do so many things I want to talk about with my daughter. She's 13 now. She is growing up into, I don't like, I don't want this to be braggie, but I am extremely proud of the young lady she has become.

5:16And it's not because she won a wrestling championship. It's because she is kind, she is compassionate, she is empathetic, she, she, the only person she ever has disagreements with or her two younger brothers. And I don't blame her at all for that. It's one of those things where like, I'm getting to watch her become a version of somebody better than myself. And I absolutely love that. That is a very good feeling when your offspring is already better than the person who you used to be. And I'm very proud of that. And so I'm not only that, not only from the sport, like she puts a ton of time into wrestling. She's also still in dance and she is, she's extremely like dedicated now to the point where she wants to shift some of her other extracurricular activities and to not doing

6:18those anymore. And I was like, so for example, dance, right? My daughter was like, hey, dad, I don't know if I want to do dance anymore next year. And on the outside, I said, oh, are you sure, sweetie? Are you sure? I mean, because you know, it's okay if you still do dance on the inside, I'm like, yeah, yeah, like fist pumping, fist pumping because dance. Oh my God, dance, dance, dance, dance. I'm sure I'm sure it's good for like girls and it helps them build confidence and it gets them into being active and all that stuff. It's just I didn't necessarily vibe with it. I know my wife didn't necessarily vibe with it. We were doing it because my daughter wanted to do it. And now that my daughter doesn't necessarily want to do it next year, we're kind of debating on whether or not we finished the season. I don't think she wants to even finish the rest of the dance season, but I'm also someone who believes in if you say you're going to do something, you got to, you got to finish

7:21it. There's no, there's no ending halfway through the season. So the thing about it is is like now she, we get to take a week off for spring break and she, and then she has to go back to dance on Monday and Wednesdays. Well, the, the new club she's joining also has practices on Monday and Wednesdays. And so she's only going to be able to do one wrestling practice a week until the end of the year, which is absolutely crazy. And so we are trying to figure out what to do there. I don't think she wants to go to dance. She wants to go to wrestling because we are now in freestyle season. And for those of you who don't know, there's different versions of wrestling. There's folk style and freestyle and freestyle is what the college girls do. And so there is a lot of, there's a lot of adjusting schedules that needs to happen between now and the end of spring break. We got to kind of figure that out, but that's, that is life figuring out schedules and things like that. So wrestling aside, something else happened that made me extremely proud of her last

8:26week. And not only did she, you know, dedicate a lot of time and energy into doing multiple dance practices like a week she was doing multiple wrestling practices a day at times she was going to her middle school wrestling practice, then going to her club wrestling practice. And then on Mondays and Wednesday, still going to her dance classes. So just an absolutely crazy schedule. And despite all of that, she still made the school honor roll, which I'm almost more proud of that because I realized that there's way more life after athletics than there, then there is time in athletics now athletics can teach you a lot of lessons like discipline, self control, how to work with other people, all of that stuff, communication, a lot of that stuff. And so I'm very proud of that. But I was never good in school.

9:26I never got good grades, hell, I can't, I couldn't even focus a little butterfly would fly by the window and I would just stop and I would look out the window. Maybe it was 80 HD, maybe it was not, but that's something I struggled with all through school even today, you know, it's trying to find focus. And that's why this podcast is sometimes so sporadic in the conversations and things like that. So extremely proud of her. I'm extremely proud of my sons. They're way too young for me to figure out, you know, figure them out and say, you know, congratulations, you know, maybe wrestling is your sport or this is your sport or congratulations for the honor roll, like for them, just showing up is a victory. And dude, I'm going to tell you my oldest son, all he talks about is fishing. All he talks about is hunting now. And it's to the point now where I feel bad because I want to take him out to do all those things, but I don't have the time to do it like, for example, this upcoming week weekend

10:32is the start of spring break. So this Friday is the start of spring break. I am pulling him out of school and my and his best friend out of school. And we're going to do a shed hunting slash property management weekend. And we are, we're going to go to one of the farms that I hunt and we're going to get a hotel in a small town. We're going to do it. We're going to eat beans. We're going to fart. We're going to like laugh, have laughing jokes like we're going to have a boys weekend. And we're going to look for sheds. I'm going to move some tree stands. We're going to cut down some trees. I'm going to do some like hinge cutting, some timber stand improvement type stuff, making the bedding areas. You've probably heard me talk about. And those kids are so damn excited for that weekend. I just hope we find like a shed or like one or two sheds. That's it. I don't care. Just enough to keep them excited. It's going to be warmish enough like the last couple days.

