Ep. 40: Spike Camp – Axis Deer Hunt

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I’m sitting there and he walks and he turns broadside and just like, all right, tank, whatever do you want to take the shot? And I’m like, I don’t like that branch, so I go even lower and wider do the same thing, and then he’s at two forty five. So we end up shooting. He does a little kick, slowly starts walking just like hit him again. So we hit him again and we were I’m like hey, I’m like, hey, I’m out of bullets. He’s like, I got one, so he hands me another one. He’s like, load it. We’re gonna walk up to the We let it sit there for it. He’s like, he’s down.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: So he lent ten yards. He was toasted.

00:00:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, look having known what happened, yeah, pretty much. We ended up, so he went. He did not go far out here. The stakes are real. Effective preparation starts with fitness, but it requires so much more. This show explores the tools, knowledge, resilience, and skills needed to be ready when it is the most Join me Rich Browning as we apply the decades of wisdom I’ve gained through training and competition to hunting in the back country. This is in pursuit brought to you by Mount Knumps in collaboration with Mayhem Hunt God Bless Texas. That’s a great song. It’s actually true. Man just got off a free range access hunt range fence.

00:01:32
Speaker 3: There’s access deer everywhere down there.

00:01:34
Speaker 1: Man, it is such a fun Let me look that up. Actually, it is such a fun hunt.

00:01:39
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:01:39
Speaker 1: It’s a great off season you know, like I guess it is spring bear, but you know it is a good ungulate off season hunt. Well you can do them three six, five, I know, but like the prime is May, June July.

00:01:50
Speaker 4: I think they go around there right now.

00:01:55
Speaker 5: It’s well you’re listening for rars yeah, bugle ru roar, right, yeah, I’m looking up how and when because I think we were talking about I think it’s the fifties.

00:02:07
Speaker 1: They were introduced the sixties. Yeah. So the deal is they the dose you will usually every three years they’ll throw four fawns, so it’s not like the year where it’s one a year. They kind of can so it keeps the bucks kind of running year round. Ish, Okay, that’s why you saw some like full hardhorned, some velvet, some like growth.

00:02:31
Speaker 3: Velvet, and some they’re all over the place.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: It’s so fun. So apparently that’s why somebody on the Internet’s gonna tellus biology of why and how we’re wrong. But that’s from what I’ve learned the last two years hunting them.

00:02:43
Speaker 4: The spot in stock part to me was cool, it’s fun. I was totally prepared for like corn feeders and a ground Oh yeah, oh really, yeah, I I.

00:02:50
Speaker 1: When there’s nothing wrong with that, I want to go ahead and preface if that’s the style of like we’ve done that. We did that back in December, and I had a blast because you see deer the in Texas in Texas, and so it’s like, yeah, I don’t want to knock on that style because hey, if that’s what you enjoy, if you enjoy fishing, why can you not enjoy hunting over feet er. It’s the same thing. I don’t understand the disdain for it. And as long as you’re not billing it as this, I’m going out for this hard hunt and no, heck no, I want to flink some arrows and and hang out with my buddies. That’s it. So this was not that, No, it was not.

00:03:29
Speaker 4: We got on top of hills I call them hills. They were low hills. They were low hills where you can see far away.

00:03:36
Speaker 1: Me and Scott were talking and it was like the perfect if you could elk hunt in that, how great would that be. It’s just like there’s just perfect.

00:03:45
Speaker 3: When you get on top of one, you can actually feasibly get to the place you can see quickly, and.

00:03:52
Speaker 1: You never really get like super leg burning.

00:03:55
Speaker 3: You’re just like I would say, they’re almost punchy hills. I wouldn’t even go with punchy.

00:03:59
Speaker 1: Man. It was like a gradual slow It was you.

00:04:03
Speaker 4: Took three breaths and you were at the top, but it was you could see just rocky. If you could take the cactus out.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: I’ve still got some you could see.

00:04:12
Speaker 3: You could seriously see just enough to where like like what happened? I mean, we’ll get there about like seeing his deer, but you could see a deer and be Okay, in about ten minutes he’ll be over there. So I need to kind of start working that way and maybe I can cut them off like that was. You could make those plans to that point.

00:04:28
Speaker 1: Though. The hard part was it’s like a maze of scrub brush. There’s a bunch of patches between and so as soon as you lost any elevation at all, You lose.

00:04:39
Speaker 4: You Yeah, he lost them and was amazed at that point.

00:04:41
Speaker 1: You’re an amazingly elabyrinth. Ye. Yeah, and so yeah, it takes some skill for sure, knowing the property. That was the first time we hunted that property. I think lease if you hunt in the Midwest or south like we were on a couple of thousand acre lease, low fence like cattle fence. There were sheep, goats, yeah, moo cows everywhere. And then the deer. We literally watched probably what twenty or thirty deer. Scott just frolic back and over the fence for two or three hours, just doze, just back and forth over the fence. And then a fawn that got stuck on one side of the fence and couldn’t figure it out and it was panicking, looked like a small dog. It was.

00:05:19
Speaker 3: I well, I want to give it backs around accident deer because I was interested in this. They’re introduced, they’re from India, they’re introduced.

00:05:24
Speaker 1: To Texas, India and Sri Lanka.

00:05:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does, that’s right. Ran nineteen introduced in nineteen thirties for private ranches and then from there obviously they just got out and then now they’re I mean, I would almost consider them.

00:05:38
Speaker 1: There’s how many.

00:05:39
Speaker 3: There’s estimated one hundred and over one hundred and twenty five thousand animals concentrated in like a certain area of Texas.

00:05:46
Speaker 1: Still there no non native invasive so you can hunt them year round. You could technically hunt them with anything, spotlights, you can do. Whatever we did, the like what you would call traditional hunting. Some down total.

00:06:02
Speaker 3: Their meat is wildly considered some of the best tasting medicine.

00:06:05
Speaker 2: It’s very good.

00:06:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could have taken it with bow or rifle, bow or rifle.

00:06:08
Speaker 1: I carried a bow for two days and then took the long bow. Yeah, the long bow, the three hundred grain long bow rceiver variety. Yeah. So yeah, it’s I mean, if you if you had a week, ten days, you could get one done with a bow. I think you’d have to watch patterns, you’d have to try to figure out where they were going, all that type of thing. But a three we were in a three day hunt. Shout out Prenier Outfitters if you ever want to do that. I think it’s a very fun, affordable ish hunt for It’s not a crazy crazy.

00:06:38
Speaker 4: I would say it’s on the lower end of yah of budget or of night.

00:06:43
Speaker 1: It’s like thirty eight dollars. And then you pay the guide fee and.

00:06:47
Speaker 4: They feed you, they lodge you, they put you up, they bring you in and out of the ranch. They do a good job.

00:06:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s a ton of fun.

00:06:53
Speaker 3: And then I mean, I obviously can’t speak for Jeff, but obviously Jordan was great, was great, really good hunter.

00:06:59
Speaker 1: So we’ll have helm on later. Jordan wants to get on there. I know he doesn’t like cameras, but we’re talking to him about in his stream for killing stuff, killing stuff in Texas. Yeah, but Jeff’s killed a bunch and around and he loves it.

00:07:13
Speaker 3: So it is interesting that I’m not following a single rud like that’s so weird compared to what we’re used to.

