The Secret Sauce Behind Shooting Big Deer | Never Apologize Podcast Ep. 3

n Episode #3 of the Never Apologize Podcast we talked about Land Management for Big Deer and how much time is dedicated to successfully tagging Trophy Whitetail.

Chris Van Gerpen and Dan Luzum take us behind the scenes to tell us all about their experience and knowledge in Whitetail Deer Land Management. Chris, Dan and Mark work as a single unit to pattern, discover and harvest Giant Whitetail almost every year.

If you’re at all curious as to how things work behind the scenes at TGR this is a great episode to listen to.

Thank you to Dan and Chris for giving us a sneak peek look into what they do here at TGR and some bonus tips for those who might be interested! Without these guys many of our Top Films would not have been possible.

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About The Given Right:
Hunting always has, and continues to be, integrally woven into the fabric of American society. Hunting is not a privilege, but a God-given right. We aim to celebrate our God-given right to hunt in each and every episode, and portray the passion we all have for this sport that we love so much.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

You guys like every thank you for this blessing out here and enjoy your creation. Thank you for this weather. Thank you for our friends and family that were able to enjoy this with. Let us have fun, save hunt, and every prayer.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Never, never, never, ever. I'll die.

SPEAKER_05 0:30

Alright, we're coming to you with episode number three of the TGR Never Apologize podcast. And this one for me is gonna be a lot of fun, and I'll tell you why. Two reasons, Mr. Mark. One, we tend to get a lot of hate on social media. Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe not me as much. I didn't notice. You tend to get a little bit more of it than uh Kenneth and I do. There is some truth to that. Kenneth likes to poke at it probably more than both of us, but it usually comes back to deer that we are shooting or aren't shooting, or how we shot said deer, and the fact that everybody seems to think that you specifically hunt behind high fences on a 20-acre piece with deer that you've bought and put there, and there's a bait pile there and a bait pile here, and probably did it in a spotlight, which that is the best one that I have heard yet, by the way. I I really like that one. Unreal.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah, unreal. If you see the real that it that they were talking about, it is unreal. I mean, it's absolutely absurd.

SPEAKER_05 1:35

It's absurd. And it's and like I'll I'll blame it on the fact that the person that made that comment um just is not familiar with cameras and how everything works with in focus, out of focus on politically correct. I can tell you right now. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt. No doubt. We may have to get some some uh yell-ins from old Kenneth here in a bit. But um, and the other side of that is that the opportunities that the the team has had um over the years comes down to a lot of hard work. And the reality is that it's quite the opposite of what everybody tends to project or accuse or whatever it might be when it comes to our haters on social media, because these two guys and yourself specifically put a lot of time, effort, hard work, money, hard-earned money into creating those opportunities. And and like it, you can't just create an opportunity and boom, it happens. Everybody knows that with white tailed deer. But Mr. Dan Luzum, Mr. Chris Van Gerpen are the guys that spend hours a day, days a week. Countless almost. Yes, that sounds silly, but it's countless hours. Yeah, weeks a month, months a year, you know, years and a decade, actually, at this point for both of you, behind managing these farms. Damn, are we there?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

How long has it been? That spurs the first question. Like 15.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

That's weave too. 13. Come on, weave help us out back then.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

For you, yeah, it's well.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

I did part-time for like close to 10 and 11 for me.

SPEAKER_05 3:20

But 13 and 11. Yeah. So long enough to count as common law at this point in time. So you you guys drive a lot of the management around the farms that you've had the opportunity to work your butt off. I'm gonna say this just because everybody says I'm politically correct. You've worked your ass off to have the opportunity to acquire and continue to build this American dream as a white tail hunter. And in a lot of ways, not just white tail, but white tail hunter specifically. So it's gonna be fun because we're gonna give people just a little peek behind the curtain into what they think this magic voodoo is. Um, and really a lot of it just comes down to using common sense, doing your research, building an education, and putting in the darn hard work. So I'm looking forward to this day. I know you guys are a little bit maybe not as we just looking forward to your meeting.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

I can tell you we're all hesitating because we have a lot to say, and it might not always be the right way to say it or the right idea that's out there in the rest of the world and the way they look at this.

SPEAKER_05 4:26

Right, and but that's the beauty of it is I don't think there's any one right way. And I mean, especially coming from where I came from before I came to work at TGR, I worked at North American Whitale, worked with one of the most world-renowned uh biologists specific to Whitetales and Dr. James Kroll. And the one thing he would always tell us is that deer management is never a finished thing, it is always continuing, it is always evolving. And if you're not learning, you're doing yourself and your deer a disservice. So I but isn't that anything?

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Anything any career, any job, any any business you own. It's you're never and you see it from me. Oh yeah. We've worked what two years now, yeah, and I'm always pushing, always pushing. Yeah, it's either in your nature or it's not. Right. And that that is one of the biggest disciplines that you have to have. It's it's it's not uh motivation, because motivation is nothing more than an emotion, basically. It's the discipline to continually push, push, push. But it's it's not just deer, it's it's anything you do. Yeah. And the people who have that usually have a little more success than people who don't have that same discipline.

SPEAKER_05 5:30

Yeah. So I'd agree. So here's how I'm gonna open this, because I feel like it could go a thousand different ways. Well, it could. It could. So let's let's just start kind of at the beginning with these two, Mark, and I would ask you, what was the challenge coming into this as they both came on the staff that you issued to them and said, All right, in the same way that you'd say, here's our goal at TGR, here's our goal with these farms, what did you tell them?

