A Hunter's Legacy
Step into the world of everyday hunters as we uncover the stories, passion, and drive behind their love for the hunt. A Hunter's Legacy is a podcast that celebrates the heart and soul of hunting through conversations with real, everyday hunters. From their first hunts to their most unforgettable moments in the field, we dive deep into the experiences that connect hunters to the outdoors and their traditions.
Join us as we explore the values, lessons, and motivations that make hunting more than a sport—it’s a legacy. Whether you’re a seasoned hunter, a curious enthusiast, or simply love hearing authentic stories of connection to nature, A Hunter's Legacy has a tale for you. Grab your gear and tune in to hear why hunting is more than just a pastime—it’s a way of life.
A Hunter's Legacy
60: Hunting A Buck In Every State One Tag At A Time With Jackson Knight (Missouri)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jackson grew up on a family farm in Missouri watching his dad carry out the Bone Crusher, a Remington twelve gauge that had dropped more deer than either of them could count. He started tagging along before he could carry a gun, sat through three seasons as a passenger, and then on one random school morning looked out the back door and saw six deer feeding fifty yards from the house. He snuck to the truck, grabbed the guns, got on the deck, and shot his first deer at eighty yards. It hit the doe in the back end and dropped her where she stood.
Jackson is not just a deer hunter. He owns Trapper Jack Pest Control, designs hunting properties, competes in Spartan endurance racing with a world championship appearance in Greece on his schedule, and holds a degree in wildlife conservation management. He has trapped everything from eighty pound beavers to a solid black coyote, caught fifty raccoons off one property in three weeks, and built food plots and habitat on his family's Missouri farm since he was eleven years old. He hunts deer across multiple states every year, chases elk points in Utah and Montana, and approaches every piece of ground with the same mindset he uses running fifty miles a week: put in the work and the results follow.
This episode covers Missouri whitetail hunting, food plot design, habitat management, wildlife trapping, and what it looks like when somebody treats hunting as seriously as a profession. A Hunter's Legacy is built for guys like Jackson, everyday hunters who are all in on the resource and do not need a camera crew to make it worth showing up.
Want to be a guest?
Ready to share your hunting legacy? Apply here.
Like what you’re hearing?
Hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. New stories drop every week.
Follow A Hunter’s Legacy:
Share the show with a buddy who lives for cold mornings, heavy packs, and quiet woods.
I grabbed two buck decoys. Both of them are like archery decoys. So I took the antlers off one of them to make it look like a doe. And then I took the other one with the antlers and I mounted it. So I put it in the middle of my food plot. I was hunting on ground level and I did a rattling sequence. And all of a sudden I hear a deer running. And this buck, the Tim Porterman that I was after, showed up the day I was hunting. He ran 300 yards across my neighbor's property, jumped across the creek, and got on my side where I was hunting. When I was looking for my scopes, I was counting the points because where I live, you have to have four points on one side to make it legal to shoot. And so I saw four points, and I probably had a hole the size of a golf ball to shoot.
SPEAKER_02Alright, here we go again. Welcome back to another episode of A Hunter's Legacy, the only hunting podcast that ditches the pros for the average Joes. This week we're in Missouri again. What's going on, man? We got Jackson. I'll going great. I'm doing great. Cool. Glad to have you on here. Why don't you go ahead and take a little time to introduce yourself and we can kind of roll into the hunting and go from there?
SPEAKER_01Sounds great. So hi, my name is Jackson Knight. I am an owner of a small business called Trapper Jack Pest Service. It's I mainly trap raccoons, groundhogs, armadillos, squirrels, moles, any critter. On the sidelines, uh I design hunting properties. I also work in water restoration areas to clear out ponds and lakes from invasives. When I'm not doing that, I'm an endurance athlete for your Spartan race and also a die hard deer hunter. Endurance athlete, huh? How much endurance are we talking? Um, so I used to run uh 210 miles a week. Oh my god. But um this year, the I'm going to the world championships in Greece. So I change up my routine each year so my body length doesn't get adapted as much. But uh I like to aim for at least um 30, 30 to 50 miles a week of just running and exercising. What's your mile time? So the quickest half I have done while training was 15 miles in one hour and 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_0215 miles? Yes. Okay. So like seven seven-ish minute miles?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_02My ultimate goal is to run a half marathon at that pace. Got a long way to go.
SPEAKER_01Um, the trick to run with that's what I've learned uh because I started my fitness journey three years ago, is you gotta start off with the basics of the nutrition. You go from nutrition to uh running, running into weight training and then to supplements.
SPEAKER_02I've done the weight training a lot, and I was really fast burning in high school, and I've been running for a couple years, and I never really focused on my form. Last year I was right at nine minutes for a half marathon, and I was probably running during the five-day work week, I was probably running six miles or seven miles total, like a mile or two a day, and then the long run on Saturday, no speed work or anything. So I feel like I left a lot out there.
SPEAKER_01That's pretty good. So, like my average day for like weight training and running is basically um start, wake up around 4 a.m., go run three miles and go in like 30 minutes, and then go swim, do 36 laps, that's one mile, and then do weight training for two hours and then go to work. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned you were doing a little work on designing hunting properties. Let's go into that a little bit before. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So um my family farm. Um mainly we have like a lot of eastern red cedar thickets, we have a lot of creek bottoms, we got little like thin pieces of cover, like pen oaks, you got some sycamores, shine bow cookeries, and you got some swampy areas. So I've been working on my family's farm. I would say since since I was 11, I just turned 30. So over the years, what I do is I walk a property over and I figure out where the food's at, where the water's at, and where's the cover at. And then from there, I figure out which trails are active, and then from that, I figure out where the most likely they're gonna be bedding at. So while my property wraps up, it butts up to four other properties. I'm the only property in my area, close to my area, that has a lot of cover to it. Most of the fields around me are just open ag fields that you can see 100 yards across. So, what I do is I uh put in food plots. So right now I have four variants of soybeans down my woods. I have stung um deer sanks hanged up. I also have some water places set up for like ambushing that buck, especially around September, and just go from there.
