00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number one and today on the show, we are joined by Doug Dern, a hunter and manager from southwest Wisconsin, and we're discussing the grim reality of c w D arriving on your property and what to do next. All right, folks, welcome to the Wired Hunt Podcast, brought to you by six of Gear and welcome to two thousand eighteen. Um, it's a new year. I'm excited about that, and we have a great guest today, but we have a crappy topic. Um. On the positive side of things, We're gonna be joined here shortly by my friend Doug Durham, and Doug's a serious whitetail hunter. He is a land manager and consultant from the Driftless region of southwestern Wisconsin. UM. You might know him from his appearances on Steve Ronnella's Meat Eater TV show and podcasts, and that's actually how I met Doug. I met him through Steve Um when we all traveled to Alaska together. This past September on that caribou hunt that I've talked about here on the show in the past. UM So that was an awesome trip. Well, definitely have talked to Doug a little bit about that. UM. But Doug takes his management of his family farm in Wisconsin very very seriously. And that's really why I wanted to have him on the show here today, because from a deer hunting standpoint, in a habitat standpoint, UM, he's just super serious about what he's doing on this property. UM. So for that reason alone, I really think Doug would have been a great guest to have on the show just to talk about that. But recent events have made Dougs insights even more important, I think, UM. And that is because just a couple of months ago, Doug got back his first two positive test results for chronic wasting disease on his family farm. And in the weeks since then, Doug has been kind of processing this news and putting together a plan, a new plan for managing this farm and how he's gonna hunt it and all those different things based on the implications of c w D. And I think this is something that unfortunately more and more of us have to think about UM as CWD continues this march across the country, popping up in new places and expanding out from there. UM. So we're gonna be chatting with Doug about his management plan and goals and and what's happening and changing now that the disease has arrived, what he's learned about CWD, and kind of how he thinks he is going to impact his future and and maybe the future for for many others of us who might have the CWD showing up nearby soon. So that's that's kind of the crappy topic that we'll be talking about. It. It's a it's a downer, but I think it's important for us to really wrap our head around this because unfortunately, CWD is becoming a reality and more and more places, and we need to understand what that means. We need to understand what to do about it, how to change our thoughts and hunting tactics and management plans UM. And I think also this will be a great reminder for all of us that if you don't have CWD in your area, we need to follow all the possible best practices and regulations to make sure it doesn't show up in our area. Um So I hate to start off the episode on such a kind of a somber note, but Mr co host Dan, can you can you brighten the mood at all? Do you have anything to share in our little pregame showed him to make us well, thanks for that. How do I how do I follow that? It's like bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, and now our co host Dan Johnson and he's not gonna say anything important. So you know, like we we we all count on your Dan to just bring a smile to our faces. Do that? Do that for us at least? Oh my god, that's a lot of pressure, especially after after that that intro. But dude, I don't even don't even I don't even know what to say. You know, I could talk about my kids, but that ship don't matter. Really. I mean, I could talk about my Christmas vacation, that doesn't matter. I could talk about New Year's that doesn't matter. No one cares, fair enough, Do you have any news on the white tail front? Because I know, last time we chaid you were saying that you might have some late season hunts in store. You were doing some scouting I saw on Facebook or Instagram or something that you found, like some standing corn and bean field somewhere. Do you have any good news on the late season deer Hunt in front Man, I'll tell you what I've I have a big family, right so all so Christmas is go. I have I have a Christmas this upcoming weekend as well, So I just have a bit, you know, a big family, lots of Christmas is, lots of activities that are going on this time of year. I think I got a day or two before the A T A show where I might be able to get out. I found a standing corn field, I found a standing bean field, and I am in a place that like if you were to draw a line between the standing cornfield and the standing bean field, it's probably i'm gonna say a half a mile between the two, but that line does not cross over onto the property that I can hunt. Um, and I'm probably about from the standing corn field would be the closest food source. I'm gonna say I'm probably seventy yards seventy five yards from my the prob pretty line on one to the property line on the other, which really doesn't mean much because I have to I can't hunt on a fence line and shoot onto another person's farm, you know, of property. So I'm even if you put it that way, I'm even further away. Yes there's tracks, Yes, there's well beaten trails. We got the cold tempts, we got the snow, found the food. It's at this point it's just luck if something comes by and um, I don't know, man, and it's just I got. I went out last week put up two trail cameras on what I felt were the best trails leading to this uh food source through my buddy's farm, and I'm gonna go probably check them. I don't know if I'm gonna do it tomorrow or Thursday, but I'm gonna go out check them. Um. To be honest with you, they're a little bit of an invasive check so um, but I think you can get away with it in these temperatures, man. Uh. And I'll see what's on there. If there's nothing on there, my season might be over. Um, unless it's a you know, a mature buck. I feel that. Um. I don't feel like I need to take another dough. My freezers for the most part pretty full. Um. You know, I've already killed a buck this year, so that that checkbox has been kind of done. And I don't know, manu, And it's literally the high today was and I think where I was at was seven degrees and a wind chill of negative twenty. So I was out in it yesterday, not yesterday the day before and it was so cold. I mean, I don't like. My eyelids started to I had to blink more because the fluids on my eyelids were freezing shut. You know, if we're starting to get frozen. So I don't even know if I have the gear, if I were all of my clothes to be get out there and be warm enough for an hour and a half, you know what I mean. Oh, I don't want to hear it. Dan, Hey, shut up, Mr. I hunt from a blind I don't have. I don't have a blind. I had to hunt from a tree stand this week too. I had to sit out in the free and the freezing cold on one of my hunts. But yes, the last two nights I did sit in a blind, which was very nice. I have a heater with you get it? Yes, you did? See? Like just for me to hunt late season, I probably need to invest five Yeah, man, this has been frigid I hear you and that like, um, well, the past week, I've hunted four times, um, three of which were from the box blind, one night was from the tree stand, and that one night from the tree stand. It was it was cold, that's for sure, um. But I did have a couple of reasons to get cold, even on the nights when I was in the box blind, because of the last two nights, so New Year's Eve night and New Year's night, I killed deer. I killed my first two deer of the season and probably my only two deer of the season on the last day of the year and the first day of the new year. Um, So that was good. That was good. But