Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: For Pennsylvania hunters and conservationists, our roots run deep. The episodes we bring to you on the Pennsylvania Game Commission's podcast, Call of the Outdoors, will take a deep dive into exposing the incredible work being done by agency staff and partners, including statewide habitat projects, the science behind wildlife management, and what drives agency decisions. The Pennsylvania Game Commission's mission is twofold, to manage and protect wildlife and their habitats for not only current, but future generations, and to promote hunting and trapping in the Keystone state.
Well, Mark, thank you for joining us here on call the outdoors. You know, it's been a while, and, you know, you and I go way back. I don't even remember how long, how long it is, but I remember back in the turkey calling days, you flew into Harrisburg and we drove to New York to a turkey calling contest sometime in the eighties.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: We did. You were calling in the youth division, so you would have been like 15 or 16. So I don't want to give your age away, but you could probably figure out how many years ago that was. That had to be 37, 38 years ago, probably something like that.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: That's scary. But things have come a long way since those days, and I really wanted to get in there. You know, a lot of our viewers, you know, here in Pennsylvania, we have dang near a million hunters, and as you well know, you've been out here a couple times, you know, to shows and things, and met the folks that we have. We have a lot of passion in this state, and they all know who Drury outdoors is. And I want to talk a little bit about your past and how you got started and where it's at today.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Certainly. I mean, well, much like you got started back to that contest, I went with, you know, yourself and your dad. We, we stayed in the same room. If I'm not mistaken. We were calling for Graham's custom turkey calls out of Hagerstown, Maryland. And Matt and I were both calling for the same team at that time. And much like you, through turkey calling, I met some amazing people. And those introductions and those relationships are still strong to this day, much like ours is. And one of the key introductions I had back then, cuz Strickland told Toxy Hayes about me. And in 1989, I met him at a calling contest in Natchez, Mississippi. And that meeting and toxie really changed mine and Terry's life because that same year, we were starting Drury outdoors, the video portion of what we do. And Mossy Oak sponsored us, and Cuz helped me with a bunch of, you know, really great tips, and it just evolved from there we started with five different turkey videos across the first two or three years of our existence. And then we got into the deer titles and that's when really things expanded for us.
And then at some point in there in the mid nineties, I started Madden, and then Drury continued to do video titles as well as DVD's. And then we did some series with north american hunting Club and outdoor life and feel and stream. Then we started doing television. And I'm giving a very abbreviated version of a 35 year history because this is our 35th year in business. Then we started an app five years ago called Deercast. And we've just had a very blessed past and a really bright future.
We've been really lucky with the people we've met, much like you and the outdoor industry, much like the hunting community, is filled with so many incredible people. So it really comes down to, you know, hard work and great relationships. Much, much like you, Matt.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah, y'all. Y'all definitely work hard. And, you know, I remember those early days, and I think Danny Galves might have been an inspiration to you personally. He was, you know, out there filming turkeys, and, you know, Danny's been on here a couple times, and it's pretty amazing. When you listen to Denny, he still gets out there and sits underneath turkeys and videos and records them every day of his life. Now that he's retired, pretty much every day on the calendar year, he's out there listening because he wants to figure out why a hen Turkey yelps. And it's pretty amazing. And I put you all in that Danny Galves category with whitetails because you really, from your early days to where you're at now, so many people look up to you. And the information and data that you guys, your whole team collects and gathers has helped so many people around this country become more efficient in the deer woods, for sure.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Well, that's a high honor to be in a category with Denny gold. He's one of my idols to this day. He's one of the guys. When I meet him, I still get a little nervous just because I had him on such a pedestal when I was a young kid growing up. His videos were some of the first out there, and I was just fascinated by him. And he was a big motivator for Terry and I to, to get out there and do what we do. So, yeah, Denny's one of, one of my favorites in the whole industry. He's so awesome at what he does. He just took the craft to, to the highest level.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Absolutely. And you look at turkey hunting, turkey calling, and where it's taken a lot of people, like, you know yourself, look at Waddell. I mean, he's like Elvis now. I always call him Elvis when I see him, you know? You know, he started turkey calling with us. And those were the days, let's just put it like that. We had a lot of fun, and it's pretty cool to see the careers of and what everybody out there that was involved in those days have done for conservation. When you look at it, you know, we're all on the same team. And, you know, whether, like my job now at the state agency, I learned a lot more, get a lot more in depth. You know, I've driven by this place my whole life and never really figured out or never really learned what happens at a state agency till I came to work here. And it's pretty amazing. And again, we're all on the same team. Hunters are the number one conservationists out there, and hunting is the way that we manage herds and all that. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. Obviously, we want to get some big buck secrets from you, if we can, for our listeners. But I want to talk about a lot about how you manage your places when it comes to the herds because you've been fortunate to.
