The Hunting Stories Podcast
Elk. Bear. Hog. Turkey. Deer and More. Hunting Stories that will make you laugh or maybe cry; real life chronicles from the field.
The Hunting Stories Podcast
Ep 136 The Hunting Stories Podcast: Mark Kenyon
Get ready to embark on an exhilarating outdoor adventure with none other than Mark Kenyon, the esteemed author and host of the Wired to Hunt podcast. We kick off with tales from his impactful book, "That Wild Country," and delve into his passion for conservation and storytelling. Mark gives us a glimpse into how he’s fostering a love for nature in his young sons, drawing charming parallels between his own childhood experiences and those he now shares with his family. His stories of hunting and fishing not only inspire but highlight the joys of introducing kids to the wonders of the natural world.
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Howdy folks and welcome to the Hunting Stories Podcast. I'm your host, Michael, and we've got another great episode for you today. In fact, today we're connecting with someone that I'm a big fan of, mark Kenyon. He wrote the book that Wild Country. I'm a big fan of the book about conservation, just being in the wild great stuff. If you don't know, mark, he's a podcast host. He's actually a host of Wired to Hunt podcast on the Meat Eater Network.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you're all familiar with Meat Eater, so I want to thank Mark for coming on the podcast. It was a ton of fun to hear his stories. His turkey hunting story with his son is one of my favorite stories that's ever been told on the podcast. I've shared it with everyone in my personal life, so it's a good episode. Guys, mark, thank you again for coming on. For you listeners, thank you very much for tuning in today and then, of course, for you viewers. I'm going to start publishing this stuff on YouTube. Thank you, guys, for viewing. Now let's go ahead and kick this thing off and let Mark tell you some of his stories. Thank you, all right, mark. Welcome to the Hunting Stories Podcast. Brother, how are you?
Speaker 2:Hey, thank you, I'm doing great.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you having me. Yeah, man, I'm super excited. I'm so excited that you even replied. I didn't think I'd ever get you on the podcast, but I'm a big fan, man. I told you I do own your book here. I've read it. I've decided since getting you back on I'm going to reread it. It had me excited to go visit all sorts of places all around the country, so thank you for writing it. Let's take a quick pause in that. And why don't you introduce yourself so the people know who they're hearing some stories from today.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So, as you said, my name is Mark and I've got one of those weird job titles that's not easy to say. I don't even know how to describe my job title because it's a whole bunch of things, long list. But I'm an author, as you mentioned, of that book, that Wild Country. I'm a podcaster. I host the wire to hunt podcast.
Speaker 2:I do TV shows and films for meat eater, so mostly deer hunting focused things. We've done a several series, one called deer country, one called the back 40, another one called one week in November, and a whole bunch of other standalone films too. So I do all that and I've written about all sorts of topics for all the hunting and fishing magazines and, oh geez, all sorts of kind of stuff in between. All there too, I'm on the National Board of Directors for the National Deer Association and for Sportsman for the Boundary Waters. So a really big part of my life is also trying to make sure we're standing up and speaking out for these wildlife and wild places that have just given us so much. So, in a long roundabout way, that's what.
Speaker 1:I do Very cool. Well, man, thank you again. Like I said, I've been following you for a while and so I'm very excited to have you here, of course, but we're not here for me to fanboy. We are here to hear some stories. So I know you got a couple in mind and I'm super excited to hear them, because your stories mostly involve your kids.
Speaker 2:You said so I want to ask Mark how old yeah, so I have two boys, one just turned seven, a couple of days ago, and the other is going to turn five in a couple more days. So big big week here in the Kenyon household.
Speaker 1:There you go. Yeah, my, my son. It turned six on Friday, so he just turned six.
Speaker 2:So, and then I have a three-year-old little girl. So same birthday? That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are right in the thick of it, man.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are. Yes, we are Cool. So I'm excited to hear your stories because I'm a newer hunter and so I didn't have anyone really like bringing me up with it, and so I love hearing the stories of people taking their kids out, something that I want to do more of. I think I'm gonna take my son out this year for the first time. I'm not sure I'm gonna try, probably do turkey and antelope um two different trips, obviously, but let's dive into it. Man, why don't you set the stage for, for your, your?
Speaker 2:Well, uh, I'll start. Maybe, given the fact that you're newer to hunting, newer to hunting and starting to get your kids out, I think a little bit of of what I have done that's helped my kids follow in my footsteps and falling in love with hunting and fishing uh, can be gleaned off of this first story. And a lot of this throws back to my own childhood. Um, you know, I started going up to our family deer camp and out to the fishing boat and all that kind of stuff, probably, you know, for longer than I can remember. I know for sure it happened by the time I was three. Um, it's likely I was doing stuff out there before that, but but the first like at least uh, recorded date of me being at deer camp was at three years old and I was just with my dad for everything from there on out and with my grandpa and I just was raised surrounded by it. I probably slowed things down, I probably reduced their likelihood of success, but they were gracious enough to have me along for the ride.
Speaker 2:They were gracious enough to have me along for the ride and then, ever since then my dad has always talked about maybe the most important thing he did was feed the habit. So once I showed an interest in these things, he quote unquote fed the habit. He wasn't going to spoil me with most things that most kids want, but when it came to the outdoors, if I wanted a new fishing lure or if I was really excited to get a new pair of camo bibs or something, that would be the one thing he would spoil me on.