11:34It's been over 60 here in Iowa. And then this next this upcoming weekend, we're looking like mid 40s as a possible high. And so I'm hoping it doesn't rain. All I really care about is that we can get out and just be outside for a while because I feel like I've really been putting in a lot of time and energy to my daughter. And now it's time to put some time and energy into my other boys. And so we're going to have a little man trip this weekend. We're going to do some man stuff like like cut down a tree, like throw rocks into water, like fart out loud and laugh at it. Like all the stuff guys love to do, right? And so, and so that's I'm so looking forward to this upcoming this upcoming weekend. This summer specifically, dude, like a lot of things open up in my schedule for this summer. I'm really looking forward to maybe getting more to some farm ponds to do in some camping. This weekend, like I got some tents. I feel like a lot of the state parks around here actually have Wi-Fi at the campground that

12:40all you got to do is connect to it. And so they have like these little Wi-Fi things on posts so that the whole campground can get Wi-Fi and that's pretty bad ass. And so I feel like I want to do a lot more of that because I feel like last summer, the kids kind of sat around all day while me and the mom were working and they weren't very active until we like pushed them outside and took them to their their activities. And so this year, I really think that we need to I'm going to do a better job of like even if I have to do my work from like eight to 10 o'clock at night even finish up my work that I want to just spend as much time outside as humanly possible this this summer and get everybody like back on the outdoor train that we were on earlier this year. So I'm looking forward to that. And then, you know, the whole process starts over again, right? One of the things I plan on doing is putting new batteries in my reveals while I am out on this farm.

13:41I'm going to freshen up my mineral sites. I'm going to turn my cell cams back on and I'm going to kind of catch the last part of shedding and then let those trail cameras kind of all wind down. You know, let the batteries wind down. Hopefully April, May, June, I'll get three months of trail cameras pictures out of them. And then when the, you know, because they're taking a lot of pictures, especially if I'm putting them over like a refreshed mineral site, I'm going to be doing that. And I'm going to be taking mineral fresh batteries, get a lot of pictures and then hopefully somewhere around that June, July timeframe, I'm going to be able to get back out there, get batteries in the cameras again. All of my stands are going to be switched and set. And long story short, just have everything ultra ready for the upcoming season as I am not going on a, I'm not going on a western hunt this year because of my knee surgery that takes place in one, two weeks. I'm having a total knee replacement in two weeks.

14:43And based off of the, what the doctor said, you know, this is where I'm kind of getting nervous. Because the doctor said, dude, you're going to be fine. Your knee is bad, but you're young enough and your muscle structure around your knee is still good enough to where you're going to have a quicker recovery than a 60 or seven year old. I get that. That's awesome. But I'm also wanting to remain active. And I want to be able to walk in the hills and potentially go in the mountains again. And I know a lot of that rides on me and my activity levels for, you know, rehabbing the knee and staying active and going on walks and, and building muscle around the knee again and going to my physical therapy and all that stuff because I think it's not the recovery that scares me. It's the doing the knee surgery than having some kind of limitation, right? Like maybe climbing a tree stand is going to be difficult. Man, I hope not because I don't want that. I know that potentially I'm going to have to change up my climbing sticks to have not

15:47necessarily every other step, but double steps on each peg. So not just every other, it's, I can have two feet on. I can go up and have two feet on and then I can go up again and have two feet on. So I don't know. I'm looking forward to I kind of just want to get it out of the way to be honest with you. My goal was to have it done already, like the first of the year. And I called and they're like, no, wait, we can't do it until March and maybe a little bit of that was some procrastination on my part. The other thing is, is my son is really looking forward to turkey season. And I'm going to be like two or three weeks post-op before by the time turkey season rolls around. And I honestly don't know what my status is going to be. I want to at least be able to go with him out in the woods. I want to be able to maybe even on crutches walk drive to a certain point. Be on crutches, open up a gate somewhere, sit down and hopefully they kind of come in.

