EP: 463 | Dialing in on Deer with Mark Drury

On this episode we’re joined by Mark Drury to discuss getting ready for the white-tailed deer season. Mark always has interesting insight and wisdom when it comes to whitetails. We talk camera placement, licking branches, the moon, bachelor groups, planting near native bedding areas and how keeping historical data on bucks leads to success. 

Listen, Learn and Enjoy. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I am Jeff Foxworthy and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, then buddy, you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Baltiok Land Enhancement Studio as they discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices, news, and of course honey. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm gonna tell you. I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

We're live in three, two, one. Okay, everybody. Lanny, Dudley, Bobby. We've got, he is such a fun guy, and I have admired him for so long. And Game Keeper Extraordinaire. There's there's I don't really and truly, I can't think of anybody that does it better. There's some guys that are bumping up there pretty close to him. No, I don't think through the years. If if you've just focused on growing big deer and then putting them on the ground, yeah, and and harvesting them.

SPEAKER_05 0:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

He has the highest cumulative average. I dare say there's nobody better.

SPEAKER_05 1:02

I don't even think you have to dare say it. I think you can just say it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Yeah. So let's look, let's look. Mark, well, hey, wake up, Mark.

SPEAKER_05 1:09

We've got we've got Mark Drury in the house. All the way from Iowa. He should almost get the kazoos, you know, because he was an intern and he worked for Toxie when he was in the summer and all that stuff. Stayed in Toxie's house. So look, Mark has been a huge part of this place for many years. So very, very uh happy to have him today.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

And what better time to have him on? It's it's getting crunch time.

SPEAKER_05 1:37

Deer season starts now. Or it never ends, does it, Mark?

SPEAKER_04 1:41

It doesn't really. It's this is the time of year we're killing them. We're not actually pulling the trigger, but it's the stuff we do now that leads to the season. That's the easier part when we're out there hunting them, but it's it's the steps we make in the off-season that really, really end up, you know, showing us whether we're going to succeed or or or not kill a deer that year. So we're uh we're big on habitat stuff around here.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

No doubt about it. Mark, you you've been doing this a long time. And you know, without going into any numbers, uh there you've had so many. I I can remember year, many years ago, you know, all of a sudden they started killing some 170s. I was like, oh my goodness. And then it was 180s, and then it was 190s. And I it they're knocking on 200. Every couple of years, you'll see Mark kill something that'll scare the heck out of 200, maybe even over 200.

SPEAKER_06 2:30

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

It's a it's just amazing how you how it has it's continued to get a little better and a little better. Do you ever have the thought and dream that, you know what, one day I might grow a world record?

SPEAKER_04 2:46

No, not not a world record. I mean, that'd be really cool, but also a one in a 10 million chance or whatever it is, you know. We just try to um we just try to work on the health of the herd. And because of where I live and because of where we hunt in northern Missouri and southern Iowa, if we work on health and numbers and balance and all the things we've learned through the years through your guys' program, our own, everyone else in the industry, we've all evolved a great deal in the last 30 or 40 years. And we try to take that accumulation of knowledge and apply it to the landscape, and then everything kind of takes care of it itself. If we can get a deer to four or five years old, and um, you know, if he's got a healthy place to live, then he's gonna look pretty appealing to most people. So yeah, we just work on health more than anything.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

And through the years, has uh can you can you remember back and you were thinking, boy, uh that 140, that's a shooter. But now, today, and where you sit today, you probably would not even consider that 140, would you?

SPEAKER_04 3:53

I shot a 140 last fall. There we go. Hit the horns, Richie. All right, Mark. Thank you, Mark. You're out in Kansas that was probably five or six years old, and he came walking through and was right at last light, and that was the target we were in there after, and man, he was he was awesome. So um, but I I understand what you're saying. You know, back in the day, you know, some of the cover bucks on our videos were two and a half-year-old deer. We had year and a half olds on the front covers of our videos back in 1989, or would have been probably 91, 92, 93, right in there. So we all go through a learning curve in life about a lot of different aspects, especially as a hunter. And I think as you age and evolve, sooner or later you're looking for the next biggest thing or the next oldest deer or whatever the goal is. And we're at a point now where we're looking for fully mature deer, and we're trying to trying to grow those and keep them healthy. But we went through that evolution curve when we were in our 20s and 30s, and and we were damn happy to to kill a year and a half old buck with our bow or a or a two-year-old. And I I think a lot of that comes from where we grew up. We grew up in the river hills of of uh St. Genevieve County, and really if you saw a buck, period, you were that was a trophy, you know. And because of that, the way I grew up as a kid hunting, I remember the first time I ever saw a rack buck in the woods, and I I would have sworn it was a bootnicrocket. It was probably 120-inch deer, you know. So seeing a rack buck in the woods from that from back in those days, it always elicited a huge response from me, and it still does to this day. If I see a rack coming of any sort, two-year-old and older, my heart skips a beat because it takes me back to that when I was a kid, and just seeing a rack buck, it's a it's a wonder of nature, you know. And and I've hunted with people that didn't have that upbringing, and I see two and three-year-olds that are really nice, it doesn't excite them. And I'm like, oh my God, that's a beautiful deer. And you know, they're just kind of staring at it. And I I don't know. I just if I see a big buck or or a turkey walking through the woods, they're all a work of art as far as I'm concerned, and they all excite me. I mean, that's but that's the way I grew up. I get excited at the sight of Wild Game.

SPEAKER_05 6:05

Me too, me too. Hunting with my with my son now, you know. I'm like, of course, we got all these rules, you know. Of course, the first buck I'm saying, I'm like, oh, that one looks pretty good. And he's like, Dad, are you serious? And I'm like, Yes. Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:19

Yeah, it looks great. Big. There's nothing more exciting than seeing a rack coming through the cover. No doubt about it.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

Yeah, if you just see a bit and like you see a rack standing up in some tall sage, and all you see is the antlers. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_05 6:32

And to your point, I'm a pro at talking people into shooting stuff. Is that right? Include yourself. Yeah, I can always make an excuse. There's always that sausage factor to know.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

All right, Mark, why don't we do this? Uh um, since the last time you were on, we've deadly started asking people some questions. It's called Rapid Fire. It's brought to you by our friends and your friends at Nutrient Ag Solutions. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Outstanding. All right, so Mark, just gonna ask you some questions in rapid fire, and uh just want a quick answer, trying to get to know you better. Are you ready? Yes. First buck, where, when, and what was it?

SPEAKER_04 7:12

Uh, right behind my mom and dad's house, and it was a spike, and it was rifle season, and I want to say I was 12 or 13 years old, um, right there behind my mom and dad's house in St. Genevieve County, Bloomsdale, Missouri.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

All right, what what'd you shoot it with?

SPEAKER_04 7:34

Uh 3030 Marlon. Yeah. I I have to share this story. I know this rapid fire, but I killed that deer, and there was a gentleman on the next hump over that hunted in the club. His name was Bobby Bosler, and Bobby came over to see what I had shot at, and I didn't even know he was there. He was maybe 300 yards from me. And um, he said, Would you do you need help gutting that? I said, I would love help gutting this thing because I've never done it before and I'm out here all by myself. And he helped me gut that deer. And do you know Bobby moved off to to Cape Girardo, and I never saw Bobby again until it was my dad's wake, and he came through the line. So this was 30, no, probably 40 years later. And uh he came up to me and he said, Do you remember me? And I said, I sure do, and I sure appreciate you helping me gut that deer. So uh it was it was an amazing story, the fact that he helped me, and then I never saw him again for like 40 years. So it's uh pretty cool that that he was there for that day.

