Hey everyone, welcome to episode six of outdoor acumen. I want to start out with telling them one that I'm going to be shifting gears as we approach hunting season, and as a result, I will be having more people on from the hunting industry as we approach hunting season. That's not to say may, maybe interjecting special guests here and there, but for the time being, I will be shifting focus to hunting in the coming episodes and that promise you won't be disappointed. On this episode, I have hunter, Greg Miller as my guest. Greg is the WHO's who of the hunting industry and has been killing big bucks long before instagram, champions and groupies who've never stepped foot in the woods. We're giving advice on how to kill a big deer via instagram and other social media platforms. He made his bones in the big woods of northern Wisconsin long before gps and all other hunting applications that are available today. For years, greg was killing absolute giants with a map and compass and boots on the ground and he's still doing it today. Greg is an absolute legend in the hunting world. You may have recognized some of this work from the magazine, North American, white tail, and other hunting mags. Greg is not only a guest, he's a friend and colleague and I'm elated. He found time in his busy schedule. We went so long on this podcast. I had to break it up into two separate episodes, so thanks for listening. Outdoor ackman and here's part one with my special guest, Greg Miller. Here we go. All right. Today on a outdoor acumen we have
Speaker 2:Greg Miller. How are you doing, Greg? Great. Happy to be here, Jesse. Yeah, absolutely man. Thank you for being a guest today on a outdoor ackerman. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Greg. I guess I've worn a lot of different hats over the years, so to speak. You're going to say a lifelong hunter. I started going with my dad on Fox and coyote hunters. They were big hone hunters when I was four years old, I think three and four years old tagging along with him and my dad was a very active hunter, was a member of a hunting camp in northern Wisconsin, which
Speaker 3:it's funny how things happen. It's interesting how people get their start doing things on that. Hunting cabin to me was like, take summer, good stuff there. Even there for a few days, our family and I just loved it, fell in love with it. So I've been, I've been active in the outdoors for almost my entire life and live in northern Wisconsin
Speaker 4:more than one third, the bottom of the northern one third and have access to fantastic
Speaker 2:the punish
Speaker 4:whole life. And uh, other than in the military I've been here and A.
Speaker 3:I'm in western Montana, but then
Speaker 4:glad I did because I really do love it.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't, I didn't know that we were talking earlier before we started the show that you were, uh, you spent some time in Missoula, Montana prior to, uh, you know, coming back home to Wisconsin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did and I enjoyed it. Had a job, pretty good job that you apply. Wouldn't even bother Montana, which is you, I don't know, seven, eight miles from missoula. I also had a girlfriend still living back here in Wisconsin. That would
Speaker 3:be my wife. Geraldine now know there was still that tied back here and I spent, I don't know, part of a year out there. Loved it and then move back here. Who could be with her thinking that eventually we'd moved back out there, but we just made. I mean this is all her family is my family, so I'm glad I went through an experience that I knew back up right out of high school. Actually enlisted while I was still a senior in high school and in the air force myself. And a friend of mine signed up and you know, that was during when the Vietnam War was raging. Pretty good in 1970. So we would have been probably drafted interview, but we decided maybe going to the air force and you know, just do something different and it was good for us. But we're both of us just to get away and get outta here. We'd spend our whole lives within your model here in northern Wisconsin, so started out. I was actually selected to be in the intelligence division of the air force and we, I spent my first 15 months when I was assigned, I was stationed in Anchorage, Alaska, so that was kind of like a dream come true would be that was in and hunted and fished and spent a lot of time outdoors. I got hooked up with a supervisor of mine at the time of tough tech sergeant that was an absolute outdoor, not in him and I and a lot of time my dream was to kill a big grizzly with rifle and came close a couple times. We had a family up there, so his, he was all about Moose, Moose meat and uh, I spent 15 months up there and then got orders for Vietnam and you know, went through a series of training and Fairchild Air Force base in Spokane, Washington water survival training at that air force base in Miami on the way over to my duty station. We stopped and I went through jungle survival training in the Philippines. It was an interesting experience and then we did advanced intelligence gathering mentions. I actually flew out of an air force base called MKP in northern Thailand, which is just on the Laotian border and I would say potentially to say of the nearly 80 combat missions that move, we were equally distributed between South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and it was at a time 1973 when the ground troops were being pulled out and it was pretty hairy, you know, we didn't have a lot of ground support but we are still using, you know, a lot of tactical air, air support for the trying to help the friendlies and, and it's part of my life that I'm glad I experienced it, but it's, it happened a long time ago and went over and did my thing and, and another experience. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it and experience it, but I was pretty happy to get home safe and sound. I always try to find something I have in common with someone that out of their military
Speaker 1:service. And there's two things that stick out to me. The first one is a Alaska. I was fortunate enough to spend some time up in Alaska in Kodiak for weeks at a time over the course of several years. Never really got to hunt, but there's a ton of game up there, you know, it's like the true sportsmen's dream and it's the last frontier that I always try to tell people that and then it never really does strike a chord with people who don't relate. You know what I mean? But like Alaska is like the last frontier.
Speaker 3:You better know what you're doing. You better be prepared for any situation that arises and if you step off a road, you better know where you're going, what you're doing, and be prepared for any situation because it's, it's pretty unforgiving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely unforgiving. You know, I try to tell people, you know, like, you know, what I've been through and everything like that and my military career, but the thing with the coldest I've ever been was in Kodiak, Alaska. That was just. I'll just leave it at that. That was the coldest I've ever been in my life. No time. No. All Day sits on a tree stand or anything, you know, and, and subfreezing temperature is the coldest I've ever been as in Kodiak, Alaska. But that was one reason was because I was the new guy and I had the middle of the night watch outside the tent. So that was, uh, that was pretty unforgiving for me. Yeah. So again, Greg, I didn't. Well I did not. Again, thank you for your service, man. I didn't know that you, uh, I didn't. I knew that you had served in the air force, but I didn't know that you served in Vietnam, so that's something new to me too, man. So thank you for your service bud.