SPEAKER_02Have you hired all your services to other farms or are you mainly just family farm?
SPEAKER_01Um, what I generally do is um I kind of work on my main farm, but if someone calls me up saying, hey, I need your help to design a hunting property, then I'm all yours. I did a couple properties two years ago. This one guy had, I want to say had 500 acres, uh, just land, just old ag fields. And uh I talked with him, met him in person, kind of came up with a design plan. And uh yeah, it's mainly just someone's interested, they just call me up and I start working with them. Something you really enjoy, huh? Yeah. What did you say you did full-time again? So my company name is Trapper Jack. Oh, that's right, the pest control. Yeah, I'm a pest control. I trap critters 365 days a year.
SPEAKER_02What do you catch the most of?
SPEAKER_01Moles. Really? Moles, moles, raccoons, squirrels, armadillos, have caught some beavers, and a black coyote. Black coyote, huh? Yeah, it was it was like solid black as coal.
SPEAKER_02That's pretty cool. Not a big fan of moles. Not a big fan of moles. They moved into my yard. Coincidentally, after I reseeded it last fall and was watering, so they liked a nice mo moist ground. I'm like, just get out of here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They ended up leaving right as I got the trap from Amazon, so that's how it goes. Yeah. How'd you get started hunting, Jackson? How long have you been hunting?
SPEAKER_01I I started hunting when I was 11, but I've been going with my dad ever since I was able to walk. And so the way it would go is my dad would uh grab his 12 gauge bone crusher. My mother would wake me up and give me some hot chocolate and a blanket and made him a walk to the deer stand while I covered up like a giant uh uh kind of like a burrito, which is the layers of blanket, and I would watch the deer come into our field, and my dad would uh pick a deer out and he would just shoot it. But once I got old enough, um my grandf my grandfather was also a hunter ed instructor. So he taught me like the basics of hunting, and then I took my hunter edge safety course and then I started hunting with my dad after that.
SPEAKER_02How long do you think you were going with them just sitting along, tagging along before you actually got to go out and hunt?
SPEAKER_01I would honestly say I really get um I said for three years, three solid hunting seasons.
SPEAKER_02Is there any hunts from that time that stick out more than the others?
SPEAKER_01Uh the one hunting thing that I that I remember was the first time my dad ever took me hunting that I was actually allowed to have a firearm. We went to my neighbor's farm in the morning, didn't see anything. We saw a lot of dolls, but I was mainly after a buck on that farm. And we came back home to eat some breakfast. I was watching Tom and Jerry while my dad was cooking some flapjacks and sausage and eggs. And my dog was on the deck and he started barking very strangely. And our farm we hunt is literally in our backyard. I looked out and there was like six deer, like 50 yards from the back door, just eating grass. So I snuck into my mom dad's room where my dad was sleeping, woke him up, and he's like, Go go outside and grab the guns from my truck. So any 11-year-old would shut the door quietly as possible, and I won't I quietly ran to the truck, got the guns, brought them inside. I got up to my dad and he's like, there's dough left. The four of them went a thick cover. So we got on our kitchen deck and we saw the dough. This dough, I would say 80 yards. And I was using my dad's 12 gauge bone crusher. And it was I had a I was shooting kind of at an angle, so like I had a 50% chance of hitting the house, 50% chance of not hitting the house. So I lined my sights up and I shot. And as soon as I shot, it just felt like everything around me was in slow motion. I looked to my dad, and he was like looking at me. And as soon as I went back into rowdy, the deer dropped. I was like, oh my god. I was I was freaking, I was so excited. And my dad, um, generally around here, if you shoot a deer, you have to like it's not advice to run up to a deer once it's like been shot, but you have to put another bullet in it just in case, because deer where I live are known to run away after being shot. They could go two or three hundred yards. So my dad ran up, put a bullet in the in the deer again, and he came down and he looked at me. He's like, Where where did you shoot this deer? I'm just like, I was came, I was aiming at the shoulder, and he's like, You shot this deer in the butt. He was like, how do you tell? It literally peed and pooped a perfect circle around the deer and just died. But that was the happiest moment after that day. I was hooked on a deer. I I couldn't get enough of it. What did you say it was Bone Crusher? 12 gauge bone crusher? Yeah, so it's a it was a 12-gauge uh Remington pump shotgun. And the we called my dad called it bone crush, because every time he probably killed hundreds of deer with that gun. And like soon you shoot a deer, they just it just crushes bone and it just deer drops immediately. Doesn't run half the time. And that name stuck.
SPEAKER_02Okay, it wasn't an actual model, it was just what he called it. Yeah, it was just a nickname.
SPEAKER_03I'm like, that sounds like a pretty cool gun. Yeah, it was.
SPEAKER_01Still got it? No, we still got it. Um that me and my brother, my dad have killed a lot of dealers with that gun.
SPEAKER_02It's amazing how guns can carry sentimental value like that. Oh, it does. Okay. How old did you say you were at that point?
SPEAKER_01I I was a I was a sop sophomore in high school, so I was probably 15.
SPEAKER_02That was the first deer you you were able to harvest? Yeah. It's a pretty surreal feeling, especially spending all that time hunting with your dad, and you finally get the opportunity and you make it happen, and at that age, all you want to do is make your dad proud.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay, you ended up getting this deer. Walk us through what you guys did next. He make you gut it. Did he take care of it?