We were talking about this earlier. One of our deputy executives has been all over the midwest. And I said, I'm going to ask Mark what probably his number one tip is. He goes, yeah, move to Iowa. And that's probably right. I mean, obviously you moved Iowa for.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: A reason, no question. I mean, I think Iowa, of all the big, big buck states, if you will, probably does it the best in terms of the management of the resource just because their gun seasons are so late. And I think that's a differentiating factor. They still embrace party hunting. They still embrace big groups out there hunting. And there's a huge tradition in the state of Iowa. However, the bulk of that happens after the peak of the rut when, when deer are fairly susceptible. So I own farms north of the border there in Iowa, and I own about the same amount of farms and ground in Missouri. So my Iowa stuff's anywhere from 15 to 30 miles north of the border. My Missouri stuff is anywhere from on the border to about 15 miles south of the border. But it's like two different planets. But you go to hunt there in the way that the Iowa deer Act during the rut versus the way the Missouri deer during act during the rut. But for, you know, decades, about November 15, the rifles come popping and the state fills with hunters and the orange army and it just changes the dynamic and the way the deer react and move.
And I see it every year in Iowa, man, you know, you go down to Missouri, you can't see a deer. You go across state line ruts going on. So the rut gets to take its natural case or course with just bow hunters in the woods. So I do think the way that Iowa manages the resource is just different than a lot of the other states out there. Kansas is similar to that as well. Their rifle season starts very late in the rut cycle.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, ours is the same way we start. We started, you know, right there after Thanksgiving for our firearm season. And, you know, nowadays we can bow hunt, you know, pretty close right up to that date. And, you know, it used to be we had to stop bow hunting in Pennsylvania on the 31 October. So, you know, not till too long ago, our hunters here in Pa didn't get to experience the rut unless they were out fall turkey hunting. And that's what everybody's, you know, bucks ran by him. And, you know, since, since antler restriction here in Pennsylvania, the, the trophies that were, were taken here in Pennsylvania, pretty incredible. Matter of fact, you know, Denny's son, Corey Galvas, just two or three years ago on, you know, on a piece of public ground with a recurve shot, number two in the state buck. And it's, it's, it's a giant anywhere in the world.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Wasn't it a mid nineties, like a. 194. 195. Denny sent me that deer.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. And he, and he shot that deer where lots of other people had been. You know, that pressure, sometimes people don't realize that you hit it on the head, you know, because I spent half my life in Missouri and lived in Iowa for seven years. And, you know, when it comes November 10 11th in Missouri, everybody has an orange hat, you know, on, and they're getting ready for. And you can hunt them in the peak of the rut. But that pressure is a big key here in Pennsylvania when we can get away from it, when we can get away from that pressure. When we're, you know, no matter what you're hunting deer alone. They, they're, they're, they're learning to stay away from us, no doubt.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: And it's just, it's just when they move versus when they don't. If you look at the rut, daylight activity versus any other time of the year, it just increases the odds that someone with a long range, you know, rifle is going to have a chance to take a. Take a deer. So it's really about how many deer make it to the next next age class. You know, I'm sure that that deer that Corey killed was probably. Did you age it? My guess is he was at least four, if not five or six, you know, so it's really about age class. Yeah.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Our deer take a little longer sometimes to get. Get as big as some of the midwestern deer. But I'm. I'm not 100% sure on that, but he was definitely, he's definitely had many birthdays, without a doubt. And, you know, we are antler restriction. I'm not 100% sure the date that it started here, and it was a battle because, you know, probably like where you grew up in southern Missouri, if a deer had antlers, you shot it when we were kids, and that's how it was here for a long time.