it was like negative seven one night when I was out there gutting the deer. So same thing as you said, like frosticles on my coming out of my nose and eyebrows and everything, and super cold. But you never appreciate the warmth of a deer's innards as much as a night like that. So that was good that we got a couple of You did see a big buck though, right, like, what what was this buck that you saw? How big was? Yes? You know, I think I want to hold off on telling that story too much because on our next episode, I wanted, well, you know, I can, I can, I can touch on this. I want to do a deep dive um next time, like we talked. You know, last time we talked, i'd mentioned that our next episode, I want us to do like a season analysis and walk through everything about the season. So I want to do like a season recap and kind of get people up to speed on how my season ended, where things stand with um, you know, the hunt for holy Field and all those different things. But I don't want to talk about that at all right now because I think that takes a full episode to talk about. But I will say, Um, towards the end of the season, like I said, I've been trying to shoot does. One night I went out with Further um and all Further came out with me and wanted to get him a dough And that night we did see a giant Um. It was the biggest buck I have ever seen in Michigan while hunting. Um. Yeah, and it was just a total bonus buck, a deer I've never seen before, never gotten trail camera pictures of this deer before. Um. Just yeah, like I said, I've never seen a deer like this on this property before so kind of floored me. I couldn't believe it. We were watching some doughs and little bucks come across this opening way on the other side of the property, could see down this power line, and Um, all of a sudden, I had my bine. I was looking at this little six pointer and then I see another deer step in the frame, and it was just like shock, Like I had not seen a deer like this, never would expect to see a deer like this around there. Um. I mean he was I don't know it was quick. I mean I probably could see him watch him for like ten seconds or give or take something like that. Um. But if I had to put money on what I thought he that kind of buck was. I mean he could have been pushing like one sixty classman, definitely one fifties. Um. He looked like that buck I killed a few years ago that I called Glenn down Ohio. That's that's what he looked like. UM. So just not a Michigan deer like, not the kind of deer you see around here. That was really exciting. Um. I went out the next night in the tree stand over in that area where I saw him, did not see him that night. UM checked all my true all cameras, didn't get pictures of him on any of the cameras at all. Um So, seems like he was just kind of passing through, maybe got bumped off of some other property by I don't know, people doing a late season drive for doze or who knows what. But um man would be nice if he's stuck around for next year, but but I don't know. So that was kind of the extent of of my couple most recent nights hunting. Um And we can we can discuss the other interesting next week. Yeah. Um So that said, we do need to wrap up our intro because Doug is expecting us. Um So, are you are you cool with stopping our fun talk of of recent success and start talking about the downer of CWD. Let's do it, all right. We'll take a quick break here to thank our partners at SITKA, and here are Sita Story of the Day. For this week's story, we're joined by Brett Joy, who tells us about a mishap on a recent white tail hunt that still ended with a tag field. One of the funnier occurrences that happened to Ross and I this year was just this last weekend during Ohio Shotgun second shotgun season. Went into a farmer trying to manage some does and get some meat for the freezer. And we're both in the ground line. We weren't filming. We both had muzzle others and we had two doughs come in to range um and we had discussed before and that we're gonna count to three and shoot on four, and we discussed the multiple times. We both were clear on it, and we were set to go. We're gonna double up. And when it came time to shoot, I was having trouble getting on the dough that I was supposed to shoot, just because of the configuration of the windows. I was really strained to get high enough to get that dough in the cross air. When I finally did, I said Rossy Wanner and he said wait, wait, wait wait, and then shortly thereafter I said how you are now? He said, yeah, go ahead, I'm honor, And so that triggered a response in my brain because you know, for years Ross and I've been filming together and that exact exchange exchange happens when we're trying to film a deer and when I'm I'm shooting, he's he's filming, so I immediately shot when he said a honor and he was just like, oh no, what did I do? I totally forgot to plan. I messed him up, screwed him out of the doll and I felt kind of silly for it, but he understood and had a good laugh about it, and we were able to recover the dough that I shot, and I gave him some meat to make up for it. So so that was a pretty interesting, for funny part of our season. On Brett's Hunt, he was wearing sick at Fanatic babes and Selsie's jacket. If you'd like to create a Sikest story of your own, or to learn more about sits technical hunting apparel, visit sitkagear dot com. Alright with us on the show now is my buddy Doug Dern. Welcome to the show. Doug, Hey, that's good to speak with you. At least I haven't got to see it for a while, but yeah, it has been a little while. And last time, last time we were hanging out, it was at the end of what I think for both of us, was one of the coolest experiences of our lives. Would that be true for you, Doug, Yes, it was. It was incredible that that time in Alaska is an incredible experience, and uh, yeah, it was cool to share it with you. Yeah, we me and me and Dan were just kind of lamenting a little bit earlier about how the main topic of our episode today is a little bit of a downer and I know you feel that way too as far as the the c w D topic. But but the caribou hunt is a is a no buts about it. Great thing that we can talk about, um, and we haven't got to really rehash any of that stuff. Um. So I'm kind of curious how much that cabra meat? Have you eaten most of it? It seems like it seems like any time anybody comes by, they're like, hey, how's that? What's caribou tastes? Like why do you come by in a couple of days and I'll make some you know, um that people are very curious about it. But yeah, it's uh and it's like gold, you know, it's okay, it's some of the else I wouldn't even say some of the best. It's certainly right at the top of the desk I've ever eaten. Yeah, that that that's kind of like the catch twenty two of like the situation when you when you're lucky enough to go and hunt like that and kill a caribou and bring that meat home. It's great except for just like you said, the novelty of it is that everybody, whenever you have visitors, they all want to try it. And so, like you said, I've gone through so much of mine because the exact same thing. You feel like it's a special event. I really should make some caribou um so I feel like it's gone way too quickly. I always try to like preserve if there's something a little bit unique, like when I've gone elk hunting in the past, when I've killed an elk, or when a buddy is killed an elk, like I hold on to that forever as long as I possibly can. But that just has not happened with the caribou um. So Dan, if you ever go to Alaska, you should keep it a secret from people. Don't tell anyone that you kill the cariboo. Hoard that meat for yourself. Amen. Know, my my niece wasn't really impressed when when they came for Christmas dinner, and I said we were going to have rain gear for She just kind of looked at me like, as her mother said, it's not it's caribly. But I'm like, no species can kind of throw