Transcription

00:00:23:04 – 00:00:41:26
Speaker 1
All right, we are. What’s there? May six. So May six, 2019. Our boy Connor here is not a turkey hundred before, and he’s got a new gun he wants to try out. Fired up what that’s going to be.

00:00:42:08 – 00:00:44:00
Speaker 1
Be all right. You ready?

00:00:44:00 – 00:00:45:19
Speaker 2
O’CONNOR Yeah, I’m I’m excited.

00:00:45:19 – 00:00:47:10
Speaker 1
Usually behind the camera.

00:00:48:16 – 00:00:49:25
Speaker 2
But he’s a star.

00:00:49:25 – 00:01:07:14
Speaker 1
Today we talk enough about culture around the office and taking new guys hunting. And we’ve been after Connor, really, for the better part of a year now. I say after him encouraging him, but he doesn’t have to hunt, but he wants to.

00:01:07:15 – 00:01:28:01
Speaker 1
So we’re taking and by the way, my podcast co-host, Joel over here is not killed either. So I don’t know if they’re gonna shoot each other today or if they’ve got that worked out. We’re going to try to avoid we’re on public land, south central Indiana.

00:01:29:24 – 00:01:50:09
Speaker 1
Not a truck here, guys. Again, we pull up to this public area we’ve signed in. Nobody here. So as of right now, which it’s pretty early, like 430, we’ve got about 1600 acres to ourselves. So anyway, we’ll hopefully you’re on some birds, man.

00:01:50:09 – 00:01:59:21
Speaker 1
Let these guys feel like they’re hunting something. And if not, we’ll have a good day. We’ll hang out, hopefully not get covered up and ticks.

00:02:02:18 – 00:02:20:10
Speaker 3
And we’re ready and we are walking. We probably have a mile walk, nice, easy flat walk, not a big deal and hopefully we can get some birds gobbling. We noticed on the sign in sheet two names yesterday and I’ve heard from several people that they were got on pretty good yesterday, so.

00:02:21:01 – 00:02:22:18
Speaker 1
Expectations might be a little.

00:02:22:18 – 00:02:26:02
Speaker 3
Higher than they were coming down. But in any event.

00:02:26:17 – 00:02:27:13
Speaker 1
Think what we’re doing.

00:02:28:14 – 00:02:37:07
Speaker 3
This is what we do basically for a living. So blessed and happy to be hanging out with my buddies and hopefully we’ll put a big old thunder chicken on the.

00:02:37:07 – 00:02:37:17
Speaker 1
Ground.

00:02:40:18 – 00:02:43:17
Speaker 4
In our we all have about it right now.

00:02:45:04 – 00:02:45:15
Speaker 5
It’s going to.

00:02:45:15 – 00:02:49:12
Speaker 4
Be coming up shortly. An easy life. But it.

00:02:50:13 – 00:02:54:07
Speaker 5
Matters that in life, when there is no life anywhere and you just start.

00:02:56:13 – 00:03:02:25
Speaker 4
Somewhere. And right now it’s like, do you guys, in all.

00:03:02:25 – 00:03:05:25
Speaker 5
Honesty, feel any sense of accomplishment.

00:03:05:25 – 00:03:19:08
Speaker 4
Already happening now? Can you not wake up like I wake up to walk in the morning and to your side but a mile from the sun comes up. Everybody I know sleep right now.

00:03:19:08 – 00:03:19:24
Speaker 5
That’s why.

00:03:19:24 – 00:03:43:08
Speaker 4
Like, that’s our doing it, man. This is it. Go, go. 627 just before 630. That’s coming up in a little while. We have decided to travel down the path farther.

00:03:44:10 – 00:03:57:04
Speaker 5
Turning now to walk about 5 minutes at the top off in the distance. It looks like we came back. At the original spot. A walk up to the spot tried to get on top of.

00:03:58:11 – 00:04:03:01
Speaker 4
Premier O’Connor’s players. But that’s. Go.