00:07:19
Speaker 1: I think they say traditionally made June July is optimal.

00:07:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s what Jordan said too.

00:07:24
Speaker 4: But half of them are in one cycle, half of them on the other.

00:07:27
Speaker 3: It was just like you said, certain dough like dose are like every four years, roughly three or four years.

00:07:32
Speaker 1: They’re fours every year, four every three years.

00:07:38
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, that’s so yeah, so it’s basically nine month is I’m guessing, and I’m guessing the the does that come into heat are probably on a different cycle too, like a three year cycle like this one. Like if there’s three does in a in a you know, in a herd, this one maybe year one, this one maybe year two, This one may be year three. So like in that herd, there may be one every year. So there’s so that would explain why they’re kind of running all the time totally why others.

00:08:01
Speaker 1: So it’s just it’s just interesting.

00:08:03
Speaker 3: It’s not like it’s not like white tail because like the things that I think of a white tail, elk and turkey all follow a season like mating, a mating cycle, yeah, a yearly mating cycle, and then uh well but turkeys kind of think I think it’s happened in the fall too, which is funny, you ever hear. I’m like, they’ll goble just because the weather. Yeah, like the weather makes them think, oh game odd time, and the heads are like the hell’s wrong with you?

00:08:27
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:08:28
Speaker 4: It was definitely very either late rifle elk e or mule deer like E.

00:08:34
Speaker 1: I’m not really hunted mule deer. I’ve been on a couple of guys are hunting mule deer. But we were in that second season last that’s the first time I’d ever even thought about helping out with mule deer. So yeah, it makes a complete sense.

00:08:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, you hike up at the top, you find him, you calculate your stock, you go out and do it. And man, if you can get down to Texas and do that a couple of times a year, maybe once a year on the off.

00:08:56
Speaker 1: Season, keeps you fresh, for sure.

00:08:58
Speaker 4: That would be an awesome way to get you know, just increase your skill for sure.

00:09:03
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting. I was thinking about this because when white tails, obviously, when white tails are running, they are fighting. They’re all running, they’re all fighting, so like is it is there like a hard horn buck and then there’s like a velvet buck and the velvet’s like whoa, bro, Like, what are you doing? You’re like if they don’t have any you know how they they just yeah, they just flipped that. They just flipped that switch, and they’re like their test osterer starts pumping and the and like the other ones that have velvet still like, bro, I don’t know why you’re fighting me, right?

00:09:31
Speaker 1: I don’t know it, must be so confused. They just run them off and they’re like, all right, books just wouldn’t want it.

00:09:37
Speaker 3: They wouldn’t. They would run away like, yeah we did hit you videos. Why this guy posturing?

00:09:42
Speaker 1: But I never saw him in the wild fighting. We did see two hard horn uh that group that you guys end up finding that we killed one of them? Were there two of them in that group?

00:09:52
Speaker 3: Because we saw we only saw a half grown Okay, so the day before that half grown was with two hard horns. There were one big hard horn and then like a slight.

00:10:03
Speaker 1: Wonder that one. I don’t know, you got run off a bit. I would almost guss, No, it was not yours post. This was post that. It was post that all right, So we can We end up driving down Tuesday night, Trice played baseball at seven o’clock, so I didn’t want to miss that. Thanks everybody for being a part of that PM and so we which I think is the best way to do it. If you can get somebody to.

00:10:25
Speaker 3: Time, you have someone that’s gonna willing to drive that like five hour.

00:10:29
Speaker 4: The real hero, the real hero of the trip.

00:10:31
Speaker 1: So we took off. I drove us to Memphis, Watkins drove us eight hours through the night and then I picked up the last four. We rolled into camp about one o’clock PM the next day. That afternoon, I think three or four we went out. Did you guys stay you guys, you guys stayed on ranch property there. So there were two properties we could hunt a couple thousand acres on each, yes, leases that they have.

00:10:53
Speaker 3: We just went down the county road a little bit, looked for stuff to like get us a start. Didn’t really see anything. So then we just kind of drove out to a spot where we could glass from and got to a place of glass.

00:11:03
Speaker 1: And really didn’t see much.

00:11:04
Speaker 4: It was pretty bad.

00:11:05
Speaker 1: The wind was bad.

00:11:06
Speaker 3: We kind of got Yeah, we got to a spot where we could glass, so, I.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: Mean we saw animals.

00:11:10
Speaker 3: We didn’t see any access to dere so then on the way back we saw some and then we got to a spot where kind of sat that for the last hour ish of light.

00:11:19
Speaker 4: Guaranteed.

00:11:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, we kept heard Jordan ship. He’s like, I guarantee he’s gonna come by here and he goes to watch and I say that I’m not gonna see anything.

00:11:26
Speaker 1: Guaranteed.

00:11:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, they were here yesterday, Yes, yes.

00:11:33
Speaker 1: Them, what else? This is crazy?

00:11:35
Speaker 4: This is crazy.

00:11:36
Speaker 1: It’s never been like this. Yeah, this weather couldn’t possibly be warm. That’s a classic. That’s a classic.

00:11:43
Speaker 2: It’s always a weird year when we’re.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: A weird year. Man, this is a weird year, Jordan’s this is not these guys. This is just your classic. We’ve hunted with some guides or with some guys that no areas and whatever, and those are the classes fail. Those are all of the the man, the moon is weird. These humidity, these bluebird skies are hurting us.

00:12:07
Speaker 4: These clouds are not where they should be.

00:12:09
Speaker 1: Dude, it was. It is classic. You can almost It’s almost like when you were joking around like and you show up and you’re like, you got him untied for us. You gotta let him out of the cage or what you let the jokes on the rope forest dad to a tree. We kept selling Jeff. We’re like, all right, we got enough v roll. It’s time to time to let him out of the cage. There’s a plane or a helicopter flying over, like, is that where they’re gonna drop it?

00:12:31
Speaker 3: You know that the hatchery. Let’s go, Yeah, the best one. I always love. I love using this one. Jordan, we were sitting there and we were making fun of him for saying you put us in a in a bad spot. And I said, Jordan, this hunting spot is so good. The deer don’t know where. The deer can’t even find it.

00:12:50
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:12:50
Speaker 3: See our first evening, we saw a couple, but nothing crazy was your first.

00:12:54
Speaker 1: We went to the other property. Uh we Scott got Scott got his nickname that morning that day we were walking in and he is trying out the new Garman Watch and uh he went to start.

00:13:07
Speaker 2: A track, a track, a tracker, a tracker.

00:13:10
Speaker 1: And it beeps, no big deal, but every like thirty forty five seconds it would do another beep.

00:13:16
Speaker 2: And it wasn’t like a I think I was causing the beeps on hind s.

00:13:19
Speaker 1: It sounded. It sounds like the Mario, like punching a coin box. Yeah, that’s what’s it’s it’s hard to and so it’s but out there it’s definitely loud. You can’t. I mean in here really that but out there is definitely loud. So Scott’s trying to mess with it. Every time he’s messing with it, he’s trying to it beeps. He’s like he’s like, I’m gonna turn it off. I’m gonna turn it off, and he’s like, no, no, I’m not. And so like we’re fighting over the watch because me and Scott are together all the time, so we’re like brothers, and we’re like, I’m trying to like grab the thing off of his wrist. I’m like no, no, push his button and just just staying there. He’s like, you two are like you know. So then he’s just starts calling Scott beeps.