Speaker 3:Likewise, we have a common bond or it's an experience that looking back on it, I think it's, I'm glad. I'm glad it happened. Bad things happen to where you know, you get a chance to experience something like that and come home safe it the objective. But, and as you well know, there's such a bond that, that gets created with the people you serve with when we were in those situations that it's unlike anything else you've ever experienced in your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of truth in that. It's very true. Very true statement in there. All right, so let's move on from the military service. But again, that's something that I definitely wanted to discuss with you. So thank you again for discussing that with me. So you got started with your father and hunting. Am I right in saying that your father?
Speaker 3:Right. My Dad was, was a huge honor and my uncle, Uncle Clayton, who was my mom's brother, and he and my dad were like best friends and it was actually plate in that got my dad into hunting and my grandfather, my dad's father in law, they were big home men. They had homes. They ran fox. There were no priorities here at that time. There were the world. We're pretty much gone or actually were totally gone, but there were a lot of Fox and they'd spend the winter months running the dogs, running Fox with with homes. They had my dad in 11 other guys had an opportunity
Speaker 2:to buy a hunting cabin. Forty acres of land in northern was right around 19 cisco and they all chip in$100 a piece and it was almost completely and 40 acres of hunting land.$1,200 back in I think 19, 49 or 1950, so that was, that's where I got my start. Your hunting deer hunting when I was 12 years old.
Speaker 3:My Dad, my brother, older brother, Mike Cabin
Speaker 2:with a bunch of other guys and it was an experience that I can still remember the sights, the sounds, the smells of the group that my dad was. The other members of that hunting camp were incredible. People can, you know, it's one of those things that they were. There were great guys, hard workers and adventurers really? Because that was at that time, it truly was bade. It was wilderness. Yeah,
Speaker 1:I believe it. I've read all your books and like a lot of them, you know, you talk about going out into the Wisconsin big woods in the northern woods, man, like, like you said about Alaska. It sounds pretty unforgiving if you don't know what you're doing out there. That's for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And in seminars and talking to people when, you know, when I do seminars with these big sports shows, you know, they'd always want to pick my brain about the big woods hunting, the intriguing aspect of, of the sport, you know, for, for dear. Anyway, it's this, it's this wilderness hunting and it truly was wilderness back in those days when I, when I first started doing it, and even later on when I became more accomplished as a deer hunter, it was still, it was still wilderness and big woods, but I would tell people that when I first started,
Speaker 3:the big word on my own in the late seventies and early eighties,
Speaker 2:ps was there were no cell phones. There wasn't Internet. There was, if you wanted to learn about a specific area, and this was all public land, it was all the thousands of acres of public land you walked in. It was the only way you had topographic maps that you could buy and you could get aerial photos from the local agricultural offices, county offices, which we do and we'd get them blown up and we'd study aerial photos and topographic map, but to really find out what was going on within those areas, there was only one way to do it. That was put on your boots and start talking and we literally from daylight to dark for days on end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's no substitute for boots on the ground. You know, all the pictures and maps and whatever, all the other, you know, the technology that they have now, there's still a huge believer in. There's no substitute to boots on the ground. You're not going to know from an aerial photo like what you can see on, you know, with, with the human eye.
Speaker 3:I became fun telling people that if you don't have a pump this in your pocket, when you walk into one of those blocks of wilderness, you better have a blanket candy bar
Speaker 2:and a book of magic prepared you're going to be in. Oh
Speaker 3:yeah. That was a big part of it for me was knowing that all the flooring and the scouting and stuff that we did would pay dividends because there were so darn few of us doing it that way back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You knew there was going to be a a. You knew there was going to be light at the end of the tunnel for a lack of better terms.
Speaker 3:It wasn't. It wasn't the type of habitat that ever produced large numbers of deer severe winter about every third or fourth year and sometimes back to back years and. But it was a type of habitat that produced giant beer that survived. They were the hardiest of the species of that particular area and some other gear that came out of those big woods areas were incredible. Five and six years old, easily, you know, there were no wolves then to speak up. There was maybe an odd one once in a while, but their natural predators were basically maybe bobcat's when they were smaller and coyotes when they were younger. The deer, but the norm was their number one Predator and there wasn't a lot of that going on. When I first started exploring the big words,
Speaker 1:their biggest Predator was time, you know, most I would imagine back in that day, most of them died of old age.
Speaker 3:Yes. We got into antler hunting back before it was cool and the big woods, but we've got into it before it was really cool and then at a point I think I became my own worst enemy when I started writing magazine articles about it and sort of let the cat out the bag so to speak.
Speaker 1:I don't really think that that's true. You know, there's. It takes a certain kind of person to go out into the kind of terrain or wilderness or whatever. You May and most people, excuse my language, but most people lack the cahones to go out there and do something with just a map and compass. Nowadays it's a little bit easier because they got gps, you know, and there's a. there's typically a road or some kind of trail. You walk in any direction you're going to run into a trail eventually nowadays,
Speaker 3:right. Look at Onyx maps or something like that, like that APP and you can go anywhere at anytime and and find your way in and out regardless of time of day or night us, it was a, it was sitting down at the table and making our own cat. I markers with the thumb tacks, taking little pieces of reflective tape and making dozens and dozens and dozens of cat. I had markers so we could tie or trails going into and out of the woods because we'd be in there sometimes a half mile or more and the end of the day you'd have to navigate your way out and you know, the woods become a whole different animal as you well know. After dark world is reduced to the beam flashlight.