SPEAKER_01So um once I got to the scene, because I had to uh get out of the house and walked 80 yards to our dried up pond. Once we got there, uh he told me like he he gave me a knife, and so I somewhat started gutting the deer, and I kind of stopped halfway because uh the smell was just horrible. And then my dad took over after then he started gagging, so so it was kind of funny, but after you think it was a shot, or you just went too deep when you're gutting? I think the shot because a shot went through the deer's butt and wrecked everything. Wrecked the liver, the lungs, the guts, it wrecked everything, and it came out almost, I would say the opposite shoulder. Okay. So it just destroyed everything, and uh the opposite shoulder that that leg is broken. So if it did try to run, it wouldn't run that far. But that's why my dad finished it off when he did. Can't imagine the yeah, the smell. Oh yeah. After we got the deer gut and everything, took some pictures, and then uh we waited till my brother got home from school because I skipped school that day to go deer hunting. And me and him and my brother and my dad, we all rode in his truck to um his um buddy's place to drop the deer off in the cool in a giant like commercial cooler. And this cooler, I would say it could house like 30 deer. It was a massive, and it was the my deer is like the first one in it. So, but he told me that deer probably weighed uh after you removed the guts. I said the guts are like 50 pounds total, but I say I probably got anywhere from like I would say 120 to 130 pounds of meat out of that deer. Really? That's pretty good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's pretty surreal feeling getting your first deer. Was that a I can't you said that was a dough?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was a doe. It was a mature doe, and I was showing all my friends, all my teachers of the deer I got on the day I wasn't at school. It was yeah, that bragging kind of feeling was like it lasted a week. But it was a great time. My my grandfather came by, checked out the deer, and he was happy. I mean, he gave me high five. It was great. It was a great feeling. How long did it take for you to get your first buck? Oh, okay. So so I got two buck huntings. Um first, you're we're gonna talk about a buck from Missouri, or we're gonna talk about a buck from a different state.
SPEAKER_02I want to hear about your first buck, and then we can go into some more stories, what whatever you want to cover.
SPEAKER_01So I say my first buck was the buck got shot uh last November during the Missouri gun season. That was your first buck? First trophy buck. Okay. So the way how it story played out was uh my we had this, we had three bucks on the property. We had a big wide eight, a big 10 pointer, and I would say a big old 12. And we're hunting, where we're at hunt, we have like we're probably hunting over like an acre of clearance that I cleared out from like doing wildlife habitat management stuff. And I told my dad, he's like, if you see the tin pointer, shoot it. He's like, okay, so I kind of jokingly said, Hey, I'll give you seven days to kill this deer. If you can't kill this deer off in seven days, I'm gonna come in and kill that deer for you. So while I was at work, my dad hunted hearts for seven days straight during his vacation time to kill this deer. He saw does, he saw some small bucks, he but he didn't really see anything that was worth mounting. He's more of a trophy hunter. So that day I got a call. It was on a Tuesday. I got called there's a bat in someone's house. So I went to the scene where caught a bat from my bare hands, took the bat out, let it go, uh, took my dog to the vet, and then got home late. I would say probably around 3:30. So this food plot I had set had some oats in it, it had clover in it, it had some peas in it, it had like everything, even some brassica in it. So um I grabbed two buck decoys, both of them are like archery decoys. So I took the antlers off one of them to make it look like a dough, and then I took the other one with the antlers and I mounted it. So I put it in the middle of my food plot. I was hunting on ground level, and I did a rattling sequence. And I did a rattling with a buck, with a doe bleed, probably for like 10 minutes while and then I just stopped and waited. And all of a sudden, I hear a deer running. And this buck, the 10-pointer that I was after, showed up the day I was hunting. He ran 300 yards across my neighbor's property, jumped across the creek, and got on my side where I was hunting. When I was looking for my scopes, I was counting the points because where I live, you have to have four points on one side to make it legal to shoot. And so I saw four points, and I probably had a hole the size of a golf ball to shoot. I was using my custom seven Bremington mag. I just got it that year. I lined my sights up and I shot it. The shot was perfect. But this buck had a lot of adrenaline left, so he jumped back across the creek, ran into four other properties, and got onto the neighbor's three um open field. And I lost sight of it. I was figuring out calling my dad, like, hey, I got a buck. But luckily, the buck that where it died on was one of my clients in the past I used to trap moles for. So I called her, I showed up to her house, knocked on the door, and said, Hey, can I go retrieve my deer? And she's like, Yeah, go ahead. I get to the scene where I saw what the buck jumped across. There was no blood for 80 yards, not a single drip of blood. I started panicking. I'm just like, I knew I hit him good, but there was no blood. So I started looking and looking and looking, and 300 yards later, there was this big old white belly laying in a ditch. And as soon as I got close, I got my rifle and I loaded up just in case it got up again. I was gonna shoot it. So I poked a rifle, barrel of my rifle on that deer, and he didn't move, so I knew it was dead. I lifted his side up and it was actually the tin pointer. I thought I shot the white A, but it was actually the 10 pointer I shot. It was the most surreal moment ever because I worked so hard on that property. I've been hunting that property since I was 11 for like 19 years. I hunted that, and I never shot a buck off that property. It's always been doe. So that buck was like a reward for all the hard work I put on that property. And that deer lightweight, I would probably say he was 220. That's how much he weighed? Yeah, 220. He was a big deer. Um, the rack on it, I would say 150. Yep. Big deer, big body. And then I had to drag him 300 yards from the spot where I shot him. Where I kind of retrieved him at and dragged it back to my truck. And let me tell you, if you feel like you're out of shape dragging a deer, I've been there. It was like the longest drag ever, but it was worth every second.
SPEAKER_02You couldn't get the vehicle access where you were at?
SPEAKER_01No, because uh earlier that day it rained a lot. So it was like very muddy, and um I didn't want to drive into her fields. I was being respectful of the land, and I told her I was dragging the deer to the truck and loaded it there, and she's like, that's fine. So yeah, and right around I got this deer, I say it was 5 30. Uh and by the time I got him to the truck, I say it was probably a little over 6 o'clock. It was that fast, huh?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh, what was I gonna say? So, yeah, you drug it that far in Missouri. Do you can a landowner turn you down from recovering a deer?
SPEAKER_01I feel like it can't. I feel like it that is possible because I have had other hunters um ask me to get on my property and I said no. But uh my rule is if you walk up, knock on the door and you ask very nicely to it, though I can guarantee they will say yes. But if you just show up on their property and not ask their permission, you're not getting that deer.
