Chase The Unknown Podcast
Welcome to the Chase The Unknown Podcast, brought to you by the Boondocks Hunting Podcast family! This show is all about embracing the pure joy, excitement, and rush that comes from not knowing what lies just around the bend. To us, Chase The Unknown means the thrill of stepping into the wild with no guarantees—whether it’s locking eyes with a 200-inch whitetail, crossing paths with a 500-lb black bear, hearing the thunderous gobble of a turkey, or simply witnessing the beauty and unpredictability of nature. It’s about the anticipation, the adventure, and the stories that follow.
But what does Chase The Unknown mean to you? Is it the adrenaline of the hunt, the connection to nature, or the pursuit of something greater than yourself? Join us as we explore those questions, share incredible stories, and celebrate the thrill of the hunt—where the outcome is always unknown but the journey is unforgettable.
Let’s chase it together—one adventure at a time!
Chase The Unknown Podcast
The Wild Won’t Wait: Driven By The Chase
on this episode of chase the unknown, we're joined by none other than dj jones, florida native turned minnesota outdoorsman, a content creator whose passion for the wild is as raw as it gets, from gripping hunts to heartwarming family moments. Dj journeys through the swamps, woods and waters of the South and now the North, has inspired thousands. We dive into the stories that shape him, the mindset that drives him and what it means to truly connect with the outdoors. If you're ready, till for last wisdom, a few wild turns. The episode is one you won't forget. Man, it is. It is great to get you back. I mean, I know this is going to be the first time you're on. You're on this show of ours, but you know you're a og from the the garden state, uh, outdoors and podcast. I think season one or two you were on.
Speaker 2:Well, welcome I want to say it was one. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me I, yeah, I believe so too. I believe it was in the first year, which, looking back at the first year of the show, I mean of just doing podcasting in general, I mean crazy, crazy time, and just you know, it's always funny to see where we are now. But now also, you know, same with you because, man, it's been a long time. I know we've DM'd and stuff like that back and forth, but we haven't like sat down and talked since, you know, since that day. So I mean, a lot has happened. How have you been? How's the family?
Speaker 2:oh, uh, family's doing good. You know I can't complain, god is good. Um, just the same, busy, working white tails family and just trying to stay as healthy as I can and do as much as I can.
Speaker 1:Um, and just enjoying everything I feel like I can try to tap into yeah, no, and and that's you know, that's the work thing, that that never stops. You know we always got to work and staying healthy. We're only getting older now, like we're starting to get up there. You know we still got some time, but like health and you know, working out and eating healthy and everything like that is a big, it's a big factor. You know just a lot of things that we do in our life, but you know it's, it's great to hear you know one thing that I really want to before we really get into you know the hunting and everything like that man, I haven't gotten a chance to talk to you since that.
Speaker 1:You know absolutely incredible, you know unimaginable incident that happened with you. You know when you're on that lake with, with those kids and everything like that. Um, you know, and I remember first, you know when it first popped up on on instagram like that. You know that I can't believe. You know that happened. So for you know, for for all those out there who don't know, you want to give a quick rundown on that whole scenario.
Speaker 2:So I'm a Christian Southern Baptist specifically speaking and a lot of people don't want to acknowledge God, you know, or choose to believe in God, and that's OK, because I'm not going to ever force religion on anybody. You know, I always feel like for some people to become believers it takes, like you know, life changing instances, or you know, they're forced to believe in something. But just summer, well, I guess it started in the spring of 2022. I was at a gym and, just for whatever reason, I just kept, you know, feeling like I needed to do the concept two-roar and I just incorporated that into my workout routine workout and using that concept to roar for those of you who've ever tried using one in a gym, they absolutely suck. They're not fun. They will, uh, burn you out pretty quickly. Doesn't matter how fast you go, doesn't matter how slow you go. It's, it's literally it's a full body workout.
Speaker 2:But I just was, was doing that for maybe two or three weeks and I just incorporated to my routine and I ended up watching um, a local youtuber, um, who's actually really great. Um, he's on our fox sports north channel stuff like that up north here. Um, superior angling company, but um, I watched one of his videos on the st louis river here in duluth, minnesota, um, specifically out of the boy scout land, and then watching that, it kind of inspired me to get out and try to do some fishing on that section of the river because I had never tried fishing on that section of the river before and first time there, first time in the river. I just remember, you know, like just getting my stuff set up and everything like that, where set the GoPro up, got the rods and stuff in the kayak ready to go, and I just remember seeing a family that's sitting on the dock fishing and there was another family sitting on the bank fishing and I just remember like looking out and there was like a sailboat and there was a little kid in the water swimming and stuff like that. You know, just, it just seemed like an average day and got in the water, started fishing and got in the water, started fishing.
Speaker 2:Oh, before I started fishing there was a couple. The couple that was on the dock had asked me if I could take their weight and lie because he couldn't cast that far because he had a broken fishing pole. It was one of those Eagle Claw fishing poles from Walmart. I'll never forget it and it looked like it was supposed to be like a seven foot rod, but they had broke it off, like it may be the second eye on the rod, so he couldn't cast, or he. I. Just, you know, he asked me if I'd be kind enough to carry his weight out and drop it on the bottom because he couldn't cast that far. So I'm doing that and I'm fishing.
Speaker 2:I'm fishing, I'm fishing, not catching anything, just floating, trying to get in a position and stopping. I just remember looking up, I just watch a dad, like you know, who had the sailboat pull up, pull his anchor and the kids still swimming or whatever, but I just didn't pay any attention to it. And by that time I remember getting turned around in the current. And after getting turned around in the current, um, I watch a boat go by and another boat go by. I'm just not thinking anything of it.
Speaker 2:Then, um, I hook into something I was never able to this day, I don't know. I I want to say it could have been a log, it could have been a really big pike, could have been a really big sturgeon. I hook into something on the bottom of the river and for a second, you know, I just kept telling myself it was a log, but every now and again that thing, it would dive like down to the bottom like it was moving. But it was moving really, really slow and it was like something I'd never caught before. So I was there trying to catch a walleye and most people were saying that I probably hooked into a sturgeon, which are prehistoric fish here in freshwater. Sturgeon fishing is very popular in places in the midwest and stuff like that or wherever you can find them, because a lot of people like literally use the phrase catching a dinosaur because they're prehistoric.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking did I hook, you know, into a sturgeon? And I just tap my gopro and this thing is carrying me down the river slowly but surely, just like carrying me down the river. So then, um, doing that I in that process, I just hear like this scream and it just sounded very like like gut-wrenching. And just hearing that scream, I looked up and I could see the kid, like almost, you know, parallel with me, away from the shore. I just ended up looking for his dad in the sailboat. I couldn't see it. So, um, he was panicking, he was getting taken away by the undercurrent in middle of St Louis River um, at that time I didn't know it, but there was a father and two daughters, um. The father and the daughter, um, drowned in that same river the prior summer but he was getting swept up by the current. I mean, he's a six-year-old kid. He had a life jacket on, thank god.
Speaker 2:Um, I try to put the basically the pedal to the metal rolling as fast as I can to get to him and I get to him. He's hysterical, calm him. Once I get done calming him down, calming him down, you can go up there and tell Harrison to get down there and eat too. Y'all can eat in the kitchen. Try to tell him to calm. I'm calming him down, doing as best I can. Cause you know it's like you know what I've learned between law enforcement and things you know, like doing security and stuff like that and just other, like you know, high pressure situations, um, the cooler heads will often always prevail and I know that me panic. It isn't going to help this kid that's panicking. So I have to think things through because in my head, like I'm trying to you know um distract him, but I'm also trying to make sure that he doesn't drown in this process.
Speaker 2:I don't know how long he's been swimming. I don't know what his swimming capabilities are. I don't know how long he can hold on. I'm trying to row without splashing water in his face. I'm trying to row without hitting him on top of the head with the oars. We were close to maybe 300 yards from shore, in theory being that 300 yards away from shore in a boat, that ain't nothing but a thing. Right, you, just you hammer down, you can go.
Speaker 2:But I got a six-year-old kid hanging on my kayak.
Speaker 2:We're in a current, going against the current, with the wind starting to pick up, because we're getting caught out in the middle of the channel and just bringing them there and then getting them there and just everything happening from there where, luckily, I was able to find a house.
Speaker 2:I didn't get shot showing up with some random white kid on the shore trying to get him dry because I didn't know what was going to happen. I don't know what people are going to think. Like you know, like I'm showing up with this random white kid who I don't know, just just learned his name, like a few seconds ago. He's cold and he's wet, but luckily I had some people who didn't try to question me. They immediately got him towels, tried getting him warmed up and then informed me of the person where the father and a daughter drowned there last year and died but one of them was able to survive, and stuff like that. And then the dad comes up and ended up finding out you know he's a law enforcement graduate from the same school as myself, but he ended up then looking at the police officer because they actually ended up graduating the law enforcement school together and stuff like that. And then that was the last I heard or had any contact from anybody about the case.