00:04:03:26 – 00:04:22:21
Speaker 5
Okay. We. We’ve got one fired up. It’s still early, but he’s fired up and he’s close enough that we decided to sit down really a little earlier than I expected. But whatever. The boys are about ten yards to my right to pose for the camera.

00:04:22:21 – 00:04:23:25
Speaker 5
I’ve got a decoy set up.

00:04:24:15 – 00:04:29:15
Speaker 4
The in front of me. So the plan is for him to come to this.

00:04:29:23 – 00:04:44:26
Speaker 5
Able to work his way up. Man they’re starting to come on. They’re starting to go. Guys are going to be quiet. Season’s been in for about a week and a half or on public ground. Some kind of thinking, these turkeys in these birds being called.

00:04:45:20 – 00:04:47:02
Speaker 5
So I’m not going to be too aggressive.

00:04:48:01 – 00:04:53:26
Speaker 4
I’ll probably go there one more time at this thing. The camera’s back. I’m not.

00:04:53:27 – 00:05:00:17
Speaker 5
Shut up. You know, the rest of it is up to the boys, to my right. And I’m. I’m Jack.

00:05:00:17 – 00:05:02:07
Speaker 4
LAMB. Let’s kill Saddam Hussein.

00:05:51:13 – 00:06:03:06
Speaker 6
That’s about quarter update. Obviously, sun’s up. Earlier I said we’re going to walk down the edge of the field and there was a little opening down there. They were just gobbling like crazy back there on that in the woods.

00:06:04:00 – 00:06:21:18
Speaker 6
So we set up behind us. We had a little pine tree and set the decoy out. And Sean was about 20, 30 yards away from us, calling periodically. And sure enough, we had one come in, didn’t like didn’t like something that he saw or heard or whatever, and he kind of bolted.

00:06:21:18 – 00:06:34:06
Speaker 6
Also, we sat for another 20 minutes or so. I still heard Goblin to the I guess to the east of us. So we got back up and we were out here in the woods right now. We had a little wardrobe malfunction with Connor.

00:06:34:06 – 00:06:45:28
Speaker 6
So we’re trying to make our way out there, trying to make our way out here. And I’ll tell you what’s really cool. You pull it off, it’s all on. You just go all the way. I’ll tell you what’s really cool about this around here in public land.

00:06:45:28 – 00:07:02:23
Speaker 6
And it’s nice. A lot of deer sign, a lot of trails. You know, it doesn’t look like there’s been a lot of human interference back here. Just just 60, 70 yards south of us. We found a little, little pond, you know, half an acre, maybe, maybe.

00:07:02:23 – 00:07:09:20
Speaker 6
And maybe a good little, little head and duck spots. So I dropped a pin on it. So we’ll see. We’ll see next year or later this fall. We can do with it.

00:07:09:29 – 00:07:14:00
Speaker 1
It’s hot out the deer we use and have a water source.

00:07:14:00 – 00:07:20:00
Speaker 6
Oh there’s there’s movement all down there. And just on the other side of it, there’s a a little ridge. And.

00:07:20:09 – 00:07:23:17
Speaker 3
You know, but the issue is what we walk in this morning, one.

00:07:23:27 – 00:07:35:02
Speaker 1
One and a quarter miles from the truck. So you go if you get a deer down, down, out here, you know, that’s its problem. But you might be able to actually, if you do it on a boat, just take them to water, be home.

00:07:35:02 – 00:07:39:22
Speaker 6
Users, take them right over here, throw the boat, take it on the other side of the lake and we’re good.

00:07:39:25 – 00:07:46:21
Speaker 1
Absolutely cool. Well, let’s let’s get back up in that field, you know, and we’ll take Shoeless Joe here to towards the truck.

00:07:46:23 – 00:07:47:05
Speaker 2
That’s it.

00:07:53:22 – 00:07:56:04
Speaker 5
Who gave us the slip earlier. It makes me wary.

00:07:57:01 – 00:08:25:03
Speaker 4
I walk over there. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Give him a mouse.

00:08:25:29 – 00:08:36:29
Speaker 5
He doesn’t gobble or he’s up here. We don’t got what we came.