00:13:55
Speaker 2: And this wasn’t five minutes into the hut.

00:13:57
Speaker 1: Five minutes into the hunt, and if you know, it couldn’t be far like, Scott’s gonna be the most professional in the group when it comes to distractions from media. Think there it is media things or just things making noise, but Scott just it kept beeping there. It is so Jeff just started calling him beeps and it was I don’t know why, but it got me so good that he just ate For the rest of the trip, Scott was beeps.

00:14:25
Speaker 4: Because it couldn’t be further from who’s guy.

00:14:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, That’s why it’s so funny. So then we went up and sat buy some water with a annoyingly loud windmills that would creep. It sounded like, you know, a horror movie that you were about to get murdered by the Texas Texas chainsaw massacre. And I ended up I’m trying to sitting in.

00:14:47
Speaker 2: A cactus, and this is how it happened.

00:14:51
Speaker 1: And the cactus just it just never got better. I had cactus in me.

00:14:54
Speaker 3: From then on, the ones you can’t see either like they were like.

00:15:00
Speaker 1: The First Man. And that first night Man, I I was thought I had them all out, and then middle of the night I would roll over and they would like go from this way to this way, and it would just point back in. It was miserable. So we go up to the top of this hill glass a little bit. We saw a turkey that was rotting. That was pretty much that was it. We saw some two doughs way.

00:15:21
Speaker 2: Off and I think the turkey was going.

00:15:24
Speaker 1: He was a hammer.

00:15:25
Speaker 3: We could have were we had something that were I mean, we could have killed him probably anywhere. Really, anywhere you they were, you heard him.

00:15:31
Speaker 1: They were.

00:15:31
Speaker 3: They were loud every day.

00:15:33
Speaker 1: The first night was really uneventful. Probably, Yeah, it was not fun, especially because the year before Man we were seeing Deeer everywhere, and so year I was here, I was like, can we just go back to the other ranch.

00:15:46
Speaker 2: The weird thing was to what you would think is when we went out that night it’s too hot and sunny, that they’re going to be shut down. Turns out they liked that.

00:15:54
Speaker 3: Weather, so that’s what they kept saying.

00:15:56
Speaker 2: Next that night should have been great, and.

00:15:58
Speaker 1: That next day should have been in inredible because it rained bad.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: The next day well, because of the range.

00:16:04
Speaker 1: It should have been good like normally oh yeah, yeah yeah, like normally with elk elk cools.

00:16:08
Speaker 3: Down they want to be moving.

00:16:10
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, traditional It wasn’t raining.

00:16:12
Speaker 1: It was raining enough to annoy us, but for them it would have been like perfect.

00:16:16
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:16:16
Speaker 1: And so that next morning it just it rained and rained. Well, as we’re walking in well, we hear Angelo’s bow. He needs to have worked one because it was really loud.

00:16:27
Speaker 3: I got suppressor on it.

00:16:28
Speaker 1: Were we go to the same morning day two, right, we go to the same fifteen.

00:16:33
Speaker 4: Minutes, you guys go to the same ranch. We’re going to the same ranch.

00:16:36
Speaker 3: There’s there’s a little there’s a little ridge line between us, like it’s like the hill line, like it’s and uh, Yeah, they’re on the other side of it.

00:16:44
Speaker 1: We pull in.

00:16:44
Speaker 3: Jordan tells us as we’re driving in, he goes, hey, uh, as we’re driving in, and when you get out, be quiet there there could be.

00:16:51
Speaker 4: The already be on your a game like they’re close.

00:16:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, like we’re He’s like, we’re we’re gonna hike up to this little knob here and we’ll be able to see these two fields and we should see something and then make a plan.

00:17:01
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, backup, back up, How did the drive start?

00:17:04
Speaker 1: What happened as soon as we start going.

00:17:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, his windshield wiper, one of his when chew wipers, flies.

00:17:10
Speaker 4: Off, just flies off, completely random. And he’s like, this is how you know you live in Texas. Yeah, but that that comes in very important later on the day.

00:17:19
Speaker 3: Takes a turn, so we’re driving in. He’s like, be quiet when you get out because we even though we can’t see him, maybe close. And we pull up around one bend in the road and he glass.

00:17:31
Speaker 1: He looks out.

00:17:32
Speaker 3: You guys are on your window, and he goes, dude, there’s a bunch of deer out there. And he said, oh, I think I see a big buck out there, and I think that’s the buck. Were like, I’ve been wanting to hunt.

00:17:39
Speaker 4: No, he goes in and I quote, that’s a big bucking away.

00:17:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:17:45
Speaker 3: Well, because if you’ve ever drove by deer like that, like going to a spot, I’ve done this too. If you keep driving, it doesn’t freak him out. If you stop, they’ll all stare at you and wonder. You know that’s not normal. But if you keep driving, like, uh, road trucks go down roads like that all the time, right, don’t think anything of it. Yeah, they’ll go right back to feeding. And so he did slow roll for a second, but then just kept going. We went, you know, another one hundred yards or so down and then we all he the deer from there were probably one hundred two hundred.

00:18:17
Speaker 4: And fifty off the road, yes, from the road there.

00:18:20
Speaker 3: And then we went farther, so we were about two fifty away from them. So we got out, got everything, and uh, he’s like, if that’s a buck, I think it is due we’re shooting it.

00:18:28
Speaker 4: And we’re mad dashing like we’re getting our stuff, and we’re like, this buck is right off the road. We’re gonna kill it right here right now.

00:18:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I mean that’s exactly what we did. We got the He brought his spotting scope, which people will probably freak out over. He had his spotting scope that I used as a tripod because we didn’t want to we didn’t want to grab all this other stuff.

00:18:46
Speaker 1: He just grabbed what we needed. We grab what we needed.

00:18:48
Speaker 3: I grabbed the gun, He grabbed the tripod or the spotting scope on the tripod, and Jeff had the camera and we’re and you know, we’re selick. We’re just going it right in.

00:18:56
Speaker 4: The most expensive stabilizer. Yeah, yeah, a double ey’d swow.

00:19:02
Speaker 3: Luckily, there is a tree with a bush between us and the deer, and so we just straddle that and we walked right in through that line and Jordan’s in front. He pokes out and he said, that’s you know, that’s the buck. He said, are you ready to shoot up? We go, yeah, let’s shoot it. And so he puts his he puts his vortex spotting scope down.

00:19:24
Speaker 4: It’s Warski.

00:19:28
Speaker 3: It was nice anyways, Uh, he puts his he puts his spotty scope down. I lay the gun on it. And as I’m laying the gun on it, the deer walks behind the tree. I go, dude, I can’t see him, and so he picks it up. I picked the gun up and we move over. I go, okay, there’s a good window. I see him.

00:19:44
Speaker 4: He pivot left just a little bit and it’s just.

00:19:46
Speaker 3: Enough to where like when I had set when I had set it down the first time, no nerves because it happens so quick, no nerves, and then us moving it over just enough time for me to start to get the shakes, and we get over. I start to get the shakes. These guys are like, why is he not pull the trigger yet? I was just like I was servious set trying to settle, and uh, he didn’t. And I had a lot of window, Like I had, I could see him for a while. So it’s like if even if he takes a couple of steps, I got him and he’s grazing like he’s not in a hurry.