Speaker 2:So I guess long and short, I was able to rescue a kid while attempting to walleye fish, potentially hooking a sturgeon. That video went viral on a bunch of major platforms because I remember when I put the video out there, I just put it out there for just you know, wanting to remind everybody of water safety and stuff like that. But a lot of people said that they probably thought that I was in shock, not understanding how serious of a moment it was, and for me it was just like I did what I would want anybody would have done. You know, to my kid or to me, If I was putting that out, I want whoever it was, I wouldn't care if you had a damn P-roll or you had a dang banana boat or RC boat in water. Help me get back to land please, I beg of you.
Speaker 1:And that's just what I did land, please, I beg of you, and uh, and that's just what I did. Yeah, I mean, you know you wouldn't, like I said, I'll never forget when you, when you post it and everything like that. And you know one of the most important things and, like you said, why you originally posted it was, you know, water safety and that's something like. Even you know I'm gonna be 32 like when we go out into the water, when we're fishing, even like as simple as going trout fishing the water levels are all high right now because it's been raining so much and you know we wear our waders and everything like that. But, gosh forbid, you fall into something, you know, a deep hole. It fills up. Then you're, you're, you're done and you're putting yourself in this absolutely unimaginable situation because no one thinks about that.
Speaker 1:You know these big open waters, these lakes, these big big rivers, like, yeah, it happens, it happened, you know it's, it's a thing that you hear, like you may not hear, but like law enforcement, everyone who lives there, it does happen quite a few times a year. You know, you always hear some story you know down the beach of, you know at least one person drowning at the beach and everything like that. So you know, for the kid, like I can't imagine, I mean, I was not. When I was younger, I I loved the water, but didn't love the water. I yeah, honestly, it took me forever to learn how to swim and everything like that. Um, you know, now I love it, but still, if there's a boat or something like that would love to, you know be in the boat but, but getting into these situations, but also you know, like you said, big believer of you know, you know God and everything like that.
Speaker 1:Like if you weren't there, you know, if God didn't put you in that that exact moment, you know the reality of what could I have. Like who knows what could really happen? You know, at the end of the day, you know, and, like I said, I don't know the full details and everything like that. So you know, for for you, you know, oh, you, you gotta be. But I think people who work law enforcement, who work with children or high pressure, at the the end of the day, hunting too, hunting can be a high pressured situation.
Speaker 1:Listen, I've been face to face with multiple black bears and everything like that. This adrenaline, this fight or flight that we get. You can't panic, you just have to like, okay, cool, this is what we need to do. I need to do this so that this kid is safe, and not only the kid, but we're both safe, because if I start panic and yeah, not only could he drown, but then also I, you know I could flip the boat, you know, the kayak over.
Speaker 1:There's so many things that could happen. Um, so the best bet is always to to stay safe for both, for not only the kid, but for both parties as well. Yeah, that's true. So I mean, yeah, crazy, crazy time, you know, and I I've been wanting to talk about that and get the story from you for now years, you know, and things like that. But you know, thank God and everything like that. Hopefully, you know, the kid is still 100 percent safe to this day, and everything like that. You know, thank God and everything like that. Hopefully, you know the kid is still 100 percent safe to this day, and everything like that.
Speaker 2:You know that's the same thing I'd be. I'd be wishing to, because I still get people that will message me to this day Like do you have any updates? I'm like you know, in the state of Minnesota.
Speaker 2:They protect minors when it comes to you know, not even a high profile case, but just like you know, any family courts, anything that involves a child, they always try to protect the minor's information and stuff like that. So I still get a ton of messages either on TikTok or Instagram you know you have any updates or people comment on videos you have any updates or I will still see the video resurfacing a lot on TikTok and people will tag me and stuff, or they'll comment me and stuff that they know that it's me because my face isn't shown in that entire video, which even then, you know, I just kind of feel like that was a blessing in disguise as well, because I I usually just throw my GoPro on the tripod behind me and even then I just I'm not going to use my tripod.
Speaker 2:Today I, I'm gonna use my chest harness and that chest harness was able to like capture him and his face and everything else and him screaming at a better viewpoint than it would have been over, you know, over my shoulder, stuff down the tripod. So it was just uh, it was just a god experience. If, um, if I always have to describe, you know, like, for me not even usually walleye fishing, for me not even fishing that section of the country, to the random urge that was put on me to start using the concept to roar, and then I was able to act whenever I had to get this kit to safety in a quick amount of time, because I don't know how much time I had, but just just a blessing to be there and a blessing to help that young child now have you?
Speaker 1:you know, have you been back to fish or any, or was that the one time and then you? Then you haven't been back.
Speaker 2:Really, I went back there once more, um, but still, to this day, fishing on the water for me isn't the same, because I feel like I still have a little bit of that PTSD where I'm expecting something to happen. Yeah, like so, even when I hear kids in the water playing, I hear any type of scream, like sometimes it kind of gets me, you know, um, not necessarily like panic, like a almost like a defensive type of aspect of like oh, what's happening now, you know, or is everybody okay, kind of thing, but it's it's been almost three years this july, um, so things have gotten better for me when I go out on the water, but I, even if you've been like following my content and stuff like that of people who've fallen, like I don't really fish as much out of my kayak after that happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've kind of noticed that yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I try to. I'm going to try to get out there a little bit more. I try not to think about I'm on the water, but every time I go in the water like I think about it.
Speaker 1:You know, I think about.
Speaker 2:You know, like the kid, is he okay? You know how's the family and stuff like that. Or even sometimes they're playing it short and my son tries to give me grief about it because like, oh, I'm eight, I know how to swim. I'm eight, I know how to swim. I don't care, you know how to swim. People that know how to swim, die in the water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even even that they know how to swim.
Speaker 2:I was like you can still, honestly, it's.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing with you know, with with us, and adults like how, how often, especially, you know fish and wildlife, that I guarantee you. They can tell you how many times you know do they pull up to a boat or something like that, and people don't have their life jackets on or don't even or there are no life jackets, jackets even in anywhere around the boat. So, like it, it's not only, yeah, you know, and for a father, I mean it's you know, you want to teach you know your kids the the correct way and keep stressing it, even though you know. It's funny how he says I'm eating everything, like that. It's like, oh, you're making it seem like he's 80 years old so uh, yeah, no, I, I completely get it.
Speaker 1:And you know, on on the fishing topic, you know, I also see like that absolute, just tank of a bass that you caught, um, yeah, 10.10, yeah, the 10.10 in florida.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, uh, jesus, just over, yeah, just Just over, yeah, just over a year ago, last March, just over a year ago. I'm going back and forth with the taxidermist now because I got the skin mountain done, but I still want to do replicas. So that way I feel like if I get enough bone on the ground this upcoming year and I do shows, I want to have that available for people to see. So I want to be able to keep the skin mounted home and then the replica I can bring to shows.
Speaker 1:So how, like real, real quick like for for anyone looking for taxidermy for fish and everything like that kind of like, what does that look like for you? You know you caught that, that bass and everything like that Like, do you have to get the exact measurements?
Speaker 2:Like, what kind of do you have to do to send it to your, to your taxidermist? So for me, I had never even tried dabbling into um, getting a fish done by a taxidermist, because in today's world everybody loves the replicas. Everybody loves the replicas, right. But, like for me, it's like I had that urge in me to make sure that whenever I caught something of that nature, I always told myself I'm gonna get a skim out done of the original, but I'm always gonna get a replica, because I want to wake up one day and have that same fish that I caught, however many years ago, months, weeks or days ago, that I caught out of that pond and, um, the funny part about me even catching that fish was the fact that, like, it's not the only double digit fish that's in that pond, cause there was like three of them that would swim around like underneath the docks, but you could never catch them. Like, the only person I've seen catching was somebody that had lived there consistently, but he would always catch him. When he catch him, like, well, not necessarily minnows, but sunfish and stuff like that, or brim, if you will. Like, you know, he'd get something about the size of three or four fingers and stun them on the water and then just flip them underneath the dock and they'd come up and get them. My dad hooked into one two years ago, in 2023, when we we were there and he was like trying to show, yeah, I'm gonna catch that bass. It was like, well, dad, you're not gonna catch that bass, like a bass that size, because, anyway, I guess I'll explain that into a little bit of a detail but he ended up catching a little brim, putting the hook in his mouth with a brim hook, and again, this, this fish.