Speaker 2:Because I fed what he's found to be such a positive habit and so that's smart, that is real smart.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I've done the same kind of thing with my boys, taking them along for everything. We do everything in the outdoors. When we first had kids, I had a lot of friends say oh man, that's going to change your life. You're probably not going to go do those big trips anymore, are you probably not going to camp as much as you did before? Are you probably not going to go hunting as much as you did before, are you? And and I? I didn't necessarily think that had to be true. I knew those things would change. I knew what that would look like would be different, but I was a firm early believer that kids are very elastic. They can adapt to whatever situation and setting that they find themselves in and that helps mold them into who they become. And I think that the outdoors is a hell of a place to mold a successful future adult. I agree, man. I agree, that's beautiful. Okay, keep going.
Speaker 1:That's a long-winded way of agree. Man, I agree that's beautiful. Okay, keep going.
Speaker 2:That's a long winded way of getting to, uh, to an example of this. Um, I have found turkey hunting to be the best way to introduce kids to hunting, and not just any kind of turkey hunting, but fake turkey hunting. Um, I start taking my boys out Turkey hunting before the season even opens and we go out without, obviously without a weapon, so no weapon. But we're going out there simply trying to have interactions with turkeys because that is such an exciting thing to have happen and it's something that can realistically happen. It can realistically happen with young kids with you. It's something that can realistically happen. It can realistically happen with young kids with you.
Speaker 2:And you know it's not always an up-close thing. And so you know, when you're deer hunting, at least if you're in like wooded areas where you can't see very far, you might not actually have success of seeing a deer or having a close call with a deer most of the time. Okay, because they're not that close that you can actually see them. And if the deer is close enough to see them, your child is probably making too much noise or moving too much and spooking that deer, right. But with turkeys, you can hear them gobble and you can yelp, yelp, yelp and they gobble back, and that can happen with them 500 yards away. That can happen before it's daylight, that can happen after it's daylight, that can happen in the morning and the evening. That can happen from a very long distance away while your kids are rolling around on the ground making a racket or doing something silly.
Speaker 2:But as soon as they hear that gobble happen, it strikes up their attention. It automatically is like something really cool is happening. My dad made a sound and that turkey made a sound right back. We are talking to animals and that just lights a kid up. It lights me up as an adult, but it seems to light the kids up as well. And not only that. But then you can be active. You can be hiking around in the woods, you can try to sneak up on these birds, you can hear it from afar and try to make a move on them. If the turkeys aren't going first thing in the morning, you hike from spot to spot, call from different spots, so it's just a very fun adventure Again different than maybe.
Speaker 1:It's brilliant, Mark. It's brilliant.
Speaker 2:It works really well and I love deer hunting. That's my main thing, but that has not necessarily been the thing that I think a kid would fall in love with. As often, right at the gate, try to convince a three-year-old to sit perfectly still for six hours in the freezing cold. That's a harder sell. Now I do still do that to a degree with them, but turkeys are a really good way. Turkeys are like the entryway drug.
Speaker 1:They're the marijuana of hunting. Is what you're telling me Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly what I'm telling you.
Speaker 1:I'm sure the National Wild Turkey Federation would love to hear us pitch it that way.
Speaker 2:But so that's my pitch on turkeys for kids, and so, with that in mind, I started taking my first son as soon as he his first spring turkey season. So, as our boys were both born on January 24th, by the time April or late March arrives, they're I don't know, three, four months old, something like that. Late March arrives there, I don't know three, four months old, something like that, and I would strap my son onto my chest and one of those little chest rigs and we'd go hiking out there in the woods and call the turkeys. And so that happened when he was four months old.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Happened when he was a year and four months old. When he was two years and four months old, he was out there sitting in the woods with me calling turkeys in, but I believe it was at three years old was when this particular story happened. We were out there in the woods and on this particular day it wasn't a planned pretend turkey hunt. We were just kind of walking around and he had an umbrella with him. I can't remember why he had this umbrella, but he had an umbrella. I don't remember it being rainy, but maybe it was supposed to rain or something. So he has this umbrella and we're walking around and way off in the distance I happened to hear a Yelp. Sorry, not a Yelp, a gobble. I hear a gobble way off in the distance and both of us look at each other and I look at him. I'm like, hey, you want to go get that turkey? He says, yeah, let's do it, dad. And I happen to have a little bag with some of my read calls, some of my turkey mouth calls with it. So I'm like, all right, let's go. So we're sneaking out there and he's holding his umbrella like it is a gun.
Speaker 2:At this age, at three years old, he was already pretending to hunt Anything he could use as a pretend bow or a pretend firearm. He would stage very elaborate hunting scenarios in our living room. He would be laying on top of the couch holding a broom and then he'd set up a pretend moose or something on the floor on the other side and pretend to be hunting it. So his imagination runs wild with this stuff. So instantly his umbrella transformed into a shotgun and we slipped our way through the woods.
Speaker 2:I remember hiking down this point and we'd heard the gobble long ways off. We hiked maybe another 50 yards in there with him and I Yelp, yelp again just to see if he was still, you know, within um. You know what his distance was. Was he coming in? Was he still still where he was? Was he walking away? What was going on on? And that second time around, when I called, you could hear like he's closer. I was like holy smokes, and it wasn't just one. This time it was sounded like three. It was like gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble.