16:50But I don't know. We'll see. We'll kind of see what happens. I'm really looking forward to just getting it over with so I know where I'm at. I know where I'm going to be and feeling getting all that feeling all that out. So before we go any further, I just want to send a shout out to all of the partners of the nine finger chronicles, man. I know that the commercials are about the brands every every time I do an episode. But what I really want is for you guys to just go visit their website. And then you make the decision on if this is a product that that you like or not. I'm a huge fan of all the products. And they have a place in my white my 365 white tail plan every year. And so I just want to send a huge shout out to these brands, wasp archery. I mean, these guys in my opinion are some of the best in the business, right? The material that they use is second to none. Most of their heads are still manufactured in the United States. That actually means something. And so that just keeps getting harder and harder to do with manufacturing in the United

17:54States. But because of certain things, it's now like we're stable again, I guess. So if you guys could just do me a favor, go over to wasp archery, check out their full lineup of mechanical and fixed blade heads, wasp archery.com. I do have a discount code NFC for 20% off. Next on the list is vortex optics. Turkey season is coming up and I put a red dot last year. I put a red dot on my 12 gauge, excuse me, on my 20 gauge and on my 410. That's what the kids have been using. And they seem to find it easier to put the dot on the Turkey's head through that reticle and pull the trigger. So I'm really looking forward to my kids getting out, you know, practicing their shot again and getting getting ready for the Turkey season. Go check out vortex optics.com and their complete lineup of objects, especially their red dots for this upcoming Turkey season. Next on the list is code blue sense. One of the things I'm going to be doing this weekend while I'm out there is freshening

18:57up. And I know you're thinking, well, it's so far from the season, doesn't it matter? If any of you have been hunting for long enough, you've maybe run across like a hub scrape or a scrape that's active all year round. I'm telling you right now, deer are social animals and they lay sign all year round, whether it's a scrape or a licking branch or something along those lines. They're not necessarily extremely active at it, but they're still doing it all year round. And so I want that signpost to be my mox grape paired with one of my reveal trail cameras, right? So code blue sense.com go check out the ropedo mox grape kit. I'm going to be freshening up a lot of those sites here pretty soon. And so go take a look at that. Go take a look at their real and synthetic deer urins. They're sent on elimination products like field spray and laundry detergent and a whole bunch of other products that they offer code blue sense.com discount code NFC two zero

19:59for 20% off. Next on the list is reveal trail cameras. These guys are doing amazing things. They're the best in the business for a reason. And I think a lot of it has to do with just the basic functionality of their camera. I could go into detail now and talk about all of the awesome things, but when it really comes down to it, what do you want out of a cell camera? You want it to take pictures of deer and send them to your phone. That's the basics. That's what I want. I want to know what deer are running around on my farms and what I want to go chase this year. So go check out tacktacam.com slash cameras and check out their full lineup of cameras. They're easy to use, easy to set up. Their app is getting upgraded, which seems like they're they're sending updates through their app on a weekly basis now. And it's no brainer to get a reveal. So go check that out last, but not least, it's almost turkey season.

20:59Go check out full sneak gear.com. Go buy one of my turkey t-shirts. I would really appreciate it. I'd like for those to get sold out so I can get rid of them and get some room here in my warehouse and what I mean, warehouse, I mean office. So I got shirts all over the place now. I got some new stock in. If you guys could do me a favor and go buy a t-shirt, I believe I'm running a pretty big discount right now. I'd appreciate it. So full sneak gear.com. All right. Cell cams and trail cameras are back on again, round two on, I guess you want to call it the chopping block or a bullet point of conversation again, it seems like they always are here in Iowa. Crossbow conversations are happening again, rules and regulations are changing. I really wanted to go Iowa held a DNR meeting a couple weeks ago and or actually was it it was last week. And unfortunately my wife had a work meeting which meant that no, it wasn't work meeting, where was I at?