Speaker 2:There's three fish that I know that are in that, that are in that pond, that are, you know, of trophy catch value, so above you know, eight pounds that I've seen on the scale, caught by the person that lives there, um, he's a good guy, his name is colby, um, he still lives there, um, but anywho, dad had a bram. He put the hook on it and just tossed it out there underneath the dock. I can watch literally the big one come up and then inhaled it and he had that fish on for all of maybe two and a half seconds and he swore for now he was going to catch him, but that fish spit the hook just as fast as it bit and he kept trying to get it to come up and bite. I was like that fish doesn't eat that many times a day. It's a 10 pound bass. It's march, it's probably pre-spawn, so you're not going to have it biting how you think you're going to have a biting. And for the past I want to. I think I've I fished that pond maybe the past four or five years in a row. Never even had anything near that size that I've caught out of that pond. I've always been one to catch four or five, five pounders when I'm down there.
Speaker 2:Just then I get to the dock. It's my next to last day. It's cold, colder than what it normally is. For that time I just flip into the water and I can't see, because it's like it's one of those ponds where you got about maybe close to a foot or two foot of the bank that you can actually see, and then it just drops because it's a deep lake. That lake is probably not necessarily a lake, it's a pond, not necessarily a lake. It's a pond but, um, it's probably close to 20 foot deep in some areas and the dock is where, like it goes like from two feet and then it just, it just drops.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people in the video were saying that they thought that I was um, I was sight fishing him on the bed. I was like I had no idea that the the bass was even down there. I had no idea that it was even considering taking my bait. I just did what I normally do, where I just I'll flip it to the dock and I'll have it drop down, that like the edge of that column and make it to see like something just fell into the water and it can't get up and it's going down. So I just I flip up to the top, flip up to the bank and I'm just sitting there and I just give it a lot of slack and I'm just barely, barely twitching it. Barely twitching it because I know it's the time of year that if something were to see it, it'd probably come up to the bank and get it.
Speaker 2:I set the hook, thinking it's probably just, you know, one of those little 12, 14 ounce bass, probably in here because I use it when I catch out of there right, I set the hook that that joker comes up and the only thing I see is like a mouth open up. It's like this wide. And then that point, like I knew, okay, this one, this was the big one. And that's when you start hearing me say like oh my God, oh my God, cause like it was, it was huge. I wasn't even expecting to catch it. I got up to the bank on the bank, and then it ended up popping my line and you hear a loud pass.
Speaker 2:It sounded like somebody shot a .22, to be honest with you, when it ended up popping the line because there was so much tension on it, my dad was kicking himself because he wished he would have been there, because he wanted to film me getting it. I was like no, it was probably for the best, because whenever he tries to film me, my content looks like it's just some world star hip hop video and he thinks he's the best cameraman. I'm like no, he's turning, like he's literally. If he's using my phone, he'll have the phone up like this and he'll turn the phone sideways in the middle of the video and make comments like, oh, you can edit that out. I'm like you just don't edit that out of the video, like it's the entire
Speaker 2:display. But it was for the best that he was never like calm, because I was able to just capture it all on gopro and stuff like that, but it was a. It was a great fish, ended up weighing um 10 pounds, 11 ounces, I think once or twice, but after that it consistently weighed that 10 pounds 10 ounces and it was the 10 10, um, I believe. It believe it measured 27 inches in length and it had like 22 and a half girths, so it was a fat one.
Speaker 1:When you first Got it on shore and everything like that and got it in your hands before you, what were you thinking? What were your guesses At that point? What were you kind of batting like, this is going to be this like you know? And then, when you actually got the you know the 10-10, like, was it your expectations or exceed your expectations?
Speaker 2:I knew the fish was big, but I just didn't know how big. Like I just knew that I finally caught one over eight pounds. Like little did I know you caught one 10 pounds. Pounds, like little did I know you caught one 10 pounds. But it was like I thought for sure it had to be at least between that eight to nine pound um size range. But I was like let me just go ahead and put it on the scale, get it on video, put it on scale, get on video. And I put it on the scale and I see it go six, eight, nine, and it's like the score just like the, the number just kept clouding. I was like, oh my god, it was like 10, 10, 11, 10, 12, 10, 11, 10, 11, because it was still moving a little bit while I was on the scale. But then finally, once the fish kind of settled down a little bit, it said 10, 10.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh my god, 10 pounds, 10 ounces, a new pb just insane, just absolutely like you know, and you go from the, you know a 10, 10. You know another place and I don't know how. You know what's your plans or anything. I know you're gonna you're always gonna be going to florida and everything like that and you always got a chance at big bass over there. But isn't like mexico or something like that.
Speaker 2:Isn't mexico, have like giant bass yeah, once you get the states like florida, you can get them in south carolina as well, north, any of those southern states.
Speaker 2:You you can catch a good because they grow all year.
Speaker 2:Um, I'm a little bit biased because I always say florida has the best bass fishing in the country and that's why you have everybody and their, their uncle, even twice removed divorced cousins, that will show up down to florida to do a little bit best bass fishing in the country and that's why you have everybody and their, their uncle, even twice removed divorced cousins, that will show up down to Florida to do a little bit of bass fishing because they're just there.
Speaker 2:You have all the professional circuits that show up every year because they're there and people pay thousands of dollars, you know, every year to just have an opportunity at a fish of that caliber. And, and the crazy part is, it can be in a pond, it can be in a stream, it can be in a ditch. Like I've seen, people bring some really big bass out of things you wouldn't even expect them to be at in the state of florida. Um, but that's, that's just part of it, you know, when you're fishing in the state of florida and that's why, like I always get excited when I go down there is to is the bass fish, and then last this actual uh spring, I was able to turkey hunt for the first time down there.
Speaker 2:How'd that go oh god, man, um, I was able to fish with uh, well, to hunt and fish with my dad, but also, uh, our family friend, mr kevin. He's gracious enough to let us hunt his property and also fish his property, which which is where I catch the bass and I go fishing every year. The first couple of days we kind of got our butts kicked because I couldn't do any scouting, obviously because I'm in Minnesota. So I was trying to allow my dad to ride around, listen for the birds, but he doesn't really know what he's doing. I asked him to ride around the property and just, you know, take the four-wheeler if you have to and just listen for the birds, look for them, look for signs, look for tracks. When I tell you he sent me a video, I got on my phone still to this day. He sent me a video of a crow on the top of the tree in the wind, and I told him that's not a turkey's like, don't you think? I know that. I said okay. So what is the purpose of you sending me a picture of a crow? How is that helping me? Like I'm relying on you to kind of, you know, do something while you're down there. But, um, so I hung up my dad on mr kevin's property for the first couple of days and literally we didn't even hear a gobble until the third morning that we were there and then hearing that gobble on the third morning it sounded like to me that bird was making its way to the pond while we were on a southern, like the southern, section of the property. So then I'm thinking of a plan to try to cut this turkey off by getting in front of him. But it ended up, for whatever reason, turning around and going back and then making it off the property and then it just stopped gobbling as it made its way across the clear cut on the neighbor's property. So then Mr Kevin felt bad that we weren't seeing the birds or hearing the birds. So he calls a friend and this friend has a couple hundred acres there in Jacksonville and we get there. Man, it was money.
Speaker 2:We saw gobblers strutting with multiple hands in one section of the field, gobblers strutting with another hand in multiple sections. Basically in every corner of this guy's field I think it was close to 400 acres there were gobblers and hens just strutting and hens just strutting. But but the kicker was he had his, um, his son, his, his grandson and his grandson's father-in-law were hunting the property too, so they had dibs on one gobbler that they had been scouting. Um, I thought I was being sneaky and I made my way to the back section of the property where I saw a handful of gobblers and stuff like that, with some hens. They had already had another setup back there for them, so we had to get set up on a different bird and a couple of other, a couple of other hens in a different section of the field. And that next morning, um cause I want to say what day was that? So that because the first, I believe the first morning we hunted his property was saturday morning. Yeah, so that first saturday morning, um, the grandson and the father-in-law, they got birds like right away.
Speaker 2:Um, I was hunting with my dad and mr kevin, um, there, the way they wanted me to, to get set up, I kind of didn't want to do it because I knew it wasn't going to be successful, because I knew how these birds were going to be, especially after hearing shots and being pressured from what we know of on this property. I can't, you know, dictate. You know how much pressure they've had from the neighbors because I hadn't been there, I don't know, but the weather conditions were kind of strange too, because it was foggy each morning. But we knew where the birds were roosting at for those three days that we hunted there. So I kept telling them that we needed to get in there earlier, get set up in the dark. No lights, no, nothing. You guys sit here, I sit here. These birds aren't going to trust what they can't see.