SPEAKER_02 5:55

How what how are you gonna approach management? And this is the problem with this conversation, it doesn't start that way. Okay. It starts with I I at least a piece of property out here. I I I I mean, I did I tell the whole story here? It doesn't take six hours. I I I I hunting in Pennsylvania. Yep. You know, uh shooting spikes, does anything that moved just like the true redneck in Pennsylvania usually does when I grow up, right? Um, you know, start a family, start a career, too busy to hunt then for maybe 10, 12, 14 years, maybe even more. So I'm I'm busy working and building a career. And then finally you get to that stage where you're 45 to 50 years old and you find yourself in a situation where I have a little bit of money. I want to invest it. And so what do you want to invest in? You want to invest in the future, right? It has to be it has to be uh quantitative and it has to be uh an investment that's good for your family. But also you have those wants and those needs and those hobbies, and so why not invest in land, right? So when I go home and I tell my wife, I've I hunted out and I wouldn't really like it. It's just like being home back in Pennsylvania. Uh the same people are delightful, they're really nice, they they wave. You know, if you you're walking down the road just for a walk, they stop and say, Are you okay? He waved. No, he didn't. He didn't want to I'll point that way. And then you say, Hey, um, you know, we're gonna look to buy a couple hundred acres out there as an investment. And she looks at you and she says, Yeah, right. And and but it if it truly is an investment, right? But you it's it's a hobby and it's something that you really like to do. And it starts off small, and it did, you know, and it was leased the land first, and then the farmer makes an offer, or you make an offer, however it works, and you buy a couple hundred acres, and you got this investment, and you're like, Yes, I can hunt out there. Oh, wait, I can't get a tag every year. How's this gonna work? Right, you know, so and then it then it snowballs, and as it snowballs, you realize that oh boy, these farms are complicated. Not only they're complicated to purchase, you know, with fencing and then resale and tilable and things that you didn't never did before. Right. I mean, I worked on a farm, I built hay. I I put up fences, I didn't own a farm. It's a whole different scenario, right? So after you get so many acres, whatever that acre can be, 200, 2000, whatever it might be, you you need to reach out and you need help. And just like business, and I'll keep bringing it back to that because it is a business too. It is, yeah. And you you always go to somebody who's smarter than you or knows more than you in that specific area to build success. That's just a fact. That's anything in life, right? Um, so in this area, start asking. Lots of farmers, I'll tell you. And I met interviewed a couple people and met these guys, local, hardworking, they both had careers and said, Listen, guys, I'm getting so many acres, I need help. I need I need help doing things, and uh so that's kind of how it starts, right? Okay, yeah, and then from there it really snowballs, and we'll get into that obviously a bit later.

SPEAKER_05 8:58

So it they come in the door, you guys signed on. First of all, when this dude from PA shows up, did I mean did you what was the response? Because I grew up in northeast Missouri, and it in a lot of ways, to the point of what Mark's saying about Southwest PA where he grew up, it it no different. The difference here is that you don't have over-the-counter tags, which God bless you guys, because it's not as beautiful in Missouri as it is up here when it comes to age class or age structure on deer. But guy from out of town shows up, says, Hey, I need help. And I'm sure at first, maybe not, there was some reservation of like, did you ever meet me? Personality, yeah. I don't work here. Like, yeah, for sure. I I know I've met Mr. Charm. But you know, talk about your feelings when you met him, and he kind of issued you guys the challenge of coming to work for him. This ought to be good. Truthful. I said no.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

Did he really? Yeah, yeah. Did he really? I'm like, you don't know me, and I don't know you. And I I starting a family, right? I just changed jobs. I'm like, I got a pension coming. Like, I'm done at 60. Yeah. Like, and at the time he was too busy, didn't have a ton of stuff here, so he couldn't hunt every year anyway and wasn't a resident. Right. Like, uh there's food plots out there. We'll check the cameras. We don't I don't need to do this. Is nights and weekend stuff. Right. It's not a full time every day. Over the next two years, accumulate a little bit more. Got to know each other a little bit more. Yep. Um, and I mean I can't remember what did this September maybe? And he's like, hey, I'm gonna start an office. You or India can do it. I said great. What's the office? Yeah. Your house. What are we doing? Yeah. And if you know, we long story short, I'm like, I'm gonna need some help. Yeah, I know a guy that's way better at computers and finance than me. And I'm like, so I called him and said, uh, you wanna come help me? Because he knew what I was doing. I mean, we were friends hunting together and doing all things. And he was like, I don't know. I'm like, you gotta come out to Jersey with me, we'll go through it. And it took just a little bit of like poke. Yeah, in my mind, it took the poke to get Dan to come along. And then we started the office in at pretty much this over at this house. Yeah, and you know, slowly kind of as things grew, yeah, TGR grew. We slowly worked our way out of doing things in that office and became more and more full-time out here as needed, right? Um, and then since then it's even grown more and got crazier.

SPEAKER_05 11:56

And you grow out aside the state.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

You're starting to really get to know me better and better, and these guys will attest to this. That I I I find myself, my wife calls it blind ambition. I just don't know when to stop. And once I get on a roll on something, I get it in my head, it's like, yeah, full tilt. These guys know this now. Yeah. I mean, it's just you know, it is what it is. So it went from having one farm, then you know, the one up uh next to it comes up for sale, it's 200 acres. You gotta have it, it touches you, right? It just you just got to. So you work as hard as you can to make that happen. And then when you find out that these investments are working well, and I'm getting to the age where I'm gonna look to retire someday, and this I really is a dream. Can I hunt half the year? Can I hunt three months a year? You know, you know, the TV show was just starting. He does it. He does it. 180 days solid with the zing. You know, and and uh throughout my career, it's always been whatever I'm doing, I look and say, if I have to pay for a service, whatever that service might be for that industry or for that business, somebody else is gonna do it, need the same service. For sure. So if we're gonna do it, let's do it for ourselves. But how do I get that when I say this for free? You know what I mean? Yeah, I get what you're saying. How can I make money on this or get that service for free? But let's just make some money, let's go do it for somebody else. And it's snowballed. I mean, it just completely snowballed. So I'll let you guys continue into that.

SPEAKER_05 13:24

But so, Dan, what were your thoughts coming in? Uh to be honest. So, like Chris said, no, you gotta be honest. No, I don't.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

Busted. Busted.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Like Chris said, like I I got to know Mark uh through Chris working part-time with him. Like I'd come out here, I'd uh we hunted. We hunted yeah, I helped, we hunted together.

SPEAKER_05 13:46

You guys are bow hunters by heart originally, right? That's kind of how you guys got all your time and uh you know built your time together.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

So then I came out and had a couple drinks with Mark a few times, and and then Chris obviously presented me with that as far as you know, hey, you want to start an office and do some work on the farm here and there? And I'm like, I was doing construction. Like Chris and I worked construction together before he even went and did uh work at the courthouse. So I was still doing construction, and it was more of a you know, I love doing construction, but it's cold in the winter. I gotta do something else. And it's and it's still outdoor work, yeah. And I love being outside. So um, and like he said, I I I can do computer work.

SPEAKER_05 14:25

I better than I can, which is impressive to me. I've never heard this like IT finance thing. No, I like to do it. You don't believe that. No, I do believe you. I just like I'm not gonna let you play dumb anymore. That's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

So, but it was it was still like he presented with that to me, and I'm like, gosh, is this I don't know. Like, where's this gonna go? Is it is it long term? What's it gonna be? Um, and then like I said, we he said we went out to Jersey, met with Mark, and had some conversations, and it was like, all right, let's do this. All right, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 14:58

It's we're gonna do this the right way. So obviously I have a transportation company, multiple transportation companies. So I knew that I couldn't hire high-end guys. They have a living, they need to make a living. I can't just pay them X amount. Like they got families. Right. And and you gotta do the right thing. So what I did was kind of split the workload between my transportation company and then helping me there. I mean, I took them to the rail yards in Chicago and wherever else we went and said, Newark. Newark, here's trains, here's what we're gonna do, here's why we do it, and here's how we make a living. Everything else we do after that, it's hobby. But it's my hobby, it's my retirement, and that's what I'm working for, right? Yep. It was definitely don't mess this up. Yeah, because otherwise you can't do anything. Now again, we have 57 locations across the United States, we have a couple hundred employees. They weren't the only two. For sure. But they were strategically placed out here and hired here for the hobby. Yeah. But I can justify it and rationalize it through putting them through the the transportation company. That's how I could say everybody can I this isn't gonna be a part-time and it's not gonna be just a a short one or two year if I don't stop hunting, you don't have a job. Yeah, I know. I promise you guys you will have and there's 12 still here. There's 10 or 12 people in that office. Yeah, they still get paid by that company, but we do our hobby first now.