00:08:36:29 – 00:08:42:05
Speaker 4
To set up for no reason. I’ll just go back him.

00:08:44:16 – 00:09:00:12
Speaker 5
We want to go before we move on now. I kind of think we’re on an older bird. This bird came out quiet this morning, gobbled within about a hundred yards. There’s a gunshot off in the distance, not in the direction of our government.

00:09:01:16 – 00:09:20:16
Speaker 5
But he came in quiet, man. Just like an old. Savvy player in a night club, calm and quiet, saw the hand, were pretty sure, but decided to move back into the world. Probably had the real thing in the woods and so he’d move back in.

00:09:20:16 – 00:09:35:05
Speaker 5
Well, we laugh. We were probably 400 yards away and we were to go right back in the same spot. So now we’re set up basically on that same spot. And the fact that he already gave us a slip once makes me nervous.

00:09:35:29 – 00:09:45:25
Speaker 5
But it’s called 9:00, and I’m not just got dumb around the woods hoping to find a turkey so they don’t gobble. I’ll be safe.

00:09:46:07 – 00:10:03:03
Speaker 4
But I won’t get another couple of minutes. So.

00:10:21:24 – 00:10:43:22
Speaker 1
So I guess what we’re doing is the American Hunting Podcast, kind of an on location version, just got done with a fairly eventful turkey hunt, honestly. It’s May the sixth. Which means here in Indiana, our season’s been on for a week and five days.

00:10:45:06 – 00:10:59:23
Speaker 1
We’re out in public ground, south, central, south, eastern, kind of Indiana. So the birds down here, I’m sure, have been called to I’m sure they’ve seen hunters. So they’re a little wily. But we almost put John and.

00:11:00:02 – 00:11:12:20
Speaker 7
I was excited there for a minute. I notice myself breathing hard whenever I first south first I’ll stop moving in the weeds and and then it went away. And so I calmed down a little bit. And then all of a sudden.

00:11:13:09 – 00:11:14:03
Speaker 2
Out of the blue.

00:11:14:24 – 00:11:18:08
Speaker 7
No noise, nothing. And I was ready to go, but.

00:11:19:20 – 00:11:20:21
Speaker 2
Scared them off, too. Great.

00:11:21:11 – 00:11:25:00
Speaker 1
But, you know. And we ought to introduce Connor. Yeah. Connor has never been on camera.

00:11:25:16 – 00:11:28:00
Speaker 2
We’ve mentioned him before, but yeah, first time in front of.

00:11:28:00 – 00:11:42:05
Speaker 1
A camera is usually sitting behind the camera. But, you know, Connor is one of our marketing assistants with the American Hunting Association and does a killer job. But he’s and he actually you and I both grew up in the city and we’ve been hunting for a while now.

00:11:42:22 – 00:11:58:27
Speaker 1
Connor grew up in the country and just never really had the opportunity or probably had the opportunity, but just didn’t want to go. Yeah, frankly. And other stuff. Yeah. So which is fine. But now that he hangs around with us and he thought it was time to go, so I bought a gun last week and yeah, we

00:11:58:27 – 00:12:11:23
Speaker 1
tried to put it to the test today, but this is your first turkey, however. Yeah. And actually I think was Connor heard the first gobble this morning. So I mean, he was on it. I don’t know if you heard him enough from growing up in a country or not, but no, not really.

00:12:11:23 – 00:12:12:19
Speaker 1
We’re on it. I heard.

00:12:12:24 – 00:12:18:10
Speaker 7
Him out in the field now and then driving by or something, but I never really did hear him quite like that.

00:12:18:10 – 00:12:35:21
Speaker 1
Though. Yeah, well, we had a bird gobble inside of a hundred yards after about a mile and a half walk in sun was just starting to come up and we kind of just started to call and we had one go off pretty loud, pretty close.

00:12:36:03 – 00:12:49:17
Speaker 1
And so we just decided to sit down and then he shut up. So I don’t know if he saw us. I didn’t know if he saw us. But there were other birds. They were they sounded to me to be 3 to 400 yards away.