SPEAKER_02And part of it is if somebody is trying to track a deer on my property and they kind of explain where it goes in and there's no blood like coming across, I don't think so. If it's a good blood trail and I can tell that deer's down or see it, then sure. But if they hit it in the dead zone and they think they're gonna track it, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've actually had um deer hunting. Um I have a family farm up in North Missouri, near Nile in Missouri, and I shot a buck up there, but we couldn't retrieve the body of the deer because it died on the neighboring property, and my cousin my family and that neighbor hated each other. So I couldn't get that deer. So in some parts of Missouri, you're you probably won't get that deer.
SPEAKER_02That's terrible. And Iowa, as long as you don't have a weapon, you don't even have to ask for permission. Really? That is crazy.
SPEAKER_03I mean, it's kind of a respect thing.
SPEAKER_02I've turned people down, wasn't my property is neighbors, and I made the call, like they showed me where the deer cross, there wasn't blood. I seen the deer running because they were doing a deer drive. It was probably three-quarters of a mile still running after they shot. Oh boy. Yeah, I don't think so, buddy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it doesn't sound like you actually hit the deer, it sounds like you just possibly graced a deer.
SPEAKER_02Now I drove around the section when they were still running around and I could see that they kind of hit it in the loin, the dead zone. Yeah, you're not just the way you set up. It's it was kind of a sanctuary, like 40 acres where everybody would push deer to. Well, we wait for everybody to push deer to it before we start. So if we would have let them go in there and track this wounded deer, they would have pushed all the deer out before we even had a chance to walk it. Wow. Luckily we took we were able to keep them out. That's good. Yeah, people pull that stuff all the time. So, like, is uh deer drives, is it still popular in Iowa? That was probably 10 years ago. It's gone downhill in popularity a lot. I don't do it anymore. It's that was probably about right when I wrapped it up. I haven't gone in seven, ten years. It's been a long time. Have you ever done a deer drive?
SPEAKER_01Uh I've done a rabbit drive without no deer drive. How's a rabbit drive work? So uh the way my grandpa, my dad's dad the way he would do it, he had three beagles. And you would have one, you'll have one guy going in the center of it, of a property with the dogs, and you would have shooters on the outskirt of the property, like I would say 50 to 80 yards away. And then when the rabb got spooked, the rabbit would run towards those sections in the corner where the shooters were waiting for the rabbits. I guess I've done some rabbit drives before. It was fun. We always when I did it with him, we always got like two or three of them.
SPEAKER_02By rabbit drives, I mean, when you get down to the last pass, Combine and Corn just get on the end and let the combine do the drive, and then you catch them as they come out. Yeah. It's pretty effective.
SPEAKER_01I bet. That's one way. I've never thought about doing that.
SPEAKER_02There's always rabbits, man. You're guaranteed guaranteed two of them. And maybe some pheasants. You never know what's gonna come out. What about armadillos? Nah, we don't have them up here now.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really? And you're lucky is I've seen uh most of the time when when I'm hunting with the corn and all the harvest going on, most of the time it's either armadillas coming out, some squirrels, turkeys, and deer, but not a lot of rabbits. You don't like armadillos? No, they uh they dig giant holes. And so, and then more of a news is they tear out food plots crazy. Do they really? Yeah. I had to reseed my food plot this spring with beans on it, and the armadillos came in and wrecked it, dug everything, so I had to manually smooth everything out again, reseed it, just to get it back to growing phases.
SPEAKER_03No kid they do more damage than raccoons. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Really? We have raccoon problems on the farm where we'll have cattle feed with plastic on top to keep the moisture out, and the raccoons will just dig right through it and holes everywhere. What do you what do you do with armadillos? Just throw them in the ditch after you shoot them? Are they good good for anything?
SPEAKER_01They're not really good for anything for at least in the state of Missouri. Um with their blood, um it is slightly toxic. It's like when I shoot an armadillo, uh, I will have to like wrap up everything, wrap the body up, and like get a hose and dilute the area where it shot it, because um that blood will just sit there for days and it has like a horrible smell to it. So by diluting the water with the blood, the smell goes away. Then I just throw the body away in a trash can. I need to get you in touch with one of my buddies.
SPEAKER_02I've never met the guy. Came across him on a Facebook group or something. We're talking about thermoscopes, and I talked to him for a couple years. It's been a while. But he's got a pest business out in Ohio. Really? A lot of trapping, bats, all that stuff. I should I'll get you in touch with him. Sounds great. But he's dude's a killer. Like he's out every night thermal coyote hunting.
SPEAKER_01That's cool. Yeah, we have uh we have an active pack of coyotes on our farm, but where they uh where their dens are butts up kind of on our property and the neighborhood's property, but you could hear them like going crazy and screaming. It sounds like a woman getting bloodily murdered. A lot of coyotes, huh? A lot of coyotes. I would say uh probably 30, 30 plus. No king. Yeah. And like in my era, no one hunts them. Like they're mainly people around here, they mainly shoot flytale, a lot of waterfowl, and turkeys. They don't mess with squirrels, rabbits, not even much raccoons either. Do you ever go thermal coyote hunting? I always wanted to go. Um, I had properties to do it at the time, uh, but um I never had the skill for it.
SPEAKER_02Dude, it's so much fun. It's so much fun. You need one. It's it's a business expense, man. It is.
SPEAKER_01I might have to look into just buy one if you consider it's a business expense.
SPEAKER_02Well, I wouldn't it? It's pest control. I had a schedule F for farming, and I used it as tax deduction. There's they wouldn't even bat an eye at it, especially if you're on pest control. Oh, all your guns, dude? Calls?
SPEAKER_03Oh, are you writing that stuff off?
SPEAKER_01I I'm writing, I probably have like $10,000 worth of traps. I write off my truck off, um, all my traps, but I probably will start writing like guns off and such, but I uh my birthday was on Sunday, so my brother got me a ammo call that has 180 calls on it. What kind of call is it? Um it's it's that honey heads called the IHunt. It's like that, it has gators on it, it has raccoons on it, it has mountain lions, bobcat, coyotes, it has that everything. It's like, what'd say like this tall? You know, there's just two batteries and you just play it and the animals just come running in. So next time they try it here soon.
SPEAKER_02Thermal optics, no question, it's it's a business expense. Okay.
SPEAKER_01I'll just go buy one right now if that's the case.