SPEAKER_05 16:20

So which is cool, man. And I think about it like it I'm glad that you guys went about explaining it in that fashion because I think it it gives a real like tangible or real uh path for anybody that's listening and and hears you say, Well, I have blind blind ambition because a lot of us have ambition down deep inside, and we kind of get caught in this jar, if you will, of yeah, that's cool, but my my dad's saying, man, don't, you know, that's that's a that's a great idea, son. Uh you know, but the reality is is you know, you've got two kids and you got a wife and you got to do this job and you gotta do it to pay for for life, and what you want with your with your soul doesn't really matter anymore. You know what I mean? And and I think that for all of us, we've found out early enough through guys like you, Mark, that man, no, yeah, you you have to work hard to get there. And you're gonna work hard at whatever you do, but you might as well enjoy what you do and keep that goal. Don't let that ambition get, you know, put in the corner or put in a box. Or if there's something that you really want to pursue in life, go pursue it. Work hard to do it. Do this over here to make this happen, whatever it might be, and enjoy it and bring people along with you because we're gonna enjoy it together, and that ambition grows. And I've seen you do that just in the three years that I've been here, and I saw you doing it before I came to work for you. Yeah, you know, and it's neat because here we are, we were gonna talk about land management, and the reality is we're talking about life because life is what has driven this opportunity for land. Well, we're into land management, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:45

I mean, if you own property, you gotta manage it just like anything else. You have a family, you gotta be responsible. Yeah, you gotta manage it. Yeah, you have your partner, your wife, and and the kids actually play a role in that as they get older. For sure. They do, whether you realize it or not, they don't tell you what to do, but they talk to you and you you want the best for that. So in turn, you instinctively do that.

SPEAKER_05 18:05

Yep, yeah. All right, so Crazy Pennsylvania is here in in uh Northeast Iowa. You've moved, you have a business here founded um initially in two different forms, but now it's a business around land management, farm management, uh, wildlife management. And now Mark starts to look at you guys and say, All right, we're gonna make this a full-time gig. Here are my expectations, and this is the question I'd have for the three of you. We've seen on multiple occasions, largely you, but this team harvest six, seven, maybe even eight, nine-year-old deer. Sometimes they have 190 inches plus of antler on their head, sometimes they have 150 inches or 140 inches of antler on the head, but the goal always being an older age structure and better genetics. Yep. That's why we have Kenneth. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Sorry to do that too. I couldn't help myself. I wouldn't do it right here. I'm pretty sure Kenneth just says that all the time.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

Sorry, no, he's okay with it.

SPEAKER_05 19:04

It's all right. So, you know, and you know, that's part of it. That that really is part of it. It is. Um, so I ask you, like, man, in the beginning, did it start with, all right, next year we're gonna have 190-inch deer, or was it pretty realistic saying, all right, we know there's probably a good booner running around here. As a as a resident, I have an opportunity, a resident landowner, I have an opportunity to have three buck tags a year. Um, let's manage for a five-year-old, 170-inch deer. I'll start this off.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

I don't like doing this, but I'll start it off because I want to give them these guys a break. Because I know what they want to say. Yeah. And they might not say it, but I'll I'll so I'll tell them myself. I sh I would shoot anything that moved. Yeah. I was from Pennsylvania. Listen, 160-inch, three and a half-year-old, they would hold my boat. They'd say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They had to slowly find a way to say to their boss and maybe not new friend yet, but their boss, you you can't do that, right? Yeah. I didn't know this stuff. I'm not gonna come in here and say I was just white-tailed genius and knew everything. I I I didn't, I didn't you like to feel a tag. I didn't, yes. I really didn't hunt as much for that 15 to 20 year uh period because I was building businesses. For sure. Right? Always had to drive. And I went three, four, five, six times a year and hunted in different places and you know, so on and so forth. So it it it was a slow growth for me. It really was. Even a couple of my friends in Kansas on our properties in Kansas, they'd call me up and say, Mark, you're shooting too many of your you know, your mid-size to bigger deer. And I'm like, What are you talking about? That's what it's for.

SPEAKER_04 20:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

And you quickly realize if you shoot three or four of those in two or three years, the next two years could be kind of lean. Yeah, you know, so so I I'll I'll I'll let them go from there, but I didn't want them to go to the next one. Where did you go from there?

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Like, you know, it a lot of it changed when he decided, hey, I'm here enough already. I'm so close to being resident. Yeah, I'm gonna make that leap, we're gonna build the house, we're gonna, I'm going to live here.

SPEAKER_05 21:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

I'm gonna make sure I'm here all those days, all the things, right? Yep, because before it was one deer.

SPEAKER_05 21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

And like we'd be like, uh he can only shoot one. Yeah. If as long as we can control all of his friends that he brings, we're good to go. You're good to get away.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

When you have 400 acres, one wasn't that big a deal. And right, and then we're acres, they'd say, Oh, it's getting easier. Then I start, oh, I'm gonna bring some friends. They get a tagger there, they're like, Oh man, like now, how do we do this? If they're friends, how do we stop them from shooting?

SPEAKER_03 21:27

So then as that as that evolved and how we that changed how you use it, right? And the numbers that you gotta be able to produce and things like that. And then it for a while I was like, hey, we gotta like slow down. Because he would ask, Where's all the big ones? Yeah. Like, remember last year when you went like one, two, three, and then we can't replace that one. Yeah, right. So that's the big that's a huge evolution, right? Yeah, we've changed how we've done it. There's been a times where we've changed. Size. You know, for sure. The goal was for sure. The goal was always inches, inches, inches. Then it was like, okay, we need age in inches. Okay. And then it was oh, that inch thing got a little bigger. And like, well, then the age things got a little bit longer. And those those we had like a couple of pretty lean years there.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

We did we had EHD or whatever it was here. The year we had the flood, and all of a sudden we didn't have anything for a while.

SPEAKER_03 22:26

Yeah, we lost a bunch, and you had a great crop coming back, and it was like, whoa. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

You know what the impetus was? I got I could throw this in here because you just made me think of this, and and and I apologize. But the impetus was I I was in a not a true audit to for per se, but we were doing some things. He is one of the ex auditors.