SPEAKER_05 8:34

That's probably his claim to fame. I helped Mark gut his first deer. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

That's a very memorable moment on both ends. Yeah. Um hundred percent. All right, so name a summer veggie that you aren't a big fan of.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

A summer veggie that I'm not a big fan of? Oh, peas. I don't like peas.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Um and I don't want a political answer here, but EHD or CWD, which one of the two currently affects you the most?

SPEAKER_04 12:00

EHD. Episode.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Um, if you had to pick one state to focus on, what would it be?

SPEAKER_04 12:08

Which state to focus on?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:11

Well, I I mean, Iowa is where I prefer to be, uh Iowa or Missouri. All right. I I Iowa's where I've killed the bulk of my you know upper end deer. Okay. There's no place like this state.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

No. What is your favorite dessert your mom makes?

SPEAKER_04 12:28

She made a dump cake, is what she called it. And it had cherries and pineapples, and it was just it was just a load of sugar. It was really good. But her dump cake would be my number one.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

All right. And what about your mom's what about your favorite dish she makes?

SPEAKER_04 12:45

She used to make a mean ribeye steak. Okay. Nice. She'd broil it in the oven, and I used to really love those. Well, of course, mom has mom's 93, so she's not cooked many meals of late.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Right. Well, I always enjoy when she pops up on y'all's show.

SPEAKER_05 13:01

Yeah, it's my favorite part of deer season.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

What was the last concert you attended?

SPEAKER_04 13:10

Now you're texting my brain would have been Luke Combs in Las Vegas. All right, our boy Luke.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Mark is a concert goer. Yeah, like you, don't you? Yeah. What would you say is the best tasting species of wild game? Wild turkey. Good answer. And last but not least, name your favorite land and wildlife management quarterly magazine.

SPEAKER_05 13:32

Oh, what a great question.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Gamekeeper.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

Hey, I knew it. Oh my goodness. Great questions, though.

SPEAKER_03 13:41

All right, Mark. Let me start with this first one. We, you know, I gave you and deservedly so. Accolades at the beginning of the show. But you may be your best talent may be taking 85 plus year old ladies deer hunting and getting them a buck. I mean, that's pretty incredible. This whole Miss Lucille story every year, she's got her hair fixed up just right, and her clothes are pressed, and y'all somehow get her up in that stand and somehow make me just I just sit there and watch it with my mouth open.

SPEAKER_04 14:15

She continues to amaze Terry and I. And we we split her seasons up. Like last year, I took her for archery and he took her for rifle. So this year I will have her for rifle and he will take her for archery. And um, she works out, you know, two or three times a week, you know, with PT and walking and trying to do everything she can to try and and make sure she's ready to try and get up in those stands you mentioned. And she's a she's a really good shot. And we did a a show last year on Deer Season 25, and we really dove into her upbringing. And she was one of four sisters raised on a farm, literally dirt floor pour. I mean, they they didn't have anything. And uh she was raised in the outdoors hunting with my grandfather, her dad, and uh it was really a good episode and and very well received. But mom's uh she's a special sort, she's really, really a fine person and and has been what a great example for our entire family, and and really now becoming a great example for the viewers of our shows because she's out there still enjoying herself, making great shots, and harvesting really big deer. So and she also doesn't care. Regardless of the size deer, she wants to shoot everyone for the most part.

SPEAKER_05 15:26

I love that.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

She's gotten to the point where she won't look at a year and a half anymore, but if it's got a rack, she's she's ready to shoot.

SPEAKER_05 15:33

Woman after my own heart.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

Yeah, she is such a special lady, and so it's it's very touching to watch the love and the respect that you guys treat her with. And uh, it's a great example to everyone.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

She's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Look, Laney, when I used to go up there and do the wildlife obsession shows and dream season and all that, Taylor was really young. All of a sudden she'd be up, she would be about 10 years old and she was killing like a 180. And all of a sudden I'm jealous of a 10-year-old. And then now I find myself being a little jealous of a 93-year-old. It's kind of right here in the middle, and Mark's at the heart of all of it.

SPEAKER_05 16:05

Well, you have a big problem with antler envy. I just don't know where it comes from. I need I need to work on that. That's where the color gamekeeper green color came from, is actually useful.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Yeah. And Mark's got a lot of reason to be green. He's he's if you ever get to go in Mark's house and see the antlers, it's it's just crazy.

SPEAKER_05 16:21

Yeah. Uh I've I've never met anybody so solely focused on, you know, getting the mission done. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Mark, this might be a personal question. So if it is, we'll just drop it out if you like freak out when I ask this. But with all those big antlers, have you ever like valued them and and insured them? If something happened to your house, uh, you know, is there a policy out there to replace them?

SPEAKER_04 16:49

No. No. Not no. Yeah, I don't know how you can recreate them, you know.

SPEAKER_05 16:55

Yeah, you couldn't replace them. They're irreplaceable. And it I think you've told us this too. Don't you on the back of each one of your mounts, you've got the tag, the date, everything, all the details of of each of each white tail.

SPEAKER_04 17:07

Certainly in the early days we do. Now that stuff's kept electronically, but back in the early days, yes, I would put the paper tag with with the mount just from a you know safety standpoint if we ever got if someone ever came looking or whatever. But anymore, we keep it all electronically.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

You know, they're they're valuable though. I mean, a boon and crockett, I've always heard that there's like people that pay big money for a full mount that they can hang in their bank or something.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. And you hear about people breaking in and taking, you know, deer mounts and whatnot. So it it crosses my mind and it's a fear of mine, but I mean, we've got security systems where they are, so that I guess that's the biggest insurance policy that, you know. But if we were gone and somebody broke in, I mean, they're gonna they're gonna I don't know whether they'd take those first or something else, you know. But um, they're very difficult to protect. And I don't I don't know if would the would an insurance company insure them and what would you insure them for?

SPEAKER_05 18:05

Just the value of the mount, or yeah, how would you I don't know. They really are irreplaceable. I mean, you know, and it's so weird for me that somebody would want to steal somebody else's mount. I mean, because it has nothing to do with them. Right. It's a sentimental value. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, look at Hercules up there. You get to look at him all the time.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

Look at Lee's just smiling. Yeah, he jumped off of Mark's farm. I watched him jump over a fence.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

You can probably get a rider for that on your insurance. Yeah, nobody's ever stolen a deer head from me, though.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

Yeah, they definitely haven't stolen from me.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

All right, let's get serious. Landy, I'll let you go with the first question.

SPEAKER_05 18:41

Yeah, Mark, I mean, you know, you're such a whitetail pro. I guess um for me, you know, I what is I was gonna ask, I think you've already alluded to this, the most important part of the year as far as it goes for you um, you know, planning your fall harvest.

SPEAKER_04 19:00

Boy, I would say every any month that it's not deer season, Lanny, um, there's something that like I love February and March because that's a time of the year where all the sign is laid out. So we do a lot of scouting in in February and March. And then of course, summers when we're putting those plans into play that we I'm a big note keeper in the blind. Like if I'm sitting there and I'm I realize something's out of place or access wasn't exactly what we wanted, waiting all, we'll talk back and forth and we're like next year we need to do X, Y, and Z. So we'll keep a list, and then when we get to the summer, oftentimes X, Y, and Z is getting is getting done. And then of course, you know, fall food plots are a huge, huge um opportunity for us to put that plot in a place that brings a plan together off of a deer that we're targeting that that coming fall. And we do that with regularity based on deer that we know we're gonna target, and and then we try to make sure we come up with a plan off of the pictures we've looked at over the last few years. What is he doing? When is he daylighting? Where is he daylighting, and what time of the year is it? So therefore, what product do we want to put in front of that deer, you know? And um, oftentimes that it comes down to to two main ingredients, and that's non-typical clover or our biologic deer radishes. I mean, the bulk of the deer we kill each and every year are on one of those two products.