SPEAKER_02No, that I mean, that's serious. If if you're taking care of raccoons, like same with the like a suppressor. Oh, absolutely. They would never even bat an ID. That's your business, man. Like shooting raccoons. You can shoot raccoons after dark. They rifles, suppressors, calls, optics, no question, it's a business expense. Like, maybe you don't take like your business dollars to pay for it, but in terms of like taxes and stuff like that, no question, it'll it'll be a tax deduction.
SPEAKER_01That's a good idea because um, especially in areas where I trap, I trap in a lot of rules and like high, like, like kind of rich areas for communities. And when I trapped out there, I used to hang up um deer hunting blinds all over the place. And then I would set traps because like while in those areas, people don't kind of like it now being caught in the open. But if they go inside of a deer blind and they don't see it, nothing ever happened. So that's what I kind of do in those areas. I would set either like a uh foot trap, most of the time it would be like a foot trap. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02But then you don't want to alert all the people living there, so you gotta have a suppressor under 22 so they don't even hear it. Or if you're working late, you gotta be able to see, so you might need a thermal optic. Oh, okay, now we're talking. No, no question, it's a tax deduction.
SPEAKER_01Like, wow, I never thought about that way. I've always like I have like a I have an ammo cable. It's it's a pole that has a cable under it, and you press it, and it tightens up to grab someone, I catch something, I put it right and I press it, and it actually kills them with the second very quick, humanely, because it gets a cable gets right around their kind of neck, what the spine column needs. You press, it snaps it. So they go out very quietly. So I might, like you said, I might have to look into doing a thermal and a suppressor for night.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Is that how you so you put something around their neck and snap their neck? Yes. Okay. I suppose that'd probably be easier than I've seen the things where it looks like uh something you like put on their nose and it just like spring loaded.
SPEAKER_01I've seen those too. Like um, it's kind of like you put on their nose and you press up, and a little little pin comes out and it pokes them around the brain and kills them within seconds. I've seen those.
SPEAKER_02Yours would work better because I like mine better.
SPEAKER_01Because you're not gonna get them to hold still. Especially you have like an angry boar style. Yeah, they will go crazy. So um, I have done some modification with my pole with the cable in it, and it works like a charm.
SPEAKER_02Have you ever had any close calls doing your trapping?
SPEAKER_01Oh. A lot of times. Are we talking um like which animal? Because I got stories for different animals. Let's hear them all. Uh, I say it was a possum, a possum job. That's one that happened. Uh last year, um, my buddy he owns a roofing company, and he called me up, I was like, hey, I have a possum that fell through my ceiling, and he's in my office taking a crap. Could you come get him? So, me being me, I showed up. I manhandled this possum. Grabbed the possum right by the tail, and I just walked him out, put him a trap in my truck and drove away. But uh, with coyotes, the black coyote I told you about earlier, um, this coyote was eating, this was like in suburb area, like a neighborhood, but this coyote pack were actually eating the dogs and cats in this neighborhood. So I found the trail where they were coming in at. And so I put it on these snails. I call it the the hangman. I have different traps for different ways of killing critters. But this hangman, it's a cable. Soon an animal walks through it and it tries to move, it tightens it up, it flings them up in the air and hangs them, and they're dead within seconds. So with this coyote, what happened was when I caught it, he had his paw around his neck or on the cable, so it was tied, so he couldn't got, so I had to go in there and uh do the final blow. But he was he was angry. Well, I can see why he's angry. I caught a beaver, it was had a uh a lady called me like two years ago. She lived in this nice, nice house. It had like 80 trees around this lake. She went on vacation, she came back, and she had two trees left out of 80 trees. So the beaver. How long was she gone? A week. Beaver cut down all 78 trees, and they just left the stumps and they dragged them into this uh man-made lake. This lake here, I would say like five or six acres, but it was really deep, and all the logs are just buried in the center of this, and this beaver was blocking off the sewage area. So I put up uh Coniber's 330 right along this walkway, and that beer came in there and just got caught in a conibare, and then I had to come up with a 22 and finish it off. But I'd said that's it was a sow beaver. I say she probably weighed 80 pounds. She had to have had company with her, right? Going through that many trees. Yeah, then the following next day I caught the male. I would say he was probably 60 pounds.
SPEAKER_02How big were these trees there chopping down?
SPEAKER_01They were chopping, but I would say I I never see I didn't see the property prior before the trees were cut down. I would say like mature, like average height.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. Like a six-inch tree or something?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Because she called me after the fact. So I just show up there when there was only like two trees left. That's a lot of trees you go through.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. How long have you been into the trapping?
SPEAKER_01So I've had, so I went to school for five years. I got a degree in wildlife conservation management, and I got a degree in agriculture and also in criminal justice. So with the wildlife conservation management degree, I studied silviculture, I've studied agronomy, I've studied water and soil conservation, mammalogy, entomology, uh, study of insects. I've studied everything. So I have five years of schooling and going on six years in the field.
SPEAKER_02We talked about the raccoons we have at the farm. So we have a wind break, have a lot of bales piled up. One break was like evergreens or spruce, whatever, and sheds full of bales, and you know, some woods quarter mile here, half mile here, and they just get on this plastic and just tear it up. What's the best way to trap them?
SPEAKER_01So do you have uh a good size live trap?
SPEAKER_02There's too many of them, dude. There's a lot.
SPEAKER_01I would honestly, so with raccoons, uh the highest I caught at one lady's house was 50 of them. How long did it take? Uh three weeks. 50? Yeah. I was using a live trap. I'd make all my bait homemade. I just do a lot of trial and failure. And I had a raccoon in that trap like every night.
SPEAKER_02Why would you say a live trap is more effective?
SPEAKER_01You catch more. I've caught threes, twos and threes in a good-sized live trap. So with raccoons, they like running in groups. So, like around here, raccoons you count any, maybe 10 or 15, maybe 15 to 20 in a group. So on my farm, we had over 60 of them on one trail camera. You see 60 glowing eyes of raccoons. It took a little while to get rid of them, but we did. But with way I do so if you get a box trap, get like a good size, like go to like uh bomb guards, go to um tractor supply or bass pro or diggy buffs or academy, buy the big old box trap. I would honestly buy three of them.