the Santa story for a loop. But well, she's I have to say, uh, people, of the stories that I've told about that Alaska trip, one of my uh favorite is the one where they dropped you and I off. You were already landed on the spot where we were in the camp and there's this little tiny yellow speck down there. Uh, as we're flying over, and I said, hey, what's that twean doing down here? In the pilot goes, that's where we're landing, and uh, he's talking to the to the guy who flew you in as we're circling once twice. In the third time, he goes, well, you know, I've got a lot a lot of extra weight in here. And I took no sense at it. I don't have my fifty pounds of here right referring to me. But then when we hit the ground and the caribou that we had been coming up that grass scattered and we're watching them, and and uh, the two pilots talk to us. So it's just you and I standing all right, pilots talk to us for a couple of minutes, and the guy goes, so, you guys have got your gear and everything, right, I mean, if you're gonna have to stay here tonight, you're all set. And we're both like, uh yeah, okay, hopefully we'll see you a little while and and you're not kind of looking at each other like, well, I hope they come back. How do they figure that we are the two that should be dropped off first? Like what if the rest of the crew for some reason bad weather came in and no one else showed up, Like we're the the the worst prepared to be left out there on our own. Yeah, well I think it had something to do with weight. Mark. Now, I made no bones about it. I was the biggest guy on the of the trip, but unfortunately you were, well or whatever, you were the second biggest guy on the trip, and you're not that big of a guy. But um, I just remember that whole that whole scene of being weighed, and you know that was the whole thing was just that. I mean everything was fun about that trip. There wasn't there wasn't there was no unfun moments. No, no, but you're right. You definitely do have that moment when the two planes pulled away and it's just you and me sitting there a hundred and some miles away from the nearest road. You definitely have one of those moments where you feel rather insignificant in the bigger picture of things, and you realize you're kind of at the mercy of a whole lot of Um, I have a whole lot of mother nature, that's for sure. So you know, man, it was. It was awesome. I was just looking back through pictures and one of those things that I don't think we'll forget, and um, I don't know, do you think you're gonna never go back to Alaska? Done? Well, you said something but when we were maybe when we were doing a second podcast with Steve, or maybe it was just in conversation, and you said something to the effect of, you know, as we were flying out, I was thinking, how am I going to get back here? And I had that same feeling. And as I was going back, I mean, there was this still we still had, you know, a couple of days of the trip to go. As we were flying back to where we uh, where we threw out of um. But at the same time, as the miles went behind me, I was I had that same feeling as how do I get to do this again? Um, I'm gonna sure try. Yeah, man, it's it's a special place. Yeah, yeah, you've got you know. I mean, I'm twice your age, man, so you've got plenty of time to work in another trip. My clock's well, I hope you're right at least about on my front. Hopefully I've got time to pull it off. I've already been talking to my wife about it, like, we gotta get you up there, we need to do it. And she's like, all right, hold your horses. We're having a baby this year. Chill out. We're not taking a newborn to Alaska. But I'm not. I'd be lying. I'd be lying if I told you I hadn't been thinking, like can I take a six month old to Alaska? Can we pull this off? The answers, yes, Mark, where there's a will, there's a way, right, Yeah, Ronella did it. He took when Jimmy was man, Jimmy was just a little shaver, he was he was well. They went to the Prince Wales Island, but you know that's possible. We can do it. You can do it well, I hope. So I'd like to get him up there soon, that's for sure. It's uh, yeah, it's funny. When we came back from the trip, I think you and me even talked about this a little bit, like on the on the flights or back in the airport or something. We were talking about how deer are gonna seem a little bit different after seeing all these caribou and seeing the landscape. We were on, Um, what what was that like for you coming back to hunt white tails again? Because I know for me, I came right back from the Alaska trip and then I was hunting white tails in Montana, and and I wonder if this had any if this had anything to do with why I passed on so many deer. Every buck I saw, I was like, too little, too little, not the deer I'm looking for. And I ended passed on a bunch of bucks that when I went back and I watched the video afterwards, like that was that wasn't a bad deer. I wonder if I was just having looked at so many great, big, giant caribou, everything just looked small in comparison. Um, maybe the Alaska hunt just ruined me for Montana. I don't know, did you have anything like that. Well, I didn't really do any helping again until um, other than a little small game hunting, I didn't really do any deer hunting until November, so I had a little time to come down from it, I guess. But um, yeah, I still have dreams of those uh those antlers compared to the size of the animal. And for sure, you know, looking at trail camera pictures and things like that, you know, comparatively, it had had a little bit of an effect on how I how I viewed the bucks that we had on camera, and we had some nice ones, you know, so uh yeah, No, I mean I didn't well, as we'll get into, I didn't do any passing of any of any year this year. So um, but yeah, I definitely had an effect on me as a hunter. Um. I just feel so incredibly fortunate to have had that experience. And it's hard to describe the people. I mean, you and I have both attempted it. I'm sure of that experience of seeing that many animals over that much terrain in that shorter period of time. Yet it was still. Um. I mean, it wasn't it was a foregone conclusion. Wasn't that mark that we were going to shoot? And now a big ball? Um? But it really became a question of which one, what's the experience and all those things that that happened, and I really tried to absorb it. So it definitely has had an effect on me. That was the weird thing about that hunt, because, like you said, and like we talked about, I think on on Steve's podcast at one point, it was a really unique experience in that, you know, barring some kind of disaster, it definitely seemed like we would be able to to to kill a caribou. It wasn't like there was any shortage of of animals out there. So we did just spend an enormous amount of time. You know, Steve kept referring to this as mental masturbation, and we're just looking at and like looking at these animals and say, Okay, which one do we want to go after? Is this one? This one? Or what kind of hunt do we want? You know, sometimes like we weren't going to go for this one because it was just too easy. It was just too close. So we almost tried to find that he just got up and walked away from you know, he wasn't even gonner. It was a heck of a nice boy walking up. It's gonna be right up here on top, carry it down to camp. And he's like, you don't want tap one over here. I tried to put you on a death march there across to the other side of the bowl. Yeah. Yeah, my mom didn't raise any idiots. Mark, I could see that. I want to. I wanted you gonna be able to keep up with you guys when you when you took off, and I had talked to them about it and said, yeah, you know, I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm the I'm the weak link of this change. So these guys go on ahead there, We'll watch him over here. He's like, yeah, and somebody better stay