SPEAKER_05 20:24

Wow. And are you are you actually moving your food plots? I mean, based on your information that you receive earlier?

SPEAKER_04 20:31

We will, or we'll swap it around. I I just I have a bottom plot that we've succeeded in several times through the years, and typically a lot of the betting occurs to the north, and then we'll work through and then they head off to the southwest. And this buck that I'm targeting in Missouri this year, I saw him enter to the to the southwest two or three times last year, right at right at dark, and we had other pictures showing that same direction of travel. So instead of putting the radishes, which I find to be most attractive to the time of the year that he's in there, which is gonna be late September through mid-October, historically that's that's when he's in there. And radishes are just death on him during that that period for us up here. Instead of putting them over there closer to his bed, that's all clover now. And I'm I'm putting it, I'm putting the radishes to the north in an effort to if that bedroom's gonna be in play and he does what he did last year many times, I think it will get him through and past us a little quicker. So we just try to break everything down and you know, see if it works. And I just got my first picture of him yesterday, so he's still alive. Um, and uh he's a he's a good one for the state of Missouri.

SPEAKER_05 21:40

So y'all will start just based on the information now, you'll start your food plotting plan, because y'all will be planting, I mean, I guess pretty soon. I know we sent some seed up there earlier.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

We're burning stuff down now chemically, and uh we're we're strictly no-till. We pretty much no-till about 90% of everything. There's a few places we have to disc up because it's it's in a bottom or whatever, but most everything is is no-till with our pH drills. So we've already burned everything once chemically. We'll burn it again, and then we'll start putting um stuff in the ground here in the next oh, 14 days or so, something like that.

SPEAKER_05 22:12

Are you clearing the the cover off the plot by burning or bush hogging anything or just spraying and planting right on top of it?

SPEAKER_04 22:18

We'll generally go bush hog it, chemically burn it, and then burn it again and then drill into it. And that that ends up with a fairly nice thatch as if you've strawed the ground. Yeah. You know, like it actually works quite well, you know, as long as we get the moisture. Yeah. Now now if it's really thick, there's a few places where we'll fire burn those if it's really thick, but we we know where most of our green fields are going to go, so we try to keep those clipped and then and then we go in and and chemically burn it, and then it's it's ready for the no-till. It works just like a charm. I mean, it really does work well. Are you drilling the clovers too? We are, yeah. We generally to establish a clover field, we'll take like green patch plus, add an additional seven or eight pounds of clover to the acre, and then plant that in the fall, and then again in in February, we'll go in or March and and uh frost seed it. And I mean, boom, that's it's game on. They look really good.

SPEAKER_05 23:12

Sorry for so many questions, but I'm gonna keep on asking.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Uh but that like that thatch layer he's talking about, uh, in the spring, it it may make your corn or whatever come up a little slower. It it keeps the ground wetter and colder, but in the heat of the summer, it's it's cooling it. And so you're saving all that moisture, and you know, you're uh it's not too hot for the for the seed to germinate.

SPEAKER_05 23:34

Yeah, we've definitely uh adopted more of the no-till method over the last few years after breaking 7,452 discs and tractors and everything else. It really makes a lot more sense.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah, it totally does.

SPEAKER_05 23:45

Lower breakdowns.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Dudley, you got a question? Yeah, um, you know, we were pre-gaming earlier and and kind of talking about cover. Um and you, you know, you meant just mentioned deer, you know, being on this bed or whatever. Have y'all done any tweaking, I guess, on your you know, your bedding cover over the years, you know, or have you made any recent changes to the the way you define like deer bedding or cover?

SPEAKER_04 24:10

For sure. The uh three things we focus on are timber stand improvement and select pockets close to our our food sources. And then one thing that we fight up here all the time is east the eastern red cedar. And I've got some areas on a couple farms where I'm actually going in and reducing the cover to try and enhance the activity in there because the eastern red cedars have gotten so congested, nothing's using them, you know. I mean, it's just a monoculture of trees that are 10 foot tall and you can't even walk through them because of those limbs. So I've got a uh a Vale X mulcher with a 335 P John Deere, and I I just I have terminated so many eastern red cedars in the last three years, it's you couldn't count them all. And and in addition to that. We're adding a lot of grasses in open areas. And I was talking a little bit before we started recording about that that prairie program that I'm working with the guys at Rosalind Energy to put on a brand new pasture farm that I have that connects to this farm that I live on. So through fire and some chemical burns and then some uh planting, we're re-establishing prairie across 150 open acres on this farm. So it's gonna be gonna be cool. So elimination of red cedars, adding prairie, TSI, those are three different enhancements we do on a pretty regular basis. And we we we do a lot of fire burns each spring as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Excellent. Yeah, we we did a podcast recently and discussed a lot of that what we call old field management. Um and it's just really intriguing.

SPEAKER_05 25:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Just so many different ways you can do it, you know, and you know, spot spray to get the species you want and you know, get rid of the stuff you don't want. It's funny, you know. In the South, uh we used to just call any of that stuff a cutover.

SPEAKER_05 25:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Set aside. And and now we've you know we've got different types of it defined.

SPEAKER_04 26:02

Absolutely. Up in this country, do you guys have remnant prairie in your we absolutely do. Yeah, so what we've been doing in certain areas is going in fire burning, chemical burning, and just see what comes up, you know. And then if we don't like it, we'll burn it at a different time of the year to see what crop comes up. It is amazing the seed beds that are out there across the landscape and what you can get. And it's it's pretty cool to see the stuff we're growing just with with fire and chemical without planting.

SPEAKER_05 26:30

And we're knowing too that I mean biologically, it's just as good for them as all the the hot crops, the soybeans in the corn and everything else.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

It's been that way for eons. Yeah, you know, and what we do around here a lot of uh we've got a lease down the road we've been tweaking out, and uh we're killing a lot of fescue. So chemically spraying the fescue and then running a fire through there. And like you said, it's amazing all the cool prairie plants that come up. And you know, that's deer, deer food cover, bugs, you know, pulp cover, bedding, you know, tons of bugs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

Butterflies, bees. Yes. I you can't believe how many bees and butterflies are on this prairie planting. It's um I mean, then it wasn't even this is remnant prairie, and we just burnt it. And you should see the flowers and plants, and it's just crazy. So it's great food for the for the poles, too.

SPEAKER_05 27:21

And we've learned more about the native plants as of late, too, just about how much more attractive they are to the to the insects. And just watching in my yard, I've you know, planted some, you know, I think I've got some small uh swamp milkweed right now, is really in bloom. And I've got one small swamp milkweed plant, and then there's my wife has several flowering plants all the way around it. There will not be a butterfly or bug on any of those potted plants she has, but then they will be absolutely covered up the small milkweed because it's a native plant.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

Oh, that's a cool observation, right there.

SPEAKER_05 27:55

That's awesome. I mean, literally, you know, a potted plant with more flowers on it beside them, but they won't touch it, they just go to the small plant. No, they just they don't recognize they can't, it's like they can't see it. Okay, let's get back to that. Okay, sorry, talk about deer, my bad.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

Mark, what do you think? What do you think is your strongest attribute? What makes you the deer hunter you are? Is it is it your your ability to just look at sign, read sign? Is it your ability to place cameras and understand where they need to be? Is it what what what would you say is your best quality?

SPEAKER_04 28:32

I think just the the interest in doing it, the passion. Like I think whether you um whether you're a baseball player or football player or deer hunter or musician, if you don't have a really deep drive to go do it to the level that you need to to succeed, you're probably not going to succeed. I mean, look at you know, some of the baseball players through history and football players and basketball players and track stars and and country singers, you know, you see the ones that fall off, and then you see the ones that that keep doing it, and they're just a deep passion, much like the three of you. I mean, would you be in this industry if you didn't have a passion for habitat and outdoors and and people and wild game and such? So I would say just the interest in doing it and the passion to do it is what's kept us afloat for 37 years. Terry and I are lucky to to have done this for so long. And uh without that passion and interest in in it, I don't I don't think we'd we we would have done it.