Speaker 2:You could hear like multiple birds yeah so like holy crap, this is actually, this could actually happen. So at this point we look at each other. He's really excited. And I had a old blind maybe 200 yards away from there, maybe less, something like that. But I knew there was a blind kind of in between where it sounded like these birds were and where we were. So I looked at everyone and said, man, if we hightail it, I bet you we can make it to the blind before they do, and we could try to call them into that.
Speaker 2:So we go racing through the woods. At this point we know they're far enough away we can make some noise. So we literally sprint with his uh, with his shotgun umbrella. We sprint all the way to the blind. We get set up in the blind in time. I'm at this point we don't know. Like you know, there's, uh, we're in timber and there's some tall scattered grasses and then an area of kind of shrubby stuff. So it sounded like they were originally in the shrubby stuff.
Speaker 2:But when we had to make that final move out of the timber to the edge of the grass where the blind was, I knew that was going to be our high-risk moment and so we had to go for it. So we went for it, got in the blind and at that point it's like the now or never moment, which is, were they close enough and they saw us and they spooked off, or are they still here and they're almost here? That was the big question. So we got settled, kind of got Everett calmed down and I got my call again. I was like all right, we're going to call again and we're going to see if, is this going on? Is this still happening or not?
Speaker 2:So I take a deep breath and kind of cut my hand to my mouth and then he just hammered Three of them, one after the other, boom, boom, boom, and they're, like you know, within 100 yards now, almost to the edge of the clearing, almost to us. Everett's visibly shaking. They pop out within seconds, three big old toms heading right for us as they get to. You know, 95 yards, 90 yards, they're running the site. You can see all three of them in a single row coming towards us, heads up, and then every once in a while I'll yell back. And then everett looks at me. He's like dad, can I shoot one? I'm like I'm buddy, they're not in range yet, but you gotta wait till they get in range. So he's like all right, I love this. So so we're not gonna, we're not gonna take a shot until they're within range, until you've got a good, clean shot at only one of them. So he's like all right, dad. So I was like get ready. So he lays his umbrella, shotgun, on the railing of the kind of window of the blind and gets settled in there and the birds keep coming. And the birds get to 85 yards. Gobble, gobble, gobble Birds get to 80 yards. Gobble, gobble, gobble Birds get to 60 yards.
Speaker 2:Everett looks up and he's like Dad, can I shoot him yet? Like, can a shotgun shoot a turkey at 60 yards? Nope, all right, we got to wait. So they get to 55 yards, gobble, gobble, gobble, they get to 45 yards, they get to 40 yards, they get to 35. They get to 30. Inside of 30 yards he looks at me again. He says Dad, can I take one? I said, buddy, wait till that first one clears the other one. You got to make sure they're not lined. So they take a couple more steps. I yelp, yelp, yelp. They all gobbled and they pop their heads up again. They're all separated. At this point I said all right, buddy, take your shot. And he leans down, puts his head on his umbrella stock, takes a deep breath, takes a real deep breath and with every ounce of his lung capacity he yells kapow.
Speaker 2:Oh my God. Then kapow Takes his second shot and those birds sprint out of there like a bat out of hell and I'm thinking this is the cool, this is so funny. This is the best thing ever. He's having a blast. He just pretend, shot these turkeys at 25 yards. They were just gobbling like crazy in his face and I thought he'd be so fired up. And he turns and looks at me and I'm like over the moon excited. He looks at me and he's almost crying. You can see like his eyes getting kind of teary. I'm looking at him like buddy. What's the matter? He says, dad, did I miss no man?
Speaker 1:you're using an umbrella.
Speaker 2:Oh God, that's such a good story man. So, yeah, like I will never, ever forget that moment, um, just such a fun experience with him and he was, you know, after you know, and I guess I really don't know in the moment. Obviously he was just so it like set in the whole imagination of the whole thing, um, but I think he will remember that probably as long as I have and, uh, in a pretty darn fun example of just how much fun you can have out, have out there with your kids yeah we didn't bring home any meat, but uh we sure we sure had a story and a good laugh out of it.
Speaker 2:and I think that kind of interaction with wildlife, getting close, close to animals, seeing them, that sticks and that makes an impact on a kid.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:That is a personal favorite of mine.
Speaker 1:Mark. So that story is phenomenal. It might be top five stories I've ever heard on this podcast. It's so good and I'll tell you right now. I, officially, am scheduling some pre hunt hunts right now with my kids. I'm going to take my my daughter, who's three, and my son, who's six, out, cause there's a spot I know and I don't think anyone hunts there and I know that my brother-in-law lives nearby and there's turkeys goblin all the time, so like I'm going to take them out there and just try and get them on something Cause, so to have that experience with my kids, I can't even imagine I'm, I'm, I'm jealous really. Man, that was such, that was so great. So thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you were welcome. It's a. It's easy to easy to get out there, even even if it's not turkeys, even for deer. Like we've done it, really for everything, we've gone out there and sat in the blind in the summer hoping to see deer. I've taken them out there glassing for deer in the summer on soybean fields with spotting scopes, you know, taking them along for shed hunts. Um, I'll go, you know, searching for deer antlers in the spring, and these days if I find antlers I'll just leave them there. I'll kind of mark them with a way point or remember where they were.