00:20:11
Speaker 4: So we were not thinking that. By the way, we like, I know when I’m on camera, like I’m just supported like forever. It just seems like forever. But I would rather that than you, like, okay, here there he is. Yeah, I want you to get settled in and comfortable. Because shooters always think they don’t have enough time.

00:20:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, usually more time than you think.

00:20:30
Speaker 3: Always that’s in my yes, from where I saw him.

00:20:33
Speaker 1: Every time I’ve messed it up.

00:20:35
Speaker 3: I had a I had a decent window where I was going to continue to see him, and he had no idea we were there. He was just grazing feet. So I didn’t really think to have a ton of a ton of rush, pull the trigger, see him drop, we all go nuts.

00:20:47
Speaker 1: Dude, like le I mean straight out like.

00:20:49
Speaker 4: It’s one hundred and twenty five yard shot. You were stable, you were comfortable your gun. Yeah, that’s like ey’d gun guys.

00:20:57
Speaker 1: Different trigger. Yeah, those are things that when I just to preface when he brought the gun and I thought, hey, at some point am I going to shoot this thing. When we sat, I cleared the gun, made sure nothing was in it, obviously away from people, and just dry fired it to see what the trigger does. Because I’m so used to a SIG where they I don’t have a custom trigger anything on them. There, no there’s play. I was like, oh god, you take a slack out and you feel the wall and pull.

00:21:27
Speaker 4: Kind of like a handgun.

00:21:29
Speaker 1: Similar, and so I’m used to and this was this. It was a gun works three hundred PRC and dude, as soon as you pulled it, it was action. So I say that to say, next time you’re shooting somebody’s gun.

00:21:43
Speaker 3: No, what’s funny is like they don’t know the rest of the story, but by the tone that we’re using, everyone knows, oh yes.

00:21:49
Speaker 1: No, no, no, you didn’t ruin it.

00:21:50
Speaker 3: The tone that me its obvious that the story is going to kind of take a little bit of a turn.

00:21:54
Speaker 4: Yes, So Angelo shoots the deer, drops immediately back down socc of potatoes. Jordan immediately goes down right there. Yeah, And I’m as the camera guy. I go from the deer, he’s down, nothing to record anymore, So I immediately pivot towards you guys and where everyone’s hooting and hollering. Jordan’s stoked, You’re stoked. I’m stoked.

00:22:16
Speaker 1: And we see your dose come around the corner.

00:22:17
Speaker 3: And these guys, Yeah, then them, that’s where Rich’s loud bow. It needs my boat needs tuning in. Like for a second, I was like, what’s he talking about? Like, oh, he’s there close enough to hear that we’re shooting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh yeah, Like I I did have the boat with me and I thought about I was like, man, there’s not I could make the I probably could have made a stock.

00:22:38
Speaker 1: I don’t know if we would have made a perfect it might have been worth it.

00:22:41
Speaker 3: I’m not saying it would have it would have been successful, but I do think we could have put It was stable for sure. It was because there was a bushes every now and then, and he was very not aware that we were.

00:22:49
Speaker 4: There, was just feeding like towards us. Yes, I feel like we could have played it.

00:22:54
Speaker 3: We could have.

00:22:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could have went different.

00:22:59
Speaker 3: I am not bow hunting purists by any means. I like to hunt equal opportunity killer. Yes, I like to hunt. I like to kill.

00:23:05
Speaker 1: I like to eat the animals.

00:23:07
Speaker 3: So if I had and I like hay friends. So if I have an opportunity to shoot the rifle over the bow, whatever, I don’t care. So like the rifle was the best option and the time, So I chose the rifle. That’s all there is to it. Uh So we all kind of you want to use your term that you keep using.

00:23:26
Speaker 1: Uh No, we’re all really excited. Yeah, we’re all really excited. We’re talking.

00:23:30
Speaker 3: We’re just kind of like.

00:23:31
Speaker 4: We’re hyping each other up. But we’re also like, what do you do the second you kill something? You back off? Ye, give it time.

00:23:38
Speaker 3: That’s what we did.

00:23:38
Speaker 4: You don’t want to pump it with adrenaline, like we wanted to let it die, which we had already thought it was dead at that point.

00:23:46
Speaker 3: Yes, so we were just taking our time. Yeah, we just stood there and talked for four or five minutes about whatever. You know, Man, that was cool. I can’t believe it played out that way. You know, all the normal stuff.

00:23:55
Speaker 4: We were talking about. It’s never this easy, yep. Like it’s you never find it right, you never shoot it right out of the road. It’s like this is crazy, yep.

00:24:04
Speaker 3: And so we spent a few minutes talking and we were like, all right, there’s been enough time. Let’s walk up one to see that it is dead. Two, let’s get closer in case there is like a for like you never know what a spike, a a spine shot would drop. So you’re just like, all right, let’s just go see, let’s get close, let’s go check it out.

00:24:21
Speaker 4: I mean, I like, I think our mindset was genuinely let’s start taking pictures. Like no, by no means that we think there was any reason for any follow up anything that’s true.

00:24:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just wanted to get We just want to get closer to the animal. And so we get over to it, and as we’re walking to it, it does a little deathkick. Everyone’s seen that little deathkick where there’s not much to it, but all four legs were moving. This is important. All four legs were kicking a little bit, and then they just kind of stop and he lays right back down on the side like he’s just totally on his side the whole time.

00:24:50
Speaker 4: He couldn’t even think about getting up.

00:24:52
Speaker 3: So I know that if he’s spine shot, he won’t be able to kick his back legs. So I know it’s not a spine shot. So I know that, like if there’s a shot deer, I’m gonna shoot it again immediately, I know that it can’t move and I’m gonna kill it. That is not the case, and so we hold back a little thirty yards or so, yeah, hold back. We glass it up, and we see a little bit of breathing, so then we just stop.

00:25:13
Speaker 4: We kind of get low breathing.

00:25:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, we kind of get quiet, and so we’re like, all right, just leave it alone. This is this is how this is sometimes happens. They just slowly die. Anyone who’s hunting for a little while has seen that, even with a rifle. So we just chill. And we continued to chill for another eight minutes, yep, closer to the deer and glassing every now and then towards the back end of those eight minutes, we saw a little more kick in it. And at this point we’re like, Okay, it needs a follow up shot, so let’s let’s go ahead and do that. And the angle that we have on it where I would have shot it the way it’s laying, I would have shot it through like the upper back into his rib cage, but his head was laying there, I would have shot through his head. So we’re like, well, I’d rather not shoot through his head like I’d like the mount if possible. So we so we move to a trophy. I am a trophy hun her I like to kill, but big mature animals.

00:26:11
Speaker 1: There should be no issue with that.

00:26:13
Speaker 3: Big mature male animals that have spread their jeens plenty, And so we make a little bit of a move to get set up to shoot him. I shouldered the rifle off safe, got one loaded, and he swivels around and is now facing the other direction, and he’s kind of like propped up.

00:26:32
Speaker 4: His back is towards you.