Speaker 1:Yup, it's so easy to get turned around other than Wisconsin. Back when you were younger, did you guys ever do like any out of state trips back in those days when you were younger or did you just stick to Wisconsin?
Speaker 3:It's interesting because I guess in 1983 I think was. I decided to go back to Missoula and do a bowhunter out
Speaker 2:completely do it yourself. We have a friend of mine and I think we spent a nine or 10 days out there living in a wall tent. Yes, an incredible experience. Neither one of US arrowed and Elf. We came close, just we're in the bowls every day and we didn't see hardly anything for other hunters and then after that did a few out of state hunts for deer and one hunt that sticks in my mind was I think around 87. My brother Jeff, my younger brother, Jeff and northern Saskatchewan, which at that time didn't have to hunt with an outfitter. You could knock on doors and get permission to hunt. I don't know how many acres we just drove around, went up near Meadow lakes, Saskatchewan and uh, like I said, and drove around and knocked on doors and these people were amazed that we were even stopping to ask permission and we got permission on every place we knocked on the door. And again, none of us killed a deer, but we all had an experience with a big animal that, you know, just wet my appetite for more and I knew, you know, I kind of start grasping how the trophy potential candidate stuff, especially Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. So ate a few trips to Alberta, several of the Manitoba Killed in Alberta. That kind of was the extent of my exploring other, you know, other lands was
Speaker 1:definitely one of the places on my bucket list is a Alberta, that's for sure. I know people would like you always hear about Saskatchewan. Alberta is one of the places in Canada on my bucket list.
Speaker 2:I loved Alberta. I mean, Alberta was, it was just fantastic, you know, and actually did a bowl hunt there with a guy by the name of Jim hole in the Edmonton, the empire area around the city of Edmonton is a Bozo and only very expansive area and you can imagine the caliber at a deer that commodity there because it is only archery only up and it's, it's wheat fields in small tracks of timber, but the potential is incredible. It's off the chart.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Anyone who's anyone that knows anything about deer hunting knows who you are. Greg. So I mean there had to be a point in time when you were younger, were hunting, like really resonated with you and you knew it was something that would be a huge part of your life. Is there a moment or a memory that reminds you in that part of your life where it was essentially solidified for you? Were you knew that hunting was going to be a major part of your life? In like a career decision? Yeah, I'll work a career decision. I know that back when you started out, you know, even with North American white tail and when you were writing and everything too, you were still working as well, right? I mean you were still working another job.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was. I was a union worker. I was a union construction work. I concrete finisher. I started writing. I wrote my first article in 1986 and it was published North American white tail and 87 and it was on Robertson Rob Lines using outlook rubs group, killed big white tail deer and it was hugely successful was it was kind of my launch pad for my career was that very first article in that topic, but I was still working construction seasonal because you know here in Wisconsin with the winters we were laid off or upwards of five months to a year. I'd spent those five months at the keyboard and trying to get more stuff published and become recognized because that selling, that first article only wet my appetite to sell more and become a part of that. That whole journalism. When I went to college, that was my major. I didn't, I didn't get a degree, but I. That was my strong suit was journalism. It always, always has been and at that time, as you well know, magazine articles were in, there was no visual medium, hadn't started yet with television and, and all the things that happened or have happened since, so North American white tail and my opinion was it, it was the Bible and that's the way a lot of serious we're hunters felt not even serious dude, how there's just people in general. They love North American white tail magazines. So my very first article was sold to them and then I had a few published and outdoor life, you know, when some of the bigger ones and it was Peterson's hardening, Peterson's bowhunting. It just sort of took off because he's editors. So I apparently saw something in my writing that they knew that I had done a lot of the legwork myself. I've been around the block, so to speak. When it came to deer hunting, both Bowen gun hunting and then we were flirting with the idea of me trying to go full time and there was some divine guidance or something that happened in 1992. I sustained a very serious injury on the construction end of it, a back injury and that ended that part of my life. I had no choice but to look in a different direction for a way to support a family, a wife and two young kids and I had dabbled in it during the five months that I was laid off from my construction job, but I really didn't know how to make a living at it. But what I wanted to do. The surgeon that I saw initially, the injury told me, let me know what I have to do to help you get your disability started. And I. I looked at him and said, I'm not. I don't consider myself disabled. I've got something else I want to do. I want to try. And he shook my hand and said, well, good luck. And I really just. He didn't know how to make a living at it. And a wife and two kids and a mortgage and a truck payment and great insurance through my union job all went away and that went away and I'm not going to lie to you the first couple years that I was a full time magazine writer and journalist and I'm not going to say regarding your starved to death, but it was. It was tough, but I stuck with it and then I, I discovered some other ways to, to bring in more money. I started on the public speaking circuit doing seminars, a deer shows and discovered that that was an incredible, great way to supplement my income. And then eventually I got my first book published and that. That was huge. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Basically you explained my next question, which was like, when did you decide you were actually going to pull the trigger and become a full time like journalist? So I know you've written a total of five bucks, right? That's the amount you've written. Five, right? I'd like for you to go over a little bit of each one, you know, kind of just give us the synopsis of each book, You know, and kind of like what sparked it.