Speaker 2:And what we learned from that first Saturday morning was those birds flew down and they didn't break that fog line. They literally flew down from the roost and they didn't break that fog. And that fog line was maybe close to 100 and 180 yards away from us because we were hoping the birds would work their way across the field but that that wasn't happening. And after that first morning, with the fall, like I knew, then I was like okay, well, we gotta get in closer. And you know they wanted to get set up in a ground blind style, you know, tarp and stuff like that, which was good. But I'm a mobile hunter, I like to run and gun like I don't. I don't use a blind, I use one strutting decoy and one hen. I don't even freaking wrap my freaking camera or my tripod, because I believe that much in my setups. Yeah, yeah, and we did that again for the evening hunt. All we could do was watch the birds 200 yards away. We come back, we come back um sunday morning, set up again different section of the property in the back, we got into, um, the corral and stuff like that for the horses and whatnot and the cows. Again, all we could do was watch the birds. They flew down that fog. They would not break that fog line to save our lives, so all we could do is like watch the birds strut 260, 270 yards away. And I knew because my binos that I run from hawk optics, um had the rangefinder built into them so I could literally just look at the birds and click yep 280, yep 267, yep 241, yep 260.
Speaker 2:And that was a saturday morning, saturday evening, and we went back out sunday morning, sunday evening. It was like the same. It was like we just kept replaying the same hunts, basically. And then finally, that monday evening, um, mr kev couldn't come, but we didn't. We got out that morning, we got to my uh, my grandfather's property and when we got there we ended up hearing a bird. But once we ended up hearing the bird again.
Speaker 2:We tried getting set up in front of the bird, but I kind of think the bird saw us and he just shut down because it was just. It was too. It was almost like a shock gobbler, because I'm pretty sure you've experienced one of those before. Right, yeah, it was like before I'm even done hitting the call sequence, bam, and it was that close, it was under 80 yards. So I'm trying to tell my dad what I think we need to do, because that bird was too close. I didn't want to call again and we tried flanking to the right. The bird gobbled again, but it was further away to our left and I probably should have used my honest application. So we tried to like to get around, but going around through the woods and I think that's where we messed up was because there was another road that we could have probably got to to cut the turkey off before it made it onto the neighbor's property and we didn't.
Speaker 2:So, um, I ended up having a really really, really bad sinus infection. I lost my voice, eyes and all that stuff was rough because I was in and out of the pines and stuff like that and the pollen on the water from fishing. I think that just accumulated over the past couple of days where it's like my voice was almost gone, and you'll, when the videos come out, you'll probably hear that my voice was almost gone. So then, finally, my dad got a hold of that landowner and asked if we could go there without Kevin, and he did. He gave us a nod, said yeah, just let me know if you get one, just bring him by the house, I just want to see him, that's it. So we got the whole 400 acres to ourself.
Speaker 2:We get there like at three o'clock and don't see any birds in the field. I'm like, okay, well, that's fine. Um, I then told my dad that I'm pretty sure the birds are going to probably do. You know, x, y and Z. I get to the field, I get set up, I don't see any birds and all of a sudden the mill is setting up like almost 400. Some yards away we could see the birds making their way off of the private property onto the public and, um, my dad was like dang, I told you we should have went this way. We should have went.
Speaker 2:I'm like, listen, it's like it's four o'clock, like we still got, you know, a couple hours left to hunt, like it's not, it's not the end of the world, like you need to check. But um, the section of the field that we were hunting, um, it has a little bit of a dip, but it has like a rectangular feel, but it almost looks like it's a, like it's a l right, but it's like this. So the dip section is here and there's like a little fence. So it's almost like I'm sitting here on the fence line so I can see back into that dip, but I can also see everything that's in front of me where those birds were. So, again, like I finally had some confidence in a setup because like, oh, we get to do what I want to do.
Speaker 2:I'm calling, I'm running my film, I'm running, I'm doing everything that I want to do. I'm like, ok, this is how I'm going to get set up. So then, get set up. I put the hen decoy on the backside so if any gobblers were to come up that hill, they'd see that hen first, and then I took the tom decoy, I put it out in front of me about 35 yards, so that way any of those other turkeys come back into the field, they can see that fan from a distance and from doing some research and listening to some of those OGs that turkey hunt and stuff like that, because Strickland was like a turkey won't, they won't do it, they won't do it. So sometimes if you put that fan and this is stuff that I've heard from some of the OGs and I decided to test it out, right, and then after testing out this time in Florida like I found it to somewhat be true, but this bird didn't get an opportunity. But I ended up getting set up.
Speaker 2:But I can't see that full back section of the field because my back is up against the fence line and there's like a bunch of palmetto trees and brush and everything else is sitting there. So I'm just like, okay, all of a sudden I start hearing a little bit of clucking. I'm like is that a bird coming from the back side? But I wanted to like to stand up and look. And my dad he's not even wearing camouflage, he's just got on one of these Luke Cone style Columbia PFG t-shirts and he's got a hat and literally blue jeans, but they're damn near white. So he decided to break a branch off of one of the trees, stick it in the fence, hang it down and sit on the other side of the fence while I'm just you know all that real tree, original camo and stuff like that up against the fence poles, right? So all this has happened.
Speaker 2:I just keep hearing clucking off in the distance, but it's like it's not that far, it's less than 100 yards. But the way that field works, because it's 400 acres in total and there's like a big little um stretch of trees that runs in between it there's a creek, it echoes like whenever those birds will gobble on top of the hill. You can hear it echoing down into the valley. So, my oh, it's probably a hen on the back side of the hill, on the other side of the fence. Just clucking, that's what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2:So I just kept peeking back over my shoulder periodically through the trees every now and again to look and to look and to look, and then finally I see a bird. All right, okay, there's a bird. Not thinking anything of it. Not not thinking anything of it, all right, well, yeah, there's a bird. So then, bam, I see the other gobblers that were in front of us a couple hundred yards. So I'm like I'm keying in on them. All of a sudden I hear clucking again. Oh, my god, that hen sound like she done got goddamn closer, right, right. So I was able to spot the bird and it wasn't a hen, it was actually a gobbler. So the gobbler was like maybe at this point in time 70 yards from us and that was the closest we had a bird all week Closest we had a bird all week.
Speaker 2:So I'm like, okay, I tap the GoPro, get all the cameras ready. I'm telling my dad, like you know, the bird's coming, don't try to stand up and look for him, just sit still. You know he's like you need me to run a camera. I said just just like I'm trying to keep him calm because he's trying to get all excited, whatever, right. So I'm taking the cameras and I run a newer camera now. So like I'm trying to get the lens right so that way it can focus. So I'm turning the camera, got the lens focusing and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And this beautiful, beautiful, you know eastern, it's just making its way directly to us up the middle of the field. I'm like, oh my god, this plan is going to work. It's literally going to work. He saw the Tom decoy. Then he kind of went half strut. This plan is going to work, it's literally going to work. He saw the Tom decoy. He kind of went half strut, half back down, half back down. That's where I've done my research. Turkeys won't attack another turkey from the back. I think that's what kind of got him, because he could see the tail but he couldn't see the front. He was like should I? It was like one of those. It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2:He starts coming. I'm like, okay, my dad's like where's the bird? I'm like he's coming, just sit still. I'm getting ready. I got the fence post, maybe a foot and a half directly in front of me. I'm turning the fence post, like maybe a foot and a half directly in front of me. So I'm turning the camera. I'm just doing my quick look, making sure everything is through and on.
Speaker 2:Okay, I got this one's on it's recording Lens. Is there? Gopro got it on the gun that's recording. Another camera, gopro on the fence, recording me. I'm like, okay, everything's on, everything's going, everything's good. So I'm just like sitting there, never, never try calling to him, like I'm not even going to try to call because I know he's coming straight to me. I don't even have to do anything, he's coming. I kid you not, this was probably the second closest I had had a bird since 2021. My first Eastern. It's the last hunt. It's the last evening. I'm counting my chickens before they hatch. I click the safety off this bird. It's continuing to come and come, and come and come. Finally he got past that fence post where he could see me at maybe close to 19 to 20 yards. I shoot, I hit the bird. He's like he almost does, like a little like he leaned, but it looked like it was a non-lethal shot. I shoot again. It ducks down. I shoot again. Takes off, flies off into the trees, into the swamp. That was it.
Speaker 1:Done, done.
Speaker 2:Done and I'm like wanting to start cussing, wanting to start swearing everything in the books. I'm like I, I'm like I just don't, I can't believe I missed that close, like I don't know how I missed that close, but I was just like you know, maybe I was just counting my chicks before they hatched, maybe I got a little bit too excited. What happened? I know that's a part of turkey hunting, but for me it's like the last bird I shot at in Minnesota in the prior spring. I just made my longest shot over a turkey and I killed him at 45 yards. It broke him down and then I missed the Florida Eastern at damn near 20 yards. I'm like what's the deal? Like what do you got going on? You can knock one down at 45, but you couldn't get this one at 20.