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: You shot it and you drove around with it in the back of your truck. You went tavern, you showed it off and absolutely. That's the tradition and the spirit of hunting, which is great. And I, you know, I still, I still remember those years fondly. And anybody that wants to go out and shoot the first buck they see, I'm all for it, because that's the way we grew up hunting. So it's really about time and resources and everything else. It's the cool thing about hunting. And, you know, far be it for any other hunter to judge another hunter, which I see all the time on social media, and I kind of hate that. But it's really about how your heart feels in the moment. And if your heart says that's a shooter, then that's a shooter to you, and that's all that matters.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: That's right. You got to make yourself happy. You know, what I really want to get to a little bit, too is, you know, you're very fortunate, as I know, you know, and you probably count your, you and Terry count your lucky stars, you know, where you're at now, where you can manage places and you're hunting places are pretty unbelievable. But I want to talk about what you, you guys, what the juries do for does, because it's not a problem, but it's something that we need to talk about, and we need encouragement to folks that are going out there, how important it is to manage your does on your properties or where you hunt and why we do shoot does and things like that. I know it's probably not something you talk about a lot, but it's something that I think is very important that we discuss.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: We don't talk about it a lot. We brush over it, you know, in our shows and whatnot. But we don't ever, like, drill down on just how many we do harvest. And the state of Missouri has a program called DMAP. And we actually joined that. My farms and Terry's are about two and a half hours apart. So I'm speaking in terms of the stuff that I have there in Missouri, not his, but he's also enrolled in DMAP. But we started on it when it was a pilot program, probably four or five seasons ago. And we established an overall buck to doe herd ratio. And we established how many estimated how high the population was on each individual unit by trail camera surveys. And once we had that baseline established, then the state issued additional dope permits so that we could try and balance that herd out. Because in our part of the world, we don't see a lot of dough harvest in general, there's a lot of emphasis on buck harvest, but you don't see a lot of people harvesting does. So that first year across that would have been about 4000 acres between a conglomerate of landowners. Greg Glessinger, Brian Kraft, David Brothers, myself and a couple other landowners got together and we said, what if we put all this together and enrolled it in DMAP? And we did. We took like a. I think we took 100 and 114 does that first year. So it was pretty aggressive. And my places in Iowa are the same. And I don't have a big block of land. I have a variety of satellite farms. Like, I've got a 40, I got several eighties, a 160, a 183. And they're all separated. And I did that years ago because of EHD. We get it a lot here in the Midwest. But EHD is very patchy. So to counter that, because I had a big farm at one time, to counter that, I mean, I got wiped out. I mean, I got wiped out in 98. I got wiped out again in zero eight. And I said, enough is enough. So I tried to move that resource into a variety of different farms and get away from EHD coming in. And I have an insurance policy of it wiping the entire herd out. So now there's generally a decent, you know, population in one of the satellite farms area regardless of what EHD does. We got smoked in 1213 to 14. We got smoked again in 22 and 23. We're getting smoked again this year. We've been in such a dry pattern that it continues to hammer us there in the midwest. And we try to minimize our overall damage from EHD two ways. Number one, a lot of different satellite farms, smaller parcels of property, and number two, managing those doe herds in those individual parcels. So we try to keep the population low and annually across, I've probably got between leases, and when I own a couple thousand acres in Iowa, roughly across ten different parcels of ground, and we'll take 125 does, probably roughly annually. We do a lot of work with the hush program. We do a lot of work with the share of the harvest, depending on what state we're in. But we're trying to get that herd in a minimal state and also as close to a one to one ratio, the way they're borrowing as possible. Because if you think about buck mortality, it's much greater on bucks than it is does. If you eliminated all gun seasons, if you eliminated hunting altogether, there would be far more does than there are bucks, because natural mortality is so much higher on bucks. So we have to do our part as stewards of the resource to try and balance that out a little bit.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: And, you know, lots of things happen. It creates better habitat. There's more out there for them to eat, places to hide. But, you know, this. This is totally. I'm asking you at your opinion. When. When you. When you do lower that, that. That herd like that, you see a better rut, too, don't you?