SPEAKER_02Because we have separate separate bunker, like we could set up three no problem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Set up three and the bait I use, this was just between you and me, but uh, and also the audience, but I'll tell you. So uh I'm separate from recipes to catch your camp, but I'll tell you one. So, what you're gonna do is get marshmallows, and then you get cherry Kool-Aid. Cherry Kool-Aid? Yeah, and then you get sardines. You mix it up, it looks disgusting. You mix it up, and you'll catch them. But here recently, I've been just using uh sardines and cherries, cherry flavor Kool-Aid. I would mix them up, it'll look like a bloody mess. So you have like pressure plate in the stand of the trap, put the bait on the back of the trap, but when you do it, install like maybe like a cardboard or plywood on the back of the trap so they can't reach in, grab the bait. So like you have block it off and then put the bait right there. And as soon as they smell it, you they will come running in. Like I've had um raccoons run, smell my bait over five to ten miles away, and they'll just come running in into that trap.
SPEAKER_02What do you mean the cardboard and plywood, so they can't get it from the outside? They have to go in?
SPEAKER_01Yes. So like if you're facing the trap, so like if this front is like the entrance, you only want to block off the corners of the trap, of the back of the trap, so they can't reach in and grab it.
SPEAKER_02That they have to go through the opening to get to it.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah, and I've caught them in twos and threes.
SPEAKER_02What size, like not like a huge trap, just a normal, whatever, two and a half, three feet by like 18 by 18 sort of deal? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. In the way you kind of figure if you could fit your so like a squ like a skunk trap's gonna be small. Skunk strap is probably gonna be like your size of your arm, just by the length of it sticking in it. But uh for raccoons and armadillas, you want the bigger ones.
SPEAKER_02Halfway deep, so you can get multiple in there. Yes. Yeah, we've been using the foot traps and caught one or two. They just put dog food in them.
SPEAKER_01That's like the most common practice I've heard of using foot traps. Um, so when you set up foot traps, like how many foot traps are you setting around these bales and such? Probably like three. So I'm just assuming from for your experience, are you just like acting? tracking these critters like you're figuring out which direction they're coming in.
SPEAKER_02The bunker walls have dirt at an angle and the grass is as tall and you can see the you can see the trails. Gotcha, gotcha.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that makes sense. Just we don't have that around here. Um I've been gonna rely a lot on my trapping through actively scouting and tracking the animal.
SPEAKER_02That's another use case for a thermal man. Yeah. Yeah I wish I lived closer man. I'd I went out to call Coons the other day. It was a couple weeks ago right at gray light walking by the cattle bunker and I looking like I knew that like I knew there were coons but I didn't want to shoot just in case you know is the old man's like farm cats. As soon as they started running it I couldn't hit squat. I shot one and I'm like standing five feet away from the wall and they're kind of like running away from me. Shot one I think I hit the second one but didn't kill him. You know what the son bitch did? Turn around like run between me and this wall like five foot I'm like right as he's like down there I'm like click like oh man thank god he kept running oh that tear you up so fast man oh if that happened to me I would probably shower my pants like I think I knew he was like trying to get out and he wasn't like but like he was like so close I went to pull the trigger and like oh that could have been bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah so were you like actively shooting with like with a 22 or were you shooting like with uh like a 708 or like what were you shooting with? 12 gauge man damn I wow don't ask me how I I was like on the like a 12 gauge I would figure a 12 gauge would at least kill it.
SPEAKER_02Well I don't know what I had for choke and oh okay so you didn't know if it was like modified or it was it was modified is it was modified and it was pheasant so I don't know that's crazy. When you think about it yeah it probably isn't enough to kill them if if they're out far enough and the pattern's wide enough maybe they're close enough where the pattern wasn't spread out yet and I was just I don't know they're probably 30 yards when I was running when they were running I feel like with that situation that scenario I think it also depends on the ammo though 12 gauge ammo if you're using like bird shot buckshot is bird shot okay wow even with birds out of that yard I would I would hope it would get them but wow that's kind of shocking don't assume it was the ammo I've I've killed like deer with mainly just slugs it's but even when I I used to do uh trap shooting I was a state medalist for Missouri for five years running for trap shooting I would uh the ammo I used back then was uh Winchester low recoil low sound and they were going I would say eight eighteen hundred till nineteen hundred just hauling ass across fields when you shoot even I just missed don't blame it on the ammo I missed I know well what kind of scores were you shooting when you were placing that trap I was doing I was getting 23s 24s and 25 out of like the way we did it was you had 25 shwenty five shots per round and I was like in the 20s every round the highest I ever got in one round was eighty I want to say it was eighty three or eighty seven out of a hundred my nephew just shot eighty six and didn't even play damn that's that's very good. Not even high school yet give him a couple years he'll he'll make it he'll make a team he is shooting varsity he shot varsity at state and he's he'll be a freshman next year. Last year's his first year of trap never shot at trap before he went out for trap just just he's got it I mean some people just have it like he's just pretty athletic kid and I mean he's just natural like he can outshoot me and I shoot quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01So like in Iowa is like the FFA or 4 H is it popular out there or not really? Yeah FFA and 4 H. Oh yeah it was actually kind of funny with when I first started doing trap shooting because I was shooting I went to an FFA trap shooting practice and they told me I couldn't couldn't do it couldn't join their team because I wasn't good and so I I took that and joined another team and went state and national champion that year and I came back to the FH after while I was still a member and I showed all the rewards I got and the advisors like you can join my team I'm like nah I'm good.
SPEAKER_02When I was in high school they didn't even have it back then.
SPEAKER_01I'm 37 and went to a pretty small school gotcha yeah yeah I was I was in high school uh 2000 yeah 2010 for 2014 really yeah did you go to a pretty decent sized high school I'd say it was pretty decent um I say per class I would say maybe 150 to 180 students per class that's I consider that pretty good size. Graduated 35.