SPEAKER_06 29:28

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

You know, Lanny, I think he's he's he he's very modest because he's really good at a lot of things. But one of the things uh and I'd like to get him to maybe he's got some tips, but cameras are such a big part of what they do and how they uh identifying bucks to go after and to having a history with them. I I bet you he's got millions of photos saved. And if if he has a buck pull up, he's he can go back and look and say, Yeah, I had that deer two years ago. And uh but Mark, can you just talk a little bit about cameras, how important they are, and how maybe even you might have something you've learned lately that could a guy could benefit from?

SPEAKER_04 30:05

What one of the things that we do, and Terry and I both do this, is like you go through the fall, and and we really started doing this when there were no self-cameras, right? It was just non-cells, or we started with cameras back when there were film cameras. We also had the wildlife eye, and we would always keep a picture of every buck or every rack buck, and I've done that from 2007 to current day. I've got every picture of every rack buck that I've ever taken a picture of all in a computer. So then if you're trying to piece things together, a puzzle for a deer, you can go back and look to see if you can find that deer in previous years to see what it what he's doing. I was talking about that buck that I saw him coming out of that bedroom down there in Missouri. And then you learn that, but most importantly, we'll take the weather from Deercast or Deercast Past. We'll take the moon phase. You know, for instance, this year, the full moon is the latter part of September, the latter part of October, the latter part of November. So then I'll go back in years that have a similar moon and I'll look at the patterns and how the deer moved. For instance, this year it's October the 26th or 27th, I think is the moon that when it's full. And the last time that occurred, I think was 2023, 2015, 2018 had similar moons. So then I'll go back and look at my pictures from that year and find out when they daylighted the most, and then look at the weather from Deercast Past, and then try to put all those pieces of the puzzle together and you don't go, you know what? This farm was red hot that year with that full moon during this particular time of the year, whether that be September or October. It really does help you track the patterns of the overall daylight activity, whether it's influenced by the dark of the moon in your area or the full moon or whatever it is, it really does help you understand when they might daylight this coming season. So I kind of get into that type of stuff. It's it's it's a it's a deeper dive into photo analytics, but I I look at a lot of photos each year. I've probably looked at close to two million this year already.

SPEAKER_05 32:09

That's amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

I keep I keep all those in my files, and then I just Tracy gets so mad at me because I just sit there and stare at that computer day in and day out. But that's how we're killing them, and we've been killing them that way for quite a little while. It's how we learn DeerCast and how we put the algorithm together on their movement habits. So it really does work. They're patternable. It just takes a lot of time and a lot of commitment to do it. But you can you can flat kill one based off of past years history and past year's moons and weather patterns and all that. You put it all together and you come up with a game plan. I put a lot of things in baseball analogies, but it's no different than a pitching uh coach getting a plan together for whatever team they're they're facing and then executing that plan with that pitcher. If you can execute those pitches, you can you can shut them out, or perhaps a no-hitter or or you know, a one-run game or something like that. So the those who are most prepared do do the best.

SPEAKER_05 36:41

So obviously record keeping's huge for you. Um, and through those years, no doubt about it. Good old data. Yeah, good old data. I can't even remember the pictures I had last week. Once less than back in 2015. And I I gotta say this. So I mean, I I mean, obviously the lot that you talked about was on moon phase. So you are are you a believer that moon phase is is a uh a big effector of deer movement?

SPEAKER_04 37:03

Huge. It's absolutely huge. Weather's number one, moon is probably number two. Well, rut rut influence would probably be number two, but month in and month out, that moon is everything to us. We went back through our you know, analytics at Drury Outdoors. We've probably killed a thousand mature deer in the last 30 plus years at Drury Outdoors, maybe more. And it was like it was like 78 or 82 percent or something were killed within five days of the full moon. I mean, it is we just kill them left and right up here in and around that full moon, just before or just after.

SPEAKER_05 37:36

Have you seen some of the research that's come out that that would say that the moon phase doesn't affect deer movement?

SPEAKER_04 37:43

Yeah, I've also seen research that says weather doesn't affect their movement.

SPEAKER_05 37:50

This might be my favorite podcast ever, Bobby, right here.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

You know, he's been collecting, they have been collecting data for years.

SPEAKER_05 37:58

Yes, and this snapshot they're looking at is what for a couple years maybe?

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Could possibly more be more data than like a hundred radio collared deer.

SPEAKER_05 38:06

Right, I think so too. This is great.

SPEAKER_04 38:09

I personally believe it is. I mean, we've looked at millions of pictures over the last 20 years specifically. Like I said, I have every rack buck from 07 through current day in a program, and it you they if they say moon doesn't affect it, weather doesn't affect it, you need to see who the who the source is there. I mean, um I just I just don't understand it. Makes me scratch my head.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Okay, Lenny, don't stir the pot. Why we got his answer to the phone.

SPEAKER_03 38:36

This is what this podcast is all about, you know? You're stirring the pot. So, Mark, let me ask this and help me out with this, okay? So I'm a guy who's getting a little older, and I finally was able to buy a little farm, and it's not huge, and I have to really watch the wind. You know, I mean, I I can't, if the wind is not right, I just can't go in there. And I finally figured out I could get one of these shooting houses with windows, and I can close these windows, and it can help me on a on a wind that's not ideal. I might could make it work on a less than ideal wind. And these guys, and I'm bow hunting now, and these guys are giving me a lot of grief for doing that. And I see you guys in in box blinds a lot bow hunting these days. What do you say to these guys that give you a little grief about hunting out of a shooting house?

SPEAKER_04 39:25

Well, get used to it because we're not we're not changing. I mean, um there is nothing more effective at helping reduce your scent profile than uh than a blind with the windows closed. Now, you've got to handle the heat if you're gonna do it. I mean, that's that's the biggest detriment to that, is it takes your hearing out and it also takes the temperature up 20 or 30 degrees every single day. And it's amazing how hot those blinds can be. Um, but boy, is it effective when it comes to reducing noise, reducing scent, reducing visual, and just not letting the deer know you're there. So we started hunting out of them, oh gosh, real heavily about maybe 15 years ago. And um now we're to the point where I I don't, I don't, I can't remember the last, well, very few deer out of a tree stand recently. Certainly most are out of a blind. And we just have a lot of a lot of luck, luck out of them. And the other thing I like about it is you can put it exactly where you need it, not oh, I'm in this tree, but I'm 60, 70 yards off the movement. And it it really helps us here in our country because our country is is rolling everywhere. There's these little hills, you know. And if you're in the wrong little spot on that, in that terrain, you're not going to kill that deer. And it allows us to watch a particular piece of dirt and then go right there's where we need to be, and then we can enhance that with a little bit of food and get them a little bit closer. And that's really the our equation. Find the bedroom, find the spot, plant to the spot, and then pick your ingress and egress, and and just be disciplined on when you go in there as far as time of the year and wind direction and wind speed.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

And that, you know, it makes a lot of sense, especially like on a smaller place, is uh you can hunt it a little bit more. Yeah. Um, and not have to worry about boogering the deer up as much.

SPEAKER_03 41:17

So, Mark, have you had a lot of experiences where like you look over at Wade and go, look, when I open this window, we got three seconds to get something done because this the way this wind's going. I bet Mark don't go in there. I don't think he's got a well a deer can show up on where you least expected.