Speaker 2:Well, the first one was titled Aggressive White Tail Hunting and I actually told that title from a friend of mine who he said he told me one time, he hunted with us for a few years up in northern Wisconsin data at our hunting cabin cabin and became a member of our hunting group up there. And you've got good hunter, but he said you're one of the most aggressive people. You're, you're like one of the most aggressive hunters I've ever been around. And that kind of stuck with me. So then when I decided to write my first book and I have to give some props here to, to a fellow by the name of Pat, Dirk, and who was the editor at deer and deer hunting magazine back in those days? Yes. Pat was a good friend along with being, you know, one of my soul called bosses, one of the editors. I wrote a lot of stuff for deer and deer hunting for pat. Pat was the one that really inspired me to get that first book published and he loved the title, aggressive whitetail hunting and I have to give him a lot of credit for kindness, stay on me and making sure that we. We've got all the right topics and got all the right chapters, so with the success of that first book, which I think was released in[inaudible], 94 came two years later. I wrote my second book, which was proven whitetail tactics. I think that was the second book and that one fold even better than aggressive. Although aggressive is still one of my favorites. It's a lot of old school stuff,
Speaker 1:old school stuff. People have long forgotten probably.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it means the world to me and people like you that you can appreciate how this all got to where it is now, but there's a book that my third book was the one that really, really sold three of my books were were deemed dollars for their respective categories and the one that sold the best and that really, really put me on the map with rub line secrets. That one was all the study and all the legwork and all the effort and and the hours and the days and the months that we put into big woods hunting. You were hunting purely. You were hunting those beers, those deer, those big words. You're purely through sign interpretation and we just discovered, you know, for years people thought, well rubs are just placed with her buck, rubs his antlers on a tree and maybe won't even come back to that spot. We discovered that not only would they come back and they actually make series of or rubs and this was never was never discussed prior to a lot of the work that we did. Me and my hunting partners and my brother Jeff and buddy of mine, by the name of Dan Dyson, we discovered that these gear made rubs along the route that they most preferred to use when they're going bedding areas, their feeding areas or they're just walking around their ranges are absolutely revisit those same rubs and those same spots time after time. So with the release of that book that really launched my career, really gave it a big boost. It's definitely like in one of, you know, the top three or four books of, of my hunting repertoire as far as hunting books are concerned. I love it. So after run after run line sucres, what'd you get? I wrote a book. It was just a book of my greatest greatest adventures was they had me write a book, but I think it's 17 or 18 chapters of my all time favorite haunts. That's pretty cool. Other one that would be 17 or 18 different on sense and that, that, that are favorites and some. Some of the ones that were in that book definitely still remained some of my all time favorite haunts. Like my first big deer I ever killed with gun that I actually missed the bowl two weeks early during archery season. Ended up killing him with a gun two weeks later. Right. Purely by accident, but it happened, but that was my fourth book. That one sold, you know, that was a pretty good seller, but then my fifth book, which is one that I know you have a copy of, it was a bowhunting forests and deep woods that really allowed me to consecrate my attentions in writing a book. Something that was near and dear to my heart, which was big words, white tail hunter right now. That was actually my one and only hardcover book and I will tell you that I wrote five books, but I've coauthored more than a dozen others. I was laughing when I was writing. I think I've ended up selling close to a thousand magazine articles during a span when I was writing and authored five books and coauthored over a dozen others that participated with other writers on other dentures and. But it was just the way it was. Then Jesse, you know it. The written word was we had, as far as disseminating information, there were no TV shows yet. There were a few, you know, there were three hunting show was on the national network back in the old days, siren go from buck masters and that was it. So it was a very, very influential part of my, of my career and it put me on the map so to speak. But then as you well know that the industry has changed dramatically from the days when it was the written word to now it's all pretty much the meetings,
Speaker 1:social media, visual, no. I would be curious to know actually how many people who actually like the number in comparison to like back then when that was all that we had and comparison to now to like how people actually read if they read like a book or not or if they just skim chapters. You know what I mean? Like they actually sit down and read the book and like an actually like retain it, you know what I mean? But we'll be curious to know the number.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting because um, you know, I've got ink when my, my, when my blood, so to speak, my writing career and that's, that'll remain that way forever. I, I became a journalist. It put me on the map, but I'm kind of sad to see, although I'm in business with my son Jake now and that's a dream come true, but the visual medium can ever go back was, it'll never be the way it was. But it's interesting to bring that up. I often think the same thing as how many people would actually sit down and read every chapter, every word in a book and a book on how to deer hunting book. Nowadays, I don't think it's very many. I really don't. And that's, that's, that's kind of sad to see. But on the other hand, so much of what we do now and how we do it has changed. It's not just, it's not just the hunting industry, it's life. Life is become more busy. It gets faster. Being able to spread the word is easier and faster and we all use it. You know, we, we all are part of that. We've all been sucked into it and it's, it's just the way it is. So fortunately for me, I was able to kind of always see what was gonna happen next and as I was writing in the, in the mid nineties, I could kind of see already. Then after about 10, 12 years of being a during the, that was going to hunting videos if I could see the writing was on the wall that more and more people were buying the big vhs tapes or or whatever. And I was fortunate to land a CCO staff position with hunter specialties. One of the major parenting supply companies, you know, they made the center away send elimination system and new sense and all kinds of gadgets. They hired me as a pro staffer, a paid position to help produce their primetime bucks video series. I think I started at prime time to and worked with them through prime time certain. So I spent 11 years on 100 specialties. Pro Staff really, really got my legs under me as far as knowing what it took to be a producer in the visual media. And then eventually, you know, when things started going to the television side of it, I landed that Gig with North American white Pale as a cohost with pots and Pat Riley and we were off and running.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing, you know, because uh, nowadays like you're like the pioneer of like, you know, back in those days it was like, you know, tv shows and video tapes and like they were so hard to come by, you know, like you'd had to go to like a vhs rental store to like even find like last year copy let alone the most recent one. They were just so hard to come by and just, uh, I just find that kind of kind of ironic that you're, you started out but like, you know, you're, you're still there, you're still on top of like what's the latest and greatest. So it's, it's, it's Kinda funny how things like that come up