SPEAKER_05 22:48

He audits himself.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

So I'm sitting off with my accountants and saying, hey, here's what I'm doing. And in New Jersey said, well, wait a second, you don't qualify as a New Jersey resident anymore. I'm like, what do you mean? You're not here enough. Now, my accountants kicking me under the table. Don't say a word, because I paid a lot more taxes in New Jersey. And that was the impetus then to say, All right, I have two companies out here already. I'm spending most of my time out here. Yeah. So that's when the resonancy came, and then that's when the serious hunting really kicked in. Yeah. Because when I was here, you know, once every two or three years and then can't just once a year, you know, it it you really can't hurt. They could keep you at long distance. Yeah, they could keep me under control. We're all going to agree, but you can't. So so I mean, let's be honest to the world, right? It wasn't I wasn't some genius to do this, but we take what we learn, and that's kind of where this success comes throughout my career. Is take what you learn, hire people smarter than you, and then run with it. Yeah. And that's kind of where we were at that stage.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

And we've learned a ton. I mean, and we're fortunate enough to be able to have somebody that can hunt that much.

SPEAKER_05 24:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

And have somebody that is also a good hunter. Yeah. Because we run into it, you know, like we'll have people in camp, and there's a difference. There's a big difference. So I could make you smile. He just said, we call them killers, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:25

There are killers, then there's hunters, and then there's people who just like to be outdoors. There's probably a whole bunch in between the internet people who tear me apart.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

And Mark is a phenomenal killer. Kill don't say that.

SPEAKER_05 24:36

No, you are, man. You are. That's just good at it.

SPEAKER_03 24:38

Yeah. And then also to be able to relay the information back to us, because also learning farms, a ton of it is hunting them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

Like you can do a ton of cameras, you can do the walking. You can, but to actually be able to sit there and be like, man, man, I didn't know this deer came out over there, too.

SPEAKER_05 24:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:55

You know, or that particular deer comes out over there, he can relay that information well. Boots on the ground, man. Yeah. You just can't duplicate that.

SPEAKER_05 25:05

I saw it tonight. You know, we came in. Yeah. We came in and we were talking about the deer that you had the encounter with tonight, and and the same encounter with yesterday, and you go, oh wow. He was he's actually a better deer than what I thought he was last night.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

You know, this is this is one of the most important things in land management and having the ability to kill bigger deer. I shouldn't say having the ability, because you have to have them, right? It is what it is. But that deer is a perfect example. I immediately texted Dan or called you, didn't I? I was like, Yeah, you called me out. Dan, this deer, I've seen pictures of it, but but he's bigger than the pictures look. Is this the and he goes, yes. And he sends me a picture right away. I mean, that's how connected we are with this. Yeah. This isn't just, you know, there is more time spent on this than most people put in a career in their job. Oh, yeah. All right. But that deer now, we know where he comes from. Chris had an idea, but it wasn't exactly right, but it wasn't far off. And and and and so now, just sitting there two nights, I know where he comes out this time of the year, I know how he acts. I know he was really smart. He stayed back. He was the last deer to move 500 yards away, stayed there for an hour and a half. And when he came in, he turned behind the blind. He looked at the blind. We didn't make a noise, we didn't move, we didn't do anything different. The wind wasn't in his face, but he went downwind of the blind. Smart deer. So we know we got an animal on our hands. Yep. We will probably kill that deer in the next year or two. Hopefully he grows. Hopefully he doesn't get shot on the state game lands. Yeah. But he has potential. He has all the kickers, the stickers, he has everything it takes to make a big deer. Doesn't mean he's gonna grow at all.

SPEAKER_05 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

But we will now target that deer. Yeah. From this day on, since I've seen him, and we kind of learn, but being in the field, I don't care how many cameras you have, I don't, I don't care how many people. You have to be there. You have to sit a stand. We say this all the time, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Well, we will we right now, and this has changed in the last few years. You know, we'd go in and look at an area, knowing that they're are using the area. But you go in and you're like, all right, this is gonna be great. We're gonna set a stand right here. It's gonna be great. And then you go in there and it's like, man, we're we're 50, 75 yards off, right? So anymore, we I mean we don't we typically don't even go in and set that stand anymore. We we go in, set our cameras, get a little bit better read as to all right, where are these deer using this? And and and then again, it's the boots on the ground. Yeah when when he or somebody else can go sit it and and just you don't have to kill anything, you just watch and know take it in. Okay, this trail they're not even hardly using this time of year when we're hunting them. So um yeah, just the the knowledge you can gain from that, all those experiences of and in particular this year down in uh on one of our southern Ireland farms. We thought these deer were all over here. We had pictures of them all the time. And he goes and they're just they're 300 yards off, yeah. Uh standing in the field, messing around with does, pushing does around.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

They were going by our stuff, but we didn't know okay, man. They spend a ton of time over there.

SPEAKER_05 28:15

Yeah, the majority of their time is spent over there. And oh, by the way, we can now hunt a whole different wind that we wouldn't have we've ever tried to hunt.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

Unless there's a deer to kill. Yeah, that's one of the biggest things that we've changed. There was nothing there. We have a couple, right? Because we we knew he was here, right? But we didn't know he was it's in the middle of an ag field. How are you gonna know he's sitting standing in the middle of an ag field, right? So you go, okay, you start here, and then you what you did is you just worked and you hunted him, right? Like, okay, well, he was over there. Oh, I think we can get there, got there. I think we can get over here, get over here, and then boom, he ended you got him at 40 or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:54

One thing you have to be willing to do is eat a tag.

SPEAKER_05 28:56

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

You you we hunt deer. We hunt a deer. Or two. Three or four deer, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We we now if we don't have one, I'll probably go home this week and go hang with the family. The tag will be yeah, it won't get used. Yeah, because we don't have the right deer, it won't have the called deer. We got three or four guys here hunting. I would rather have them shoot one, you know. Uh, but yeah, you need to be willing to eat a tag. We hunt a deer, we find where he's at or where we think he is, and then we go from there. And and it's it's uh it could be a three-year process. And people just don't understand that. And not that they should. But I I I didn't understand it, right? This isn't like we're geniuses, you just learn. Well, that's part of the evolution.

SPEAKER_03 29:36

Right, like the evolution, and that's what that I mean. The first deer I shot was a spike. And then it was like a half basket rack, and then it was a basket rack. You didn't shoot a doe first?

SPEAKER_02 29:46

No. Mine was way bigger than mine hundreds of does the first time.