00:26:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, his back is towards us. And as I go into the scope, he gets up and runs straight away and nothing had ever happened, and Jordan’s like shoot him, and I like kind of trying to get him the scope. I mean, he’s running straight away, so I only have a Texas heart shot or in Texas, I only had that shot for a second. And then he gets lost pine something and in my mind, I’m thinking that even that is okay, He’s probably gonna go fifty yards and pile up again.

00:27:02
Speaker 4: Like that’s exactly what I was thinking.

00:27:03
Speaker 3: The first thing that goes into my mind is it’s a liver shot. He is dying but not dead yet. He’ll go fifty yards and if we don’t push him, he’ll lie there and just die there. So we kind of one freak out. We’re freaking I’m freaking out. Are you freaking out yet?

00:27:20
Speaker 4: I’m just like I’m in shock, Like I’m just like, what in the world just happened?

00:27:26
Speaker 3: I mean, I’ve in shocked. I’m a little freaking out.

00:27:28
Speaker 4: I wouldn’t say I’m freaking out, but I’m also not the hunter. I’m just the like the journalist camera guy.

00:27:33
Speaker 3: I’m freaking out because I thought for sure he was dead when he did the soil of a round. That was enough to freak me out. And then when he got up, I was like, what just happened? And so he runs away. We track him a little bit. Find good blood, red dark red blood with bubbles in it.

00:27:53
Speaker 4: Yep.

00:27:53
Speaker 3: So we’re like, so this is before we watch the footage. I’m more confident that it is a liver lung shot because of the dark red blood and yeah, oh no, no, before yeah, before I saw it, I’m more confident that has liver, long blood clipped some long got dark got liver because of the color with the bubbles.

00:28:15
Speaker 1: Find a good a good bit on a cactus.

00:28:18
Speaker 6: On a full cactus, paddy leaf, Patty, I don’t know what it’s called, your pad pad lily pad, And the entire thing was filled with bubbly red blood.

00:28:29
Speaker 3: And then the bush beside it had it on the leaves. At this point it starts to absolutely pour, I mean absolutely poor. We’re two hundred yards from the truck and we are soaked to the bone.

00:28:43
Speaker 4: It was like, you know the I know this is gonna be funny, but like this scene of the notebook, like.

00:28:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s that’s horrid, Like do you want.

00:28:56
Speaker 4: But like it went from zero to a hund and we were all soaking wet within twenty seconds if it started.

00:29:04
Speaker 1: All six of us. Really, yeah, you guys were out that.

00:29:07
Speaker 3: We’re like, we were wondering what you guys were doing because I knew you weren’t that close to your truck. You guys are kind of wiped in.

00:29:12
Speaker 4: Yeah. So if you guys know, rain and blood trailing do not go hand in hand, so cold dog.

00:29:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we go back to the trucks to the call of dog. It takes about two hours to get there. At this point, it rains off and on thunderstorms that whole two hours we get there, all the blood we had seen prior is gone.

00:29:32
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:29:33
Speaker 1: I get Jeff said there’s some type of hormone that’s released between their hooks.

00:29:38
Speaker 3: I get shot that likes like adrenaline between their stuff.

00:29:43
Speaker 1: That’s what the dog is allegedly tracking.

00:29:45
Speaker 2: I imagine that goes away.

00:29:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s what for sure, that’s what the dog tracker kept saying. And I know he was just trying to one back up his dog and to like talk to.

00:29:56
Speaker 1: Us, because yeah, and angry kind of.

00:30:00
Speaker 3: But if the blood washed away, it’s just like if there was paint there, if there was red paint there and clear paint there, both paints are gone. You just can tell that this one’s gone. Uh So then yeah, we call a dog, We track it. What we think, Yeah, we think we tracked for two or three hours. I think the dog kind of got lost and we found some does.

00:30:23
Speaker 1: He tracked some does.

00:30:24
Speaker 4: We ran with some does for about two hours and.

00:30:27
Speaker 3: Ran us up and around some hills. We did, we retried, we restarted the track, retried. Yeah, and so we yeah, we called it at that point.

00:30:38
Speaker 2: So to parallel that, it also kept raining the whole the.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: Whole time, continue to rain while the dog was there. So parallel this, Scott and myself and Jeff were walking up this hill. We’re here shot, We’re like sweet, we kind of go over. We sit in glass for a second, thinking we’re gonna get a picture, gonna get a picture, gonna get a picture. And they’re like, ah, you know, like he was down blah blah blah, and we’re like, this is weird. You know, they’re not sending us anything. You know, usually you get up some type of genitalia picture or something, you know, and we weren’t getting anything. And so yeah, we’re just sitting there in the rain. And we sat there in the rain.

00:31:14
Speaker 2: For what two hours probably, yeah, pretty much soaked.

00:31:17
Speaker 3: My feet were wet for forty eight hours if not.

00:31:20
Speaker 1: I have trench foot still. And we sat under some trees that did not provide any cover whatsoever after they got saturated. And we walked around for another hour or two after it stopped heavy raining, and didn’t see a thing, right.

00:31:34
Speaker 2: No, we didn’t see anything that morning.

00:31:35
Speaker 1: Nothing, not a thing.

00:31:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw you, I mean we saw the dose that yeah, I think with his groom.

00:31:41
Speaker 1: First when he shot the does kind of peeled around the side of the hill.

00:31:44
Speaker 2: That was it.

00:31:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, you guys were leaving as the dog trayer came in because it was like twelve thirty by them when the dog tracker got there, like it had been a while.

00:31:51
Speaker 4: Yep.

00:31:52
Speaker 1: So we go back home and Angel worked out a little bit while Jeff pulled up the video. We watched the video and it was probably what four or five inches in front of the shoulder, dead center on the neck. To me, it’s still like with a three D PRC. So I think it either just send the customers the same thing.

00:32:08
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, pretty much the same thing, but.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: Like either concussed him or yeah, like the stunned him for a little bit and then he hopped up and gone, yeah, I don’t understand I don’t really understand it at all.

00:32:18
Speaker 3: What everyone keeps saying is you can like the pressure obviously obviously when you shoot a puercussion pressure. Yeah, the bullet’s small. I mean, I don’t know bliss as well. The bullet small. The bullet isn’t what does all the damage. Like, the concussion does a lot of damage. What I’m hearing is that it went through meat on the neck. Their neck is obviously thicker than ours. Meat on the neck, and the concussion show the spine to where he like was paralyzed for a second. Then when he was no longer paralyzed, he got up. I don’t understand it at all. If I got shot in the neck, I probably would die. Most things would.

00:32:53
Speaker 1: I mean we looked, you looked, watched the video kind of assessed that he was either still alive. I mean, you did everything you possibly could at that point. So that afternoon you guys went and hunted with Jordan, the hunt winner, which there were two Jordan’s, two Jeff’s, and two Jakes at camp, and so you guys end up killing. They did a nice stalk on a one. You guys did some glass and for him and helped and did whatever. Jordan got his buck. They’re from Michigan, so they actually drove all the way back to Michigan.

00:33:23
Speaker 3: They bounced.