Speaker 2:full circle. Well it's been a hell of a ride bro. I mean, it's not when you think, I mean I've Kinda in capsulized it here to a degree of, you know, from 1986 to 2018 and if that's a long time, but it's, it's been a blur. It's like how did we get to 2018 and I'm still doing it and I still enjoy it. I still probably more than ever because I'm in business with my son and it's been a dream come true, you know, just sitting here now talking about that whole progression from the late eighties until her mid eighties I guess probably go all the way back to the early eighties when I first became obsessed with, with trying to, you know, figure out big white tails and in wilderness areas to now it just seemed like the blink of an eye. But there's been so much in between and I, you can't, you can't stop progress. You can't. Things have become so finite now with the equipment, the APPS. But I think it's also, and I don't know if you agree with this or not, but I think it's also enabled us to keep this whole thing with deer hunting in the mainstream, so to speak, because it's, in order to be popular, it's got to be something that can be done easily. People can figure out they want to do it. So I think it's all been necessary. Would I like to see it go back to the way it was years ago? Well maybe from an install standpoint, but you know, I'm, I'm a realist and I just go with the flow. But I've been able to keep my ear to the ground and I really have a sense of what's going to happen next. And so I've been able to survive for over 30 years in this industry and I'm doing something I absolutely love. If you were to ask me what's next, I don't know. Yeah, well
Speaker 1:yeah, you, you, you, you actually kind of said it right there. He's just like you, you know, you're doing what you love. But at the same time, man, you're also doing it right. And I'm not really wanting to interject my opinion on the show here. I, I mean I will every once in a while I've got a couple more coming up. But the, I think the thing is from the nostalgic perspective for me, like the biggest thing for me nowadays, you know, I'm big on the. I'm big on the whole public lands be just because, you know, they're not making any more real estate. But like I for me from a nostalgic perspective, the one thing that I would probably change is like access, you know what I mean, because like long gone are the days where you could just drive down a country road and pull in to someone's front yard and they'd be welcoming and everything like that. And you'd ask them for permission to hunt and they would say yes. You know, nowadays it's like, well how much money do you have? Because I'm leasing it to a bunch of gun hunters, which is neither here nor there. And you tell them you were hunting with arbitrary tackle. So you know, they're, you know, they still want that. They still want that. They still want that, you know, that part of the lease, whether or not you're hunting with archery tackle or you know, a rifle or a shotgun or a muzzleloader, you know. Right. And that's, that's one aspect of
Speaker 2:the industry or the sport that. And there's no changing it. I mean there's no getting around it anymore, you know, it's, it, it is what it is. But the one, the most disturbing aspect to me is, is what's happened as far as the, the money that's being thrown around a four leases and purchase of land and we have Buffalo County here in Wisconsin that's probably one of the top trophy, whitetail producing counties in the, in North America. I agree. Yeah. And it's just down the road and land there two, four to$5,000 an acre for a place that you are going to absolutely have giant deer on that prop 40. I just saw a 280 acre piece that was listed and I think it was one point 4 million. Goodness gracious that with the asking price was yes. And the thing is people are buying. It's not like that very long, so, and I'm like you. I'm a realist. It's, it is what it is, but there is still some incredible public land hunting. Oh yes. Probably as good as it ever was because it involves a lot more work and people who are willing to work like yourself. I know I've seen some pictures of some, some deer youth cake and I think it's, I believe it's in Virginia.
Speaker 1:Yup. Yup. We Hunt in central Virginia. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and
Speaker 2:that's totally do it yourself and you're just getting back in somewhere where you know there's good deer, you know, you can get away from other people, but you're doing that and it's kind of the way I wish I could do more of that. Just go back to the way things were. The public land here isn't what it used to be in the northwoods because from the time that I first started getting serious about trying to kill big woods, dear trophy deer and now are. We have some situations and first thing is first and foremost is our timber wolf population is out of control and rolls and Deray will cohabitate, but worlds also eat a lot of deer and they really single out mature bucks, especially in the winter. Oh yeah. Because they're so rundown. Yup. Yup. And so that whole dynamic has changed there. That's a whole different dynamic up in the north woods of Wisconsin now in comparison to when I was doing it, but if it were the way it was back when I was doing, I could, I could definitely, I would strongly consider going back and giving it another try and the big words because I know so much about it and I just enjoy. I really enjoy the whole experience. It's. And then when you do, you know when you are successful, it just means so much more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you man. Well, moving on, I know it's some subjects that are near and dear to our heart, so it almost sounds like we're like being like somber, but it's really not, you know, the, the opportunities that people have to hunt nowadays is, it's just as good as it was back then if not better. Your opportunities of killing like a trophy are probably better now than they, I would like to say better than they ever have been just because people know that if they pass on smaller bucks and they let them grow, uh, there's gonna be more of an opportunity for those smaller ones to grew up to bigger ones nowadays. There's just more people are more aware nowadays is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:Without a doubt. It's the let them go and let them grow. Mentality has just gets spread like wildfire. And so the thing is yes, there's all the, some of the downsides, it's more expensive. It's, it's, but it's harder to find land to hunt and Yada Yada. But all that being said, your chances of killing a true trophy whitetail are probably as good or better now than they've ever been because because of the way things are limited access, stricter criteria, what you're going to shoot, what you're not going to shoot, what you're going to let go and, and, and the technology, Jesse, that has the evolution of scouting cameras and people being able to monitor and keep track of individual dear very accurately. And then the whole genetic thing, knowing what dear to take and when to take them. We have got some very, very. I mean when it comes right down to it, deer hunters are very educated bunch right now, very educated and very just knowledgeable people. You can have conversations with people that about white tail deer and habitat and creating good habitat. It's things like hinge cutting and food plots. And it's just incredible. And it's, I think it's a very healthy endeavor for people. I think it's a great stress reliever. It gives them something to do. It gives them something to, to uh, the anticipation factor. I think it's very good. So all the other stuff we were talking about, just kind of the negative thing, but the flip side of that is we've got more big deer running around in North America probably than ever before, more that
Speaker 1:he keeps getting stuck on this subject. But like there's just things that keep popping up with me. But it's. I mean there's a lot of truth in that. And another thing too is that, you know, just because I was looking at some numbers the other day of some seminar, somebody posted up, I don't know which forearm or which facebook page or whatever. There's so many of them. I can't even keep up with them all nowadays. But I saw one the other day where it said the number of hunters, as you know, has dropped from like, I don't even want to give the number, but it was like several million. Like there had been several million hunters that are just like completely stopped hunting due to access. And I don't know if it's kind of like a generational thing or not, but I think there's a little bit of bullshit in those numbers because yeah, there may be some of these fairweather hunters that have completely stopped hunting because like, you know, they're not willing to work for it, but I would say the quality of hunter has gone up exponentially, you know, you like watch some of these kids on youtube nowadays and like just some of these young diy guys are out there doing it on their own hunting these small little pieces of public and they're killing some whoppers. So I, I just think the numbers thing, the ratio of like hunters to like hunters and like, you know, oh, hunting's dying Huntington never gonna die as long as the USA is still the USA. You know what I mean?