SPEAKER_05 29:52

I committed the cardinal sin out of the gate. I I started with a button buck. From Missouri while eating at Hershey's bar on a drive, on a drive with an SKS. Now, I don't know how I could be any more ice. I know I know. I was horrible. So I I you heard you said something there and talking about being able to eat a tag, but boots on the ground. And um, earlier this year I'd written a little article for somebody that said, Hey, can you pencil this out or type it out? Whatever. And I was going back and thinking, I love to hunt late season, always have, especially both, because I feel like, man, there's an opportunity there that all you know most of your competition has left the field for the year. And there are great opportunities when you get a deer that you want to kill back on a feeding pattern and they can become predictable and you can do that boots on the ground research to put yourself in a really good position to harvest that animal. And one of the hardest things for me to learn, well, I'll say this when I did my inventory of all the deer I'd killed, I actually found out that I'd killed more deer in the late season than I had in November. As I said, I was like, holy smokes, I didn't realize I'd got to that point. So all three of them, you guys are supposed to laugh there. I think it's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

But we knew that. That's bad. Maybe you meant this year, but then. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_05 31:22

Um I did so in looking at it and going back, um, the deer are I have had the most success with putting a plan together and killing a deer in the years where I have hunted the least because I took the time to go sit in the truck on the top of the hill, the next farm over or the next section over to watch those deer with a spotting scope, to watch that deer with binoculars, to use opportunities to put surveillance on those animals rather than putting myself in a stand and blowing the area out and trying. And I think that's one of the hardest things as hunters for you to do is to take the time to step away and go, all right, it's gonna be hard. You know, uh, but I'm going to pull myself out of the field and I'm gonna watch him. I'm gonna know what he does on this wind, when the temperature's this, when the pressure is this, and uh, this is where he comes out versus over here. All right, we're gonna kill him tonight. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

We we have probably a little bit of a different approach, and I'd love you guys to jump in if I'm if if if I don't see it the same way you guys do. We don't get very many places that we hunt on any one of our farms that I can think of that we get to sit on a road or get to sit back and do true observation. Different landscape. Right, yeah, that's right. I guess it's the texture and environment and you know, the contour of the land. But just we just don't get much of that. So we kind of have to depend on our cameras off-season, where we know these are, but we have experience with these, and it's usually I hate to say this, an older deer or a bigger deer, which sometimes are the same, right? Yep, sometimes, not all the time. And we get to know the deer, and we know our properties like the back of our hand, right? We just know that we do and and not every deer does the same thing on the same piece of property or the same area as the other deer. Yeah, they just don't. Yeah, but that's when I am probably a little more cautious than Chris. In most cases, he kind of pushes me a lot, right? That I I would I'll take a very cautious approach for Kansas, for example, for this year. You know, I was like, no, Chris, I know it's the right time, but I gotta get down there and I'm gonna sit on this stand, which is on the outside edge of where this deer comes to. Let me rattle, let me call, let me see what's going on first. All right, and and we're getting like, okay, it's time. He he's here, we gotta kill him. He he showed up on a camera, da-da-da. Then I go the other side or whichever way the wind's gonna, and I'll sit there on the outside of the other part of his his his territory, right? Yeah, not anywhere close until we find out, like, okay, I can rattle, I can call, let's get in his bedroom. And we go straight there then. So it management means a lot of things. Yeah, we'll get to the land part of it, but the land part of it is it very, very important, but knowing that property is the most is the biggest key.

SPEAKER_05 34:15

Oh, for sure, for sure. And there's ways to manipulate it. And to the to the management part, maybe this is where we segue right here. And the management part of it is yeah, uh in the same way that a person has a character type, anybody that spends time allowing for whitetails to consume their mind space um is gonna find out that deer have a character type. And some of them are more aggressive, some of them are more passive, some of them, you know, like to be more dominant, you know, it just they have different character types, and there are ways that you can start to build management to supplement certain deer, I would say. Like maybe maybe their maybe their tendencies and and their habits that they build. But that being said, as you guys go in, you identify a deer, you get to know the deer, you get to know the property. How often do you find yourselves putting management processes in place over hunting tactics in place?

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Let me give an example and then they can jump in and and this might not answer it. The deer we killed rooster this year. Yep. He came to a place that we took a bulldozer or skid's deer how many years ago? Four or five, six years ago? X number of years ago, and made a creek crossing. He wasn't there. I mean, when we did it, he wasn't there. We didn't do it for this deer. Yeah, thank you. Good point. Well said. This was just a place that we said, as we're doing management here, this would be a great place that that it's probably got six, seven, eight hundred yards. It's not really easy to uh cross this creek. Here it is. And it's two CRP fields that we put in specifically for deer bedding. Yep. Okay. And then we cut trails like this, one or two specifically from each CRP field to meet at that creek crossing. We made a place five years in advance for a big deer or for us to shoot a deer off of never hunted. Oh, they hunted once or twice after uh there for a couple of the but just basically visually to scout. Perfect. And guess what? He was using it.

SPEAKER_05 36:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

Five years later. Yep. That's management.

SPEAKER_05 36:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

That's that that's part of that. Okay, we manipulated the land and we we talk about we do this specific we hunt a specific deer, but we manipulated the land five years before that deer got there.

SPEAKER_04 36:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

And when you do that over a couple thousand acres, all of a sudden you have 10, 15 places that are just waiting for big deer to get down there because he will use it.

SPEAKER_05 36:43

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you answered my question perfectly. That's where I was trying to leave you. You went down that road. So you two, as you look at a piece of property, and and whether it's here in Iowa with what you guys have built here in Iowa, or you take a look at Kansas, where you've also built a magnificent place, um what are the first three things that you know fundamentally when it comes to land management? This is what we have to establish here, if you were to look at it. Are there three things or are there two things that you're like, all right, we gotta do these?

SPEAKER_01 37:15

I mean, I I think obviously you you should you have to have some kind of food, right? You you need to bring them in, whether it's clearing a small area, to put in a little green plot, to put something in for food. Um you need to have the cover, right? You need to have browse. So that's where we we bring a lot of the the the logging aspect in, or like TSI um, you know, we'll we'll go in if a if if the woods is just mature and there's not much undergrowth and just wide open, maybe it's time to go in and harvest some of those trees, right? Um maybe do a planting behind that as well of some more trees, but just letting sunlight into those areas, um the tops, the tops creating bedding, right? Yeah, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

So like I said, a lot of it's cover, food, um usually based around access. Yeah, that's so it's like first and foremost, how do we get there, right? Like, do I have a square block I can get it for all four things? Every the beautiful slash insanity part of land is there's nothing that's the same. So you can't just say, Oh, here's my blueprint, boom. Yeah, and you're you're not gonna go into it. Right, yeah, yeah. So everyone's a little different. Your neighbors make it different. There's just we could stay here and talk about differences in land for days. Yeah, so in general, it's access, and then how what how can we best hunt it? Sometimes, like to Dan's point, a lot of times it's food for us, right? We really do food cover, I mean um food cover and water, of course. I mean, those are and those are basic. So I sometimes I feel like everybody would know them, but I also know a lot of times that a lot of people overlook them.