with him for see. Yeah, he had a very convenient choice there for him. Yeah, that that did end up being the death march of the trip to that was coming back up that final hill with a quarter from Steve's bowl and then that big moose shed I was I was hurting on that one. So you guys, and you especially because those guys do that, I mean, they take off and then you know they're always doing it. And you know, I mean, I wasn't completely sure you're back around and anything when it came to that kind of hiking, but he came back and he looked like a better man for it. Yeah, it was good. It was a good push, that's for sure. One of these days, Dan, you gotta you gotta get up there and make a trip like that happen for you too, buddy, dude, It's a dream. Yeah. Well, if you ever need any um, not that's gonna be you. I was gonna say, if you ever need um, if you ever need some not terribly helpful but maybe slightly inspirational advice, me and me and Doug might will help you with that. Gotcha, gotcha? It was good. It was good. So you you alluded to this, Doug, um, and we have kind of worked our way up to this in our introduction before you joined us though. But but you had a weird year this year when it came to your white tail hunting when you got back to Wisconsin, and uh, and that's what I really want to spend most of our time talking about here. Um. So before we get to this season, though, Doug can you help us understand a little bit of your history and the history of of your family farm where you're hunting and management has been going on. What's the story of the Doug Durn family farm there in Wisconsin. What you guys have been doing to this point, Well, you know the I think it's important to note that family, my families on this farm for over a hundred years, and it's been past generation to generation generally with one of the uh, well not generally. My great grandfather bought it and my grandfather bought it my great grandfather, my dad bought it from my grandfather, and in this generation, um, it wasn't necessary for the farm to be purchased by one of us. So all of my siblings and I are partners in it. I mean, it's our inheritance, for lack of a better word, um. And for the last um about twenty five years, we've been very interested in dear management on a couple of different levels. First, from the conservation standpoint, we have a high deer population, and my family has been in the lumber of business. I'm not in a lumber of business, but my great grandfather, grandfather and my dad early on was very into forestry and logging and stuff out, which we're doing on the farm as well. But uh part of that was ongoing management or woodlands. And one thing that we learned in the eighties, in the late eighties and early nineties when we started putting land in the CRP and planting two trees. If you plant a row of white pines and then a plant grow of red oaks, and then a plant roll of white pines, you're gonna end up and do that over acres or something then end up developing some really nice habitat for deer uh in the in those white pines and the red oaks are gonna be like little pobstacles for them to eat during the wintertime as they walked down and eat themselves. Uh you know, such a great food source the brows of the red oaks. So there's been sort of these two uh ways that we were going forward in management m a whole bunch of years ago. My about that about five years because I said, my my younger brother, who's uh, who died in a car accident, and uh about twenty two years ago. Um was a bull hunter, and he had this great saying, Uh, no matter what kind of buck he killed UM, he'd always say that that had been a nice buck next year. And so that kind of became our mantra of of wanting to kill bigger deer and are bigger bucks and and you know, we're taking on the quality deer management principles and but at the same time still quality hunting meant UM didn't always matter that it was a big buck. It was you know, the experience of the hunt that you had UM and uh, you know, there were a couple of devid instances of smaller bucks that were shot that that was a great experience for either the hunter like a new hunter or a guest or or we had just worked all day to get one deer and and it happened to be a smaller buck. But by and large, what we were trying to do was to adhere to most of the quality deer management principles of you know, population control, h good age structure. And we did it. I mean, UM after brilliant since two thousand, two thousand and one, the we went from basket racks to um you know, undred thirty five, hundred forty five and the biggest one we've we've taken is a hundred eight seven inches. Um. The biggest one this year was a four year old that uh, you know, measured a hundred and fifty five UM. And uh, I guess it's important to say that predominantly gun hunters were. Man, it's just we're farmers, and you know, farmers don't generally have time to go hunt, and so at least in my family, we're gun hunting. Is where we were doing most of our hunting. And there's except for my brother, um, because we were farming anymore. And by the time he was around with most of the lands and crp um. So ah, we really developed that and we just had these anecdotal situations where a neighbor got egg nuisance tags and he shot truckload or two of antler this year one year, and all of a sudden, uh, that combined with the letting him go, letting him grow mentality that we had, um, we started shooting those those bigger class bucks, top row bucks we call them. And uh, but you know, at the same time, we're not we're not like completely obsessed with it. Um. You know a hundred. We started out with the idea of the mixture in the next buck is bigger than the last one, that shot. Well, then I shot that one was a hundred eighty seven inches, and I'm like, well, we got to kind of rethink that because because, as one guy said it, you might as well show me your view, rightful, if that's such it did do um so and true enough, we've not killed them bigger than that on the farm. But in the five year period of time after that, that was in two thousand and five, in the next five years, there were five bucks bigger than that one shot within about a mile and a half radius of our farm. So yeah, so other people were practicing it as well. Um, at least letting the deer go um, you know, the smaller bucks go. Um. That the hurdle that we've had with management on our place, and I think in in the area is um population control. I'm sixty years old or going to be sixty years old, and um, a lot of fellas from my generation, just as one guy said, I'm fundamentally opposed to shooting those and uh, you know that's that can be a hard hard thing to cross. UM hard bridge to get people to cross. And we have some you know, there's some properties in the area that you know, they're sanctuaries for deer um not because they don't get hunted, but because they don't shoot um dose on them, or they won't go out there, or they won't allow someone else to shoot those or um like we just had yesterday with the last day of our late season and on the only holiday hunt with rifle and UM properties that I was taking pictures of thirty and forty gear on as I just took a drive. Nobody hunting them and no one allowed to hunt them. So you know, that's kind of tough. Uh So our management strategy to do was to do that, and we were uh was to you know, keep a balanced turn both for the gear perspective and what we were trying to do with our timber um and uh you know, and set the size of the bucks that we were getting in, you know, and on average we were we were doing that and there were years and sometimes you have to accept you're not going to kill We're not going to kill a buck this year. We're not going to kill a big buck this year, um so, and and everybody hunting with us, family and friends who gun hunted all, you know, accepted that. Um that's been that had been the unknown for quite a