Speaker 2:And then next time I'll go get my kids and the next time they can come with me, you know kind of put them on the right path and hopefully they find them. So I just think any kind of you know opportunity you can have to share it with them and for them to have some kind of interaction, whether it's finding an antler or seeing a turkey or whatever it is. That's all those little things add up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's brilliant. So I'm not a great hunter. I'm trying my best. Right, I'm getting better every time I go out. But I think about, like, well, how do I bring my kids where, like, I still have some kind of opportunity? I'm not blowing the opportunity because they're too young. And this is like this is the perfect answer to that question. Right, you take them out for lack of a better term.
Speaker 1:You take them out scouting with you yeah um, and then you just pretend the whole thing just like you did, and that's awesome. So I think a lot of it is.
Speaker 2:I'm excited. Good A lot of it is like setting your own goalposts, right.
Speaker 2:I think this is something that can be applied even to a new adult hunter. Um, if your goalposts are set at the same place that, for example, my goalpost is set as a hunter that's been hunting almost 40 years right, if you are judging success the same way I am, you're setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment. But instead if you say, hey, you know what Success for me today is, if I could just find a spot where I can see an animal, and if I see an animal tonight.
Speaker 2:That's not an easy thing to do. That's pretty great, and then when that happens, man, it feels great. So with kids I recognize man it's probably not going to be easy to kill a bird here today, but if we can go out early and have an interaction with one or hear one they have a blast.
Speaker 2:That's great, whatever it is. I think you know I've applied the same thing to fishing, to camping, to hiking, all these things that I love to do. We've readjusted, we've moved the goalposts so that a win is achievable and then we're all having more fun because of that and I'm doing this now because I made the mistake in the beginning Sometimes we're, you know, I was used to going for 10 mile hikes and we take the kids out and we make it 200 yards and they're already looking at this or stopping here, rolling in the dirt, and I'm disappointed because we're not on pace. And then pretty soon you realize like it's pretty silly to be getting upset about the fact that our family is outside in nature and the kids are having a good time. Uh, this is not something that I should be disappointed. So as soon as I kind of readjusted my expectations, it changed a lot for the better.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Changing the goalposts, changing, changing the spot that's, that's brilliant. Um well, let's keep going. Man, I know you got another story a deer story with your kids.
Speaker 2:I'm excited for this one. So I'm going to take a fast forward a few years. Uh, my same son, everett, will fast forward from age three to that pretend Turkey hunt, to age six to a real deer hunt. Um, he, as I just described to you, has been going out and doing all these things with me ever since day one. So at three years old, that fall after the turkey hunt, three years old was the first time he got to come to deer camp. At four he went up to deer camp again, spent more time with me hunting in southern Michigan as well. Our deer camp's up in the northern part of the state. Age five. He time with me hunting in southern Michigan as well Our deer camps up in the northern part of the state. Age five. He was with me. We killed our first deer together at age five.
Speaker 2:This would have been the hunting season of 2023. Okay and so that was a great experience. But this past hunting season it had been kind of a tough hunting season for me for a whole bunch of reasons. Didn't get to take him hunting with me as much as I wish I could have, and a handful of times we did go, things just weren't really working out in our favor as far as seeing deer and having good interactions with deer. So we're right at the very end of the season this past season and I had asked my son before he went to school on this given day like hey, man, if you know we're almost out of time for the year, it would be so great to get a deer together. Is there any chance you'd want to go out tonight after school? If we get everything ready? Um, there's good weather tonight. The deer should be moving. It might be snowing. It's going to be cold. If we get home right away from school, we could probably get out to hunt at this property and maybe be able to do something with the last hour and a half of daylight.
Speaker 2:He says, yeah, I'm game, but I want to spot and stalk one. He's heard me talk about doing this in the past, especially with does I like to during doe season, sometimes like doe firearm season, you know, go into a hunt with a loose plan. But in the places that we hunt, at least in Southern Michigan, there's a lot of crop fields. You can kind of come up and over little rises in terrain and look down to this field, see if there's any deer out feeding there and if there's not, you can go to a different area of the property and look down to this little grassy area, maybe see some deer there, et cetera. And then you know, in the late season I'll do this when there's a lot of does out and about and you can sometimes, you know, put together a kind of fun, unique kind of of deer hunt in that kind of way.
Speaker 2:So he wanted to try that himself, this time with me. So I said, all right, yeah, sure, we can give it a shot. So he gets done from school, I go pick him up, we race over to this property, we get out. As we're sneaking out towards this property, we can see right away there's already deer out in this little kind of food plot opening we have in this area of the property. So he's all excited. The spot and stalk is on. This could happen. He is, unfortunately, an apple that has not fallen far from my tree, in that he is stubborn, he wants to lead.
Speaker 2:He wants to tell me everything to do now.
Speaker 1:He's listening to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's listened to me enough now that he thinks that he knows what he's doing all the way.
Speaker 1:My son is always like I know Dad and I'm like do you? Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. It happens, I guess to the best of us.
Speaker 2:But he really wants to lead the way. And I'm struggling in the moment to battle these twin voices in my ear. One side of me is saying you know, he needs to be behind you, he needs to be listening. He's going to screw this up If you let him go ahead. He's not going to be able to.