SPEAKER_05 39:03

I think access is one of the most highly overlooked.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

If I'm sitting here and it's the first thing that I wrote down in my head when Dan said this was access. You you you manage around being able to get in there, like we did into his bedroom, as we said, and and shoot 214-inch deer at 30 yards. How'd we get him there? We got in quietly. It was his bedroom. He lived there. Yeah, well, we knew where he lived, but we got in there quietly. We got in there with the right winds, and it was total access from five years ago.

SPEAKER_03 39:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

And it's the number one thing. And then you build around that.

SPEAKER_03 39:34

Even the other one, like, how'd we get in? We're where we were sitting that the early season, right? When it was P14, it was like, okay. We knew when we set it up that he was coming that direction. We could have set it up anywhere in that area. We chose that spot because our access was the best. Yeah, we could have been on the other side, but our access was not great. We had a we had good terrain, we could we could get there, right? So did everything in our power to get him to come to a place that was more conducive for us, not for him, right? And throw those I mean, they have all the advantages in the world because they know it inside out backwards, right? They're like, oh, Mr. Squirrel's not here today. That's that's odd, yeah, right? So, like any of the things you can put in your advantage, and sometimes we do some weird stuff.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Weird, weird stuff. But but access, access, because the first time you hunt there is the most optimum time to kill that animal. So everything has to be when you say perfect, whitetail hunting is never always perfect, it doesn't matter what you do. They always seem to like the deer tonight. I was like, wow, is he smart, right? I mean, he outsmarted me by far. But yeah, access to the the the to make it perfect to hunt there, and but you gotta kill him the first time you're there. If you don't, it's a battle. It's it's just it's it gets harder every time.

SPEAKER_03 41:03

Yeah, yeah. Every sit is there's a percentage that it gets gets harder than that.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

We get a lot of flack on the internet and and and from some of our friends. How do you guys go in there in two days? It's just easy for you. You went in two days. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

Yeah, this deer's been on the radar for five years.

SPEAKER_05 41:20

Five years. Well, how what was it last year that you set 42 sits?

SPEAKER_02 41:23

Yeah. One stickers curve. Yeah. Yeah. A couple years ago, I shot set I sat 72 times in one year for one deer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We could not. He just stale or no, that was uh the drop time over on the knee. I shot him the last day of the year. Did you? It was the last or next to the last day. It was late season. I had shooting him 280 yards of the muzzle loader. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:46

It's the only way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

Yeah. And I we would see him, like I would physically, I went and sat in the blind numerous times and that farm, because the same thing. It's like, why can we not get this deer start to get mad, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:59

So we all we we we we jump on it. We all sit in different places that won't interfere on that outside edge. We just need an edge to see where do we I saw him six times. Yeah. Six times. Never got close enough to shoot him.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

I saw him three or four times I satisfied. And never I never saw him the same place twice. Yep. And it wasn't because it was him. Like that deer was a nomad. Just he didn't have a pattern. And if they're patternable, they're killable. Yeah. When they're not, it is. That's what we're trying to do all the time, right? Like we're always trying to pattern a deer and figure that out. Yep. And some deer are just more susceptible than others.

SPEAKER_05 42:36

No, they won't. Well, I I know that there's a lot of folks when they hear you say you set 72 times for a deer, they're gonna go, must be nice. Must be nice.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

And I'm telling them, I'm not apologizing. I worked my ass off for 35 years to get here. Never apologize. This is what I do with my money.

SPEAKER_05 42:52

This is what I like to do. You know what I mean? Which is awesome. This is that's what it's all about. And I think that, you know, whether it's land management, whether it's shooting bows, whether it's sitting with a guy like Neil Davies that we got to sit with the other night, like the end of the day, it comes down to, you know, if the Hornities, they're in an awesome place and they have awesome people working for them and with them, and they've built this amazing thing. But it all came down to living the American dream and working their butt off, you know. So kudos. You want to go shoot PRS or you want to go play tennis or you want to chase big deer like we do, well then hey, yeah, that's that's you have that right. Never apologize about it. It it is what it is, but I I it comes back to man, like just putting the time and effort in where we started this whole podcast, putting the time and effort in, and money usually comes with it in a lot of ways, um, because somehow you're gonna invest. That's just all there is.

SPEAKER_02 43:42

There is no two ways about them. People say, well, it must have money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

I worked for it. Yes. First of all, I worked for it. Yeah, ask how many people took 15 years off of hunting.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:52

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You sacrificed. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

There's always there has to be. Yeah. I mean, I my gas was shut off. My I had double uh two mortgages. Yeah. I was back on taxes. I almost went bankrupt. Yeah. I came out of it. I don't know how, but I did, you know?

SPEAKER_04 44:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

So don't tell me it must be nice. Yeah, discipline.

SPEAKER_05 44:12

Yeah, and then and it applies to hunting in so many ways too. And I yeah, I just it it always just kind of gets me fired up. I laugh because we get to see it. We get we know you, we work with you, we live with you. Like we're not physically live with you, but you get what I'm saying. Like day in and day out, there's not a time that we don't communicate somehow or another with you. And um, we know how much time you put into what you do and how much time you guys have put into it as well here in building what you guys have have it again. It's still not a walk in the park, man. This is free range low. Most places you made a comment yesterday. Most of my farms don't even have a fence on them. You know, and yeah, we tear them out. We don't have cows, right? I and I laughed because people are like, oh, it must be nice to hunt behind a high fence. And I'm like, it's actually the opposite, you know. And the other thing I'll call out that you called out earlier, um, and I don't think you meant to, but uh, I have had the the privilege over 20 years of working in this industry and living in the Midwest Missouri, selling real estate in Missouri. I was never licensed in Iowa, but I went and helped manage land in Iowa and Illinois and Kansas and then worked at North American Whitetail. So you name the typical whitetail hunter that owns little land that might border state ground or public ground of some sort. And I will tell you that 85% of them that I know get pissed off about it, and they try to find every way they can to deter any movement away from that state ground with what they call their deer. You're not that guy. And you haven't been. And I can tell you, like, I can count on man, I can't count probably on two hands the amount of times I've heard you say, well, we lost that 190 inch deer to the state public lands. It happens, it happens every year.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

To be honest with you, I I'm I'm I they may put me away for this statement, but we've the same we bought properties because they were by state lands.

SPEAKER_04 46:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

It depends on how it's situated.