[00:15:17] Speaker B: You see a better rut, you see body sizes increase drastically. That's the one thing I think one of the best analogies that kind of hits home is, like, when you have a pond, I. And you have too many bass in the pond, they all end up the same size, right? You can stand there and catch all day, and they're all, you know, twelve inches or 13 inches, whatever it is. And I think the deer herd is similar. It's an analogy we can all relate to because we all love to fish and whatnot. We've all been to that honey hole pond where all the bass are stunted. And I think in a big picture, it's not that severe. However, it does limit the upper capacity of what a deer is going to be in terms of their genetic potential. If there are too many bodies on the landscape, you know, there's competition for brows, there's social stress, which I think is a huge deal. There's health issues like EHD and other things that they can spread with too much communal spread. So while EHD is a nemesis for us, it also at times reminds us that Mother Nature's in charge. And those years that follow, severe EHD outbreaks, 1213 and 14, we got wiped out. I bet I lost 60% of our overall population. And those years that followed, in 15 and 16, with reduced social stress, I saw some of the biggest bucks I'd ever seen just because there's not as many bodies on the landscape. And I predict that's going to happen here in the next few years because we're going through a pattern like that again, 22, 23, and 24. So that in a big picture, kind of talks about or really shows what Mother Nature can do by reducing the overall amount of bodies, it really does help the overall health of the herd.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: So when do you. When do you guys shoot most of your does? I mean, what time of year?
[00:16:57] Speaker B: We shoot the bulk of them in the rifle season in Missouri. Cause that's when the DMAP permits become available. They actually added a season this year in October. So we probably take advantage of that. Ideally, if you could get them harvested ahead of the rut, you're probably doing yourself some good, because then the bucks don't have to stress themselves quite as much as they go through the rut because of so many does to service. But oftentimes you're limited in terms of actually taking a lot of them. The rifle seasons don't come in until during the rut or after. So sometimes it's difficult. But in Missouri, a lot of it happens in November. In Iowa, the bulk of it all happens in December, January, when our gun seasons come in.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Because I know I've seen some videos of Terry even with his bow. Like, there's not one that's even safe when it walks by him. You know, he definitely likes to shoot a doe once in a while.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: He does. Yeah, he takes a lot of does with his bow, for sure. And we do to some degree, but not nearly as much as we do. Because when we go out and. And we're trying to harvest does, we're trying to kill as many as we can in a shorter period of time. And we'll pick the right weather. Strong wind out of the north where a lot of the deer are moving. They don't hear the gun report nearly as well. In those. In those windy days, a deer running across the field, falling down doesn't seem to bother them as bad on those windy days. So we kind of choose those days. We go out there and try to shoot more than one or, you know, maybe three or four or something like that. So it helped.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Choosing tough for a lot of hunters, too. Cause, and this is. I even fall in this category, and a lot of our folks here in Pennsylvania, like even our archery season, you know, it starts obvious, you know, obviously the beginning of October. And sometimes you're scared to take a dough because you never know what's right behind it, you know, and you almost have to have that mindset. And, you know, we have a campaign that's running out right out there right now to our hunters is of how important it is to harvest does. Because when your population gets out of control, a lot of things go wrong. A lot of stuff we just talked about here. And like you said earlier, Mother Nature, sometimes you just can't. You're not going to beat her.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Do you deal with ehd much in Pennsylvania?