SPEAKER_02Oh really wow yeah you can see why we didn't have trap yeah that's crazy so like with uh with your class was 35 did like did you know everyone or did everyone know everyone well I knew the whole high school man oh that's awesome hell yeah it's different so back to hunting so you talked about your first decent sized bug and you asked about out of state do you do some out of state hunting?
SPEAKER_01I actually so I do a lot of out of state hunting so with my property where it's at uh it's surrounded by hunters on all four sides and all my neighbors are like if it's brown it's down so I go hunting out of state a lot more just because I can afford to so but I generally like to go to North Carolina for deer because with North Carolina you get six deer tags for a hundred bucks. Really? And that's like two bucks and four does North Carolina that's your choice for like if you want like a lot of deer because I don't I'm a carnivore I eat a lot of meat but um this year I'll be going to Texas and Arkansas and Florida for deer hunting this year. Interesting choices uh the reason why I pick Texas I'm be hunting the north tip of Texas uh the farm I'm hunting um if a 160 to 200 inch buck comes out you can shoot it and there's no trophy fees really yeah it's uh I'll send you the info do they have have them that big there yeah well the section where I'm hunting they get a lot of big deer the outfitter reached out to me and he's like are you gonna bow hunt or are you raffle I'm gonna bow hunt could be my first ever bow hunting out of state and the place in Arkansas their bucks get over 220 for weight live weight really and they just the outfitter over there has thousands of acres so they plant uh all sorts of crops so they just get thick and big for the Florida one even though Florida's not known for deer my uh girlfriend wants me to take her deer hunting the first time but the only rule is I have to shoot a buck first so then she could shoot a buck bigger than mine. Good luck with that yeah but I already have it planned out how I'm gonna win that one so are you just going to guides or outfitters what what are you thinking um I'll be going so the most of the hunts I do out of state are DOI gear yourself but you just pay like a hunting lease over that farm for like five to seven days or less and you have access to the entire farm and then you can shoot whatever you want if you have the right tax for it. Where do you line that up through so um I go with uh on Facebook it's called cheap hunts uh bunch of outfitters upload hunting info about their outfitting and also I do uh that's another place I get a lot of hunting trips other one I go on I just search I'll say the top 20 outfitters for such and such state and I get a list of every outfitter and then I read your reviews I look at their success rate and then I pick which one I has the most positivity in it and then I go book them I'm just curious what your process is for picking which states to go to normally it'd be like Illinois Kansas Indiana okay so you're gonna answer it that way uh Indiana I'm born from Indiana I moved to from Indiana to Missouri when I was a kid so my goal is to give a buck in every state so I already Missouri I already got two I already got one from North Carolina so next year goal I'll be trying for Kansas I got a point this year in the draw system so I'll definitely try Kansas uh Indiana and Ohio next year are you doing a lot of putting points in every year is that what you're doing putting points in every year yeah I I mainly focus uh for whitetail I will mainly do Kansas because I have family in Kansas and also I have connections in Kansas where I could go hunt some land but I mainly put in a lot of elk points I do elk points in Pennsylvania and also in Utah and also I got some points in Montana as well. That'd be a good place to go. Yeah Utah is like in my opinion it's like the Wild West. Oh yeah yeah it's it's crazy.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if I'd waste your time in Pennsylvania I feel like I have better chances in Pennsylvania than Utah.
SPEAKER_01I've had a couple of people on from Pennsylvania and the residents have extremely hard time getting drawn for Pennsylvania that's kind of surprising um I know Kentucky Kentucky and Tennessee is very hard to draw in that especially in Arkansas Arkansas's very hard to draw for elk they got elk in Arkansas? Yeah at some parts of Arkansas and some parts tend to be in Kentucky I need to get elk more yeah they have elk in uh some parts of Nebraska I have some in South Dakota North Dakota Oklahoma even I would say some parts of Michigan as well oh for sure I've heard Michigan I've heard there's some big elk in Nebraska oh I've heard too the out there in Nebraska you have to pay for uh outfitter tags and I've heard some some outfitter tags going as up to five grand that's crazy and it's that's just crazy to me and like with Utah there's some hunts 15 to 20 grand just to kill a linen entry bull out be nice. Yeah it'd be nice but it better be guaranteed success rate at that price I would hope so but um I also listened to your live your heard every I listened to every one of your podcasts. You have and I've yeah I've I listened this being like my fifth time listening to all of them again. Really? Yeah your number one fan man that's why I applied so many times I saw your name on there a couple times I feel like I probably applied to get on your show at least 20 really yeah well I did you know were you just like messaging the channel or so like with your uh so saying you uh type in a hunter's legacy and you go on like hey you want to be a part of the show there's this link that you click on this link and then you type in information and it sends a reply directly to you I probably did the Facebook one I would say at least 15 times. And then I went so what say this again where is this at so like on so what they hunter's legacy like you're the kind of like on your prof the your page that you ask people hey does any want to be a part of on the show and so like I I looked at some of your posts in that and like it had like a link on that page that um you click on it and you enter your info and go that way. So then I after trying that I tried your webs tried your website thing and then I tried a couple times on that and I just stopped doing it. Was it all the same form? Yeah same form same format yeah okay I wonder if it only lets you because I only saw your name twice interesting yeah that's when I knew like I better reach out to them yeah it's just like I like what you do and everything about it it just seems very unique. So like with me I drive a lot I drive probably 5000 miles a week in my pickup truck. Really so I'm constantly listening to podcasts. What's your favorite episode? I really like the one uh the guy the North Carolina one the North Carolina guy he's like the ginger how like he had a um you said one of his embarrassing stories was he mixed like nicotine with Mountain Dew and he farted and it was just like a mist okay hold on uh is that a recent one no that one I would it it North Carolina oh is he a ginger Cody yes that guy yes I'm kind of colorblind I didn't yeah I okay I remember that now like he was down below and his buddy had to go real bad and yes that's my most favorite one Samir's probably been my favorite so far yeah you got any other cool stories you want to share before we wrap this up uh hold on I was gonna ask you were you able to like make the connection of like who the host was of the podcast or not?