SPEAKER_04 46:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

What is land management? Everybody thinks, okay, land management is what seed do you put in the ground? What do you use as a screen? Yeah. How how do you TSI? I mean, there's thousands of ways to do this stuff. It depends on what you have. Land management is more than that. It it's way more than that. It's being able to see where you can possibly kill a deer or where a deer would like to be at some point in time in its life, right? And is that the deer you're gonna kill? And so we look at some stuff and they say, Oh, nobody will buy this because it butts up to the state game lands, and it's just a it's it's more of a recreational property than it is an agricultural. And we look and say, let's go drive around, let's go see where these state game land hunters have to access that property. Right. Are they gonna push deer into our property? Are they gonna make it better later in the year? We've learned some of those are some of the best places we have, right? Minnesota.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

Well, it goes back to just access again. Like what's their access for our access? Yeah, always access. And then just the reality of it, like some just because they have to go through a bunch doesn't necessarily make that a bad thing. Yeah. There's there's more into like that particular farm and some of the other ones that our terrain is just conducive to when they come in, they're not going out. You know? Yeah. And yeah, during a couple weeks in November and just what deer you're rolling the dice. Yeah. Like, yes, we're gonna lose them, and you have to just understand that that's a possibility. And yes, does it suck? But you know, I could lose it to any neighborhood. Next door neighbor here, any neighbor who brings a friend in to hunt.

SPEAKER_05 47:43

Come to Missouri and lose them all to your neighbors, but that but our state gave me a better neighbor.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:50

The state guy is no killer, killer, my bad, my bad. I got the hunting part down here.

SPEAKER_03 47:58

What's that? State does not ever change. Yeah. They can't put in food plots, they're not gonna do this gonna sound horrible. Some people but state game land stuff is some of the most we're gonna get in trouble now, poorly managed properties out there, right? Like they just not for what we're doing. You think about all the work we do to manage for wildlife on what we have, and then what when's the last time you saw somebody on a state game land stuff doing stuff? We are it's not that that doesn't happen. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter, but the amount you can do versus what's gonna happen there, that whatever you buy next to state is going to stay the same. The people may change, yeah, but the land is going to stay the same.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

When you buy a piece of property, you don't know who your neighbor's gonna be in ten years. Everybody says all farms are once-in-a-lifetime buy. That's BS.

SPEAKER_05 48:51

No.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Farms go inside some farms will never find, they'll they'll stay in a family forever.

SPEAKER_05 48:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

But you don't know who their their son or their cousin's gonna bring in to hunt next to you and what they're gonna shoot, and if they're gonna put stuff along your fence line, and so on and so forth. So the state never changes. We know what to expect. And and and we we your your neighbors, they they can shoot a deer from you any day and they can change any day.

SPEAKER_05 49:15

Yep, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

From a guy who didn't hunt for 50 years to oh my god, they got six guys who they put 20 food plots in and got tree stands everywhere, right?

SPEAKER_05 49:23

So and it can happen overnight.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Overnight.

SPEAKER_05 49:25

Believe me. Yeah. Well, I think um that's a pretty good preview into uh just some basic concepts around how you guys look at managing land and the effort that goes into it and what motivates it. Um we could go down so many roads when it comes to what green plot, what time of year, what grain, what tree, you know, that's the easy part. Yeah, it in a lot of ways, it really is. Yeah. And I think we will. And and so as we continue to do episodes, man, it's gonna be great to have Dan back on and and GERPS and talk to you guys more specifically, like break down some of those micro elements, right? Like, not look at it so macro like we kind of did today. More than anything, it was just to get you guys here and introduce you because you do a heck of a lot of work together as a trio, and we get to see this guy flinging arrows quite often because that's the nature of our content, but we don't always get to see you guys because he runs from the camera half the time. And I'm behind it. Yeah, he's behind it. He's like, he's right.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

The devil's due here. Yeah. Remember, we talked about giving up hunting? Yeah. Ask him how much they hunt now.

SPEAKER_05 50:33

Oh man, I've seen it. They they very seldom hunt. Yeah, do you want to let's see.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

No, okay. I'll let's this year, this year, last probably in the last three years, I've hunted a total of one day. And that was last year, sitting in the in the blind late season with Tyler and Curtis. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:52

And we went to get our late season like antlers tags this year. Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't Dan's like, how come you have to pay this much for your tag? I'm like, Dan, I haven't bought a deer tag this year in Iowa. I I forgot about that. Yeah, but that's what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_05 51:07

Buck hunting. Go go hunt a deer for yourself. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it because you guys you guys are invested here.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Most of all our stuff now is hey, there's a management deer over there. Yeah. You know, and and if everybody else is done, okay, we'll get a go crank it.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Yeah, you know, and that's what I wanted to bring this up because everybody says, Oh, you you do this, you do that. It's a team. Yeah. And they have given up, they're basically saying I'm not hunting anymore, but I'm I'm giving all my time and effort and expertise for the team to kill a deer.

SPEAKER_04 51:37

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

I may be the one pulling the bow back or shooting it with a gun, but I didn't do all the work. Right. It it took all of us. We talk endlessly. They give me an end of day every day explaining what they did. Yeah. And I read every word. And they'll they'll go a lot of times they'll be like, Oh, it's Mark at six o'clock. I sent my end of day. Yeah. What's this mean? Well, let's let's get on a phone call tomorrow and talk about this deer, or just talk about, you know, this. Yeah. It's it's it's every day.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

For sure. Well, and and that's where like, you know, when when we're sitting, we have camp in Kansas. We go down to Kansas, you know, sometimes Chris or I, or both of us, can't even be there. So when we're not there and Mark kills a deer, you know, it's it's frustrating to us, more so than the fact that like we want to celebrate that, enjoy it because like it was all three of us. Yeah, Chris went down and killed the deer um this year in Kansas as well. And it was just like, man, it would have been awesome to be there with him too.

SPEAKER_04 52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Because we all I'm not just us, but we all had a huge part in getting to know that deer, setting things up. So it's like, yeah, it's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 52:39

Yeah, I probably said it wrong when we were talking about how much we hunt now. Like he says yes, we don't anymore. We don't kill stuff anymore. They hunt all the time. We hunt, we hunt three hundreds. We hunt more than we've ever hunted before.

SPEAKER_05 52:53

We have a lot in common.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

You know, I get to kill they get to hunt. But but they get really upset, and genuinely rightfully so, that if we're together in Kansas or here and I kill something, I can't go get it. I gotta wait till they get it. They're going with you. And and now I really thoroughly understand it, and I truly appreciate that. Yeah, it means a lot to me because they they get to take some credit in it, they get they get pride in that.

SPEAKER_03 53:20

So your first call when you shoot something, it better be to us. I get it first, but I'm like, if if I'm like looking at it and Facebook pops up, I'm like, that's gonna make us mad. That happened to me.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

I'm looking at it.