00:33:24
Speaker 1: They bounced the next morning. So that afternoon, me, Jeff and Scott, against mine and Scott’s better judgment, we went back to the property again where we had not seen anything you guys had shot, and so we hiked around, got up on that nob. I guess it’s not even like it is a hill, but it’s not whatever, and so we glassed up what I think was the buck that we ended up getting to the next day. But we tried to make a play and get in front of him, and he just did not cooperate. He was just moving around. He was pushing some does and they were a herd, and we.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: Tough because there’s not much elevation, so they can in its thick brush, so they can get away pretty easily. We basically saw him in one gap, some in another gap, some another gap, and then didn’t and then we.

00:34:11
Speaker 1: Then we give to get position and he was coming at us.

00:34:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he kind of just.

00:34:16
Speaker 1: Went on a like slowly left left and just kind of stayed on the perimeter of us where we couldn’t seehim, you could hear random roars. So we kind of called it at that point and we’re like, ah, let’s get back to let’s get up high or see if we can find him again.

00:34:28
Speaker 2: Well, we wanted to see where he went and maybe have a player for the morning.

00:34:32
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so we get up to the top and we’re walking by one of these brush I don’t know, little forests type thing. It’s not it’s you know, not really big. It’s probably what a thousand, five hundred square feet of brush. Yeah, and where we hear noise commotion, Well, then you hear antlers, but it’s not your normal like bust where they just get up and go. It was like a labored get up up, like try to get up, fall down, get up, fall down, get up, fall down, get up. Ease out to the next set of brush, and we saw some dough a dough well, we saw the buck. We saw the buck, but we saw a dough there too. That was just kind of doing whatever.

00:35:12
Speaker 3: That’s when Jeff like panic, gets a gun because he’s seen a buck.

00:35:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so we just all hell breaks loose, all Helm breaks loose. I grabbed the gun and the bow. I think at some point we’re running. Gun is not loaded. We’re running with the gun and trying to get in position to get ahead of this buck. And in my head, I’m like, oh, it’s Angelo’s buck. And if it’s not Angela’s buck, it’s injured. Hopefully it’s Angelo’s buck. So Angela’s not stuck in purgatory anymore, and he can either have his buck or you know, or I kill this buck and then you can go on another buck. Because you draw blood, you’re you’re stuck with that buck. And so we tried what four or five different places along the way that he would just run to the next set of scrubs.

00:35:55
Speaker 3: How far was he running, like between those fifty dollars, Yeah, fifty yards. Maybe that’s weird activity.

00:36:01
Speaker 1: Weird activity. You would think you bust something and boom, they’re going county. And so we we got close enough. Helm even like we got in this little brush, we had an opening where if he ran, and he ran right through that opening, but he ran not walk through it, Jeff through a rock and it spooked him to the next set. And then we just could not get on him. If we had a pistol, you probably could have got on it with the rifle. Dude. It was just hard to hard to find him. And the western they got western real quick. And then on the video, it’s gonna look like we had four hours left of daylight, but I could barely see through this. Well.

00:36:35
Speaker 2: Then we finally did bust him away out.

00:36:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he took off, So we dropped a pin there for you guys to come back. And that sets up your last day where you guys just looked for him for about nine hours.

00:36:45
Speaker 4: Just to backtrack a little bit, if you see a wounded animal, you want to try to do yours for sure. That that was the point. So we see they see a wounded animal. As hunters, they’re trying to do their due diligence to you know, finish this. Sure.

00:37:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that it’s not acting right, that it’s running fifty yards and trying to hide. Yeah, you know, usually they’re like I’m gonna rely on my legs and I’m gone. Yeah, So there’s something weird about that. So that was my thinking was that, hey, get this thing down. If it’s Angelo’s great, If not, I don’t care whatever. And so next day you guys come back and you searched and gritted, and what’d you do like ten twelve miles?

00:37:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least or at least ten we did at least ten of just like you guys send us the pin where he crossed one of the dirt roads, and we just went up and back, up and back and down back and grinded it back and gredded as much as we could, went as far as we could, basically until we got to the creed to help you.

00:37:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you guys got to a creek bed.

00:37:41
Speaker 3: There’s the other side of the creek.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: That’s why I said, or heard you guys want to get lunch. I went to the other side of creek. Yeah, we’re like, well, might as well try the other side.

00:37:47
Speaker 4: We went through every single bush you can imagine.

00:37:52
Speaker 3: And with the other period, I mean, the other issue about it was that, like you guys said, he’s only gone fifty yards at a time. So we could be within thirty yards of him and not move. So we had to be diligent about going, Like if we went down this line, we could only go thirty or forty yards down and do it again. So we couldn’t just like kind of see, h yeah, it’s not really here, and then it’s hard to see some of that bush.

00:38:13
Speaker 4: Yes, it was definitely. We were very much grid searching. Yeah, like you can see it on our track. We’re going up walking fifteen steps going back in. Yeah, we’re not like trying to be stealthy, no, trying to flush again, we’re pheasant hunting for a wounded access right now.

00:38:30
Speaker 3: We started a little slower and a little more quiet because we thought what you guys have told us, he had literally got across the road and bet it down, So we started slow, and then when he wasn’t there, we’re like, well we kind of just get him. We need to get him moving. Never saw him what about ten miles or so, never saw.

00:38:44
Speaker 4: Him, never even came close.

00:38:46
Speaker 3: And then I mean we walked. We walked from seven am until about four thirty with a lunch break, with a lunch break four thirty or five, and I don’t know because we yeah, we charged our phones for a little bit, and we want to help them.

00:39:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, I bet you we got Yeah. It was probably six when we and we started glassing them. Yeah. And then I’ll be honest with the angelo. I was. I was really motivated. We’re going to find that.

00:39:14
Speaker 3: He was so optimistic, was so optimistic. Me and Jeff are the epitome of glass half empty, half full. Yes, my glass is always half empty. Yeah, your glass is always half full. It’s the same glass. I do not see it. Every time we turned the bush, Jeff saw it as another opportunity to see where the deer’s at. Every time we turned another the bush, I thought, well, hell, if he’s not behind that one, why the hell would he be behind that every single time?

00:39:40
Speaker 1: So it was just a.

00:39:40
Speaker 4: Struggle’s been through so many different hunting scenarios where it’s like last ditch effort, last little you know jaunt, and it works out, it changes the trajectory of the entire hunt.

00:39:53
Speaker 3: The problem is the last few tracks I’ve done for like wounded or mortally wounded.

00:39:57
Speaker 1: Animals have been not successful.

00:40:00
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:40:01
Speaker 3: Sure, Like I guess maybe maybe if the last one had been successful would be enough to push me to Oh yeah, this one could be too.

00:40:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, I also think, like you know, I was telling Angela like I need to grab my pom poms right now and just cheer for you, because like it’d be really easy as the camera guy with no strings attached to this hunt, just beaking like, yeah, we’re never gonna find Like I don’t know why we’re even here. It’s true, like I’m trying.

00:40:29
Speaker 1: To bird, Bird, do you think think we’ll find him? Odds are pretty bad? I don’t think so. Literally, No, That’s what he said in you talk. When I shot that bowl that we found the next morning, seventy five yards from where we were, I said, man, you know I’m where you were on whatever day it was. And You’re just like, gosh, one, you wanted an animal. Two, you’re going home empty. Three you look like an idiot, like that’s your whatever? Ye, And I’m like, Bird, what do you think? And He’s just like, yeah, I’ll be honest, are pretty bad.