SPEAKER_04 41:33

No, better yet, I'm gonna come to full draw. You open the window and get out of the way. Yeah. I killed I killed a deer in Missouri about three seasons ago that was an absolute ghost. We had pictures of him, I believe he was seven or eight years old, and he he we ended up going like 191. It's the biggest deer we've ever killed off the Missouri farm, and and we knew the wind was wrong, but we also knew where we needed to be. It was late October. We felt like he was going to daylight. He did, and he walked straight to the downwind side of that blind, and we had just, I mean, seconds, but we got him killed. And luckily I hit him good and he ran about 60 or 70 yards. That was the first time either of us had ever seen him during daylight, and we hunted that deer relentlessly for three years in a row. That was the first time we ever saw it, and we got him killed. And if we weren't, if we weren't in blind, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have killed him, you know. So it's as simple as that. I mean, um, some people don't like it, but I I prefer it. It's my preferred method as far as as far as hunting them.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Yeah, the the hearing part is the is the most.

SPEAKER_03 42:42

I mean, it it is. It takes you lose something there, but you can you gain so much more. And I I promise you on the small track, it it's a it's a big help. Have you got a window unit in yours? I don't have a window unit in there. No, I've I've I've uh you know it's it's mine's in the shade, and it's not it's not as bad. A lot of marks sitting just right out of the sun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:04

It's those west facing um blinds for a west wind that are just brutal because you're on the east side of the field of an evening and you're gonna burn up, man. I I know I finally got some of those little thermometers because Koondog and I were sitting there last year, just I mean, heat exhaust and we were so hot and we were just ringing wet with sweat and we were like, how hot do you think it is in here? And I know it had to be 110, 115. It was it was ridiculous. So I got some thermometers I'm gonna carry with me this year and put them in some blinds to see how hot it is. But it's uh it's a brutal way to go, especially in the early season. Now, the later season, it's great, man. You know, it'll it'll warm you up and keep you hunting when you might might have froze out in a tree. But that early season, boy, she's brutal. Those temperatures are nuts. I actually built a uh cooler and put two holes in the lid, and then I have one fan, these battery-operated fans blowing into the cooler, and then two blowing out, and then we'll take 40 pounds of ice and put it in there, and we could drop the temperature probably about 20 degrees in a blind, provided that we have uh really thick window coverings, like those blackout curtains, you know. Yeah, so we we killed a big deer last year in Missouri. We killed two big deer um on the same bottom field, and that blind is an oven, but we were able to get it down to where it was tolerable. It was still warm, but it was much better than without it.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Yeah, it's kind of like those evaporative coolers you see on the sideline at the football game. Yeah, I've seen people build monocoolers.

SPEAKER_05 44:40

That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

It is, it definitely helped, but yeah, I I I like that kind of blinds, but a lot of people don't care for it. But I and I understand that. That's that's fair.

SPEAKER_03 44:50

Yeah. And they do seem to be growing in popularity, though. There's a lot of companies making them really good ones. A lot of them.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

Oh, they're everywhere up here, man. The landscape is littered with them.

SPEAKER_05 45:00

Tractor supply, you go buy, it's got them in the parking lot, every hardware store, in your local, you know, feed and seed store, they've got a lot of them. A lot of people manufacture them now. Yeah, the quality stuff. They're also a lot safer.

SPEAKER_03 45:11

Well, and if you got kids, it's a great way for them to they can be involved without spooking stuff and can you kind of get the lay of the land of what well, here's what we're doing and why we're doing it.

SPEAKER_05 45:21

Yeah, making it more comfortable, comfortable for them in the winter, especially like he was saying.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

Yeah. In our specific case, we sit every day for four straight months. So it is nice to be able to sit there and maybe have a little conversation with whomever you're filming with that day, and it does help the season pass a little faster, too. So there is a benefit from that socially, you know. Um, but I, you know, I still enjoy, you know, not sitting in a blind. We've got a bunch of spots down in Texas that have tree stands in them, and I I enjoy that just as much. I mean, as long as I'm out there, I'm happy. If I'm if I'm seeing deer, it's it's a good day.

SPEAKER_05 45:54

That's right. And y'all hunt every day, every day possible, it sounds like.

SPEAKER_04 45:59

Yeah, with the exception of Thanksgiving and Christmas, or if it's a really hot day in the rut, or you know, a low pressure, warm day, or heavy rain, we might, we might skip a day, but we probably wouldn't miss maybe six, eight days the whole fall, something like that. So it's a it's it's a grind. I mean, it's it's it's every day, 13, 14 hours a day, every day, seven days a week for four months for the most part.

SPEAKER_05 46:24

Well, there's another reason he's hugely successful.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

I'll say uh what about morning versus afternoon? Ah, the classic question.

SPEAKER_04 46:33

I kill 90% of our deer in the afternoon. Are you hunting the morning still? We do hunt mornings during certain times of the year, certainly. You know, when you get into um oh call it October 26th or 27th, all the way through Thanksgiving. That month we'll hunt every one of those mornings. When we're down in Texas there in early December, we're hunting mornings. But like September and December, January around here, early October, it's an afternoon game for us. I mean, we don't see a lot of daylight activity, and they're just not moving far enough for you to be able to make a play to get between bed and food. And all of our spots are so tucked into the bedrooms, like there's not a lot of leeway there. So it's a much safer bet to go in of an afternoon for a hunt than it is of a morning. And we've we've been, you know, pretty effective with that that technique.

SPEAKER_05 47:25

How early do you go in in the afternoons?

SPEAKER_04 47:28

Um, you know, early season, Lanny, we're probably out there. If it's getting dark at eight, we're probably in the blind by five. But during the rut, you know, boy, we're we might get in there at 12:30, 1 o'clock, something like that. Um we had a hunt this past fall in December, and we had a deer that a field that was showing up real early, that just deer were coming out early. And it was like December to maybe 13th or 14th or 15th, and we went in at noon and um killed the deer at like 2 30 or 3 o'clock or something already, which is very, very early for that time of the year around here, but it was an interior field. We knew we had to get there early. We got there at noon. Luckily, they started showing up right after that, and then we killed like 163-inch 10-point at three o'clock. So it just depends on the. I've got other spots where you could walk out there 30 minutes before daylight and catch all the movement. You know, I got one spot where everything happens right at dark because the bed's a little further away. So it really depends how close you are to the bedroom.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

Scraping branches that seem to be uh we we see a lot of guys using them, see some of your crew using them. And would you explain what the thought process is there and how effective they might be?

SPEAKER_04 48:46

You know, it's kind of like fish destructure in a in a lake or a pond. I think if you've got a spot or a food plot and you're trying to get one within bow range, if you give them a little something to pull their attention over there, my personal um preference on doing it is to take a T-post, uh, a taller T-post, drive it in sturdy, and then cut a pin oak that's uh maybe the the base is about the size of your forearm or your you know or your ankle or something, and then wire that to that T-post. And uh, you know, you want one with really long branches. And then you want those branches kind of facing your hunting position, if you will, so that the deer comes up and approaches it. He's giving you a quarter away to broadside type shot. We like to put those upwind at like 25, 30 yards. And if it's a really big open field, we might put three of them out there to try and draw attention to. And a lot of times the does and little ones will come over there and play with them, and then the buck will come and check the doe. So it doesn't always work, but it is a reason for a deer to come a little bit closer to your position with that with that scrape tree out there. And there's better times of the year, late October, they are death, early November, they're death, and then they get popular again in and around Thanksgiving for us, and then then it dies off. December, they don't they don't hit them nearly as much around here, but they sure hit them in the in the early early part of the season. October, man. They're magic in October.

SPEAKER_05 50:14

Very interesting what he was saying about positioning the the limbs to give you the good shot. So just you know how never would have thought about that one.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

You know how they stick their head up and just kind of show all their vitals that that would be the perfect scenario.