[00:18:59] Speaker A: We do, but not nearly as much as the midwest. We have some cases this year we've had a severe drought. A lot of it hits different places in the state. A lot of the southern part of our state, southwest over there on the Ohio border, you know, a lot of that we get, a lot of that. We don't nearly, dear. We don't deal with it near as much as y'all do.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a nemesis for us, but I really believe it. It's what helps keep our herd with these giant bucks because Mother Nature just suppresses it. It seems like about every eight to ten years we deal with the HD, knocks the herd way back. And then for four or five years following that, we go through this incredible growth curve where we just see giants everywhere, especially if that's coupled with an acorn crop that was strong four or five years prior to when that deer matures and a wet, wet pattern thereafter. You know, we've been through a dry pattern the last few years. Hopefully we've got some water coming. But, boy, we've been really, really dry.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: So we've been pretty dry. We were dry at the right times for turkeys this year. We had a pretty good hatch statewide, which is, which is great news. How are the turkeys doing in your part of the world?
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Really good. We're probably on four or five decent hatches in a row. I don't think we've had a record breaking hatch, but they are much better than they were the previous four or five years. You know, we were really wet in the springs of 1718 and 19 and we had terrible reproduction for our turkeys. But we've been pretty good here the last four or five years. I've probably got as many turkeys on my Iowa and Missouri stuff as I've seen in a day.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: If you ever need any help with turkey management, I know a guy come on out, man.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Just show up. We'll go. Just be there. Be there about an hour before dark for life.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: You and I have had a good turkey hunt that one time with you and Terry and Eddie, and we had a heck of a heck of a day or day and a half, whatever it was, a lot of it was.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: How's it he's doing?
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Good. He's getting old, just like you and I. He's a little older than us.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I know. God bless him. He's one of the. One of the good ones. I was talking potts earlier today as well, and he said to tell you.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: He'S, you know, you think about it. You know, at one time, mark of fact, I have that article that they did on us in outdoor life a long time ago called the young guns, and Chris Kirby was on there as well. And I. I look at that a lot and think about, man, that was a long time ago. But at one point, we were young guys.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: I know.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Let's switch gears and talk about bucks and, you know, obviously, the years that y'all have put into it, and, you know, just the education that those deer give you, and there's. There's nobody that's more intimate with. With watching deer. And I know that you. I saw a picture just the other day or yesterday of a deer that you shot early in the season in Missouri. What? Just so I can put out some arguments. It was on instagram. What was that? What was the score on that deer?
[00:21:53] Speaker B: It was one 60 on the money. It was nails. Right at one.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: I lost. I lost big time, because I thought, he looks like he's in the seventies to me. How do you know how long is g? Can you tell me how long his g two s were?
[00:22:05] Speaker B: The one was 13 and a half, the other was twelve and three quarter. And his g. Those were. And g three s were like a little over eleven, if I'm not mistaken. And beams and 24 g ones were. I don't remember what the g ones were, but he was a real, really nice.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: How old was that, that deer?
[00:22:28] Speaker B: I'm gonna guess that deer was four and a half years old. I thought him three and a half last year, and then I think he was four and a half this year, if I had to guess. It was an interesting. That was a 40 acre parcel that I own, and I had pictures of that deer through the month of September last year, and about the 28th or 29th, he just vanished. And I got one other nighttime picture, October 16, and I never had him again. The rest of the season, no sheds, no other pictures. And, and we trail monitor pretty, pretty aggressively, you know, so we have a fairly good feel for what deer around and what, which deer left. Well, we were dealing with EHD last year, and that's about the same time many deer vanished last year. So I felt like he probably had succumbed to EHD. So to my surprise, he showed up this summer and I was like, oh, he dispersed. So that whole home core range is always fascinating to me how some deer you'll have in velvet and they'll stay there the entire fall, and then other deer you'll have just for brief periods. And like that deer, he was there in September and then one time in October didn't come back and then back this year. So we felt like, you know, if we were going to try to harvest him, we'd only have a couple weeks to do so because we opened September 15, and luckily he, he came out. I was actually in there targeting an older deer that did not show and nor have I gotten his picture since. So I don't know if our intrusion that night on that, on that particular parcel affected that older deer, but he'll come back at some point. But that deer walked by and I certainly was, wasn't going to pass him. And since I've had pictures from three different neighbors that were all targeting the same deer, so.