00:41:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I’m like he asked me that same question, dude, he’s gotta be got to be on the corner. It was crazy because I don’t know the way I look at it, and Angela and I talked about this. I as a hunter, just like continue to check the box, right, Like, Okay, we tried this, check the box. That didn’t work. We’ll try over here, check that box that didn’t work. Like eventually you’re gonna run out of boxes to check and you’re gonna have success.

00:41:26
Speaker 3: My problem is like it’s like there is a law, it’s a laundry list of stuff to do. And we did this, did this, did this, And when you start to run an option, you go, well, hell, I mean I only have three more options at this point. The other fifteen didn’t work. So because it ain’t gonna work.

00:41:39
Speaker 4: Probably the truth is if we were like locals there, like if you were hunting in your backyard, you would find that buck eventually. And even Jordan texted me he’s like, hey, I’m still looking for this, Like there’s no way he’s going to survive this summer. Yeah you know. And so the only reason we didn’t have successes because of time. Yeah right, we’ve been there for a month. Maybe we would just fine. So long story short.

00:42:06
Speaker 2: And probably rain and rain didn’t help.

00:42:09
Speaker 3: All right, let’s like, can we get out of a better not sure? Can we talk about his hunt? It was actually really fun.

00:42:14
Speaker 4: We did our due diligence, we checked all of our boxes.

00:42:18
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, so previous day I dropped my backpack, which we’ll get to later on the story.

00:42:27
Speaker 3: This plays though, and so we even Curtis is never wonder rule.

00:42:32
Speaker 1: Well, it was like a day pack, and so you really didn’t need it, you know, like it was really kind of worthless to have until the next day. Usually we would come home for lunch. I think last year we stayed out one whole day. Me and Scott preferred the whole stay out all day method because you can’t kill anything at the ranch.

00:42:49
Speaker 4: Same.

00:42:49
Speaker 1: So anyway, so we get out that morning. I’ve got no pack. God has water, That was it.

00:42:56
Speaker 2: I had water in a couple of mountain ops and a stick ignite, yeah I was. I planned to be out there for four hours, five hours.

00:43:06
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, and no breakfast yep, yeah, running on caffeine. So we get out. We kind of climb this hill to glass a little bit. We see some does, watch them hop a fence for a little while.

00:43:17
Speaker 2: Well yeah, because we thought we thought that he was going to be the yeah.

00:43:19
Speaker 1: And he just was not there. So we decided to when the Doe stopped playing frolicking over the fence. We go to this kind of the backside of this property and we do a couple sits and listen, sits and listen. Then we get on the hillside and we glass. Jeff takes a nap. We sit there until about Jeff takes a long two hours. Me and Scott are just sitting there with our on our thumbs.

00:43:43
Speaker 2: I think I took maybe a twenty minute nap.

00:43:45
Speaker 1: I think you did.

00:43:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, it felt nice, maybe thirty minutes.

00:43:47
Speaker 1: I did not nice. I did not. And so we get up. We kind of walk back, hiked back, and then we’re kind of back and forth with these guys. So we go back to the original spot because we see some doze and they’re jumping the fence again. You know, probably fifteen twenty one.

00:44:00
Speaker 2: Should also be said. We did stay out the whole day.

00:44:02
Speaker 1: So the whole day.

00:44:03
Speaker 2: So you guys have food stat all day and we’re like, well, no, but we’ll stay Yeah.

00:44:07
Speaker 1: So Jeff throws me a meat stick. So I had a Mountainknops chicken buffalo chicken meat stick. So that was about it. Then we sit there and we’re watching these doughs, watching these does, thinking this buck’s gonna come by Well, then these guys go up on top of the hill with the glass and get my bag. Ye, and so they spot a buck, and so we’re kind of this is legal in Texas. It’s convenient.

00:44:27
Speaker 3: It’s convenient that your bag was on that knob too, because that was kind of the one we were probably gonna go up anyways. But also it was like kind of no choice. Your bag’s up there, you guys are gonna be able to go there by dark. So all right, we’re going up there.

00:44:38
Speaker 1: And so you guys spot the buck. And so Jeff and Jordan are like, we’re in a good spot we think from where he’s gonna come, judging on where the power lines and all this stuff are. So we’re sitting there and for what all over hour and a half, their phones are starting to die, and we’re starting to like text each other sidebar like, hey, where’s he at. It’s actually because Jeff and.

00:44:59
Speaker 2: They kept saying, hey, he’s one hundred yards from the fence. He’s about to be in the meadow. He’s coming down the power line and we’re looking at a meadow and we’re not saying buck or anything.

00:45:11
Speaker 4: Disclaimer All of this is legal in texting all this is legal in texts. Yes, yes, communication via phone, there’s no rules. It’s an invasive species, there’s a rule, don’t come after some rolls.

00:45:23
Speaker 3: But last there’s less rules.

00:45:25
Speaker 1: There’s less rules on the phone for invasive species. If this is white tail is probably different, right, bet, you couldn’t do this right tail. But anyway, you can.

00:45:31
Speaker 4: Talk on the phone, you can text, you can send pins. All that’s legal.

00:45:35
Speaker 1: So at some point they decide that, oh, where he’s about to cross the fence line is about a mile away, fourteen fourteen yards away something like that. Yeah, so Jeff’s like, we gotta.

00:45:48
Speaker 2: Go well becauid Angelo sent us a pin and I was like, dude, this isn’t right. He’s way off. And then we’re like, wait a second.

00:45:56
Speaker 3: I send a pin when I really he’s had a picture where he was at it, this is where we’re at, And we’re like, why the hell’s you just sending us a picture?

00:46:03
Speaker 1: But actually did hell? I wanted to show you what you were seeing, what we were like.

00:46:06
Speaker 3: I saw the bend in the road and I started I could see roughly it was.

00:46:11
Speaker 1: Far, but I could see gravel, dirt, driver.

00:46:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, dirt.

00:46:16
Speaker 1: I’m like, if that’s as far as he can see. They aren’t anywhere in the vicinity.

00:46:22
Speaker 2: And your pin was so far away from where you guys were describing this buck from our per I was like, there’s no shot his pins right, and that when we realized the pin was right, we were like, oh crap.

00:46:34
Speaker 6: Yes.

00:46:34
Speaker 4: So when I remember when Jordan and Jeff had the initial conversation of being on the same page, I was genuinely impressed. I’m like, wow, that took not a lot of.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. The telephone, the last telephone.

00:46:49
Speaker 4: Bole, Yeah, perfect done. Meadow, Yes, the bole got it like boom, like and the conversation and you guys are just pinned on this meadow near the telephone. We were in different universe.

00:47:01
Speaker 1: We were thinking that where he went yesterday, he hopped that fence. Those dozes were with him, and it was a four hundred dish yard shot something like that, I think, And so we’re just waiting for him, thinking he’s gonna come right along that line. Yeah, we were wrong, and so we bomb this hill and get out to the the dirt road.

00:47:21
Speaker 2: We were literally running.

00:47:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jeff Helm was running. I dropped the bow. At this point, I’ve given up on the bow. We’ve got this hunt and then the next morning and that’s it.

00:47:28
Speaker 4: We’re done.