Speaker 2:I continuously want to tell him like hey, you're going too fast, you're going to spook the deer. Hey, you're not going to stop at the right moment. I can see the deer faster. If I see a deer, we need to freeze immediately and determine whether or not it's looking at us, determine whether or not we can move, et cetera. But he's lower to the ground. He can't see the deer as soon as I. He's going to spook deer, right. So that's one side of me. So I'm constantly wanting to say that to him, wanting to slow him down, wanting him to get behind me, and I yeah, I have been saying that some of that. I'm not saying as much as I want to, but I am saying some of that on the flip side, the other side of me is like, hey, he's having so much fun, he's very excited about this.
Speaker 2:He feels like he's the little hunter, Daniel Boone leading the hunt. Um, you don't want to squash that excitement. You know, don't make this not fun. Don't be a grumpy jerk and yell at your kid the whole time while he's trying to have fun hunting with you. You're going to look back at this someday when your son's old and off doing his own thing and wish you had these days back when you could be doing this together.
Speaker 2:So chill out, Mark, is part of what I'm telling myself. So I've got these two twin voices duking it out of my mind and meanwhile my six-year-old is racing ahead trying to sprint up to a deer on this quote unquote spot in stock hunt. So we kind of find a happy medium. I try to explain to him why I'm trying to get him to slow down and what we're trying to achieve here and how we need to do it, and I'm at least getting him to stay close to me and we're kind of moving together as a team. And, long story short, we get to the point where we can see this little food plot opening where those deer were and the deer are gone. So we had either spooked them or they had just naturally moved off or something. But deer were gone. So we get up to the edge and you know I'm disappointed and we're down to an hour of daylight maybe at this point, maybe even less than that, and you know we're faced with a little bit of a fork in the road. We can either go and find one of the blinds that we have on this property, elsewhere we could go sit somewhere, we could continue slipping around trying to find a deer, we could call it quits. And you know, as I had been kind of doing throughout this hunt, I wanted to give Everett the uh, some agency and let him kind of choose his own adventure. So I was like all right, buddy, here's the situation, here's how much time we have, here are the things to consider. Um, what do you want to do? This hunt's on you, bud. And so he said ah, you know what, dad, I think? I think there'll be more deer that are going to come out to this food source. So maybe we should just like post up here. But I don't want to sit in the blind.
Speaker 2:There actually was a blind in the area. He's like I want to stay out here. I want to lay in the ground. Let's get down in the grass, hide in the grass right here and see if the deer will come up close. It's like okay, and I happened to have a white. I brought a white sheet in my backpack just in case we had to like hide out on top of one of the crop field hills because it had been snowing. So I thought we might need to use that to hide us in some kind of way. So I had a little white bed sheet and we had a lot of tall grass around us, so I let him pick the ambush location.
Speaker 2:We kind of argued over some specifics of where he thought he wanted to be versus where I needed to be to get a clear shot. But we found a middle ground again and so he's laying down in one spot, I'm laying down in one spot next to him. I throw that blanket partly over him so he's got a little bit more cover over him and the snow started coming down just beautifully. There's a pretty good breeze and we're laying there and I've kind of settled in and look over him within three minutes, five minutes of sitting down there, we're down to the last 30 minutes or so over him. Within three minutes, five minutes of sitting down there, we're down to the last 30 minutes or so, and then a couple minutes I look over there and Everett's totally passed out, snoring, sleeping in the snow already. So I'm laying there on my belly thinking, hey, this is pretty nice, this is kind of fun. What a fun little adventure. And we're sitting there.
Speaker 2:I'm not really expecting to see anything at this point, because it had been like he'd moved around from this spot to this spot to this spot. All over the place, A lot of movement, a lot of action, a lot of noise. And as I'm thinking through all this, though, of course, serendipity, whatever, good luck a deer comes walking right out at like 35 yards. And then another deer so there's two does at like maybe 35 yards, come out of the tall grass on the other side, right out, and I'm like, holy crap, there's deer, this is gonna happen, they're right there.
Speaker 2:So I slowly, quietly, kind of lean over and start tapping ever on the top of his head, trying to get him to wake up, and I'm like never wake up, never wake up. And I'm trying to do it quietly, but at the the same time he's not waking up. So I keep on tapping harder and harder on his head and I'm trying to make a little bit more noise, but I can't move because these deer are so close. There's just a couple. There's a little bit of grass in front of my face blocking me. So finally I nudge him enough.
Speaker 2:He wakes up. But the way he wakes up he pops his head up. His head was laying down. It pops up fast and aggressively. He's like what? I'm like there's a deer right in front of us. I'm like freeze, don't move. And of course one of the deer saw him do that. So this adult doe is staring at me and my son laying 35 yards away in the tall grass. I'm just like don't move. So he's frozen there. Still. The doe is staring at us. I'm kind of looking back and forth with my eyes and I just kind of whispered down like can you see her?