Speaker 2:And it would have been a memorable moment for me and both my dad, because it's like, um, my first trip to Florida, turkey hunting, despite growing up there and never doing it. And then, um, having the cameras rolling around and having the week that we had seeing multiple gobblers. You know, almost every day the second week of the, uh, the second half of the of my well, not even necessarily the second half of the week but the last four days of my trip just seeing goblins each and every day, um, but still was a blessing, you know, to help my dad and help mr kevin, stuff like that. But I just thought that for sure I was gonna have a florida eastern at the taxidermy right now getting a full body mount, but I just wasn't in the cars this year I guess. I guess I may have to go down there in the fall and try to get one.
Speaker 1:yeah, no, uh get one with the boat, definitely a little redemption, uh, redemption tour, maybe in the fall. But you know what the you know what the thing is like with turkey hunting, with deer hunting, with any type of hunting, whether it's a bow gun, whatever you're kind of doing like you know I can definitely speak especially for the Like we're practicing 60, 70, 80 yards.
Speaker 1:And I'm like all right, you know I'm not really going to take this shot, but you know I the confidence, you want to have the confidence. And then you know you do have people that like my one buddy one year killed a bunch of deer at like 40, 50. And I think he even took a shot at 60 and smoked it. And then he had a shot like, I think, within 20 yards and absolutely just missed, just straight up, just like missed. And then you know one of our guys um, he actually missed. He said the turkey was so close when he shot it at it that the shell didn't even like nothing. It was still just the full, didn't pop out, nothing came out. And it was just so close that like he's like there's nothing I could really do.
Speaker 1:And it's like I think sometimes the closest shots to like the closer they are, like you think it's going to be like all money, this is going to be easy. But then sometimes I think it just like the confidence there and then it's like, oh, mistakes still happen at 20 yards, they still happen at 15 yards. It may lessen the opportunity of something going wrong or you missing, but that's hunting. There is nothing like at the end of the day, like you won't know for sure until that animal is dead on the ground and and that's really it. But I mean just a, and I love how you know your dad's outfit. No, camo, you, you got the full.
Speaker 2:I love how you said it's on video, like one of the one of the other things I'm glad I could probably talk about this too is I have finally found a guy that um that does great youtube content. Um, his name is alex comstock. He does the the whitetail dna stuff here within the roof, minnesota. So I've got some stuff in the works with him where he's going to start editing my videos and, um, he's got a couple in the queue from me right now. He's got my um, my iowa deer classic, and he's got my florida trip with my dad and in um minnesota started today. But I'm not going to go out till probably Friday morning where I'm going to take my son and I'm going to have maybe three mornings to try and get it done. Um, if I don't get it done between Friday to Sunday morning, I'll probably call out once or twice at work to probably try to get it done.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah, I'm excited to kind of have him to kind of bring more of these hunts to life, you know, on YouTube for me, because for years I would just get irritated with myself for my content and then I would never put it up. So now I got like all these SD cards that I've accumulated since like 2021, 2022, of hunts that I probably should have put up there, despite harvesting deer or not harvesting deer, and they haven't put on my YouTube channel. So I told myself this year I was going to kind of, you know, commit more to that financially, regardless of how much it costs. So that's what I was going to do. So he's going to probably knock it out of the park, like he always does with his videos when it comes to this Florida trip yeah, well, looking forward to that, looking forward to seeing all those things and but, but it's, it's the one part.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people what they don't talk about. You know, especially for us with you know the content creation and everything like that. And you know, yet again, I always tell people we're not. You know we're not the juries, you know we're not. We don't honestly have the full backing of you. You got people filming for you. Then you're going to have people that are editing for you, or even the hunting public.
Speaker 1:Listen, I love what they do, but they get like they film and then they're all editing and they even still, you know it's a full time grind where, listen, you look at a lot of us. You know, at the end of the day, like we film, then we work, take care of kids and everything like that, or or whatever the case is, and then I still like to learn it all to get it exactly how you want. Sometimes, like you have these expectations in your head when you're filming and you're, and when you're, you know you're doing what, what you're doing, and sometimes you the expectation that when you're editing, it doesn't come out the way you want it to. So it's frustrating, like do I really want to put this? Like I right now I'm editing um our currents from our currencies and I'm just like I'm not happy with it, like it's it's okay, but it's not like, it's not anything like oh, my god, yeah, I know, and it's it's not like it's not anything like oh my God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, and it's because at the end of the day, it's like it's. I feel like you get some people that will put content out there just to do it, and they don't care if it's good, they don't care if it's bad, they're just putting it out there so they can say that they did it. And then you have people you know, like ourselves, who are like okay, for what I can do right now, this is the best what I can do, but I know I'll be able to do better in the future. And, like you were saying, you got these upper echelon hunters and people that can fish.
Speaker 2:They got these videographers that are with them in these, uh, these companies, um, that they're producing full feature films, right, like two hours, you know, for one video or episode, 37 minutes. They got like a million jump cuts, 16 slow-mos. They got five, you know, drone shots. They got the slow-mo when the arrow is getting released or the turkey's getting shot, et cetera, like all these other things that are happening. And we don't have some of those capabilities, but it doesn't mean that we can't get there, but I feel like that's why I feel like going forward, I feel like I'm hoping Alex and I can continue to work together and continue to get some good content up and produce some great stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, any else for you and you know what, what you've done, I mean you, you see, just with what stuff that you're you're posting on instagram and everything like that. Like you have the content you're, you're creating it, whether you know you're when you're out hunting and stuff, whether you you kill something, whether you're not. Even this, this florida trip, like I think it's always like this is what I want to see, like when I go watch my films and like when I'm producing my content, everything like that. Like then day, like I want to see you know, you and your dad together, your dad not having the camo on and blue jeans and everything like that. But also like, yes, I would love, for you have to killed that Turkey.
Speaker 1:Of course we all would, you would, you know everyone. But it's also it's a huge learning lesson. Like, hey, even when you think something's a sure thing within 20 yards, like these mistakes happen. But it's okay to talk about these mistakes and that's another thing why I think you know somebody like the hunting public and everything like they do so well, because they show everything that they do right, but they also show everything that they, that they do wrong, and that's what gravitates a lot of you know hunters who are watching this and everything, yeah, like that.
Speaker 1:See that that's no one would think if you're talking about my dad and that's Mr Kevin, and this is what they would wear a Turkey on what you see right here, right there, when you think Turkey hunting, every Turkey hunting experts like camo camo camo can have did it and they just like, but it's, it makes a story, it builds the story up and you know what? Then they, those are memories you guys are going to have forever yep, and this was us set up in the corral oh, my god, I love that, I love that.
Speaker 2:Let me show you them set up. Oh yeah, so this was their setup, the first one right there that's great that is great but that's what it was. That's how we were hunting, you know um. I kind of wish we could have probably did a little bit of running and gunning, because that's just my style when it comes to turkey hunting like I'm. I feel like it's one of the only you know um styles of hunting where I can truly be aggressive and not worry about the outcome right.
Speaker 1:I agree with you, I think with turkey hunting and don't get me wrong, I'm not and I talk about this a lot during turkey season, when you know I listen, if you know you can get in a blind and they're going to fly right down in front of you. Whatever, you know what I mean I 100% get, I'd probably do it live. But running and gunning turkeys like and this will be my second full year of officially like being not fully obsessed, but like the itch, where, like I'm taking it seriously, scouting, like everything is done correctly, like I'm constantly on birds, like you know what I mean um, just the running gun style. It's so much fun, you know and I it reminds me of saddle hunting, you know deer, where you know I get set up and boom, if I don't like my setup, like I get moved down.
Speaker 1:Or if you know you can always be, um, you're not just stuck, you know you, you're, you have the, you have options because hunting, a big part of what we do is you just don't know how the hunt's going to go. You know you don't. And if you got birds hung up, hey, you might have, you're going to have to move. You can't just sit there in the in the blind and be like damn. I really wish that you know that they're coming here and you can call it. And sometimes it just especially, the more pressure these birds get, you know, know, the harder. It's just going to be where that running gun style works. After week. After our first week, which starts monday, I will have decoys my a week after that I don't run decoys anymore. No more decoys for us.
Speaker 2:Um, just because we've noticed that the birds start to get wary and because everyone is running decoys the first week yeah, um, my areas of minnesota are really unpressured, like as far as I know, which is kind of one of the perks of the area that I have. Um, I have about 12 people that live on the block and out of the 12 people that live on the block, I have permission at 10 houses so I can run around everywhere I need to run around without any worries. Need to run around without any worries. There's only two houses that I don't hunt because in minnesota, um, it's illegal to hunt properties that um for turkey season, that have bird feeders in the yard so of course there's two people.
Speaker 2:they got bird feeders in their backyard. So I don't even knock on the door or ask to try to even hunt their properties. Um, I know there's one property, um that that has a bird feeder that I used to ask them permission to hunt it but I couldn't hunt it because the bird feeder was there. But I would also put the camera in the backyard to watch like these birds coming back and forth. So that's where a lot of like my turkey content would come from would be from those birds coming up to the backyard and you could see the bird feeder there. You could see the landowner in the back of some of my videos and also the other birds and the geese and stuff there and it would come to the backyard.