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Well, that brings to a great point. And you said, you know, 40 acres, and, you know, you hear it all the time. Well, those guys can hunt thousands and thousands of acres. And, yeah, I mean, when you have your own property, you can manage. I mean, you are at an advantage. You're still hunting wild animals, but it doesn't take thousands of acres to be successful. And then you're proving that year after.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Year that 40 was a pasture. And we went in and took two big, three big fingers, turned them into warm season grasses, put a clover field on top. There were beautiful draws already on it. All those things included the other thing. You know, we did TsI, added the warm season grass, added the food, and then we also added water because there wasn't water anywhere close to that neighborhood. We put in a pond, and all of those things increased the population, increased daylight activity, and it's just been a neat little 40 to go and hunt. We've had a lot of good luck.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: There through the years, and you hit on a couple things. I just want to come back on timber stand improvement. And you know, how, you know, we're very lucky here in Pennsylvania. We have our agency and our hunters we own over 1.5 million acres of state, state game lands. It's public hunting, and we manage it for wildlife and timber. Stand improvement is, you know, is something that we really feel strong on. We have a very aggressive program, and when you look at a lot of the, the folks that are successful on our public ground, they really utilize those areas where we're going in and improving that habitat and making cover. But the other thing you hit that's really important is water. People, folks don't realize how important water is to animals out there, and I think it's something we should hit on. And what you guys do when you say add water and things like that, just talk about that for a little bit, if you would.
Absolutely.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: And I generally don't like to, like, just add a water hole, try to kill them over. I try to add a water source in terms of a decent sized pond, if it was already there. A lot of times these properties, they're there, you just got to go fix them. A lot of times those dams erode through the years and you just got to go fix them. That's the best way to add water. I don't really care whether it's close to where I hunt or not. I just want to make sure that it's present just to have more deer activity in and around the area. So water is so vital to life out there, and they don't need a lot, but they do need it in general. I think they get a lot just off the plants they eat and so on and so forth, a lot of the moisture. But, boy, you, you really never realize how important it is to them until you hunt through a drought or a really dry fall. Then you see that, that intake and that consumption and all the usage around that water really increase.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's something that we overlook even in turkeys. You know, some, I mean, we need it every day of our life, and so does everything out there. And, you know, we're fortunate here, especially in the mountains, where there's lots of springs and lots of streams, and rarely can an animal not go get a drink. I mean, obviously, living in the midwest, it's, it's not as available all over the place as it is here. You know, you get down in states like Oklahoma, when the Red river that, that runs between Texas and Oklahoma, many times you go by it and there's no water in that river at all. It's kind of crazy to think of.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: It is crazy, and it's a magnet when you have it, and it's not readily available. Absolutely.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's a great point. I, we really appreciate that. If you have, if you had a couple really good tips for our hunters when it comes to big bucks, you know, because there's a lot of folks that go out deer hunting, like we talked earlier, and they don't care if it's a doe or, you know, if it's a legal buck, you know, here on half the state, we have to have three on one side. The other half, we have to have four on one side to be a legal buck. But if you had a couple real good tips, something that, like you wouldn't leave home without, what would they be?
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Boy, it varies by time in the season.