Speaker 2:he's like yeah, I see her, and then we're just waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting. And you know, in this kind of moment, when the deer is locked on you you can't move at all, so it's just a waiting game. And she was not stopping. So we waited for several minutes and so at this point I just kind kind of whispered, I'm like, hey, you know, you were sleeping pretty good. And he's like no, I wasn't. Yes, yeah, you were sleeping. He's like no, I was awake the whole time, dad. So we had this little whispered debate about whether or not he was sleeping, while the deer is just kind of staring at us. There's enough breeze, though, like I know, the deer can't hear us.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, everett was able to stay perfectly still and that deer gave us the pass after maybe you know three to five minutes standoff. It seemed like she finally was like okay, whatever I saw over, there is nothing. There's snow blowing, there's wind. She gave us the green light. She started moving again. So as she starts moving, every time she puts her head down to feed or she turns the other way I slowly adjust. My gun was laying on my backpack. I had to slowly reposition so I could grab my rifle, pull it up, get it up to get my eye up to the scope, etc. Everett's able to get you know, slightly adjusted so he can see everything. I can see everything.
Speaker 2:The doe, you know, eventually moved into a position where he had a good kind of quartering two ish slightly quartering two shot get a shot seems like a good hit. She sprints away. Everett's very excited. We're all thrilled awesome hunt. Can't believe that just happened, you know, from the ground hiding in the grass on his spot and start planned hunt. She runs off. Uh, high fives, hugs the whole nine yards, um, but it's, like I said, very windy and a lot of snow coming down and I started thinking, you know, usually I would wait. I like to wait usually an hour to go track a deer, just kind of a rule of thumb, unless I see that deer drop dead. I just give them a time just to be safe.
Speaker 1:A couple quick questions. What distance was she when you shot and what caliber were you using? Just curious.
Speaker 2:Yep, the distance was like 35 yards.
Speaker 2:Okay, so she hadn't wandered too far she hadn't wandered Maybe 30 to 40 yards somewhere in that ballpark and I was shooting a .350 Legend. So it's like a straight-wall cartridge rifle. You can use those in Southern Michigan and yeah, so looked like pretty good shot. But with the wind and the snow I decided that I want to pick up the blood trail fast. My buddy had been down hunting with me the weekend prior and had a similar set of weather circumstances and we did not get on the blood trail soon enough and it was completely gone, could not find blood, could not find wind or couldn't find any sign tracks, anything. It completely disappeared. So in this case I was like man, I felt good about the shot, uh, but it's quickly disappearing. Like we waited like five to ten minutes, maybe five minutes, I don't know, maybe even less than that. But we quickly got on the blood trail and it was like disappearing already fast. So you could see some. But I was all right, we need to just follow this quick. So me and Everett pick up the
Speaker 2:trail. Another cool thing about my son is that he is a terrific blood tracker relative to me, because I found at a late stage in life that I have some red-green color blindness. Oh, really, it doesn't come up in my daily life at all. I think I can see red, green. Colorblindness oh really, it doesn't come up in my daily life at all. I think I can see red and green perfectly fine. I can notice it all around me. But when you are in a low light situation, such as when you're looking for blood drops, especially contrasted against brown or green, it does not stand out to me like it does to all my other buddies. Fortunately, I found out by taking my son on a lot of blood trails that he doesn't have the same problem. He sees blood much better than I do, much quicker than I do. So we pick up the blood trail quick and we're going to try to get on it fast. Everett's leading the way because he can see it better than I am. I can and we set
Speaker 2:off. It's kind of a blizzard. We go pushing across the field, get into this patch of brush, push through maybe 50 yards of brush. We get to the other side of this brushy spot and it opens up into kind of some open hardwoods. And about 60 yards away, 70 yards away, I see a deer laying down deer down. First thought is like great, she's there dead. Second thing is like oh no, her head's still up, she's still alive. So deer's 60 or 70 yards away, still alive. I look over ever explain like hey, she's right there, uh, but she's not down yet. I'm gonna take a follow-up shot to try to finish this off. So I have him kind of stand off behind me, I try to get a little bit of a stable rest against a tree and take a follow-up shot. At the shot the deer was laying down facing away from us 70 yards away. At the shot she jumps up, spins and runs directly at us sprinting on a line directly to us to the point where I.
Speaker 2:At this point she gets 70 yards, 60 yards, 50 yards, 40 yards, 30 yards, 20 yards. Within 20 yards, I grab my son, pull him behind me, put my arms up and start yelling and screaming at the deer. Get get, get, no, no, no. She collapses within five yards of us, at our feet.
Speaker 1:No way, no way. That is insane.
Speaker 2:It was the wildest, craziest thing I've ever seen on a hunt. I mean, I literally thought we were going to run over by this deer and my son, I'm sure, thought the same thing. I think he was. He must've been terrified in the moment, but immediately afterwards he was like, oh my gosh, that was awesome, awesome but incredibly intense moment and to share that with him again, another one of those experiences that we're never gonna forget. I you know one of the most intense wildlife encounters I've ever had. Yeah, having a situation like that unfold and and then you know him being fired up about it and wanting to be involved and everything, even from that point on, you know he wants to hold the leg on the deer when we're gutting it. He wants to help me drag the deer out. He wants to tell the story when we get home to his mom and his younger brother.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear his version.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'd love to hear that too. It's pretty. He leans on me too much for the story, but I think as he gets older he's going to start fleshing it out with more of his own details.