00:12:50:08 – 00:13:05:03
Speaker 1
And this was a single bird he gobbled basically once. And we we sat down, shut up. He shut up. And so we’re kind of playing on thinking, okay, if this is an older bird, he’s probably savvy enough to just I know she’s out there.

00:13:05:03 – 00:13:19:00
Speaker 1
I’ll go find her when it’s time. And I couldn’t see him. I never did see him. I set up with the camera. I don’t know. I was maybe 15 yards from you guys, but just over a rise. I could see the decoy and you know, I kept picturing and come up and over the rise.

00:13:19:00 – 00:13:22:29
Speaker 1
But he never did. And then, you know, we had him we saw him where we.

00:13:22:29 – 00:13:34:15
Speaker 2
Were at behind that tree. I intentionally put Connor to my left because he would be able to see everything first and yeah, I’d have an opportunity to shoot. So when he told me, he goes.

00:13:35:19 – 00:13:37:03
Speaker 5
I did, I did see something.

00:13:37:05 – 00:13:49:08
Speaker 2
I was at the turkey. I could tell, oh, no, you know, so, so I’m thinking I can’t, I got to try to get my head around, see. And, and, you know, I don’t know. Not even 10 minutes passed.

00:13:49:08 – 00:14:03:09
Speaker 2
No, no. Out of nowhere, no sound, nothing. First of all, I heard him start breathing. He’s like and I’ve look and he’s like, starting to look is going to be there as a turkey. Nice job. I got to put my head around.

00:14:03:09 – 00:14:10:24
Speaker 2
And yeah, this this old guy just kind of showed up, and I’m fairly confident he saw the decoy, but there was just something.

00:14:11:03 – 00:14:24:07
Speaker 1
Something wasn’t right, you know? And he didn’t we actually got back on that turkey an hour and a half later and he came back out into that field. So what I’m trying to piece together my mind is I think he probably had a had the real thing in the woods.

00:14:24:27 – 00:14:38:29
Speaker 1
He came out to just kind of survey the lay of the land and saw the hand feeding. You know, if she’s feeding, she’s calm, she’s not going anywhere. I’m going to go back with this real thing that I know is a sure thing and take care of business and then came back out.

00:14:38:29 – 00:14:48:25
Speaker 1
By that time, we’d kind of moved on, try to some of those other birds. But, you know, two things come to mind. And Joel, you and I have talked a lot about this in the podcast and that is mentoring new hunters.

00:14:50:08 – 00:15:03:03
Speaker 1
And, you know, Nate at work took his time and took you out and show you what kind of a gun to buy and all that kind of stuff, which is super. And then, you know, we brought Connor out and there’s nothing more to it than what we did this morning.

00:15:03:03 – 00:15:13:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, you’ll learn a lot. And it wouldn’t not honestly won’t take you longer term. What I am. I know Turkey holding’s not my thing. But again, what we have to ourselves, we come back and we’re. There’s one truck here.

00:15:13:22 – 00:15:28:17
Speaker 2
I think that’s the biggest takeaway for me is not only did the coroner go through the process of buying his first gun and that’s I mean, really, that’s the first step. You can borrow a weapon from somebody, but you decide to buy your own somewhere in your brain.

00:15:28:17 – 00:15:42:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s an investment. You decide you’re going to give this a shot. And we’re out here and we got back and there’s one truck here now. But this is anyone can do. I said this when we’re walking back, anyone can do this, right?

00:15:42:01 – 00:15:46:03
Speaker 2
Show up and start walking. One of the benefits of wearing a Fitbit is I know how many steps.

00:15:46:13 – 00:15:47:02
Speaker 1
How many we do.

00:15:47:04 – 00:16:01:07
Speaker 2
Well, we did about six or seven, roughly, you know. So it wasn’t it wasn’t a super hard walk necessarily. We went through the woods a little bit there. It got kind of dicey, but. Right. Relatively easy. Walk in and out, know up and super complicated.

00:16:01:07 – 00:16:08:29
Speaker 2
And anybody in the state of Indiana who’s a licensed hunter can show up here and sign that card and just start walking for free. For free.