while. And you know. Uh, two thousand and two, c w D was discovered south of US about seventy five miles on the other side of the Wisconsin River. Um. Funny thing, dear across that river. Um, and it really uh it's taken fifteen years. But this year we had our first two positive uh deer, both bucks. When it was a three and a half year old, when it was a two and a half year old. And you know, we've killed. I killed the two and a half year old three years ago that came in. Weeded, and we tracked him down and and I shot him and hundred three inches a two and a half year old buck. Second brack. I mean it's system death. So when I say a two year old was you know, sometimes people think, well it's a fairly small deer. Well know, I mean that that ches is very possible. Um so and a lot of those deer got shot to you know, folks were shooting them. Um because still it's in it's a quote unquote trophy or I get my book. That's what I'm most concerned about. UM. I would say that by and large in our areas, people were passing up those little forkings and all of that. I don't. I know very few people who were doing that. But so cd w D happens and we start paying attention to that, and it was a uh, it was a pretty scary thing, but there were some great benefits to it also in that for hunting anyway, in that UM again predominantly gun hunters. UM, they expanded the seasons for us we had. They started to earn a book, which I'm in favor of. I mean, I think we need to tweak the system that we had, but I should like to see it in me and stated and we can talk about that. After a while, earn a buck all of a sudden started helping. They're being helping. There be bigger bucks as well, because you know, I might shoot a doll or a half to shoot a doll as if they said I don't want to have to shoot, but they would shoot a doll and and uh and then maybe they would shoot a buck or that you know, a buck escaped. As a result, UM, we saw increase in the area, UM in the size of the box, the average side of the box. From that as well, UM, we started to have a these early UM seasons. So you know the year that I shot this year that we call the standard this hundred in the eighty seven inch. I shot him in Halloween out of a bowstand with a rifle. I mean, you know, I had a buck tag I hunted this year. I had him figured out anywhere in is going to do and he walked up out of there and I shot him at thirty yards or thirty at six. You know, he wasn't wasn't going to get away. UM. So that kind of hunting opportunity with a gun increase, UM. And you know, we enjoyed that quite a bit. And you can make make that all of a sudden that became kind of a new tradition for us. And now as the ant of this holiday hunt has has become that as ball expanded hunting opportunities, Um, a lot of traditionalists didn't like that. Bull hunters didn't like that. A lot of bull hunters didn't like coni. You say, all Um, and I understand those parts of the argument. But the whole idea was that we were hopefully going to be reducing heard populations slow dispresident disease. And U quickly quickly here um started to interject, Um, but can you can you expand on that element of you know when CTBT was discovered in Wisconsin. Can you elaborate on what we're all the proposed chain just so you just mentioned a couple of them, but can you elaborate like what all happened at that point, what changed and how did how did hunters take that, because it sounds like from your standpoint there were some benefits to the quality of hunting maybe, um, but I feel like from a lot of the things I've heard when I was following this from Afar, there was quite a bit of controversy around, you know, some of these different changes that were enacted post initial discovery of CTB, because it really was kind of a sky falling down mentality right after CWT was discovered there in Wisconsin. Seemed like is that right? Is that accurate? Yeah, You're exactly right. There was very much Uh, sky is falling. What I've come I would use using that analogy now it's so, yeah, the sky is still falling, but it's just falling really slowly. It's not all coming down at once. But you're absolutely right. Um. Uh. The Department Natural Resources established a CWD erratic Asian zone in the in the hot area where it was discovered, and that meant what they thought the um prescription should be is to eradicate all of the deer in that area and hopefully stop the disease from spreading. Well Mark, if I was my farm was in the middle of that eradication zone, and they said, we're going to shoot all the there in your property, and we have all these different techniques to do that. I you know, it would have better in our self for me as well. Um So, there was some real hot heavy, some real difficult public relations things there. But what they did they did then do was to establish a uh CWD management zone and that's what we were in. In fact, we were on the northernmost edge of it, seventy miles away from the hot zone. Um and uh so what they did was expanded hunting opportunities for gun hunters in that because you know, you mad. You know that I made comments that you may remember, I'd made some comments about bow hunters being folks who don't have enough to do. Um. Uh but I'm trying to trying to become one of those guys. Um But um but I mean, let's face it, if you want to if you want to knock your population back, you do that with rightfuls a shotguns. You're not going to do it with archery. Um and uh. So that area had a lot of bigger properties and and you know, I know some of those folks that they were doing quality der management and they were way into archery and doing good management with their guns and and uh, you know all of that. And you know it's just a tough down told to swallow. But on before the rest of us out in the in the CWD management zone. Um, it did expand these opportunities. Some might say to the you know, you know too far. Um, I mean shooting a deer with a rifle on October one. Um, well, I thought it was great at the time. I mean I understand the objection to that from from the bull hunting perspective, especially when you've got a bunch of gun hunters going in the woods during the beginning of the heatd or right and all of that. Um and and so there were things that were really mishandled. The message was uh, the idea was correct, The message was needed some tweaking, I guess would be the best way of putting it. And I can, of course, in retrospect everything makes a lot more sense. Um. But we started looking at do differently than UM. The testing. Uh, there was a lot of testing down in that area, and then they were starting to expand it out a little bit. We didn't really start testing here at all until about uh eight or nine years ago, and then they only wanted you to test adult here, um and adult books especially. And when they say an adult book, it's the classical meaning of one with handlers, um and so um. So we started to do that, but it was controversial marketing, and I think rightly so. Um, there's a lot of uh, a lot of unknowns. There's still are a lot of unknowns. There's a hell of a lot more knowns now. Um in terms of how the disease spreads, Um, you know who's spreading it, what we can do to slow or control that. But eradication that's a pretty tough one, you know. As I mentioned Brian Richards, CWD expert, that that Steve had on the podcast on the media podcast UM hunted with me on Friday, and uh, actually before I hunted with him, I wanted to re listen to that podcast and and you know I used his expression in that piece that I wrote about taking the gloves off and what I meant by taking the gloves off. Was you know, we're not gonna I'm not judging anybody about shooting an antler buck anywhere, and we are. In the last two years we've been shooting antler list dear um. And it used to be pretty shameful to shoot and not be bucked that you had to wait. But suddenly we're not shooting antler and list dear because we're