Speaker 1:Yeah and uh, adding his own flair. Yeah, yes, dad fell asleep in his story right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure he's going to have some of those. So those are two of the most memorable hunting moments I have had to date. Uh made extra special given that my son was there with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, those are phenomenal stories. I've never had anything. I've had a hog charge me similarly. But what's funny is I was with, so I was taking a buddy hunting. We're in South Texas, we're actually in a river, and we sneak up on some hogs and he's like what do I do? And I'm like, well, you pick one and you shoot it, like whichever you want, we have shotguns, double out, buckshot, um, and he, he blasts this one hog, small little black hog, still the biggest one that was there, and 20 hogs sprinting in all different directions. But that hog he shot came right at him, um, and he unloaded two more rounds of double out buckshot into that thing and like, by the time it stopped, it was probably I don't maybe eight yards from him. Uh, and man that was something.
Speaker 1:So I can't even imagine, with your son being there, just like the fight or flight, the dad reflexes I bet you were on it like just they kicked in. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They definitely kicked in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either way, he blew that hog up. There was nothing salvageable from that thing. You know three rounds of double out buck shots the first round of 30 and the next two at, you know, 15 and 10. Uh, but yeah, that's. That's a great story, man. Um, thanks for sharing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're welcome. It's fun to relive those good moments I wish.
Speaker 1:I wish father's day was closer. I'd save this episode for father's day, but I gotta we're going to put this one out way before then. Um, do you have any other stories you want to share? Uh, I know we have a couple, you know 20 more minutes or so happy to listen. If you can think of anything otherwise, we can wrap it up right here. Mark, it's up to you.
Speaker 2:I mean I've got too many stories to count.
Speaker 1:I figure.
Speaker 2:But I can well. What would be a good one? Do you want a story that has been told before? But it's a pretty good one, a pretty wild one, I haven't heard it, so I'm sure many of my guests haven't either.
Speaker 1:My personal favorite is when people do stupid things, but if you've got a good wild one ready, let's do that.
Speaker 2:Oh well, this is a wild one because of me doing stupid things. Perfect, so it'll be right up your alley. It's very embarrassing.
Speaker 2:It speaks to physical flaws and issues with incontinence and big deer and all sorts of wonderful things. So perfect, here's the story. There was a deer that arrived on a property that I could hunt oh, seven-ish years ago, something like that. Okay, and I live and hunt a lot in southern Michigan. I hunt there as well, a lot, and in southern Michigan we have a lot in southern. I live in southern Michigan, I hunt there as well a lot, and in southern Michigan we have a lot of deer. We have some decent deer, but we don't have like the giant deer that you see on TV, that you see on the covers of magazines, that you watch in the movies, whatever. We typically don't have that kind of deer here. Okay, but for the first time in my life a deer pops up into my world. That is jaw dropping, mind blowing, I mean a deer that waltzed off the outdoor channel and somehow into my life and visiting from Iowa. Yes, exactly, somehow this deer arrived from Iowa in southern Michigan and is blowing my mind. And I proceed to have a whole bunch of really exciting encounters with this deer during bow season, but never quite close enough. I watched him follow a doe into like 60 yards and breed her and watched him hang out with this doe for a long time. I watched him tearing up trees, making scrapes, making rubs, chasing does, doing the whole nine yards Very exciting. But every time I was at tree A he'd be over by tree B. The next day I'd go to tree B and he'd be by tree A and the next day he'd be by tree C. I'd go there and every spot I'd go to he would be the other spot. We're like circling each other within five to 10 acres over the course of like a week plus, and I'm never quite right. He's just outside of range every time.
Speaker 2:This is a Boone and Crockett huge Michigan buck. And this brings me to. I can't remember which day of this series of days this was, but on a particular morning I had made a move to this old hay bale blind I had. So this is a blind that looks like a bale of hay but is actually like a ground blind and it's situated on the edge of this little opening. Interestingly, this is very close to where my son and I killed that doe, and so on this particular morning I had seen him take a doe into this tall grassy swale the night before, and oftentimes during the whitetail rut, if a buck has a doe that is ready to breed, he'll lock onto her so he will stay with that doe, for, you know, 24 to 48 hours straight and they oftentimes stay in a pretty small area.
Speaker 2:So if during this period of time you see a deer, two deer together, acting in this kind of way and there's there's certain behavioral traits where you'll see like, oh, that's what's happening, like she's ready to breed, he's not letting her go anywhere, he's not letting anybody else close to her, that's what's going on. When you see that I will very oftentimes try to get you know. My very next opportunity to move in, I'm going to get as close as I can to that area or the spot that allows me to hunt that area best, and I will stay there as long as I need to, because they're probably going to be kind of roaming in and around that little zone. You know, a couple acres maybe. So I see this buck and doe together the evening before that morning, the following morning, I think all right, my best guess is they're going to be back in there at daylight today. So I figured out like a long, roundabout way to get past where I was worried they might be feeding in the dark, because I didn't want to go through there and spook them, figured out a way to get past that, got to this kind of transition area, back to the bedding cover where this blind was. So I get in there in the morning and it was one of those hunts where, you know, I'd seen them the night before.
Speaker 2:I had a strong plan for today. Confidence was through the roof. I had done this whole maneuver that would put me into a good position. Conditions were great, the wind was great, everything was perfect. It's the kind of situation where you are just on edge. You can feel it in the air, you can feel your fingers are kind of tingly. My buddies and I joke that. It's like the kind of excitement that gives you like the pregame jitters and the pregame got to go to the bathrooms.