00:47:29
Speaker 1: So I’m like, rifle time, rifle time. I’d rather come home with something for my kids to think was cool than hey, no, your dad’s a loser. So we started writting down you getting kids, yet you will? And so we start sprinting down the road. We get to some trees, we see the buck and there Jeff’s like, here he is getting the trees. Find a rest. There is no rest. What make it work?

00:47:56
Speaker 4: Can I back up a little bit? Yeah, so Angelo, Jordan and I see all of We see the original meadow that Jordan was trying to convey to Jeff. Here comes as does, here comes to half buck. Here comes this beautiful buck, and we’re like waiting for your gunshot, waiting for your gun shot because at this point the conversation we had thought everyone was still on the same page, and we like, we just see this beautiful buck not getting shot and moving into the next thick timber, and.

00:48:27
Speaker 1: Then all hell breaks well we start.

00:48:29
Speaker 3: That’s when we started when scramble.

00:48:33
Speaker 4: Because that was, yeah, that original meadow was when we were like, oh, no, one is on the same page.

00:48:40
Speaker 3: We realized there’s two rows of telephone poles, one going vertically and one going horizontally. They’re like at the horizontal, We’re like at the vertical. That’s the that was the problem to.

00:48:48
Speaker 4: Conundrum multiple meadows.

00:48:51
Speaker 1: So we get in position. I get on a tree and just wedge my hand into the tree as much as I can it’s straight up into out, and just set the gun on the tree. That’s my rest sucks, and so he at first, I don’t know, we thought he was gonna spook a little bit because the doze kind of either saw us or got a little doze.

00:49:10
Speaker 2: Were all staring at us.

00:49:11
Speaker 1: Yoh dag. So we can’t move, and he he has turned heavy quartered to basically frontel and it crossed my mind, Oh yeah, but I did not.

00:49:24
Speaker 2: I remember you saying like he’s front I was like, I’m.

00:49:26
Speaker 1: Not gonna take a shot. So then I’m looking and i can see in my scope the branch on the tree in front of me that’s hanging right at my scope level, and I’m like, that’s below the barrel. I should be fine, but it’s it’s like it was enough in my way. So I’m sitting there and he walks and he turns broadside and just like, all right, whatever, you want to take the shot. And I’m like, I don’t like that branch, so I go even lower and wider, do the same thing, and then he’s at two forty five. So we end up shooting. He does a little kick, slowly start walking just like hit him again. So we hit him again, and we were like, I went, I’m like, hey, I’m out of bullets. He’s like I got one, so he hands me another one. He’s like load it. We’re gonna walk up to the We let it sit there for he’s like he’s down.

00:50:15
Speaker 2: So he went was toasted.

00:50:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, but having known what happened, we ended up. So we he went, he did not go far, and he was dead when we got there. We did not have a Lazarus situation. And those bucks now named Lazarus. Yeah, you don’t get it. Read the Bible, you’re pagan.

00:50:38
Speaker 4: Because when I saw the footage on Scott’s like, he didn’t drop immediately, he kind of ran off and then like jumped in yeah, or took his death roll and yeah, because we heard.

00:50:49
Speaker 1: It, and then we had good keep pumping them with it. Yeah, all right, hit him again. I’m not taking after yours. I’m not taking the chance and it doesn’t mess the hide up as much as I think.

00:51:00
Speaker 3: So I was like, all right, we’re good. Nope, we’re yeah. Hit him again.

00:51:03
Speaker 1: So yeah, man, Texas is awesome on a highs and lows and yeah, but it’s a great great adventure for some friends. And got some that Jeff last year got close to him, so we’ve stayed friends. We’re gonna have him on a podcast maybe, Jordan, if he’ll come out of the darkness and wants to actually talk about guiding a little bit in Texas.

00:51:22
Speaker 4: You did get him going like he was talking to Yeah, yeah, we got him going a little bit it.

00:51:26
Speaker 3: We had a good time. Really, he’s a great I mean, he’s a great hunter. So, like you said, that’d be a great place to go hunt. I think.

00:51:32
Speaker 1: I think, man, it’s such a good off season thing. It’s it is spot in stock. Granted we we spot stocked with friends and with communication. Yeah, you can done three days. You have three day hunt man, and it’s you. You gotta get what you gotta get.

00:51:48
Speaker 3: I asked Jordan that. I was like, so how come, how come? Because it is Texas, why don’t you guys hunt our feeders. He’s like, honestly, I think you can. We just it’s just not our style. We like like honey access teers like more fun on like spot in stock style, he said, And I’m just a little better at it, and so you can do both. But like I mean, it is fun and it’s doable. It’s definitely doable compared to like, like we said, compared to Colorado or somewhere else that’s very difficult to train. This train is moderately difficult. I say, the most difficult part is just the rocks. It’s just rocky and it’s just annoying. Yeah, it’s not difficult, and there’s some hills, nothing crazy, you can most most of the places you can see and actually get to in a reasonable amount of time. I thought it was fun. I’ve I’ve never had in a guide. Jeff was the first guided hunt I went on, which doesn’t really count. Jordan was the first guy I’d ever had and had great We had a great time. I mean, like he really kind of knew his stuff.

00:52:41
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to go to learn, it’s great to learn I think from a guy I think it gets knocked at times. Will do it myself cool.

00:52:48
Speaker 3: He’s he’s hunted those those several thousand acres for like fifteen or twenty years. Like you can’t learn it in three days. Like, yeah, you can. Yeah, Like you’re saying, it’s a good especially if you just haven’t.

00:52:59
Speaker 1: Done it a lot.

00:53:00
Speaker 3: It’s it’s probably a good idea to have somebody who knows one what they’re doing and two knows the area.

00:53:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you’re going to do it, bring.

00:53:06
Speaker 4: A bowt in a rifle to totally.

00:53:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, you never know.

00:53:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, coming from a fly fishing guide perspective, if zero is like a never ever and a five is a pro. If you’re going on a fly fishing guiding trip or a hunting guided trip, that person’s knowledge, take full advantage of it. Yeah, you have like a lot at both fishing and hunting have a lot of dead time. You can just ask that person for as as many questions as you can, Like if you go on a guide to hunt, try to take full advantage of it.

00:53:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, because then maybe at one point you don’t need a guide, but like at right and when you’re starting, you probably do exactly a lot, and then at one point you can try to do it yourself from the knowledge you’ve gained from those guys.

00:53:46
Speaker 4: Everyone needs a mentor man, and you know some.

00:53:49
Speaker 1: Come to Maham Hunt Prep camp.

00:53:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:53:50
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty seven because this will probably be out after right, yeah right now. Oh if not, there’s a couple of tickets left. Twenty twenty six, No tickets off.

00:54:00
Speaker 3: Well, just because the more for the orders and stuff. You can’t yeah whatever the other not it’s nice.

00:54:06
Speaker 4: Is not my role, gotcha? Yeah?

00:54:08
Speaker 1: No, twenty twenty seven. Yeah, you on the lookout. We go ahead and look at now keep you go in it. Yeah, give them a year. Heads up Texas Texas, go to Texas, go hunt Texas Preenti Outfitters if you’re looking for a good spot. Jordan says, they’re full, but they might.

00:54:23
Speaker 3: They might work with you, work with you.

00:54:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s.

00:54:27
Speaker 1: Fun. Scott You anything, Dad, Nope, make cactus still all right, Pa,