Speaker 2:But it's, it's fun. You know, um, we don't get to interact with. You know the targets that we're hunting a lot like, if you really think about it. You don't interact with the bear at any point in time when you're hunting them. You don't them.
Speaker 2:All the time you can communicate with the deer is during the rut, basically, or pre-rut, sometimes post-rut. You don't communicate with the hogs, there's no way to. You can communicate with the ducks and the geese and stuff like that if you're in a waterfall. But outside of that we don't have many animals that we can communicate with and they'll communicate back with us as far as I know. Turkey elk, goose, duck, that's it. What else can we communicate with? And that's why I feel like I love turkey hunting so much is because you can get on a piece of property you've never been on before. It can be hardwoods, it can be a field you can call seeing exactly nothing. All of a sudden, you it wasn't a bearded hen, but a hen was gobbling, wow, and it's on his YouTube channel. I could be wrong, but I want to say I've seen it on his YouTube channel before, where a hen was gobbling, and he had it on video.
Speaker 1:That'd be pretty interesting to see. Um, you know, and that's like when you hear people, you know they always compare it to elk hunting. That's one thing that you're like, oh yeah, you know what, because of the interaction you're, you're going back and forth, which I 100 agree, you know. But that feeling like like when, a, when, a, when you do hear a bird gobble and it's like, oh man, it's like it's on.
Speaker 1:And now the cat and mouse game of calling, you know, scratching, you know scratching is a big thing that we've been using here and everything like that. Even, you know, we even got times where, like just scratch, just scratch. Like my buddy's, like listen, just scratch, don't even call, he goes, just scratch, maybe one part here, maybe a cluck here, but mostly scratch gets them in, you know, and it's that cat and mouse game and that's what's so fun about. I think turkey hunting is just all those interactions, you know, and I'll never forget when cause I, yet again, I'm new to, to, to the whole turkey grind and everything like that, like my buddy's, like listen, just scratch. Like when I first found out about scratching, I was like this is all favorite thing to do sometimes, especially if you're not in the rut. It's like, well, we're just sitting here yeah you know, you're not.
Speaker 2:You're not communicating with anything like you're, just like you're sitting there and you're waiting. I've seen some people can start communicating with their pre-rut.
Speaker 2:I've seen some people that, like up in my area, they don't even want to call to anything, even during their rut, because deer is skittish yeah right, and especially if you're doing getting your close quarters in the hardwoods and that buck can't see that there's another buck and he's looking up at the tree because he's that close not to pinpoint you down, it's like it's crazy.
Speaker 2:But um, even that you're talking about the whole scratching thing today, you know I was sitting at work and I was able to watch um, ted was was using a scratching technique and I believe they're on public land in south carolina and one of their most recent videos that posted and the bird ended up coming around at the top of the ridge looking and all they did was call and start scratching. And they're on the bottom side of the ridge. The bird comes up and he was getting ready to take off because he didn't see, because he didn't see the bird that he was looking for. But he knew where that last call was and he could hear the scratch. It came, boom, got him killed because it's just it's, it's the little things like that sometimes and it it pays off. But I haven't been turkey hunting all that long myself because I've only ever gotten um four and I used to always get down on myself for not being able to call, like some of these world champion calls that.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing on TikTok and Instagram and um, those types of things that I would see. That would make me start. You know like carrying a mouth call in my truck but I'm making it. You know like long road trips and I know it's Turkish season, but I'm just like calling in the truck by myself, like practicing with no calls, trying to listen to people like bo brooks and stuff like that. And um who, dave owens and the rest of those guys I know, I think he just won a national championship here last fall or last spring, or was it this spring with nwtf. He just won national championship for colin.
Speaker 1:One of those things was like, just pretty sure, yeah I think it was this year, if I remember, because I think I I'm pretty sure I saw that as well on Instagram talking about that. So I think it was this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like trying to. Even though I've been successful consistently the past four years with turkeys in Minnesota, I'm still trying to figure out what can I do to get better? I want to learn how to get better at making clucking sounds. I do to to get better. I want to learn how to get better at making you know clucking sounds. I'm gonna get better and learn how to make you know a purr, you know. I also want to get better at arranging turkeys and figuring out how far they are based off of their gobble.
Speaker 2:I know we got tools like my onyx application where you can try to like range them and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But sometimes I get so fired up that I don't even really necessarily care to try to range him Like. I'm just trying to get where I believe he's going and cut him off because I don't feel confident in myself enough to to call a Turkey away from you know a hand or anything like that, cause I'm not that good. But then I watched, like some of the some of the folks that are OGs, like I watched Waddell and Mutt and all those guys cause Strickland and the rest of those, those OG Turkey thugs and stuff like that, and they, they don't even get to do that all the time. I watched Phil Kup. Like you know, those guys that are the Turkey thugs, they can't even do it all the time. So then I tell myself, like you have to be realistic, you're not going with that. So don't get mad at yourself because you're telling yourself, if you knew how to call better, you could get that bird to break away from that hen.
Speaker 2:He's not leaving that lady boy. Find one that's ready and it's communicating back.
Speaker 1:And that's exactly and that's what I like. When you get them hung up, and when you know you have them hung up too, it's like, well, let's find a different one, or you can even, you know, maybe get the opportunity to make a move, you know, and that's another running gun style where it's going to just benefit you so much more. And you know, that's my belief. You know, I think I'll always probably running gun when it comes to turkeys and everything like that.
Speaker 1:Man, the miles I put on the last year just before, because we're done at noon, the first up until the last, like two weeks of the season. I mean I remember the first week we're up in the mountains and everything like that. I mean before noon you're looking at like six, seven, eight, nine, ten miles done. Yeah, you know of just walking, climbing, everything like that. Getting on birds you know getting, you know messing up or you know a bird being able to figure you out or you, or you know just not working for you, but it's, it's just such a fun time and it makes the wait for deer season so much quicker, like it and that's why I got into it was because exactly what you just said right there like the wait for deer season- yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's just it feels like that, like last year, I was like deer season was over, I mean turkey season was over. I think that was like for us. Like early june, the fiance and I we went to europe for for a week and I came back and I was like, oh well, let's get ready deer season, like let's, let's go, like, let's boom it's, it's gonna be here quicker than ever and yeah, it's a great fun thing to do. Now. You know two more questions.
Speaker 1:You know for you, um and this is both gonna be turkey, uh related um, when you were starting calling for anyone out there looking to get into calling and everything like that, you know you said you practice everything. Is there anything that you found useful with doing the diaphragm call that you know that you could recommend to to someone new? Like, what are you kind of like? What was your kind of process? I feel like for me it's like, yeah, I listen to other people do it, but obviously it's just doing it. But maybe, obviously, knowing your cut, knowing you know your mouth, maybe trimming it a certain way to fit better in your mouth, what worked for for you?
Speaker 2:the first thing I did was, like I just kept doing like a lot of research because, um, my first couple years turkey hunting I didn't even touch a mouth call because I just simply would try and it sounded like trash. It still sounds like trash, but I just ended up doing my research, starting to find a couple of things with hunting specialties, and I started like listening to folks like Cush, strickland and stuff like that Phil Culpepper, michael Waddell, nick Munt, like any of those folks that you see that are legitimate turkey thugs and stuff like that that you know you can go on any website and find somebody that's a turkey calling champion of any sort and then listen to what they say. Right, and that's what I started doing. I ended up using a box call at first and then I ended up moving up to the pot and glass and then I ended up moving up to a mouth call. But I carry all three of my packs just because, like you know, I found out for myself with self-filming that it's much easier to use a mouth call than for me to try to sit there and use a, um, a box call or pot and glass and stuff like that with the turkey in range, because it's just too much extra movement. So then I forced myself to start calling and I committed to using a mouth call, no matter how terrible I am at it, and I got my first bird.
Speaker 2:Doing that. I called one tom, with like six jakes with him, from the roofs up the hill into my decoy and it just made my confidence go through the roof because I was like I did it right. Like I called in some turkeys but I sounded like trash like, but it worked. I'm like, but it sounded like trash but it worked right. So, like I'm like not necessarily trying to get too, too excited about it, but also not getting bummed about it because, like, I just tried something for the first time and it worked and I got my first bird. So it's just um, I would always tell somebody you know, just do your research and figure out what's going to make you feel the most comfortable, what's going to be the most suitable for your hunting style.
Speaker 2:Do your research on the brands of calls, because you know everybody and their cousin makes a turkey call. Like, some folks got them for $13. And I see some folks got them because they got a name attached to them, because they won a national championship. They want you to spend $150 for their call and to me I don't give a goddamn how many national championships you want. I ain't spending a hundred goddamn dollars to call a turkey. I can call one with my mouth for free. But if you feel like that's what you want to do, that's what you got to do, that's going to give you that extra edge, you go ahead. But I'm tell you me, me, never yeah, no, that's, that's not happening.