21:59Recently, our company softball team lost the big game by one run. Then Dale tried to console us with the quote, winning isn't everything. Dale's a loser. I played a win. If you were 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

23:01and 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. Anyway, my schedule shifted last minute and I wanted to go take, I wanted to go to that DNR meeting and just listen to what they had to say. It was one of those open forum town hall type meetings where they talk a little bit about rules and regulations. And one of the things that came out of that, I believe, based off of everything that I've heard from people, is the trail camera issue on public land. Now, there are some states where no cell cameras are allowed. There are some states, especially on private or public ground. Now what I'm hearing is that not only do they not want cell cameras on public ground,

24:05but they want no cameras on public ground. And I'm thinking about why this is, why these changes are happening, right? And really what I think it comes down to is two groups of people thinking that another person has an advantage. And then the people who think that they, one group has the advantage, then says, well, if that's the case, you know, we don't think cell cameras should be allowed. And in my guess is they say, okay, no cell cameras allowed on public ground. Well, then those guys are going, well, if that's the case, maybe no cameras on, on ground, on public ground. So now you have no cameras on public ground. And I'm trying to like figure out where that line in the sand is, what this all means. And I just, I even my own opinions seem to be moving in different direction these days about crossbows and about cell cams and trail cameras and drones and all of this shit.

25:11I really, I really think and I know a lot of people disagree with the department of natural resources in their state and they feel like they're doing a dog shit job of managing the natural resources. But when it comes to weapons and when it comes to animal tag allocations and whether or not you should be able to shoot one buck or two buck or bucks or, you know, or X number of doves in a county like Iowa, for example, all of the dough harvest are based on quotas. So for example, the county I grew up in, there's like 2000 tags available for doves. And so those get sold out, those never get sold out. I can keep going back and, and I can continue to shoot doves. I could probably shoot 15 doves, 30 doves as many as I wanted to shoot until those tags run out. Other places in Iowa, based off of research, based off of scientific data, based off

26:17of drive-arounds, you know, the DNR will go on count deer. I think they might even do some other different surveys in different, in more of the farm country where there's less habitat, less, less of a deer herd and they do their counts and things like that. It determines that no doves, there's certain counties in Iowa where you can't harvest a dough unless you have like a landowner's tag or something like that. And so the, the quota for doves is different in different parts of the states. And what this kind of, what this kind of is telling me is, or the thing I'm thinking about is how are these rules and regulations made, right? First off, I don't believe any politicians in any way shape or form should be making any rules and regulations on the state that you live in and hunting rules and regulations. I think all regulations, and this is just my opinion, all regulations need to be made

27:17where the biggest beneficiary is the natural resource itself, right? I don't care if it's fishing bag limits, fescent bag limits, trapping limits, if it's the number of deer tags that are allocated every year, what weapons you can or cannot use different season structures, things like that. I honestly think that, and this is why I think Iowa tends to get it right is because I feel like they're putting the natural resource first and they're not, they don't care what a lobbyist is trying to tell them about a specific weapon or what the farm bureau is telling them back and forth, all these things. And so I get it, you're never going to make anybody happy, but I think everybody just needs to listen to what the wildlife biologists are telling us, right? And that should determine whether or not you should be able to shoot X number of a species throughout the course or how many fish you can catch and just do the research. And I understand that there's a balancing act there where in order to fund that we need

28:23tag sales, we need people to buy licenses, we need people to buy tags. But if there's an abundance, you know, based off of data, well, then increase the tags. If there's a shortage, decrease the tags, right? And I don't think it should be, there should be anybody else involved in that. I think that private landowners, especially in a state with low public land, should be pulled and asked some questions, not necessarily to help make the decision, but to get information so that the department of natural resources or the wildlife biologist can put forth the proper amount of data into that. And really that, I think that's what it comes down to, like, you know, like I don't like having a crossbow season in the archery season. I don't necessarily think that a crossbow is a bow. It's a crossbow. I feel like there, if we're going to have a crossbow season, it needs to be its own season.