SPEAKER_05 53:44

I think I may have even been a part of that at one point or another. I remember GERFS giving me the mean mug, like, hey, what the heck, dude? Yeah, that may have been a turkey. I don't remember what it was, but anyway, yeah. Well, I I thank you guys for sitting down. Like I said, I want to introduce you to our podcast audience, make sure that they know who you are because you are coming back. And the way I'd like to look at it, like I said, is from more of a micro opportunity. So as we get into different parts of the year, having you guys pop on and say, all right, hey, guys getting ready to go turkey hunting. Um, next year, as he starts to look at an opportunity to put some type of a green food source in for his turkeys, what do you guys do? What do you put in? And then we'll talk science. Um, so I look forward to those days with for his turkeys. Hey, that believes that's just wrong.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

I'm like, don't want him to say that. I'm just gonna go with Tyler. I can hear the gobble of the back of the kid.

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Yeah, I'm gonna just say one more thing. Yeah. As I listen to you say that, I don't think the conversation is gonna end up much different. I'm I'm joking, but I'm I'm I'm really not. Yeah, they're gonna we use this phosphorus and this, this, and we put this in. But we we go hunting, we we say this is what's happening in that area, this is what's going on. So next year we're gonna have to put a fence around the beans. Yeah. We're gonna have to plant corn there because it does this, and we're gonna intercede it with something, brassicas or you know, whatever it is. I I I I don't think your conversation's gonna be much different, buddy.

SPEAKER_05 55:13

But I know and it to us it won't be.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:16

To the people that I and maybe I'm grossly wrong and I apologize. To the the the guy that is in their first 15 years of their career that are looking to fast-track the process and lean into some some guys that have some real experience. Like, look, you guys, you do this for a career. Most guys do it for a day, yeah, if they're lucky, maybe four or five days a year if they're lucky.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

I can go back to some of my days in Illinois, wish I knew what I was doing. I wouldn't have to do the same food plot three times.

SPEAKER_05 55:43

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. I mean, like I'm telling you, coming from North American Whitale, we had three major categories that when we served content across digital or social that drove numbers for us with that audience. One, big deer, two, equipment, three, land management. And land management was bigger than equipment and what I'm or gear, you know, and guys just they lean into folks like you all because you put the time and effort and days and hours and weeks and months in, you know, and so it's to be able to glean information and hear the little things that you do that you've had to earn that perspective on over a decade of management we screwed up. Exactly. Well, that's part of it too. That's part of the learning. Like I'm gonna tell you, you know, I one of the things I learned is part of owning a tractor is that every time you use it, you're gonna damage something.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

Yeah, when we when we do things now, it's because we've done it a hundred times, and if somebody hasn't done it, they don't they don't know. And it's not that you know they should, like I said earlier, they don't they shouldn't know that.

SPEAKER_05 56:39

And a lot of guys get discouraged too, man. I'm gonna tell you, they go out and they try to plant their first turnip or radish field and it doesn't come up and they don't realize that they were a day of rain off, half inch of rain or a quarter inch of rain. Next year they won't do it. They may never ever do it again.

SPEAKER_02 56:53

Whether the pH is wrong and it's acidic and they won't eat it. Like, my turnips are this big, not one bite, I'll take it out of any of them. So perfect example.

SPEAKER_05 57:00

Like, oh, I had the most beautiful turnip field. The deer won't even touch it. I don't get it. Well, did you check your your pH balance? Did you know what was the palatability of that type of a turnip the right kind of palatability for you know, so there's all those little things that we just kind of take for granted, I think a lot of times, because we we get the opportunity to do it more than most.

SPEAKER_03 57:17

And well, even the plot we sat last night, yeah. Right? You're like, well, what's in here? And I'm like, well, we put oats in that one, we put turnips in this one, we put winter wheat in that one. You kind of looked at me and I'm like, well, I want to know which one they hit, like when they hit it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 57:31

Like, and we were talking about the night before because we watched in a different on a different piece of ground.

SPEAKER_02 57:35

Did you kill a deer on that?

unknown 57:36

No, we didn't.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

Okay, just checking.

unknown 57:38

No, we didn't.

SPEAKER_05 57:39

No, we did not. There ain't no we about. We, we, we're the only one that gets excluded from this right now. We no, um, but you know, perfect example. We walked in, there's standing beans there, and the deer were going to the standing bean plot, but they not a single one of them. I sat there for 30 minutes and I watched them. Dan and I are sitting there just kind of talking about other things, and every deer would walk into that bean plot, not a single one of them picked a thing off of a stem. Every single one of them were pawing at the ground and eating what was under the snow. I said, What's under the snow? And Dan said, Ah, well, you know. I was like, Yeah, okay. You know, just little things like, and man, little things like that go such a long way. It's the little things that we often miss as hunters because we're so caught up in the moment. And you know, if you get 10 days a year and 135-inch deer walks out, you start watching that deer and your your heart starts beating and you're a hot mess, and you're not paying attention to the fact that he stopped and browsed on this plant. Then he turned around and he went back this way to get over here because he has the wind in his favor. And oh, by the way, he didn't go to the top of the hill, he didn't go to the bottom hill, he went one third of the way up the hill where he can smell those thermals coming up and see everything that's going on. And those are the things that man, it takes years for guys to understand that.

SPEAKER_02 58:53

And sometimes you really never find out. No, it can't, it might not be just the food, it might be something like the thermals or that deer does for whatever reason, deer have different uh personalities.

SPEAKER_05 59:03

Yeah, well, I know we could talk about it for forever, but I appreciate you guys hopping on. Um I hope I didn't have to prod you too bad. You're the best. Well, now you guys have had the opportunity to to meet um you know Dan and Chris. We call them groups all the time, but um, you guys have seen you know, both of you pop on the camera so often, and um you can understand a little bit more of the madness behind the method, I guess is a good way of putting it. And and we look forward to tapping into that a little bit more. And thanks for all that you do for the team because you guys work your tails off, whether it's cooking bacon or some beautiful pizza roll thing that he had managed to scratch.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

The dip is beyond.

SPEAKER_05 59:54

Yep, you guys are as big of a part team, if not bigger, than anybody else. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 59:59

They are the team. I mean, it is what it is.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:00

Yeah, but that's what I love about our team, man. Whether it's Curtis sitting right there behind the the camera running the podcaster board right now, or you know, T Weave cracking jokes, or Kenneth sleeping. Oh, Owen, yeah. You know, you never know what he's going to golf balls. Playing golf on the golf simulator, yeah. But we have a great team, everybody does their part, and and it all at the end of the day is for you all. So uh we hope that you enjoy it. And um, man, give us feedback, like, subscribe, follow, turn your notifications on, do all those fun things. This is another way that we look forward to bringing you more content here over the next year.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:35

Anything negative, call somebody else.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:36

That's right. Haters, keep hating. You know, see ya. Uh thanks, guys. Appreciate it, appreciate it.