For me, it's always intrusion. I think even last night we went in, we know this bucks there. We didn't see anything. And we had hunted him a couple nights where I was filming Wade and I told, I was texting Wade this morning, I said, he's on to us, man. Because, you know, two or three nights prior to that, he daylights, we're there and you don't see anything, you know, and I said, it's our access. So I think intrusion is probably your biggest foe, especially if you're monitoring an area with a cell or non cell game camera and you're looking at the activity and then all of a sudden you're there, the weather's right, deercast says good or great and you don't see anything. You were probably the reason for that. So, you know, I always look at every spot, first and foremost, and go, how am I getting in and how am I getting out to, to create the least amount of intrusion on that deer herd? And if you can answer that question and go, yep, that one's locked in. I've got this great, you know, valley that I could climb up and get up to the top of this hill, or perhaps it's a creek that you're sneaking up to get into a bottom field. Whatever it is. Those, those hidden access points in and out really do help. So intrusion to me is one of the biggest ones. You never want to be doing a deer drive on the way to your stand because whitetails are masters at not letting us know when we screw up, right? Like they'll either stay in their bed and not let you know or they'll get out of there. And you didn't know that, that you spooked them. So that that's number one and number two, probably off season scouting. I just, to this day, I walk the legs out of my tail each and every offseason I map out every scrape and good notes, like good notes, whether it be in deercast or hunt wise or onx, whatever app you use or if you're still old fashioned, keep a logbook, keep your notes, and also keep your trail photos from previous years. The more analytical you are and the more organized you are with your scouting efforts and your overall trail photography history that can lead you into a successful hunt in the future. We kill so many bucks off of not this year's pictures, but last year's pictures. Exactly to my point I was talking about. With that ten point I killed, I referred back to last year's library. Since zero seven, I've got every single picture of a rack buck I've ever taken. And I have hundreds of thousands of photos from across the farms. And I spend countless hours each year keeping all that photography so that in years future, whether it be the spot I'm scouting. So it might be ten years later with the same crop rotation and a similar acorn crop, because I keep all those notes. A different buck, however, he may still act the same in that landscape as a buck did ten years ago, and daylight at the same times of year because the full moon's the same, the crop rotation is the same, etc. Etcetera. So you might be scouting a spot or you might be scouting a buck like I did with that ten point, but those notes and that overall organization will make you so much better. It's, it's very time consumptive, but boy, it is an absolute difference maker in the future.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Yeah, y'all live at 365. And you know, going back kind of made me laugh there for a second because I was thinking about a story that Denny we had trapped a hen in through a tag. And just the information we had, we knew that hen was twelve years old.
Denny called me, goes, where'd you all trap that? And I didn't know. And I asked and he goes, I know that hen.
He said, I know, I know who she is. And I'm like, you talk about intimate that spending time in the woods and knowing what's going on and, you know, even our forefathers, the more time you spend out there and scout and look around and know what's going on, you know what move to make next. And you can't say enough about getting out there. And the intrusion thing is really intriguing because a lot of people don't understand, like how many, when you close your eyes and think, I think about this a lot. How many deer do you think we walk by in a season that just let us go by. And how many big ones?
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Most of them.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Right, right. And, you know, you think about deer drives in Iowa where, you know, here we got big, vast land, mountains and nooks and crannies, and, you know, out there, there's a lot of places where you think, how can a deer get by me? But they do. I mean, I've been out there and watched some of those drives, and it's amazing to watch what those deer do when they do those things.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: They are amazing, man, back door and sit there until you literally have to walk over them. Like, they're really good at living. I say it all the time. You know, we're. We're part time deer hunters, hunting full time deer, or whether it be deer turkeys, they're really good at staying alive. So you just got to up your game. And like you said, the scouting is so important. And the other cool thing about scouting, like when you're hunting, sometimes you're just going to your stand, you're sitting there and then you're out. During the scouting part of the year, call it January, February, March, you get to walk, you get to enjoy the outdoors. And there's that saying, that meme you see on social media. There's no such thing as being a bad mood while you're in the woods. That's so true. Like, if you're in a bad mood, I go out in the woods and enjoy yourself, go scouting or go for a walk. You're going to learn something. And that's the cool thing about the outdoors. You literally can't go out without learning something or seeing something that goes, that makes yourself go, wow, I've never seen that before. I do it every day while I'm out there hunting. It just puts a smile on your face. It keeps you in a good mood. It's the best therapy. Mother Nature is the best therapist, too.
[00:33:06] Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm not going to take too much more your time. I know you either have a hot date or you got to get in a stand tonight. One or the other, they're both important. But, and I ask this to a lot of folks cause to me, it's changed. This agency has changed my life and my thought process. When you think of the word conservation, and, I mean, I know you've got a lot of scientists in your blood, so you're gonna go deeper than most, but what does it mean to you? Conservation.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Conservation, in the simplest term, is leaving everything better than we found it, in my opinion, for next generation, for the next hunter. And I don't care if it's a piece of trash. I don't care if it's just the process of going to buy your tag to support each and every local agency out there. Buy every tag you can.