Speaker 5:Yeah. You, the thing is,
Speaker 3:did you have a different caliber of hunter? Maybe the numbers are going down, but the people that are doing at this core group, there's a core group of deer hunters, hunters in general that I think, man, they're more serious than ever. You and I both know there's a lot of money being spent and when it comes to white tail deer people they have, they find the money, they find a way to get the money and it's a more serious bunch of hunters than we've ever had and more educated and
Speaker 5:right down the line, yeah, maybe the numbers are down, but the quality of the hunters is way better than it's ever.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 5:Yeah. No disrespect intended. Therefore the people that were doing it years and years ago, I don't mean it that way. It's just. It's just the way it has to be that if you want to kill a big deer, you have to be a much better hunter now than ever to. We produced a much more educated bunch of white tail deer. They're far more wary, I think, than ever because always being poked and prodded and watched and their turf is being invaded more than ever and and thank God they've evolved right along with the hunters. As we've gotten better as hunters,
Speaker 3:our prayer has gotten,
Speaker 5:I don't know, more educated, more wary, but don't you just love it? I mean it's just so cool.
Speaker 1:I don't attribute it to being a even like competitive or anything like that either. I just think like, you know, I've already said it once. I'll say it one more time. I think just the quality of the hunter out there nowadays is just so far above, like compared to like when we were hunters in a different era, like the eighties and nineties and even like the early two thousands, just things have so much with technology and so recently, you know, it's just, it's made younger hunters like just as good as some of the older hunters out there just because they're so into it. You know what I mean? Well, yes. I mean if you're going to get into it, you're going to get into it and you have to be. If you want to kill a big deer, you,
Speaker 5:you just have to take that next step. You have to go to that next level and he's techie minded, young people. Any tech techie minded person can, you're able to use technology to be a better hunter and I think that's just the way it is and it's pretty cool that that happened to, but when I was talking about when I first started deer hunting with my dad and going up to our cabin in northern Wisconsin for the 98 gun season, that was very few of those guys that were involved in my dad's group hunted that whole entire day of gun season. They maybe went up for the first three or four days. Some of them didn't even come up until it was always. Our Wisconsin gun season always runs through Thanksgiving week, so it's like the end of the month, the end of November, but some of them wouldn't even go up there until the middle of the season and then they'd spend three or four days. That was it. There was no scouting, there was no going up and walk in the woods trying to find better spots. That was their entire deer hunting season was the three or four days or five days that they spent up at that cabin in November. That was yet, with the exception of two of the guys that were original members in my dad's hunting camp, we're actually bowhunters and they started bowhunting in the fifties. Oh Wow. Those guys, one of them died in the name of Jerry Laner, who was President Wisconsin bowhunters association for for years and was on the board. He was a member of my dad's deer hunting group and my brother Mike and I, when he found out that we had started bowhunting in the sixties, he was ecstatic and he shared a lot of his knowledge with us. So there were a couple of guys that did hunt for more than just that nine day gun season, you know, a few days at the end of November.
Speaker 1:Nice. Nice. Yeah. All right, so I want to touch on two of your books, man. So there's two that are near and dear to my heart. I know you've signed both of them, so I'll just lay that out there now. So there may be a little partiality on my part and I might be a little partial to these books, more than others, not yours, but other books just in general. So we already discussed both of them go honey forests and deep woods and rub line secrets and as you said earlier, and I don't want to rehash it again, but you pretty much made your bones in your younger years hunting the big woods of Wisconsin and you're uh, the forest and deep woods of the northern big woods I think is actually what you guys call it in Wisconsin, right? The northern woods. Does that, is that a good term for it? Yes. Yep. Okay. So I always call them. We get that with a big woods. Yeah, it wasn't a big way. The big woods. Okay. So, and as you said before, man, you have been doing this longer before. It was cool, you know, there's just like, you were making that happen long before it was cool. So. And I just wanted to throw that out there. There's a lot of people out there is like, you know, like I'm one of the originals, like, no, Greg Miller is probably one. It is definitely one of the originals. So there's no question about that. So in chapter two, but we're hunting for us in deep woods. You write about mental preparation. So what do you think the most mentally demanding situations hunters need to prepare themselves for nowadays? Especially in the big woods or a deep end on public or whatever else you can think, you know, just where it's really extremely wilderness driven. I know at least one for me. Hunters need to prepare themselves for possibly go on days on end without seeing any game. I mean we've, I'm sure there's without a doubt, we both shared that same sentiment. The key for me personally is staying the course and, and you've got to remain upbeat and positive. You know, we can talk about all the yoga stuff if you want to or not, but uh, I'd like to know your thoughts on, on mental preparation and like some, maybe one or two experiences that you've had where you've really needed to be. Have some mental intestinal fortitude for lack of better terms. I agree 100 percent.