SPEAKER_03 50:27

So let's think about this for a second. Help us analyze this, Mark. You're saying they're Murder in uh you're saying they're great in October, and your rut is is mid-November, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_04 50:38

Yeah, it's the pre-rut where they're hitting them.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

Yeah. So for us, it would be November.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Yeah, it'd be probably early Detroit. Traditional time that deer look at scrapes.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

Right.

SPEAKER_04 50:48

Yeah, it's whenever the scrapes are are on fire, that's when you you would probably see the most success there. Do you set them all up preseason? We set a bunch up last week on our clover field, so they're already there. They're getting used to them. And you just cut the tree and it'd hold its leaves for pretty much for the whole fall. Pin oaks are the best, or some little oak tree work works the best.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Yeah, usually when you you know you cut a branch on a tree that still has green leaves, they kind of die and stick to the branch.

SPEAKER_05 51:14

Instead of sloughing off. They just stay there. It's called Marquescence. I thought that's didn't you think it was Marquescent? It starts with Mark. How about that? Look at there.

SPEAKER_03 51:23

Marquescents. Mark, this this time of year, uh, so are you know, bow season's really not that far away. Are you shooting your bow every day?

SPEAKER_04 51:32

I haven't been so much this year. Um, only because I've I've been nursing a couple injuries, so but I'm I'm getting ready to start, certainly. But what I do do is a lot of free weights and um just different um exercises to try and make sure that I'm I'm in good shape when I do start shooting it. But it's it's that time of the year. But I I don't shoot a lot. Um I did when I was younger, but I've got a really bad left shoulder, so I don't shoot nearly as much, but I try to make sure when I do practice, I'm practicing effectively. So um and I I'm just I'm not one that shoots like every single day. I will when the season gets here. I take batting practice every day, especially if I'm hunting that day. I'm dad gonna sure gonna shoot the days that I hunt. Um, so I I I want to I want to make sure I'm in tune and ready to go.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

Batting practice. He loves basing. He loves he does love some baseball. Yeah, he does. So the St. Louis Carl. I love bass.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

He loves baseball. You're so now you're a little further away to be able to attend the home games. That's gotta be kind of rough on you.

SPEAKER_04 52:37

Uh it's not too bad. I got the MLB packets, so I watch them when I when I want to. And we're in a rebuild year, but they're still a pretty good team this year, even through the rebuild. We got some great young talent, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_05 52:49

Well, you know, the the baseball aficionado I am, you know what I mean? Uh just getting exposed to it. I it's interesting, you know, Mark, you're you're such a fan and a student of baseball. My limited exposure to me has to baseball has taught me one thing. There is a whole lot of strategy in it. I mean, good grief, from the players to when to use, who, where, depending on just what he was talking about before, which to me translates to exactly what he's talking about uh about hunting, even the record keeping, right?

unknown 53:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:19

All of it. All of it. There's a lot of analytics in it, you know, and it's about repetitive things happening over and over, you know.

SPEAKER_05 53:27

Like that moon phase, Bobby.

SPEAKER_03 53:29

Yeah, but you're stirring Bobby Lenny. What?

SPEAKER_05 53:32

Why don't you want to talk about the moon?

SPEAKER_03 53:34

Mark, right now I'm getting a lot of photos with three and four and five bucks in them. You know, these bachelor backs.

SPEAKER_05 53:41

They they look like they're all buddies. And that picture you showed me of that big deer didn't was just a single deer. Yeah. Oh, I wasn't supposed to bring that up.

SPEAKER_03 53:50

So the uh but uh you know, uh Mark, do you kind of plan around, okay, look, as long as they're in velvet, this is gonna be their pattern, knowing that when that velvet comes off, things are gonna change. And does that does that factor into your decision-making process?

SPEAKER_04 54:10

Well, to some degree, I mean, during the summer, we take summer surveys with our cameras, just trying to figure out who's still alive, who might have gotten killed in the offseason or died of EHD or got killed by a neighbor because we lost them last year. So we're taking summer survey pictures. And then we get into the the season. Missouri opens September 15th, Iowa opens October the first, and by then they've they've shed their velvet, and those bachelor groups might still kind of be loosely held together their early few weeks of the season, but they're starting to do their own things, and then you know, just days or weeks after that, they you know, they're they're at war with each other. So, but they're still loosely in bachelor groups when we first start hunting them. So, yeah, we definitely pay attention to it. But what I have found is where they summer isn't necessarily always where they're going to be during the early part of the season. Around here, it's all about what grain is planted. You know, a standing cornfield or a standing bean field might have that bachelor group, you know, sucked into it during the summer. And then about the time everything turns brown with the corn and the beans defoliate, that's where our biologic food plots. We just we just have such success there in the early part of the season. I mean, we we just have a great track record in late September and on through October. Those are the two months where we kill the bulk of our deer anymore. It's not the rut for us, it's it's on food early.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

Uh, so to continue on what you were just hitting on, uh, you've got a lot of camera data from years and years. What would you say? Uh how many deer, how many bucks disappear when they shed velvet and come back, you know, towards the end of the rut or after the rut compared to the guys that stay around?

SPEAKER_04 55:53

Maybe a third of them, roughly.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

That's a lot. And that's so frustrating. Yeah. You know, you it may be your best deer, and it just disappears.

SPEAKER_04 56:02

That's home range, but conversely, one can show up too. You know, that happens a lot too. It's not like it's just your the deer you're monitoring that are doing that, it's the whole herd doing that. I mean, that's just their natural progression. So um I I would say about a third of them do that, maybe a third to a half. It dep it also depends on what type of terrain you're in. If you're in a river bottom where all the cover is is lateral, then it's a lot more that are moving up and down that river. However, if it it's if it's checkerboarded like much of southern Iowa is, it's not quite as as severe. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 56:36

Never thought about that either.

SPEAKER_04 56:38

Golly.

SPEAKER_05 56:38

Yeah. It it really hurts your feelings, so it's definitely terrain dependent. Yeah, and him describing that specifically cover dependent. Right, yeah. When you said lateral, I mean, of course.

SPEAKER_01 56:50

Oh, well, you've been complaining about our lease uh the last couple weeks and how we don't have any deer, but I mean it's surrounded by soybeans.

SPEAKER_05 56:59

They're gonna show up. Yeah, it is surrounded by soybeans.

SPEAKER_04 57:02

Now, do you guys get to put minerals or um feed out? Like we we can't here in in Missouri because of CWD Iowa, we can, but you can't put minerals out in Iowa, or you can put minerals out in Iowa, but they're considered bait. Do you guys get to do that for summer surveys?

SPEAKER_01 57:19

We do. Yeah, the bio rocks are the only stipulation is if you put out feed or bait, it has to be like above ground. It has to come out of a spin cast feeder or just you know, one of those standing feeders. Or a cast. It can't be put on the ground.

SPEAKER_05 57:33

Yeah, you can't feed on the ground at all. You can cover trial for spin cast, but we can put salt out.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

You can put salt on the ground.

SPEAKER_05 57:39

You can put salt on the ground.

SPEAKER_04 57:41

Isn't it interesting how each state's approach to different feeding and CWD just differs so greatly?

SPEAKER_05 57:48

Very interesting. That's very interesting. Nobody knows. That's what it comes down to. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 57:55

Yeah. It's it's kind of frustrating and like being in the industry and trying to sell product. It's you've got to keep up with what every state's saying they can and can't you can't do that.

SPEAKER_05 58:04

So even even within the state, the counties, you know, because if you're a you know a county here, you know, if it's in a CWD zone, then you've got you know different regulations.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

You know, and if you don't have a really good summer food plot like some you know, beans or deer vetch or something, you know, you we rely on those salt licks on that bio rock for inventory for sure. So, Mark, what are you doing where you can't put any salt out?