00:16:09:08 – 00:16:16:23
Speaker 1
Yeah. And access is a problem for Honan and that’s why I’m not completely sold on that. Sounds to me to be kind of a good excuse and.

00:16:17:09 – 00:16:33:00
Speaker 2
You know, there’s, there’s the layer of we touched on this on the walk back to you know, how is this public land use too much? Maybe maybe not. I don’t know the answer to that. But there was no shortage of deer sign anywhere when we were at you know, we were on birds.

00:16:33:19 – 00:16:35:21
Speaker 2
There’s no there’s opportunity, no.

00:16:35:25 – 00:16:50:22
Speaker 1
Minimal sign of people. We saw some boot tracks, not a bunch. And it’s rain down here quite a bit. So way more deer tracks deer sign. I saw maybe a can saw Pepsi can from 1970 I think.

00:16:50:22 – 00:16:51:17
Speaker 2
Yes I’ll say more.

00:16:51:18 – 00:17:07:29
Speaker 1
Yeah. But other than that, no trash. No. It just doesn’t show evidence that it’s getting overused. Yeah. So yeah, public land is a decent option and you know, obviously we deal with leasing and we encourage hunters to lease their access.

00:17:08:28 – 00:17:23:18
Speaker 1
But there’s an entry point into the sport and I think the entry point is public. You know, if you can kind of light the fire by hunting on public ground, do that for a couple of years, you know, spend your money for a couple of years on some gear, on some boots.

00:17:23:20 – 00:17:30:07
Speaker 1
Castle, mini moose crash on that one. Yeah, this one. This the soul just fell off to the well.

00:17:30:29 – 00:17:41:15
Speaker 2
Hand-me-downs are a great way to save some money and I’m all for not even got some myself. But that’s just kind of part of the deal. When I get them, I get right. I’ve got two pair, but it looks like I picked the wrong one.

00:17:42:24 – 00:17:56:03
Speaker 1
But yeah, we’re now we’re about growing the sport. My gosh, take advantage of the public ground, learn what you can and when you’re ready. If leasing is an option for you, it’ll be there. I assure you it’ll be there because it’s not going anywhere.

00:17:56:26 – 00:18:09:15
Speaker 1
But yeah, take advantage of this stuff. And again, man, there’s nothing special about wakening, you know, it’s just like church in the gym. The hardest part is getting here. You got to get out of bed, you got to drive to public ground.

00:18:09:27 – 00:18:13:24
Speaker 1
You got to access it. You got to walk in and you sit down, you start out and you figure it out.

00:18:13:26 – 00:18:27:01
Speaker 2
I’ll tell you what, too, you know, we’re only we’re just up the road from our lease here. Yeah. So I’d hate for the mentoring to stop today. And I’d love to show Connor how to get some hands on experience, hang hanging the trees and move some trees.

00:18:27:01 – 00:18:33:14
Speaker 1
And I think we should. We’ve got one bladder stand that needs to be moved. You probably don’t want climb up in that tree, you.

00:18:33:22 – 00:18:41:05
Speaker 2
Know, not after last time. You know what we have I’ve pictures from that. I got poison sumac or I’ve heard poison something.

00:18:41:21 – 00:18:43:21
Speaker 1
A lot of it really, really bad.

00:18:43:27 – 00:18:53:27
Speaker 2
Really bad. To the point where I even questioned if I ever wanted to step foot on that lease again. The first question I asked you on opening day was, you think I’m good to climb? That got.

00:18:54:05 – 00:18:55:05
Speaker 1
That of.

00:18:55:06 – 00:18:56:18
Speaker 2
Up there. Yeah. You’re all right.

00:18:57:00 – 00:19:11:14
Speaker 1
Just don’t hug the tree. Right. So. Well, good deal, man. What are you guys say we pack up, head out, go by the lease, move that stand because we don’t get to move before the crops get in. It’s been really wet down here, but at the same time we’re down here and we’ve got a grant, so we

00:19:11:14 – 00:19:15:27
Speaker 1
might as well put in more as well and help us out. Cool, cool. Let’s go to the tree stands and.