29:23It can be in the muzzle loader season, like it is during the Iowa late season. You can use crossbows there. I don't think that you need a crossbow in any other parts of the season. Maybe if you're going to introduce a crossbow, maybe give it to the early season muzzle loader as well. You can, you can do something like that. But I just feel like a lot of people are positioning their opinions against or for a certain thing and not the data that needs to be, that needs to be shown. So I just keep thinking about that. I'm just like, if all of a sudden there's this giant problem and the data shows, hey, listen, I think the data shows that we should have gun season during the right. Well, we know that doesn't work. We can every other state that has a gun season and then compare it to ours. And the other thing is, what is the focus? What are we? And I've talked about this a lot, but I think about it a lot. And what is the focus? Is the focus for a good experience for everybody to get an opportunity at a deer who wants

30:28an opportunity at a deer? Is it a big buck, right? Who, who are we making these decisions for? I feel like the people who are voicing their opinions, the loudest are the people who want an older age class deer, people who want to shoot big bucks. Yes, big bucks are awesome, but I don't know. Maybe we can, maybe we can make everybody happy, but I feel like the rules and regulations that we need to have need to support opportunity and not necessarily giant antlers. I don't think, I don't, you know, yes, I think a healthy deer herd is an older age class deer herd, but I think a new hunter doesn't necessarily care about inches per se. They just want to go out and see deer. As we get into all of this, inches of antler are definitely important to some people. But realistically, I think that if we start to go down that path, obviously the older

31:31a buck gets, the bigger his antlers get on average, let's say, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that hunters are going to have more opportunity because antlers get bigger. And so I feel like especially in a state like Iowa, right, where there's maybe even Kansas, the two of the lowest public land states in America, being able for their residents to still have access is very important as well. And I feel like there needs to be something done for rules and regulations and to do something like that, like walk in programs or find ways to access or maybe for the state to buy more ground and make it public for hunters to be able to get in there and do their thing. But right now it just got it just feels more and more along the line of it's becoming harder to get access and harder to hunt for deer. I see that now.

32:31And that's why a lot of people travel to different states, right? If it wasn't for generous, generous landowners, allowing me to hunt their property in order for me to hunt Iowa, I would have to lease ground or hunt public public. And I don't care what you say. Public is overrun in the state of Iowa in the first two weeks in November. It's just, it just is. And people in Pennsylvania and people in Pennsylvania and Michigan can say, well, you don't know what pressure is. I'm just telling you, you drive by any parking lot in the state of Iowa. And there is definitely a, there's definitely people there. You take, you take less people, but also in less public ground, you're looking at, you're looking at probably the same results here. I know there's less people, but there's also less public, sorry, I actually just now there was this, there was this bug. He was on my microphone, I think in Iowa, we call him stink bugs.

33:34And I kind of got it off my microphone just now. I touched it. I touched my nose and my nose is burning. My skin is burning. My left eye is watering right now. This blows my mind like I feel like I've never been pepper sprayed. I've gotten downwind of pepper spray, but I've never personally been pepper sprayed. Do this sucks right now. A little bug did this to me. Holy shit. Anyway, I'll try to tough it out. All right. I got down trying to maintain my composure here. So I guess what I'm getting at is like, is the, how do we balance this system? How do we all find a voice and come together and be able to support everybody's needs? Because I feel like right now, hunters across America are almost in desperation mode where they're, they're, I don't want to say hoarding ground, but they're buying up ground.

34:35They're leasing ground, they're asking people to leave properties that they've been hunting for several years. I'm going to tell you right now, my main property that I've been hunting for almost 20 years now. I don't doubt I have that farm in 10 years or in five years. I feel in the next five years it's going to get put on the auction block and it's, it's going to be done. It's going to be done. And I hope that I hope a local is able to buy it, I guess. I know for a fact that I will not be able to continue to hunt that farm tons of history on that farm. I'm just very, very concerned about losing that farm because I've spent so many years on it. I've treated it honestly like my own, but at the end of the day, none of that matters anymore. Right? People see the dollar sign with land and people are using it as an investment. People are like even in where I grew up, like people are not, like even the locals aren't they're not even able to afford the land anymore.