Speaker 5:It is the toughest part, especially back when I was doing it way back before all the technology changed the sport with the scouting cameras, where'd you could at least maybe get a picture of a big group here so you knew he was still there, but the fact that you may go days literally without seeing, not just buck, not seeing a deer, deer numbers were. And what we discovered was were a lot of these big deer live in the big woods. They were kind of loners. They were kind of, you know, I'm talking about non times until the riots started. You were hunting a director. You may not see another deer. Not Everybody's cut out to do this, to hunt like that. And I discovered that because I was killing enough big deer back in those days that people were taking note and they wanted to come up and hunt our camp. By then, my brother Mike and I and a couple other guests had bought her own hunting camp in northern Wisconsin and it was right down the road from where I first started hunting just a mile down the road and we had a rather expand, you know, a big place, lots of beds, blotter room. People would want to come up and hunt and I'd tell him, man, come on up and hunt. There are tens of thousands of acres of public land up there. It's not like you can't find a place to hunt. There's always places to hunt. I can point you in the right direction, but from then and you're on your own, they would hunt with me. This happened a number of times and maybe for a few weeks, maybe a little bit longer, and then look at me and go, I don't think I can't do this. I don't know how you do this, man. I don't. I'm not saying anything. I don't know how you can hunt here and see so few deer and they, they'd quit. You know, they'd come back down onto the farm ground where they knew they were going to see a lot more deer. They didn't care if it wins a big buck, but at least they were seeing something that's the mental side of this that you referred to that you can't let it break you. Yeah. I always knew that first. My thought process when I was starting the big woods exclusively was I may not see a lot of deer, but if I do see a deer, there's a better than average chance it's going to be a book and it's a better than average chance. It's going to be a good book. So I just hold onto that and go, okay, I'm not going to see a lot of deer, but if I do see a deer better than average chance, it's gonna be a buck, and again, it's probably the deer I want to kill and I could go days without seeing a deer seeing very little, but there was always other things to keep you entertained as you well know. There's other stuff going on in the woods and. But it takes a strong mind to, in a country without a doubt. It's okay. It's not for everybody, Jesse. It just isn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree man. You know, and even like some of the places where I hunt back in Virginia, there's farms that I have the opportunity to hunt on and I remember I would go for like at least a period of like eight or nine days where I wouldn't see a single deer, you know, and I would just meet, man, what am I doing wrong? Eventually you'll start seeing deer again or you'll see the right dear. I, I tried to put myself in the position to like see the right dear. Like as you talked about earlier, you know, in, in just, you know, and then the light bulb goes off. You go through that so many years and you just know that I know I'm in the right area and I know I'm not over hunting it or whatever. And I know that there's deer in the area. Eventually it's going to happen and you just have to keep that kind of mindset. It's going to happen. You just got to keep plugging along and stick with it.
Speaker 5:And what a great feeling when, I mean just seeing one, especially if it's the deer that, that you're out there to try and kill, but then if you manage to close the deal, there is not a feeling like it. It's icing on the cake. Oh my gosh. You know, and it makes all that other. You just forget about all those hours and days and that you spent trying to put that deer on the ground and you forget about it. You know, we have convenient memories and convenient loss of memory at times. Oh yeah. And I think it's a good thing because that just made it all worth it for me. And you know, looking back on it, it wasn't for everybody. I had more hunting partners come and go for no other reason than they just, they weren't cut out to do it. And I understood. I get it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. I think we all actually get it. We're getting into like the one hour mark here, so I want to kind of move along. Not that I'm rushing, I just want to listen to and not rushing through it. I just want to get through, you know, we got some listener base questions to that I want to ask you here before long. So I didn't exactly write the chapter down but it Kinda, this one kind of stuck with me a little bit to Kinda hit me in the side. So the curse of the. You talk about the curse of the quick success and I think that there's a lot of truth to this one as to not that the rest of them don't have any truth to them, but this one like kind of stuck with me here. So the group that I hunt with, we have a close friend that, that we used to hunt with think like maybe his third or fourth year of like serious hunting. It might even have been first or second. I mean he killed an absolute giant and like in the first hour of the hunt and he was really young. I'm not, I'm not saying like he was in his teens. He was probably in his late teens, maybe early twenties, probably early twenties, and I'm not saying he didn't deserve or earn the buck because I mean he definitely did, but it's my belief and as well as others that it spoiled him and it made him believe he could continue to keep hunting the same way despite the woods and the terrain changing, you know,[inaudible] like the woods that we had hunted once before. It had been clear cut. He thought that he could keep hunting the same way and he didn't evolve with the terrain and you know, it just really put him in a frustrated situation and we've moved on and as a result he left our hunting group. He's just had like a last 10 years. He's had some very unsuccessful seasons and I just think it's attributed to like that year were like, he was really young and he killed that really nice buck. What I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 6:There's something to be said for the instant success or men, if you figure out how you had that success, that's fine because then you can use that as a learning experience rather than just celebrate your success and that's, I don't think I know in the big woods are specially. It was, and this was going to happen. Jesse, you know as well as I do every year, some of the biggest deer are killed by people that they really don't even know how they managed to kill that deer. It just happened. It's just one of those things. It used to freak me out and still leaves me scratching my head that people that are. It seems to be doing all the wrong things, end up killing some of the biggest deer and it's just the way it is, but the people who do it and think it's always going to be that way or really don't have a clue as to why they were able to kill that deer. Like sounds like your your buddy. Maybe that was his case. He didn't maybe really know why he killed that deer and I think that's, you know, it's not so evident anymore with the technology, but back in the day was like a dangerous thing that somebody would come up and hunt the big woods and and have that instant success and then maybe never have it again because they didn't really know why they were successful. They were just and then go back and hunt that same spot, do the same things over and over and over and then get soured on it because they weren't successful again. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't want to get into all the details of it because you know, the guy and I barely talk anymore and like I don't want him to listen to this like one day and be like, he's never going to talk to me ever again. But it's a really good lesson for people out there to learn is like, you know, you just because you kill a buck and your first one or two years really nice buck in your first one or two years of hunt of serious hunting. It doesn't mean that that's gonna happen every year and you've got to be willing to like put, you still got to be willing to put in the work and scout some new spots. You've got to be willing to like read the woods and like know what the woods are doing. You have to evolve like with a, you know, the way the deer move through those woods. And I think that that pretty much sums up the curse of the quick success.