looking at them, whether they're numbing bucks or not. And um. But when Brian said, you know, gloves off, I think it was in the Finland where a carible herd um had seen that he was discovered in the caribou herd and the fins that's the correct word for someone continueent went in and their plan is to kill every year and that hurt or every terrible in that herd. That's serious gloves off. But it's different, of course because carib it was a herd animal. It's different than gear who travel in the ways that they do. And um, but it's been CEP has been on the mine for fifteen years. There's there's there's no doubt about it. And it has there's been some ebb and flow. Um, we can we continue to do buck management up until two years ago, with the exceptions that I've talked about new hunters. You know, until you get some bucks under your belt, you can shoot what you'd like. But um, from the older hunters, our idea was that even though arn a buck was legally not a law anymoren't we I wanted my experienced hunters to shoot a doe or two before they shot a buck, or if they shot a buck, um, because I have to pass up a nice bucket if you saw it, Um, Um, and and and and the new hunters were just folks like Joe Rogan and Bryan Callen who came in, or Britney and Helen and came and hunter with Steve. That exception was for um and my nephews, and and and the new hunters who were friends also. And so you know, I guess my point is, so we didn't have that real rigid if he's got to be a three and a half year older, it's got to have this many points or whatever. We didn't really have that real rigid control. But we kept doing that kind of thing until uh really uh this year to two questions then, Um, First, what the heck was it like hunting with Joe Rogan and Brian Callen. Did you guys actually do any real hunting or is it just laughing the whole time? Well, I'm telling you what, man, one of those guys left my face hurt and my stomach hurt. Um. Well, and as you know, Joe has become a quite an accomplished uh archer and uh man practiced an incredible amount. And uh so he got into hunting, you know, hook line and center in mixed metaphor. But um so, but he got into it, you know, deep, and he he had his own rifle, he'd been to the range all of that. It was after that that he got into the archer um Kallen. Uh uh, I mean I love the guy, I really do. I was skeptical with Steve, asked me about it. But now you know, Steve, he's not gonna bring a couple of lunatics to the to the to the farm that they're going to be dangerous on the safe And I knew that was going to be the case with Rogan because how into it he was, whereas Callen is uh Joe's buddy going along. Now, So Joe was learning educating himself about it, and Callen was just showing up and going, do you think this cashmere sweater looks good on me? Um? And Uh. But oddly enough I took I took Brian out and uh and Joe Steves took Joe so and I was one of those really miserable cold opening days. And at one point I looked over at Brian and I said, I'm going to tell you it's nothing. Man. If it wasn't for us filming, I wouldn't be sitting here. I need to be back in or I'd be I'd be still hunting. And much as we call it. And Uh, I'll tell you that guy was. He was rock solid in the in the in the blind as far as understood. Listening to me, I was a little concerned. Um. I didn't give him any bullets until we actually saw a deer. Um because he you know the rules, you're not going to chamber around until you have a target. And I didn't grow up that way. He got a round in his chamber and he's got the gun on safety. But the producer the first time we did, UH need eater sdand doughty, and he said, hey, you know, we don't chamber around until we have a target. I'm like, okay. And then with cal And, he said, and uh, you might want to hold on to his clip, but until it's time for deer to come or to shoot a deer. And and he kind of laughed when he said it. And I but when we got into the blind, cal And was sticking his rifle out of the out of his blind all the time. I was like, Brian, you got a quick doing that. You don't move it a lot. We're trying to He goes, hey, I'm an actor. I'm visualizing, just dead serious. He says that, And I'm like, okay, but get it down and then we're gonna be done with it. And to the guy's credit, he took two shots and he killed two deer. That's great. Yeah, and uh but yeah, there was uh the the time, you know, in the in the house and and cutting up the deer and sitting in a fence row with them. When they started talking about uh, they asked me what this black stuff was on some black cherry branches, and it's called black not but it's also commonly referred to a ship on a stick. And and Joe, those guys just started off on that and it became a YouTube video and uh, and then I also ended up being a cartoon, so it's yeah, it was crazy, but it was just super fun uh to do. And uh, I mean I've I've hung out with Joe and Brian together and separately since I haven't done any more hunting with them, but um, seem when they're in town or in the in the in the region. They gave me a call and gone to Chicago and see him and it's you know, it became a friendship that um. You know, it's just we stay in touch, and it was it was great fun to happen. And I can't tell you how much fun was bet. They seemed like a hoot. Speaking of speaking of a hoot, Dan, you got anything over there. So now I'm the guy who has to bring it back to the topic after that put a lot of pressure on, right, I know, right, So, Doug, my question is when the state of Wisconsin first made the announcement, Hey we have c w D and it was seventy miles from your farm and where you were at, what kind of emotions were going through your head? I mean, were you fully educated at that point in time on c w D or was it something you took serious or was it just kind of a whatever, I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing. Yeah, I took it very seriously. Um. The warnings were, you know, we're from a conservation standpoint, you know, her level effects, population level effects, Um, what this did, what this did the individual deer? But so, I mean I remember then my first emotion being, Wow, it's really too bad for those guys down there, and what are they gonna do? And I hope they come up with something to to deal with this, they being you know, dn R and and and uh so. And then that first year we started, we got those uh we got the early season, the early sea, and we had t zones before that where you could go out and shoot an or this deer earlier. But now all of a sudden we had the certainer buck thing. And I mean to a degree it was like, uh, wow, that's cool. I guess I'll make time to go hunting on that weekend. And when I shot that big one, I mean I've kind of credit it, you know, um y, I mean, yeah, I would I have killed him with a bow, well maybe, but um, you know, there wasn't any doubt about it at thirty yards. But um, I was a rifle but so you know, you kind of saw that bonus opportunity there. But I also it was just really important to me, and it has been sense to continue to follow it, um and to educate myself on it, and you know, and hopefully to a degree um other folks um that I come in contact with. But that was Crest Fawn and it was there are people were saying, oh, there is Why are we panicking about this? Why are we panicking about it? And I don't think there was a panic about it. I think there was big resistance. And like I said, understand if we saw down there where they're going to eradicate the deer um. But so you know, it's sort of like, and you know, I was watching it from nearby. You know, it's sort of like when there's a Now I live up here in Casinovia, if there's a protest in Madison or something, well, I know it's going on down there, but I don't have to participate if I don't want to. UM. And that was kind of the way I felt about that too. Oh. I remember one of the first things Stan was, well the rivers there, that's