35:36It's all either big, big money farmers or like co-ops who are buying it together or land investment groups or some non-resident, you know, millionaire from Chicago who is buying a farm to literally hunt it maybe once during the turkey season and handful of years during the archery season or the shotgun season or the muzzle loader season in Iowa. They'll cash rent the ground, they may run cattle for pasture and things like that. And so that's just, I guess, the way of the world right now. The sad part is there's people out there and this is, it's sad for me because right now I can't afford land, like I'm trying to afford it. It's just not, I'm trying. It's just not an option right now. And so, and I know you're like, oh dude, you own a podcast network, am I good? If you knew how much money I make, you wouldn't do this shit. I'm doing this shit because not for the money, sure shitting for the fame, I'm doing this

36:40because I love doing what I'm doing. And so it's really hard for me to, I just couldn't sit in a cubicle my entire life. And so that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. It's definitely not for the money. That's for sure. So the dream of only owning land someday, that's, that's, you know, the, being able to manage a deer on a farm would be nice, but the properties that I can afford are like 10 acres, dude. And even then 10 acres are the most, they're the most affordable, which means they're the most, and what I mean affordable, I mean, they're the smallest dollar amount, which means the down payment is less. And so people are more attracted to those than the $100 million, $100 acre million properties that are, that are here in, in my state. So I know I'm rambling, but I'm just trying to foresee the future. I'm trying to have my, like, foresee the future with my son in what he's going to do, like, he's going to have a better opportunity fishing to be honest with you than being

37:43able to, to do what it is that he, he loves to do. And that's, you know, like a turkey hunt or deer hunt here, here pretty soon. So I'm just always curious. I'm always kind of trying to check the temperature of all of these things that are happening across the state, across the, the country. I mean, it is honestly more affordable for me to go and realistically buy a farm outside of Iowa that is an over the counter tag and that residents can get a tag every single year. Then it is for me to buy land in my own state. Now, I know what you're thinking and that is what a hypocrite, because in the past, I have said, I do not think that landowners, non-resident landowners should be a, should be able to hunt property every year that they own in the state. And a lot of people will disagree with me. And the reason that I say that is because I've already seen the influx of non-resident landowners

38:47in the state that are buying recreation ground. And yes, I feel you should be able to do that. This is America, right? The issue becomes, for me, and this is what I've seen, I've lost land every single, every handful of years. I lose hunting properties and rights to hunting properties because non-residents come in. They want to have that dream of killing a big buck in Iowa, just like everybody else. And the reason a couple of things have happened, they closed the party hunting loophole in Iowa and a lot of guys didn't like that. The other thing is they also, they're last levy or the last damn to hold the waters back for Iowa, is that non-resident landowners don't get a hunt every year. And I still have to go through the preference point system. The second that goes away, dude, it's going to be over for a non-landoning resident in Iowa. You're going to be forced to go hunt public land or be really creative in where you are

39:51hunting. And that might be an open field next to a different property, right? And so yeah, just kind of just trying to figure all that out and just I think about it all the time. Not necessarily for myself, but for the, not necessarily for myself, but for my son who is the future. I mean, all these guys are the future. And I really hate when people say, yeah, if you want, you got to change the future. If you want that, the future is buying land and then not letting anybody else on out of it. And I just, I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing or not, right? It's more of a, if you want to be a part of this, you got to do it. Instead, I mean, everybody's just falling like, I don't want to say giving up at that point, but it just, it's the way of the world, I guess. And maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I don't know. I had something else I wanted to say on that, on that topic, but it kind of is what it is. You know, I don't, I don't know, man, I don't know what's going to happen.

40:53I just know that this, this is completely off topic, you know, how my ping pong brain works. That's been a couple of years since the last time I had an absolute giant on camera. Now yes, I did have a 170 on camera, one, two, let me see, one, two, three, I had a 170 on camera three years ago. That's the deer I hit, but never recovered any was shot during the muzzleloader season. Okay. I call that a big deer, definitely a big deer. And maybe close to like magnum or like a giant, giant deer. But the last time I had a freak on camera, like I've been running trail cameras for a long time. And in the course of my trail camera career, I guess you would say, and I, dude, I had a folder on my, one of my old computers that I ended up losing from where I was able to get my first ever SD card trail cameras.