Speaker 6:I think you'll agree with me that there's being a hunter and there's, you know, you're hunting skills and there's woodsmanship they're separate. We're predators. You know, our canines are fairly short. They're not like they used to be probably, but we're still predators or eyes or in the front of our head. You have to become a predator. But a big part of being a successful Predator is, has been good in the woods and learning how to recognize certain situations at a glance. And to be very honest, I think some people have it, some people don't, some people can work at it and get better. You know, I've hunted with people that they just, they're woodsmanship skills were they just wear the same, not necessarily bad, but not quite on a par with some of the better hunters. I knew and I think that's just the way it is, but you better know how to read the woods as much and learn as much about your hunting areas as, as you do about the animals that live in those areas, especially the deer, but, and I think that's become kind of a lost art with the technology and I don't know if people are doing the leg work that they used to do, especially in wilderness settings, but maybe they become a little too dependent on technology to. I don't know, I don't want to call them lazy. It's just, it's just a whole change in people's personalities I think. And, and what makes us tick as compared to 30 years ago. Yeah. I can't agree more, man.
Speaker 1:You know, and Woodsmanship, you know, I'm, I'm fortunate enough to where my dad taught me a little bit. He still wasn't a know it all, you know, when it came to that. But he taught me in a little bit just to get going and basically from there I just learned by trial, by error of like learn how to read the woods and over the years of it, and I'm kind of behind the power curve, you know, in my age group because, you know, I spent 10 years of active duty during war time, you know, so it didn't hunt for a span of 10 years. So I kind of feel like I'm behind. So I mean, I, that is what it is, you know, I feel like I'm still like on top of it and you never really lose it if you're a serious hunter, I'd like to cover another chapter, man hunting clearcuts you did a chapter in the big woods book that you did there, hunting clear cuts, burns windstorm damage. So, you know, and there's a lot of hunters out there now that are like experiencing, you know, hunting clear cuts and burns, you know, like, I mean, it's no secret, especially out west that there's a ton of fire going on. A lot of these places that they've hunted from in years past, you know, are going to be burned over or even like my first year clear cut growth second or third year and where I hunt and Virginia, a couple of places where we hunt, they been clear cut like the last one or two years. So I just like to hear your opinion here. You know, I'm a huge proponent of initially hunting the edges of this type of habitat and I'd like to hear some of like your top recommendations for a hunting this type of terrain, you know, especially like clear cuts and burns. Not so much. I don't really want a whole lot of like windstorm damage, you know, although there's a first time for everything. I know I like to start personally on the edges and then move in for a strike once. I figure out like how the, how the deer are moving through there and once to have a certain specific area narrowed down. Like I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4:But my first
Speaker 1:I approach it the same way I started out in. I would the he started doing more lobbying.
Speaker 4:We haven't changed our strategies or move to a different area and I thought fuse fucking Mile Square 640 acres, but once but it was good, had become mature papa force that just needed to do harvest. We'd be devastated initially to get there and see their favorite, cutting down one, your best hunting areas, but you were still there and what we'd do is you'd get up in a mature tree somewhere around the edge and maybe it'd be in the right spot. Maybe it wouldn't. We just sit back and watch and see how these deals with government entities, clear cut areas because as soon as they cut those, it's like a candy store for a kid this year that there's food everywhere. The tops of the trees are laying there. Regal starts almost immediately as you well know and it's a food rich area, but you need to figure out how the deer accessing it, how they're coming into it, how they're leading it. It was a huge part of being a successful big wigs. Hunter was making this transition into becoming clearcut hunter. Whether it was from a windstorm or a fire, fires were rare, but logging was everywhere and then by about the second or third year when that stuff actually the second year when they started to go back to deer actually would start betting in those clerk that areas and you know, then we'd have the edges and move in and the loggers always left a certain number of victories paid, leave some old, at least in our area, so then you could move right into the clearcut and after studying on the edges and seeing all the deer are related, the clear cuts, then you could make your move, but I think it's really important that people start on the edge like you were talking about and then go from there.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed part with Greg Miller. Stay
Speaker 7:tuned for episode seven and part two with Greg Miller, and as always, I truly appreciate every single one of my listeners. Go and check out the new website ww dot outdoor Akamai.com. It's still a work in progress, but we're getting there. You can also find us on instagram at outdoor acumen and on facebook, as always, after episode seven, stay tuned for future episodes with hunter and Greg Miller's son, Jake Miller. Hunter Spencer knew heart, retired seal master chief and hunter, Ron Belen, an expert diy hunter, Bernie Berenger, and much, much more. Talk soon.