Speaker 1:Um, because you're so okay.
Speaker 2:You're so excited, We'll just say, um, so, uh. So that was what was coursing through my body on this particular day. Um, early morning, it's starting to break daylight. I've got this adrenaline rush already, even though I haven't seen anything. I drank a bunch of coffee that morning. The whole system's firing and ready to go and any moment now I just know I'm going to see this buck. This is the biggest buck of my life. I'm going to see this deer. I've done everything right. I've done everything that's going to lead to this moment, that's going to lead to all my hard work paying off. This is it.
Speaker 1:And as.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking through this, I'm glassing my binoculars over here to the opening in the grass, over here to the tall swale, over here to the grass, over to the tall swale, checking the hardwoods, checking the swale, checking the hardwoods. He's going to be here any single minute now. And there's a doe and the doe steps out of the tall grass and then, immediately behind that doe, you just see this tall white frame of antlers looming out of the early morning gray light and it just hit me like a brick. I need to take a shit. And this fuck starts following this dough and my internal system starts going into meltdown mode, where all the coffee and all the nerves and all the excitement and everything that had been building up to this moment all of a sudden sends my GI into the most cataclysmic meltdown you could ever imagine. And I proceeded to watch the biggest deer of my entire life slowly follow this doe.
Speaker 2:As I started having an internal dialogue, it was kind of like my earlier story where there's two sides to me. One side was like hey, do not move, do not do anything that's going to mess us up. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. The other side is saying you need to go to the bathroom. So bad, you need to dance around, spin around, run outside of the blind. You need to do something. Then the other side is like do not mess us up. You have worked for years and years and years for this opportunity. You have to pull it together, you need to control yourself. And the other side of my mind is saying you cannot control yourself. This thing's coming out now. We need to do something different. The deer's at 75 yards, the deer's at 65 yards, the deer's at 50 yards I am literally about to just it's happening. And so in this moment I recognize, if I get out of the blind and do what you would normally do, I will spook this deer. But I am in a ground, blind, with a dirt bottom.
Speaker 2:So in this moment of panic I realize that maybe if I lay down low enough underneath the windows of the blind I can stay out of sight of the deer. And I start taking my bare hand and digging into the mud in the bottom of my blind in a panic, while 170 inch plus buck is moving within 60 yards, I dig a hole with my bare hand, enough of a hole that I'm able to then pull off my jacket, pull down my bibs, position myself like a crab, release the demon inside of my body into the hole in the bottom of my blind, cover it all up, try to pull back on my bibs and see if that deer is still there in time for me to get a shot at.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:I do all those things you just made a port-a-potty. I successfully relieved myself of the demon, but the buck was not enranged and would not come in to where I needed to be, and I did not get that deer on that particular day, but I did christen what we now call the poop blind. Yeah, it will forever be known as the poop blind.
Speaker 1:Goodness gracious, did you haul it out of there. Did you just fill that hole in? Did you move the blind over 20 yards?
Speaker 2:I filled that hole, I put more dirt on top of it and four weeks later I came back and I killed that buck. In the same blind run the same blind. No, I no pun blind. No, no pun intended, but I shit you not, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:A little bit of a pun intended.
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's so good.
Speaker 1:That's my story. That's pretty awesome. I'm glad that you ended up getting the buck. I've actually had a couple guys on the podcast before that had that same demon in them. I have a guy I'm trying to blank on his name I always do this but he's full draw on an elk that he that he called in um doesn't ever quite get a shot and he has to let the demons go. And we're not talking like something that is just going to sort of fill his pants. We're talking fill his boots, um, yeah. And now he's a couple miles back and has to walk out of there. So yeah, it's a thing. It's a thing. When you get that excited, you lose control of certain functions, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, happens to the best of us.
Speaker 1:Yes, it does. Yes, it does Well, Mark. Man, this was fun. This was fun. This was one of my favorite episodes, so thank you so much for joining us. Man, You're welcome. Do you want to share where the people can find you or do you want to walk off into the sunset? What would your preference be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll just say if they want to read the book and hear some more of my other stories, they can look up that Wild Country, an epic journey through the past, present and future of America's public lands. And then, as I mentioned earlier, I host the Wired Hunt podcast and do a bunch of films and shows for Mediator, which you can find all at the Mediator website or YouTube channel.
Speaker 1:Perfect, mark. Well, thanks again, man. I really appreciate it. Thanks for taking your time sharing your beautiful stories with your children, and then one embarrassing story at the end. That's exactly what this podcast is about, man. So thank you so much. Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Happy to do it, yep.
Speaker 1:All right, guys. That's it. Another couple stories in the books. Like I said, that was one of my favorite stories that turkey story. So thank you, mark, for coming on the podcast. I really do appreciate you. Again, big fan of the book. And to you listeners, if you don't already have it, get out there and buy a copy of that Wild Country, it's worth it. Make sure you give Mark a follow on the social medias and check out his podcast. That's it, guys. Thank you so much. I really do appreciate you. Make sure you share with at least one person today so we have more and more folks listening, more and more folks reaching out and talking to us about their craziest stories. And then, whatever you're listening to, make sure you give us a five-star review. And now get out there, guys, and make some stories of.