41:54I don't believe there were more trees. They were the size of like, they were huge, de batteries, dude, they were so huge. My favorite part about those old cameras is they came with the smallest bungee cords ever. And the camera was so heavy, it would sag on the tree. And then as the bungee cord itself would get weathered through rain, heat, cold, all that stuff, the elasticity would run out of them. And they would just continue to sag down the tree. Anyway, back then when I was running those types of trail cameras, I had a little folder on that computer. And then I had like an SD card on that computer that, that I was like keeping all those, dude, I had so many giant deer on trail camera, whether it was on the farm, just passing through during the rut. And it's been since like 2017, 18, 19, I believe that time frame was the last time I had a true, a true Iowa giant over 200 inches, you know, I think I've shared a couple

43:00of those pictures on, on trail camera, but just a free, a genetic freak. Don't know what happened to that deer. If someone shot him legally, he would have been on the cover in North American white tail. He would have been at, he would have been the biggest deer, maybe not in the state of Iowa at the time, but up there, top 10 for sure. Like a 220 plus inch freak non-typical giant, who as a three year old was a 170 class 10, three year old, 170 class 10. As a four year old, she blew up as a five year old. He went even bigger and as a six year old, he didn't get bigger in, in inches, but he are as far as time length, but he got more mass. And he had like three drop times and he had just like multiple splits on all times. He was just, he's one of those deer, you look at him and the critics just go high fence. That's a high fence deer. And if I didn't have trail camera pictures of him over a three year period, four year

44:01period, I would have never believed it myself. But he really wasn't that particular buck was not, I called him Vader. I believe I called him Vader, yeah. And I saw him on the hoof once, I played cat, cat and mouse with, mouse with him several times. And he kind of disappeared for parts of the year and then I would go somewhere else. I'd kill my archery buck and then he'd show back up and I try to get on him late season. But this deer was not secretive. He was at least where a couple of my trail cameras were and then it snowed one November. And I put, there was a big massive trail leading out of this timber crossing a road and going into an ag field. And I put a trail camera on there and sure enough, I was getting all of the cars. I don't think they could see my trail camera. And I was getting all of the cars that would go by. And there was one picture, I wish I still had it, this buck, a 200 inch giant standing

45:05in this little clover field or this little grassy area with a school bus in the background. So broad daylight, so people definitely, especially the locals, had like the people who lived very close to this farm, they had to have seen him. And my guess when a deer like that just disappears, and I know the area fairly well, my gut just tells me he was poached. He, you know, someone heard about him. They were driving at night, spotlighting or they saw him from the road and they just shot him right out of the, you know, right from the road. And no one would ever know. And so, you know, and after talking, and after talking with the, the DNR officer in that area, the, it sounds like there's a lot of that that goes on in that area. So it's unfortunate that I never got to know that the closing, the ending stories of this, of this buck. But dude, if he, if he was killed legally, congratulations to the guy who did it.

46:09That is a, an absolute monster of a, a white tail, and I would love, if anybody hears this, I would love to see a picture or, you know, whether it's a year old mount, that's in your garage or in your breezeway or I, I envision that buck if he was killed legally by a local, year old mounted in a, in entryway to a house, that's not like the wife won't even let him hang it in the, in the living room. So it's a year old mount. It's above the deep freeze in their little breezeway and, and it just sits there. And no one's ever going to know it about it. No one's ever going to see it. I hope the hunter walks by that every day and realizes how much of a treasure that buck is. That's something I, dude, I think about that all the time is where did this buck go? Like if, if, so everybody here knows the story of Megatron, I've talked about that buck a lot. Everybody here knows the story of shipwreck. I know the endings to those stories, because I know the people who shot them, one's the

47:11biggest eight pointer I've, Megatron, the biggest eight pointer I've ever seen, a shipwreck, a buck I chased for five, five plus years, 200 inch cover in North American white tail caliber deer, giant, awesome dude shot him, right? I know the ending to those stories, but I always have these little thoughts pop into my head of some of the biggest deer I've seen. For example, I think I still have video of it, but the biggest deer I've ever, like the biggest typical deer I've ever seen, fairly young at the time. The deer was fairly young. I believe it was probably a three year old, maybe a four year old, 180 inch typical 12 that I screwed up on. He caught my scent and, you know, this is back in the quote unquote glory days. I wonder what happened to that buck? Where did he go? Who shot him? Where did this appear to? Did anybody find his sheds? Those types of things. I wish I had, I don't know, I'm a, I'm a marvel geek. And so I wish I had the time stone where I could like go back and forth in time and just