going to slow any you know, spreading of it. So then it was really trying to learn about Okay, I was the disease spread and and those kind of issues as well. But yeah, it was an emotional h it was an emotional time for sure. So how many how many years of testing did you do on your farm? Uh? From the time I mean were you testing immediately when they made that announcement or was there a uh a lag time before you started testing on your farm? There was a leg time? Um one, Uh, there was an opportunity immediately in our area. UM, and I had to go back and look at my notes. But um, we've been testing for at least ten years. But that's changed over time too. It was where you could Uh, all they wanted to test were adult gear because they didn't think they'd be able to detected. And well like the two that we had this year, one was a two and a half yield buck when it was the three and a half yield. But um that they they those deer were those were most likely to have it, so that's what they were testing. Now we can have it, we can have every deer tested, but it's totally voluntary, um as it was then. But um, they may have had mandatory testing. I'm sorry for not knowing this, but mandatory testing in that in the eradication zone because we had on site check ins in those days. UM. You know, it was a time on a tradition, you know, you put your gear in the back of the truck and you take it to a gas station or or to the bar or whatever. We checked it in and you showed everybody your gear and we got it checked in. And so then that's when they were doing a lot of UM testing. But again, the closer you were to the hot spot, the more intense the testing was. UM. But then like where we used to check in here in Casnovia, UM, depending on the day, there'd be somebody there, Hey, can we you know, test your dear can we take the limplodes out of your deer? Um? And they were targeting those older doors and older bucks so UM. But then places were UH stations were set up. UH A lot of things that are a part of this. We don't have on site checking anymore. So. Actually, a dear friend of mine who had a check in station about eight miles from here, decided that what she was going to do was become a testing UH site to continue to have people come in. Um, and uh, she was testing. I think she told me five six years ago she was testing. They were they were taking the notes out of SEV This year was over four hundred and that was that's volunteer, voluntary testing people bringing them in. I want to test it. So Um, they've got more intense, you know, the closer with God and the more you've got to be known about it. So so so now Doug, that testing has continued. You guys have been doing that your farm for years. Now you finally have the dreaded positive results this year. Um, I guess first, tell me how you're feeling about that? How you you mentioned I think before we start recording that you've kind of come to peace with it. But what where's your head at? What are you thinking about all this? How has your perspective on things changed since you've been watching this for a decade or more slowly coming your way and now it's here. But before Doug answers that, let's take a quick break here for a word from our partners at White Tailed Properties. This week with White Tailed Properties, we are joined by Steve Purviance, a land specialists out of northern Oklahoma and Steve is going to be telling us about what he thinks separates the most successful hunters from everyone else. Well, Uh, to start with, you've got to be in an area, um, really a specific area that even potential to produce the biggest deer. Let's just use that for an example. You know, the guys that are killing the biggest are the big bucks. You know, they're hunting in states that can produce them to begin with, in areas of the state that can grow them. Um. And there's just so many factors, I guess really the first one would be just the tract of land or the tracts of land that they had to hunt. Um. Secondly, you gotta have time. You gotta have once you get into that area that's got a big deer, and a lot of people can start identifying them now you know you years ago you just had to put in the time. Now with all the technology trail cameras, et cetera, you can pretty much pinpoint a big buck and what you find one, You've got to have the time to put in the hunting. Um. And that's a lot of things that you know, that's a that's a big thing that a guy can't do these days. It seems everybody's busy, so the more successful hunters are going to have time, um and energy to put into hunt that specific big deer. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Steve currently has listed for sale, visit whitetail properties dot com. Backslash Purviance that's p U R B I A n C. Yeah. Um, it's interesting. Your listeners could go and look at the c w D website for UH Department Natural Resources and you can kind of look at how it's spread over the years because they have year to year comparisons and stuff, and how many of your positive per section which is s um. I've for the last two or three years have kind of kept my eyes open for uh dear that looks sick. Um. Two years ago when we the last time and shot me either here, um, we found a dead buck by a water hole and it was interesting because I had a camera on that trail camera on that on that water hole and I when I that that ninth that we found and we were up there, UH do building blinds, you know, ground blinds out of brush and stuff, and so you know, I contacted the biologist and they said, I've got pictures of this year and he don't look that good, but he doesn't look bad. And you know how a deer can look on a trail camera picture too, if you don't catch him at right angle off, they don't have their head up or whatever, they can look dumpy or whatever. But then to find that deer lay in there where you've got pictures of him for the last two weeks too, um and dead. I took that head in tested um non positive. They can't say negative because there's still a possibility and that con so tested non positive and they didn't test or anything else like you know, h D or or something like that. I speculated he got hit on the road and it was just um, um, we can buy it, and eventually it killed him. We didn't. I mean, he was kind of decayed quite a bit then, so we didn't. It wasn't like we could gout him and find out if there was you know, internal injuries or something like that. He'd been chewed on pretty good already. Um so ah, that was. I don't know where I was going with that, other than we were also testing um here that we were finding dead. You know, they test the ones that if they take take a deer in that get hit on the highway. They've been testing those as well, just to get a bigger sample. So what now now that it's here, what are your thoughts about? What are you gonna do now? How are things going to change? And I guess, how do you feel about hunting now in this area? Well, one of the things you said before, what were the emotions? So we've been taking all these deer in and getting the results back very quickly. Um, seven to ten days. Um. We had some guys here the second second day and uh of gun season. Some friends have let be in dissent by the way, and how yeah, it's a couple of them anyway, But uh, those deer got tested. I shot about opening day. We shot nine deer on the second day, and all those year got tested. We're getting those results back in ten days, seven days, ten days. You know, I think when I shot on Saturday, I got I had the results by the following Saturday, and so I felt really good about it. We're getting non positively gonna kill him four and a half year old buck and he's non positive. You know that's great. Um. I didn't shoot one of the kine of the Latians. Did but um uh, when I shot the buck that I that tested positive, we were group hunting that you can do in Wisconsin to my brother and a couple of other guys, and anyway, shot that buck. Um