SPEAKER_02Oh with you yeah um at first um I didn't know it was you I just thought it was like one of your like office staff or something but after it said Michael Fox and I was like oh it is him and I was like I was like oh my god this is awesome yeah like I probably need to do better about like getting my face out there because you could probably go through all the reels I've been better about it like okay who who hosts this like is this just somebody stealing clips from other podcasts no um I subscribe to you on YouTube and also I'm subscribed to you on Apple Podcasts so I listen on those two platforms and like the way you have it set up honestly with the videos and shorts you do an amazing job.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it man I listen to like eight different podcasts but you're like honestly like the top one up there like you do fantastic job I would just say keep up the good work.
SPEAKER_02It's this the Facebook's done really well the podcast listens I think it's just tough it's competitive and people like the way people comment on Facebook posts like I don't think they understand what we do yet. They think we're just trying to teach people how to hunt it's like no it's basically an open mic for hunters is what it is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I appreciate it uh I say my most embarrassing uh I got a couple I got lease one embarrassing story because you always at the end of the video you have you have one embarrassing story and you also talk about your favorite scent killer.
SPEAKER_03Yeah oh the the what what do I call 'em? The rapid fire you mean?
SPEAKER_02Yeah okay uh I'll have to get you in touch with uh dude I've interviewed like three or four people in the St. Louis area I'll have to get you in touch with them. But yeah we'll we'll uh go into this rapid fire question. I think I have six of them. So the best hunting gear purchase you've ever made.
SPEAKER_01I say my best hunting I got two my Semaromton mag and my PSC uh Stinger the gun that doesn't even leave a blood trail yeah it it just knocks them down it just it just yeah it just knocks them sounds like a pretty sweet gun though oh that's amazing most gimmicky hunting purchase you've ever made total regrets all mock scrapes things all the like the use like spend thirty dollars and buy a mock scrape kit none of that shit works honestly I have a boss uh I just pee in my scrapes and then the the deer like it they just show up yeah no sense spending a bunch of money on your spray and I could see like the rope working but just buy rope from the hardware store I've done the beads I've done like the the the gels I've done everything you said beads yeah so I was part of a hunting um company it was called Whitetail Flare and we did uh we mainly sold um custom uh scent for deer they would be like a doe estrus to like a mock scent scrape and they also sold minerals and fertilizer things so I was a I was like a member with them for a couple years. You said beads yeah beads so basically the way we did it when I was a member with um you get a like a bottle like a little like kind of like a traveling shavel like traveling uh shampoo bottle and you have beads in it like little tiny like B beads but they're liquid form and you what you do is you pour them out and you dump buck urine or dough esteris whatever you want on it and they absorb and they turn into golf size side beads and then what happens when the buck or dose peed on the scrape it sucked up all the scent and then released it every other day. So it made it look like there was a deer actively hitting that scrape every day. I've never heard of that yeah it was it worked on the Dills but not on the bucks at least on my farm but everyone else that uh tried it out in this area they were gilling like boon and crockett bucks off of it. That's pretty sweet that's pretty sweet what about hunting luck versus skill percentage breakdown? I'd say with me I'd say it's I would say 90 90 10 skill 90% skill yeah and 10% luck I just way with my farm is set up is if you want to kill a deer off my farm you have to put in the work. Yeah because my land is also native um Native Americans used to hunt this area so anytime I go hunting I always offer offering to the natives. Yep either in like coffee grinds or I would like leave something down there that respect the spirits and I always kill deer off of it.
SPEAKER_02That that's pretty cool man giving back what about most controversial hunting hot take?
SPEAKER_01I feel like especially what's going on with Oregon right now about how they're outlawing hunting and trapping and such out of that state I feel like with a lot of people um they just have like the wrong taste of hunting with it like I feel like if everyone got together and like took hunter safety classes because I used to be a hunter um instructor and understand the concept of like managing a healthy population of deer and explain to them if we don't hunt this is gonna lead to uh extinction lead to disease spread I think they would understand more if they had more knowledge of what hunting's really all about yeah and and I think it's just going out there to kill.
SPEAKER_02I mean yeah the hunters and outdoorsmen do a lot more good for the herd than what they take off of it. Exactly. What about most underrated hunting tactic? Uh decoys.
SPEAKER_01Deer turkey I mainly hunt deer using uh deer decoys especially uh opium week Missouri firearms I wouldn't set up using decoys like the second day after the firearm season like that Monday because in Missouri generally hunting season starts either that Saturday or Sunday I say that Monday use decoys and a lot of rattling getting after it huh yeah awesome well I appreciate you sharing that let's let's roll into some embarrassing hunting stories okay um my first embarrassing hunting story is about my uh seven pointer that I shot two two or three years ago I had to go pee real bad so I for jumped I climbed down my ideer stand ran in woods um went to the restroom got back up and as soon as I got up to my stand there was the seven pointer was literally right there. I shot him dropped him and that was it I think the P scent was kind of like a cover scent because it was downwind and he came up the same direction where I went in the restroom and he thought I was uh a deer and yeah yeah okay 90% skill 10% luck huh yeah what else you got um another embarrassing hunting story was um I actually was it was first time I went deer hunting with my grandfather and we went up north to the family farm and I really had to go bad like go uh I really had to go like poop real bad so I squatted in the woods I left my gun in my stand and out popped a one of the bucks that my grandpa saw earlier and I couldn't do anything about it. Literally got caught with your pants down. Literally you at least should have had like the rifle on your lap or something I did I just the the direction where he came from I just would not have thought he would come from that direction. You left yourself a little too vulnerable. I did and like after that day I anytime I have to go in the woods I always have my gun right next to me.
SPEAKER_02Mistakes happen at least you learn from them right yeah all right man well it's been fun I'm glad that we finally got to get you on on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01Yeah me too this is like uh a dream of mine I've I've always wanted to be on a podcast and since you started and how you're how you do it it's really honestly a blessing and uh life like a once in a lifetime opportunity to be on this podcast because it's really just amazing and I love it. All right man it's great meeting you thanks buddy