48:18follow these deer and see where they're at and what they're doing and how they die and who shot them or who poached them or maybe they just got sick and died in a crack somewhere and that's where they've been ever since, right? And maybe some leaves fell on top of them and now no one will ever find their, their skull like that kind of stuff. I don't know, I, I probably think about that stuff way too much. And so, but that's what I feel like really makes the guys like me. I'm not the only one. I know there's thousands and thousands and thousands of other guys who are similar to me who are, man, they just, that's why we love the next season. I mean, even sitting in a tree staying during the best time of November, you're thinking about, dude, what is that guy going to turn into next year? Right? What is, what is this buck going to turn into next year? Right? You know, what if he makes it, God, I'd love to see him.

49:20I got a buck like that right now. He's a typical 10. He had a split G2 this year on 40 plus 145 class 10 pointer. I passed him two times this year and he was just that deer that I'm like, he needs one more year. And who knows if he's going to show back up, God, I hope he does. I hope, to be honest with you, I hope I find, I hope the boys find his sheds this year. And I'm really hoping that I'm really hoping we find, find his shed. So that story then continues. So I don't know, man, I'm always looking to being optimistic and trying to look to the future and looking to the future, not only for the continuation of North American hunting, my, because every year that's one less hunting season that I have. That's one less hunting season I have with my boy. That's one less shed hunting trip. That's one less. And then at, you know, like, I'm glad I'm not there right now, but it's what I'm thinking about right now. How many more seasons do I have left?

50:22I'm 45. Do I have 20? I hope so. Do I have 30? Holy shit. 30 more seasons left. 30 more, 30 more archery tags. If I'm hunting what I'm 75 years old, bow hunting, maybe, maybe not. And so I think that's why everything is like, I got to hate to use the word, but precious. Everything is so, it's fragile, it's precious. And I think it just takes a lot of communication to continue to keep what we have right now. And I don't want people to hoard it. I want people, you know, Spider-Man says, with great power comes great responsibility. And I think if you have access and you have the opportunity, man, maybe you should think about letting somebody or sharing your knowledge or letting other people who, God, I don't want to say the word less fortunate because I don't feel less fortunate, but I know there's people out there who, man, they used to hunt, but now they don't, because they just, they

51:23don't have the property that they used to hunt. And so maybe it's on them to go find it, but I feel like there needs to be a middle point. I feel like others need to share information about hunting strategy, or maybe about public land spots. I don't know. Maybe about, you know, people who only bowl hunt to allow some kid to come and shotgun hunt. Maybe a group of shotgun guys allow a new hunter to come and bowl hunt their property. I don't know what the answer is, I just, I want to see it continue. I know that this hunting thing means a lot to me. It means a lot to you. It means a lot to our children, especially if they're involved, the kids that are like, the dads out there who have kids that are maybe a year old, and they're excited to get their kid out like in 15 years, what are you going to have to hunt? Do you have your own farm? Do you have public land? Is that landowner going to be around to let you hunt that? Is there, are there kids going to sell that farm? I probably think about it too much and obsess over it too much, but I do, I definitely do

52:26think about it. So that's what, that's what's on my mind today. Hopefully everybody enjoyed my random rant for today. Hopefully everybody is living their best life, man, and I do mean it when I say it, good vibes, man. And the last thing I'm going to say, take it if you want it. You can leave it where you found it. But if you are struggling right now, whether that is all the aspects of being a man, whether that's just with life in general, whether it's stress, whether it's with your wife, whether it's with your kids, your family, your job, and you're stressed out, there is a book that you can pick up and maybe do a little research on what versus you should read. That's going to make you feel better and I think everybody kind of knows what I'm talking about there. It may not solve all your problems, but it will give you the opportunity to meet someone who possibly can. So take that if you want to take it. So I mean this with all my heart, good vibes in, good vibes out, we'll talk to you next

53:26time.