SPEAKER_04 58:27

I put my cameras out extra early in Missouri because I can't put any any minerals out because we're in a CWD county. I can't feed them, I can't do anything. So I'm just putting them in pinch points and and areas that we've had good luck in in the past. Um in Iowa, we can put feed out, so we'll do uh one round or two rounds of some sort of feed in front of the camera in five or six steps and and get an inventory that way, but not uh we don't leave it out there very long. But you can put minerals out in Iowa, but then if they create a spot, the whole farm's considered baited, like the whole farm is considered baited. So I don't, I don't uh I just don't don't do the mineral thing because of that.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

Wow. Well you gotta be safe on on the rules for sure. You gotta follow the rules. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 59:14

It's uh that's just how it is. And every state's a little bit different. Alabama's different than Mississippi in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_05 59:20

Right. And those those state and local, you know, um habitat resources, whatever the agency is, I mean, they're they're studying, you know, those local areas and more reason than and more tighter areas.

SPEAKER_03 59:29

So have y'all been I noticed there was Mark, I bet you noticed this. There was a statistic that came out the other day that um over the last five years, the states that have only allowed a hunter one buck, those states have started rising up in the ri boon and crockett numbers of uh of deer killed. Well, that seems to make sense.

SPEAKER_04 59:52

It it does. Have you heard that, Mark? And I have seen some of that data for sure. And there's there's um some powers that be that are pushing for a one buck state here in Iowa, um, which Iowa's been a two buck state forever, and it's done quite quite well, and landowners get to kill three bucks in the state of Iowa. But I asked a guy the other day, I said, how many people in the state kill their second buck? And it's only like five percent. I said, How many people kill their third buck? And it was like 50 people throughout the whole state that had so I don't know what it would necessarily remedy here, although I will say this our numbers are lower than normal because of the fact that EHD has been so rampant to uh 2025, 24, 23, 22, those four years, and we're in conditions now again this year where it's probably going to happen. Our numbers are quite low here uh comparatively. So I think they probably do deserve a break, but I don't know that going to a uh one one buck uh per hunter would would change things dramatically here. Um but um but I I have some of the data you guys are are talking about, and I think it those states I think you could do other things like pull the pull the gun season out of the rut. I think that would help you a great deal. Um start managing like they do in the state of Texas, where you're managing either counties or or individual conglomerates, so that you're actually doing that resident herd the best job you can do, because that one size fits all just never seems to work very well in in wildlife, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

That that stat with uh about deer, you know, the one buck state versus two or three is similar with turkeys. You know, a lot of people uh you know, Mississippi has a three bird limit, but a lot of people only kill one turkey and then start fishing. So it's it's not uh you know statistically significant with that, you know, that higher rate.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:53

Yeah, well, I can tell you, you know, like in Mississippi and Alabama, we have so many deer. Yeah, deer is through the roof. Yeah, we we need to kill more than I believe so than what they're I mean if you guys need to need to shoot their bucks in their does. Their does.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:11

Yeah, yeah. I need to do a better job of shooting does for sure. Yeah, you do. How long has it been since you killed a doe? Well, I probably killed one last year, I think. Did you? I think so. I'm impressed. I say, Mark, going back to to EHD and and I mean you've been obviously the records you keep and the the track, I mean you just mentioned five years of of dealing with it in a row. I mean, what are your your kind of expectations? Are you and your management plan or are you planning on losing deer every year?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:36

Well, I used to not, but I do that I do anymore, and I really reduced our guest load this particular year. Like I just told everybody, I was like, don't put in. Or if you do put in for a point, because I just don't think we're gonna have them. I think we'll still have a good year, uh, but I don't think we're gonna have a historical great year on the farms here in Iowa. I mean, we've got some nice deer, but nothing like it was six, seven years ago. I mean, it is just not the same. They're they're just not here. I mean, we've lost so many bucks the last few years, and it's that way all across Southern Iowa. Everybody you talk to is saying the same thing. They've just they're just not here. They've they've died.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:15

Are you thinking that 25% uh of your bucks, or is it even more than that?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:20

I think it'd be closer to 70 in the last five years. Oh man. I would say we have about 30% of the deer that we had five years ago.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:31

Wow. That's that's staggering. I wasn't expecting that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:36

You know, you would think, I mean, this has been going on what, 20 years where it's or fit even 15 years where it's been pretty bad. With these deer that are making it, you would think they would start developing some tolerance or resistance to it by now.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:52

I was talking to a guy at the shot show about 10 years ago, and he was a biologist, and I can't remember his name, but he was telling me it was like, he goes, we're starting to see EHD outbreaks in parts of the country that haven't had them historically because there's some new variants coming from South America. And he goes, It's it's going to take decades, perhaps centuries, for them to re-establish an immunity because these variants are so new to the species. So, and sure enough, since he said that, man, I mean, we've I've seen die-off after die-off, and you hear more about it through social media and talking to other hunters. They seem to be dying all across the country, you know, at a much greater rate than they used to. So his words have rang true since since I had that conversation with him.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:37

Wow. Yeah, we get it down here. You see the sloughed hooves, but it seems like the majority of the deer actually, you know, survive it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:45

We've not reached that point yet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:50

That's a shame. 70% of your hurt. Uh, that just hurts me.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:54

Yeah. I know it hurts him. Richie, why don't we ask Mark a his trivia question? Mark, we prepared a trivia question just for you and your love of the St. Louis Cardinals. Oh. And I've, Mark, I've got an ask. Uh, we've got a young man over here, Richie. Say hello, Richie. Hello, Richie. So Richie, Richie grew up, his dream in life was to be a Cardinal play-by-play announcer. That was his dream. Is there a string you could pull that he could just maybe go sit in the booth and watch those guys?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:28

I think I can make pull that. We've had a great, great run with some phenomenal announcers announcing those cardinal games. One of my first memories in life is sitting, listening to an AM radio, 1120, KMOX, listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon call games with thunder, thunder interfering with the signal to where it would. It's one of my first memories in life. I might have been four or five or something like that. But I used to listen to every game at night. I had this little radio that I had to tune in, and um I could, you know, I literally grew up listening to Mike Shannon and Jack Buck.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:05

Yeah, Jack Buck's a legend in the broadcasting realm. And uh, you listen to his old games back in the day. Go crazy, folks.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:11

Ozzie Smith hit a home run from the left side of the plate in the playoffs against Neiden Fuhrer of the Dodgers, and Jack made that famous call.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:19

The wizard.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

Man, I miss watching him do flips and stuff.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:24

Oh, Ozzie Smith. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:26

I do remember that guy.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:27

Yeah, I wanted to be a broadcaster in the Cardinals, and now I ended up here.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:30

Boom! I mean, here's what I thought that was an upgrade. Well, is that not an upgrade?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:38

We also need to get Mark down here for a spring baseball game for the booty noble field.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:44

That'd be great. Maybe Bobby could take him turkey hunting. Mark doesn't have time for that. The best college already.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:52

Look, the jury offices is littered with Cardinal jerseys, bats, balls. You really wouldn't even know it was a hunting organization going on right there. Everything is the St. Louis Cardinals hanging on the walls.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:07

We do love our birds.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:08

Yeah, they've got stadium seats from when they renovated. I mean, these guys are into it. Richie, this was my best shot to get you into the city. All right, Mark, on a side note, Richie is the voice of the Caledonia, is it the Cavaliers?

SPEAKER_07 1:07:25

It's the Cavaliers, not the it's not the Confederates anymore. We had to change, but it's the Cavaliers.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:31

He's the voice of. So if you were ever in Caledonia, Mississippi at a football game over here. Can you give us like a brief, your your little spiel, your little saying?