They need so much support because so often resources are stressed and thin. I don't know how they are in Pennsylvania, but I know here in the midwest, you know, there's. There's conservation officers that have two counties, you know, and that's very difficult, difficult to go out and actually patrol. So everybody's stressed. Budgets are stressed, much like we are as a country, we're stressed right now, you know, so do everything you can to do your part. Leave it better than you found it, and it will always pay you back. Mother Nature is the best, best investment you'll ever make, that's for sure.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: And I appreciate, I know you all at jury outdoors, you work with your conservation agencies hand in hand. I mean, sometimes we don't all agree on things, but we all are in this same boat together. We got to work together. So we all leave it better than we found it.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: I never understand a hunter's frustration with their individual state agency because as you've said a couple times this podcast, you never really knew what it was like till you're on the inside. And we still don't know what it's like. But we do work closely with MDC and the Iowa DNR just because if we can, you know, get a message out, we're always willing to do so. But they're working so hard, round the clock, trying to do everything they can. That's in the best interest of the resource. That doesn't necessarily mean it's in the best interest of every hunter. They try to, but it's got to be about the resource first. We have to be resource driven, whether it be, you know, the lands you're talking about, the game within that land. It's a big picture. You think about managing your own life or managing your hunt for that day. What all you need. Imagine trying to manage a state or a region. It's very, very challenging. So I hope everybody out there supports and, you know, everybody's working so hard. I want to say thank you for having me on. Thank you to everybody in Pennsylvania. I've been there several times doing seminars. And one thing about Pennsylvania, those people are passionate and they love to drink beer. That's one thing I've noticed about them. That's why I got along with everybody I knew, because we'd always. I'd go do a seminar and we'd head to the local tavern and have a few cold ones, which I love.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: I don't know if we can compete with those St. Louis boys. I mean, you know, Anheuser Busch was in your backyard, so.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So I guess we grew up drinking it there. So Wisconsin is the same way. Those three states, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. If you met somebody, you were about to go have a beer, that's for sure.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Well, Mark, you're welcome here anytime and we'd love to see you if you ever get around Pennsylvania. But thank you for joining us today. Good luck to you, your brother and family this fall. And we'll be, we'll be catching. If anybody wants to check out some of your stuff, you know, Andrew, do you have some? I know deer cast is something they should, they should definitely check out because there's so many hunters that use it as a tool. If you have any information for our folks out there to, to pass along, we'd love to love for them to check it out.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. Best way is deercast and there's an awesome free version if you want to download it. There's a bunch of features if you want to upgrade. Also YouTube. If you go to our Deer season 24 series, you'll see everything as it happens in a semi live fashion. And the views over there are really, really big. Not only for us, there's a lot of different producers out there putting their stuff out. Lee and Tiffany are doing it. And the seek one guys, the hunting public guys. So there are some fantastic content with a lot of education out there on YouTube that I think everybody would enjoy if they haven't already discovered it.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. If I could ask one favor. When you all are out there, if you get a chance, help us encourage folks how important it is to shoot analysts, to shoot those. And I know you do and do a great job. And I think that's something that, you know, when we look at this resource, it's something that's important that we just got to keep that message out there.
We all want to and dream of big bucks and it happens, but we have to think about the importance of our herd and the health and we take our hats off to y'all are doing what you're doing and we just got to keep preaching that word.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. It's so very important. But I will say this, there's other places when EHD wipes them out and my population seems really low and I'm not seeing any deer, then, then I go, you know what? I'm not shooting a doe here, you do it with a common sense approach. If you're seeing an excess, then it's time to try and balance them. Because they're born at a one to one, roughly 50 button bucks. 50 does. So they're born at a one to one, however, make a common sense approach. Don't shoot every deer in the woods either. So it does go both ways.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, again, thank you, Mark. Have fun tonight and good luck this fall. And like I said, you're welcome in Pennsylvania any day, buddy.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: I appreciate it, Matt, so much. Thanks.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: Yes, sir.