Speaker 1:And you know, especially, listen, at the end of the day, yeah, that $13 call, it'll work just fine. And, like you said, I've heard of people, like some of my buddies, who one of them, two of them, they are phenomenal at calling, like they from turkeys to waterfowl, to everything they are like on, and they're like listen, it don't matter sometimes if you really from turkeys to waterfowl, to everything they are like on, and they're like, listen, it don't matter. Sometimes if you really hear turkeys, they don't even sound like turkeys. Sometimes he's like I've heard birds and it's like that's a hunter. Like he's like that's another hunter and what is it?
Speaker 1:it's a, it's a bird like that so like you don't need to be a professional, you don't need to always sound you just, you know, sometimes like you just need to be a little different, because every bird sounds different and they're unique in their in their own way. So like, yeah, how the hell are you going to tell me to get a hundred, something you know call that also I'm only going to probably use for maybe a couple of weeks and then I don't. I don't use any of my calls from. I get brand new calls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I learned from THP again. Yeah, just shout out to the whole THP crew. I'm just going to say it because I've learned a lot of stuff from them in a couple different aspects of hunting and I love them for the educational stuff that they put out there and the experience that they put out there and stuff that they share. But I do use turkey calls outside of turkey season. Um, I can't remember if it was aaron or if it was um zach, where they stated when they were getting back to certain areas where they know they could potentially bump deer out in the woods before dark, they would, you know, um cluck like a hen I think I've, I think I know which, I think I've heard that too as well from from them as as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds very familiar.
Speaker 2:I was like that's genius. Like you're walking through the woods at dark and you can barely see. But if you cluck like a hen and have that same step cadence, some of those deer might not be as spooked. I was like ooh. So I do do that whenever the situations occur. So I always try to keep at least one or two calls in my bag just in case. Even if it's the fall and I'm hunting and I want to mess with turkeys, say, I'm walking across the field and I can see him like 150 yards away, I'll just, I'll just grab my call, hit it one or two times just to see if they're gonna make any noise or not.
Speaker 1:But and you know the, the last one I got for you is really more like minnesota, and you know turkey I don't know too much about, you know Minnesota. So, like, what is your experience been like? Or or the overall, what is it like to hunt Minnesota? Because you guys do, then they there are spots where you you have a lot of woods. You know it's tough hunting, especially, I think, the more North you guys go. You know that's where you guys have wolves and everything like that. I'm not exactly sure. So, like, what is it like hunting turkeys, just overall, in the state of Minnesota?
Speaker 2:I can just speak just in general terms of Minnesota. Like I've been up here since 2012 and I remember where I would just be driving around certain areas in the county that I live in, I'd be lucky if I saw one or two birds. Literally, I will be lucky if I saw either one or two turkeys. And three years I started seeing them more and more and more and more, to the point to where the population now is booming and several hunters like myself wish that you could get multiple tags or run a tag system like you do in Wisconsin. But for me and in my areas the population is great. There's not a lot of hunting pressure, so I'm basically hunting unpressured birds every year, regardless if it's the first week of the season or the last week of the season. That doesn't mean these birds aren't getting hunted by people that I don't know that are hunting. But for most of the hunting that I do for turkeys um, it's unpressured, but they're still wild turkeys. Their job is still to evade me and what I got going on so they can stay alive and, believe it or not, they win more often than not. Um, but the turkey hunting for me is is has been really good. Um, I will say that when I've hunted properties where I've had other hunting pressure, it's been tough, but that's just like. That's just hunting pressure in general. It's always going to be tough when you have more people, you know, competing and fighting for the same resource. Whatever the animal species is, they're going to adapt to it and we, as hunters, you, you gotta adapt to it too, you know. But, um, it's, it's not as bad, and I see posts all the time in facebook groups and stuff like that that I'm part of because I'm all. I'm a hunting junkie, so I'm a part of everything. Where I feel like I I can get any information on what's going on, either in my area or surrounding areas, I'm always going to try to tap in.
Speaker 2:So what I've been seeing mostly is a lot of people do not like the fact that there is a individuals or our indigenous population here have certain treaty rights that date back to 1853 that they made with the United States government, and I can speak about it because I just read a post about this, I want to say yesterday, where an indigenous hunter also some individuals, you know, consider our indigenous hunters as Native Americans or Indians shot a bird before the season started. So a lot of people in the Facebook posts are talking about oh, that's illegal, how could you do that? He's like well, this was a bird that I got based off of their treaty rights, and he had it in a post and he has a page specifically dedicated to stating that you know, due to my, you know my history and and my race, I'm allowed to hunt before the season starts for not just only turkeys but deer bear, etc. I can have more than the average person. And just seeing him catch a little bit of hate out hate out of that and it opened my eyes up to something that was happening that I never even had a clue that was happening until I saw that post and it just seemed you know all of the people that were like liking some of the hateful comments and that some people were congratulating this guy and some people were hating on him.
Speaker 2:So I know that's the aspect where some people want equal rights and to take away rights of others and stuff like that, which to me it makes no sense, but you know that's just what some people choose to do. To me it makes no sense, but you know, that's just what some people choose to do. But outside of that I've seen people complain about not having a youth turkey season before the actual season to give you for better time which what I from what I could read in the comments, it had happened prior to the way they got this, the system right now.
Speaker 2:But, um, our youth can hunt every week of the season but only get one bird. But as for us regular hunters, the way minnesota has it set up is they break the system, the uh, the system up, and I want to say seven weeks where it runs wednesday to wednesday. I want to say, and you can only select one week, but if you don't, if you don't get a bird during that one week, you can always come back and hunt if you haven't filled your tag that last week of the season. So say, for instance, I example, it's the first week I can, I can buy my tag and if I don't get one within that one week time frame, I can't go out turkey hunting again until that last week of the season, which I believe is going to be late maybe wow so by then it's like birds have been pressured.
Speaker 2:Grass has grown up yeah there's a lot that's going on, right, but as a youth hunter, you can hunt that entire season. But you can also hunt the entire season if you're an archery hunter and you buy an archery tag for turkeys oh, okay, okay so interesting so they make you pick right.
Speaker 2:So you have to. Either you pick a boat, you can hunt the whole season, still get one. You pick a shotgun. You got to pick one week. You don't get one during that one week with your shotgun, then you're forced to come back out that last week of the season, which most people have already given up by then, because the bugs are out and it's hotter and it takes efficient opener yeah, it's it's way different later in the year.
Speaker 1:Now one thing you know, and you, you said that so when you first moved there 2012, you maybe see one or two, you know, does the number growth? Do you know what that contributes of? Obviously you guys really can't shoot that many birds to begin with anyway as hunters, so obviously that definitely has a place impact and everything like that. But is there anything that you have heard where, uh, minnesota's fish and wildlife has done um to help protect turkeys and grow this population?
Speaker 2:well, you know I have a love-hate relationship with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources just because it's like I have firsthand seen people give the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources information that's been local from within my community year. You may or may not have seen one of my videos last year where I posted about, um, potentially either a bear or a cougar or something climbed up a tree right um that area that I was in. I told my girlfriend, my girlfriend told her mom and her mom had told me about someone else who made a post within, like you know, I, like you have like the Facebook communities where it's like a local city or half like a hot.
Speaker 2:She pulled up a post from earlier in the summer where someone had been walking their dog not too far away from where I was at and the cougar or mountain lion was in the woods like hissing, and then whatever it was doing at their dog and then they left right Bunch of other people commented if oh yeah, that's right, by my house I've gotten that cat on trail camera. I sent this in to the Minnesota DNR. The Minnesota DNR sent like a blanket statement Well, thank you for sending this information in. We have no reports of any mountain lion activity in that area that we could substantiate. We have no proof of this. We're sorry that you may have misidentified this, but that's not a mountain lion. I'm like what?
Speaker 1:Same thing I see here in New Jersey.
Speaker 2:But it's like to me, it's like you know, just because you're saying they're not there doesn't mean that they're not there. It's the same thing with our wolf population right now in Minnesota.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard people complain about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's terrible, but again you could tell them all right, I got a pack of wolves that are within a certain section of community during this mile stretch. They've, um, they've killed this many calves, this many. You know animals have been domestically. You know, blah, blah, blah. Minnesota, any wolves in our area, the wolves that we have that are collar over than this section of the state. It's unfortunate that this is happening in your area. That's it like. How are you gonna tell somebody what they're experiencing in real time? They're not experiencing. It's almost like they're gaslighting you in a sense, but then they want to take all the credit for populations and stuff when things are going good.