SPEAKER_07 1:07:41

Well, no, it's just, you know, like I said, I do PA, but I I enjoy I do the high school football and now the Pee-Wee football games.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:47

There you go. And in your in your spare time, gamekeeping.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:52

Producer extraordinaire. All right, Mark, we got a question for you. Uh, if you answer this question, the world will be so impressed.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:59

Is it a hard one?

SPEAKER_07 1:08:00

Well, as first, you know, I know we're it's taking a little bit to get into this trivia question, but so what could be better, Mark, than watching the game at Bush Stadium as the Cardinals are making a run for the wild card race and having a can of bold peanuts right there with you.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:15

Oh man. We love bold peanuts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

Yeah, that's good. Look at Mark.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:21

Trivia is brought to us today by our buddies at the Peanut Patch. We love those bold peanuts. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. So we had a listener left a review on Spotify, Taylor, listening to episode number 457, Talking Ducks with James Calicut. Oh, yeah. Love to hear about the different natives ducks prefer. Hope to look and identify more the next time I'm scouting public.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:41

There you go.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:42

Love it.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:43

Love it.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:43

So I take the last two weeks.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:45

This, I mean, I'm we've been talking about natives for a while, but man, it's a lot to it.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:49

Yeah, it is. Yep. All right, so here's our trivia. Enough Slaughter's game-winning mad dash from first to home to score the winning run in the 1946 World Series for the Cardinals ranks as an exciting, memorable moment. What team did the Cardinals beat in the World Series in 1946? Bobby. That was before he was born.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:15

Well no, but he's a fan.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:16

He may know the answer.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:18

I'll be honest, I didn't I didn't quite know this one either.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:20

Are you a Cardinals fan? Yeah. Oh, my bad, Rich.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:24

Um I want to say they beat the Red Sox, but I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:29

He knew that why did you even doubt?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:33

Why did we even doubt it?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:34

We didn't doubt it. Yeah, I started to ask what was the first pitch.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:39

Oh, that would have been fastball.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:41

I mean, what would you say?

SPEAKER_07 1:09:43

Slaughter's mad dash is uh remembered for uh he started on first, ran all the way around, ran through the uh third base coach, stop signal, and ran all the way home and was the winning run.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:53

So the third base coach tried to stop him, yeah, and he kept on trucking. He kept on I like this guy. What's his name? Enos Slaughter. Enus Slaughter.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:02

Enus Slaughter.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:04

I bet that third case came out. I bet he was mad for a minute and he was like, You're the man.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:09

No, don't. Yes, Mark, we love you guys. Matt, up the he uh uh the 100% wild podcast, he looks like he has a lot of fun with that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:20

Absolutely. He and Tim do a super good job with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:23

Yeah, yeah. They wrangle you in there very often.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:27

Um, usually a couple episodes a year, maybe one deer, one turkey, something like that. They they try to get you know different guests in to do it and whatnot, much like you guys do. So it's always fun to visit with those guys, though. It's it's fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

Yeah, I enjoy listening to it.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:41

Yeah, be sure and check it out and follow it if you or subscribe or whatever you need to do.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:45

What about Taylor? How's she doing? She's doing great. She's wide open. She's got a three-year-old, and um we spend as much time as we can with them. They came in for vacation for a week and just had a blast with her and Austin and Maverick, but Taylor's doing good.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:00

Does she worry you and say, like, Dad, have you found a look? I really like to kill a big nine. Is she worrying you about stuff like that?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:08

No, not at all. I mean, we have a shared album between myself, Wade, Christian, Taylor, Koondog, and we'll put all the all the bucks in a shared album. So we'll check the cameras, and then, you know, that way we can all talk about which buck is what. And she, you know, she just looks through there like all of us do. And and um, you know, when she's in, she helps with the cameras or on the farm or whatever it is. And she's she's pretty insightful. Like, I'll tell you what she is. She's really good at interpreting a hit and understanding how long to wait when it comes to tracking. Like we all, when we get a hit, we'll send it to Taylor and get her opinion, just like if I was sending it to Terry or Matt, or she's like a really good tracker.

unknown 1:11:51

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:52

Cool. Well, if you hit if she hit one this year, you should send it to Taylor.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:56

If I yeah, well, I I gotta shoot at one to hit one. I'm still in full guide mode over here. Yeah, you are. Have you have you not found a buck for Jesse yet? Uh oh, I think you did. You showed it to me. I don't think so. I'm on I showed it to her, so she's really excited about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:11

I'm gonna show that to her.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:13

Oh my goodness. Mark, is there anything else going on in your world we need to be aware of?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:19

Not that I can think of. We've covered quite a bit. I just appreciate you guys and and love all of you, that's for sure. I mean, it's been uh been a wonderful run. We started in '89, and here we are, still still sitting here talking. And it's like family. And I love being on. You guys are my favorite podcast. You really are.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:36

Well, thank you. Well, how about that? You know, we don't get complimented very chill bones. Yeah, no, no doubt about it. It is so cool for us to. I mean, honestly, we've been talking about you know deer and whitetails and wildlife for a long time now. So quite a blessing. Blessing to know you, Mark, and and what you've done for this brand and place, too. That shirt Mark's got on, he probably got it in 1989. If we tell you, he probably got that out of Toxie's closet before we started raiding it.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:00

I don't know. Matt sent it to me. It's a uh no, that's a that's a more newer one. Yeah. Mark, were you one of the twenty five?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:08

I I'm gonna guess, you you're like me, that through the years, I have given away so much camo. I never thought that vintage camo would be a thing. And you know, I'd go on a hunting trip somewhere and give them your jacket. You'd give them a your coat or whatever, and uh I bet you were just like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:24

There's no limit to what we've given away. I mean, I don't know, I'd much rather be a giver than a taker. So I'm I'm always giving giving stuff or things or one of the things about what we do is we get a lot of product because of the shows and the online stuff that we do and the social media. So like it's it's great to give something that we know we're not gonna be able to use to someone that that could use it. So it's it's uh piles of it. I don't have any of my original stuff. I wish I did, Bobby. I wish I'd have kept some of that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:56

Yeah, we're the same way. Yeah, exactly. And I'll tell you another thing the juries do. They're big supporters of the catch a dream. And every year they go the ninth uh mile to make some young person have a great experience. Yes, they do. And uh, Mark and Terry and his whole team, they are so good at that.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:13

Yeah, they roll out the red carpet for him, they really do. And I I gotta say, you know, if if I was a catch a dream recipient, I would definitely choose to go with Mark.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:23

You know, I don't have anything negative to say about Mark and Terry. Although my phone doesn't ring much in October and November.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:29

I always sometimes they're busy. Speaking of catch a dream, Foxhole shootout's right around the corner. It won't be long.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:35

That's right. I was gonna say text me in October between about oh two hours before sunset and sunset, and I'll be on my phone sitting in a blind somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:44

So feel feel free. He'll send you a photo to make you jealous.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:49

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:49

Yeah, antler envy. I'm nothing like it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:51

All right, guys. This has been a lot of fun. We absolutely always enjoy talking to Mark, and we need to we need to reach out to Terry and see if we can get him. Yes. Yes, sir. Love to pick on Terry. So all right, Mark, thank you. Richie, I did my best. I sure do appreciate that, Bobby. All right, Landon, guys, if you enjoyed the show, we sure would like you to give us a positive review.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:12

And uh follow us, subscribe, what all the good stuff is, please.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:16

Yeah, we have a lot of fun putting this together.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:18

Yeah, and don't forget about the Game Keeper giveaway. You win that Rambo e-bike if you get signed up for it. So that's a powerful little bike. Yeah, be quiet when you're slipping in there. Yep. All right, why don't you say goodbye, Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Richie.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:32

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Game Keeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Game Keeper Farming for Wildlife magazine, and don't miss the Macio Properties Fistful of Dirt podcast with my good buddy, Ronnie Gus Strickland.