Speaker 1:It's like they just acknowledge it's like okay, the key word you said is collared. What about the wolves that are not collared? Like, how, like, what it's like? That does it like? If you're going to make that statement, you know I mean like, come on, make it make sense, like, dude you, that you guys don't collar all the wolves, so like. But you know it's's a simple Listen. I don't know if you know about New Jersey and our bear situation. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Corey Anderson would tell me about it. Oh yeah, he would tell and talk about it and stuff like that. But it's just like you just get some people that would get in positions of power, whether it's local, within your local city or you know, even higher up political offices, as you know, their delegates for your state or whatever it may be, whatever their political position is, and they will disacknowledge what is happening locally, within their community, until something directly happens to them. And then they want to take action. And it's sad, but that's just's, that's what a lot of people do. It's like. I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:I watched a video of Two very, very, very, very, very big wolves I want to say was either in Montana or Idaho and you probably seen this video too because it went viral where this German shepherd got ambushed by two wolves. Where this German shepherd got ambushed by two wolves in the middle of. I want to say it looked like a turnaround in a regular urban-looking community. He got drug off by two grown wolves into the middle of the woods and they want to say, oh, they don't have a problem with their wolves. You got wolves that are coming out of their environment into the city to get food. That's a problem. Next time it might not be a German shepherd, it might be your neighbor, miss Nancy, it might be you, it might be your kid trying to you know, take the trash out, although it's nine o'clock and it's a little bit too late. Next thing you know little Timmy's going to miss it. You find his iPhone and he's 67 miles away, in a different city, in a wolf's belly.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, but it's just, some people will not take action until they have that personal experience themselves. And it's sad, but I have my own theory about that. I feel as if some of these Department of Natural Resources do not want to admit things are happening, because then it means that they have to then begin attacking the problem. It's like right now in Minnesota.
Speaker 2:One of my biggest issues with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is they will disprove what hunters are bringing them for information. But if somebody wanted to conduct a study in Minnesota that pays them $100,000, $200,000 to conduct a study, they'll take that information and research and throw it out there for us hunters and say that this is what happened. But they'll disregard the local hunter, the local fisher within their own community who's lived there and has been buying licenses their whole lives. Their whole family has disacknowledge what they got to say, but this company, out of wherever in the Calif, kalamazoo, who knows, now paid you. Now, all of a sudden, you want us to read this information that you got from them on a Sunday day conducted.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing when I see some of the CWD stuff.
Speaker 2:It was mind-boggling to me because they found traces of CWD and this is something that happened in Minnesota because they had a no feeding ban in Minnesota for supplemental feed in the off season the only time you can put stuff out. They put a no feeding ban in my zone back when I was hunting a couple zones away a few years ago from a deer that had tested positive for CWD in the southern part of Minnesota, less than 40 minutes away from the Iowa border that's dang near three and a half hours away from where I hunt at. And you telling me that I can't put something out because it's something y'all found in a controlled environment like a deer farm with eight foot high fences, and I can't put something out to protect my deer herd who's been malnourished all winter due to the winter and spring that we just had. That was record-breaking. Now I can't go put out analogics. Now I can't go put out some big tine, because of something y'all found three years ago at a deer farm.
Speaker 1:That's insane.
Speaker 2:But that's what they do, though that is literally what they do. Though that is literally what they do.
Speaker 2:Jesus Christ and then in some of those southern zones when that happened not to cut you off, but some of those southern zones when that happened they ended up jumping up the tag a lot, like you know, like a lot. Some of those areas have one or two deer tags to. You can take one buck, and up to seven does In these CWD zones, but you can't eat the meat. So it's like you're just shooting, you're just killing them, just to kill them there Because you can't eat the meat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah that's. I'm not a fan of what we have, but at least we can eat it.
Speaker 1:So we have unlimited, at least we can eat it, so like we have unlimited doughs here, oh god unlimited, seven bucks a limit and, let's be honest, you're not some people and I imagine, if they have their own private property, yeah, they get to shoot a whole bunch, but, like, for the most part, I think it's dumb. I honestly, like I would like for our state to do, to move to a two buck any weapon. Two bucks any weapon, yeah, and then maybe, maybe, if you were gonna, five does for the whole season, and I would say that that's a huge number, but our state only cares about the insurance, the money, yada, yada, yada. But this is what I always tell people.
Speaker 1:You tell us what we have and, yes, we're overpopulated and yes, some hunting zones are overpopulated, but I will tell you for the most part, no, it's not overpopulated. And the residential areas where we can't hunt, that's the issue. We're going on these private properties that you know, like I was driving by some just giant 300 acre farm that no one can hunt on, there's deer and turkey everywhere. Well, yeah, no, duh, there's going to be a lot of car accidents there and people are going to hit deer because you.
Speaker 2:That's one of my, that's one of my main, that's one of my main talking points. Sometimes, when I talk to people who want to give me some of those objections when it's to getting permission, what I tell them is, like you know, by me hunting here, you know I'm going to kind of help out the local economy. And what way you happen on the economy. I was like hunting here, I'm going to kind of help out the local economy. What are you helping out the economy? I was like you got a nice truck right there. Yeah, I do. What year is it 2023. Yeah, you still making payments on it? Well, I am.
Speaker 2:I say, say, one morning, evening, any point in time, you're driving. What's the speed limit to get in here? 30, okay. Say, for instance, you hit a deer going almost 30 miles an hour. The total your truck. You can definitely dent it up. What's going to happen to your insurance rate because you just got into a vehicle accident? It'll go up. I say it'll go up.
Speaker 2:I say, but you know what could help prevent some of these deer and some of these vehicle accidents? It's like what? You sign this piece of paper right here. Give me opportunity to hunt so that way I can help control the population and your insurance rates will go down. Yep, oh, really so. Yeah, so if I sign this and you can hunt everything else, I said, yeah, I was like, and I'll be more than happy to continue to share information I got with you, I can send you articles to show you how, when you have hunters in your area, everybody benefits the population, the city, the deer, the state. And I guarantee you what your truck looks real good right now, don't it? Yeah, it does. Okay.
Speaker 2:Now, if you get a dent in it and a deer did it, are you gonna be at? You're gonna be happy, you're gonna be mad. I'll probably be pissed off. Quite frankly, you know I'm getting kind of pissed off this thing about. I could probably hit a deer. I said, yeah, it's, it's a possibility, which is why you see me here at your door trying to get permission because the deer are here. Yep, well, yeah, I see him. I say, yeah, I was like I can handle you seeing him, but let's, let's get to some of this paperwork. We continue to chat, right, but it's just well, that's what. That's one of my main talking points. Sometimes, when I talk to people, I hear the objections is oh yeah, that's one of my main talking points. Sometimes, when I talk to people and I I hear the objections is uh, oh yeah, insurance or blah, blah, blah blah, or they not. They might not even bring up, you know, insurance or liability and I have to talk about that. I talk about that sometimes too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and it's, it's a hundred percent. That's that's what New Jersey uses right here to to keep our hunters being able to shoot what they do and I mean we really don't shoot what we that number, but they still keep it there just to keep the insurance companies happy. But you know, man, I got to thank you so much for for coming on. I mean, this has been an incredible episode. We talked about, you know, a little bit of fishing and turkeys the whole entire way.
Speaker 1:It's that time of the year, it's turkey season and everything like that. You know I I had absolute blast. We definitely got to get you back on, friend, when we get closer to deer season or in deer season and talk deer, because I know it's been, it's been some time since, uh, since we've done, uh, you know, talk some deer hunting and everything like that, and you know I've I've seen the work you put in and some of the bucks that you've killed and everything like that. So definitely got to talk about that. And you know, just really love I'm obsessed with talking about deer, so that I could do for for hours and hours, and hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, me as well.
Speaker 1:Well I I appreciate you so much for coming on. I want to thank you everyone. Make sure you go check him down in the comments below. Everything's gonna be down in the link below. Go check him out. Awesome stuff going on over there.
Speaker 2:Any last words um, I just, you know, I would just always encourage anybody that's listening. If you have the opportunity to, you know either go hunting and learn about it, take it. If you're going, you know fishing or you want to learn about fishing, take that opportunity. You know, get outdoors. You know we spend so much of our lives going to work here, there, family, but we don't spend a lot of time outdoors or as much as we could. So that's why I always want to try to encourage people to get in the great outdoors. People to to get in the great outdoors.
Speaker 2:Um, if you don't know, ask somebody. If you, if you don't have anybody to ask, get on youtube and just look at some some basic videos from either the hunting public googling squad about fishing any of these things that you can probably get on youtube and just google, or find and get into the great outdoors and make sure you get your license and your legal. Let me get your ass out there illegally hunting and illegally fishing, getting your ass in trouble, don't get your license and then go try it.
Speaker 1:Definitely don't do that. That's something that we definitely don't need and that just adds more fuel to the fire for the guys that are and ladies out there that are trying to get our rights taken away. But yeah, perfect, said Everyone. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and we'll see you guys next time.