we we it's time to get him out. And I was like, well, put my gloves on and getting them out. And I got a little blood on my pants, you know, you know how it is you get and h I didn't think much of it because we hadn't had a positive yet. Then I did that positive result and I'm like, should I be worrying about the blood on my pants? And then I'm thinking, oh my god, you're now you're panicking. Should I worry about the knife that I used? Because they say you can't remove it surgical you know, from steel and all of that, and there's protocols to go to follow this. Um actually something I asked, but there was that. It was something that I asked Brian Richards but um which I can talk about in a minute. But one of the other points of our discussion was that dick factor. And I just remember feeling very differently about that deer. It was a beautiful book and just feeling like, so now you can't tell and how do I you know it actually happened to be one that I gave a deer that I gave away, that we gave a lay I should say someone else. UM. And then I let them know, as you know, it's positive. So they're not eating it. Um, and I'm not gonna eat don't know. I guess that's the other part of it. UM. The Center for Disease Control and Stephen I talked about this, and maybe you and I spoke about a little bit. The Center for Disease Control says not to eat it. The World Health or Health Organization says not c w D posit the meat UM in Wisconsin Health Center says not to eat it. That's good enough for me. You know, I'm not gonna do it. I'm just not going to eat it. Painful to think about that. Uh My buddy who got the other one that tested positive, he'd already ground it all up to Hamburger, and you know, are most of it. He had the choice cuts and then he ground everything up for Hamburger. And he's sitting there looking at a pile of meating this reason that you know he's They're having a baby in a couple of weeks he's like, you know, so that that part of it is just they're just killing me. Um. I've had people tell me, oh, they don't know, you should just go ahead and eat. To me, that's the hard one. And I think that everybody has to decide what they're uh tolerance for risk is, you know, so that that would, like you said, it would be painful, I would I like that is the Like one of my worst fears is ever to come home one day and have my freezer have you know, the power gone off or something, my freezer shut down, and have all that meat, you know rot. Just the idea of of that meat going to waste would literally cause me like physical pain. So this is a similar to the situation you kill the deer and now you can't eat it. That meat has to go to waste. That has got to be an awful feeling. Um, how does that change? And we talked about this before about the long term implications, but how does this change hunting for you in the future when you will make a decision to shoot a deer and you have to know in the back of your mind there's a chance that I won't eat this deer, that I can't eat this deer. Will that impact you at all, dug in making the decision to kill a deer in the future, And that should I even kill a deer if I won't eat it? Um, I don't know if that's something that you wouldn't make an impact for you or not. Obviously there's other management implications too, But where's your head at when it comes to all that? You Just just asking the question kind of makes my stomach turn a little different, you know, It's like that, do I even want to? I can understand why there's gonna be people who say, as I don't even want to, I don't even want to kill a deer. I'm not that guy. UM. I'll tell you this that south of US, in the southeast part of Richland County, UM there last year, UM it was a coin flip as the weather an adult buckhead um c W D or not. And now it's the population according to the recent conversations that I had had of the deer that we're tested those bucks and fauns of them. We're uh testing positive, so ons are testing positive or you can understand it, it's CWD positive, dough and her fawn is developing the phone liv it or she's positive. I can understand where that could happen. So they look, it seems like there's some transfer there, but it may also be because of the you know that the the amount of prions that are around and activities, and there's a big there's a big gar population now there as well, um, and that's going to start having That's where they're talking about population level impacts. Um. Anyway to go back to your question, I'm not stopping deer hunting. What I'm wondering about, and I'm going to continue to take precautions. I'm not going to even me Ah, I wonder about a lot of things. Mark. Now it's like, ah, well, there's a processor here in Wisconsin. You may have read the articles. You we're not making sausage. We're not taking deer in any We're not going to take sausage. It's we we it's you know. That's that's the level that they've gotten to because if the deer are uh, because not everybody tested their deer, you know, you're not required to. It's so really voluntary. Um, well, then why not take der only deer that have been tested well? And now all of a sudden it's becoming an administrative nightmarage you can understand. UM. So you know, and a lot of guys, UM, we we do both processing ourselves and have some process you know, it kind of depends on who it is and when it is and how many years we got hands um and UH. And so we have a processor, UM you know, it's a U s D a inspected facility that you know, they butcher all kinds of other meat as well. And in that same facility they're processing deer that UM are being tested because that's actually where are UM UH food Bay donation program is and which we were thrilled to get back. It went away for a few years, but now they're and they're doing the food bank donation program. Aga end up being paid um you know by funds that have been raised to process here. So what they're doing is boning and de boning everything, and then they isolate each deer in a separate bag with the UH registration number and the c W the test number on it. And if that deer comes back positive, then they discard the meat and if it comes back nonpositive, they grind it up and give it to the to the food pantry. UM. So when you think about it in those terms. Boy, what a there's another concern that the both the facility and then the food bank made um you know, suffer as a result of it. Um. But I was bringing this up to some of my conservation friends the other day, UM and one of them who's done a lot of work at the testing facility down the Black Earth, she said, well, do you want to get over your fear of c w D, just go down and work for a day of the testing facility, because it's everywhere down there, ya have. I that really doesn't make me feel that much better. And she said, well, you know, the truth is it's it's uh, that's a matter of like lowering the risk as much as you can. And I get and and the point was that you know they've got these um um secures the wrong word, but uh facilities, these kits that are isolating each one of the samples, right, So they're doing that. But you've got you're gonna have that's where they're testing the deer, so you're gonna have the testing the limph nodes, the stuff is going to be around. Their protocols are really interesting. I asked about this. They changed surgical blades on the tool for each year, and I watched this half where I get mine tested or where I get the limp modes extracted. They're actually doing the testing. They're just extracting the limp noodes and taking the information, sending them to this facility and black earth and uh. And then they soaked the um. They discard that blade, and then they soaked the the handle in Uh. It's a surgical you know, it's a scalpel. And they said, so candles in some solution that currently does as much as they can in terms of removing it. And they're so they're using a clean one for each one, so there'sn't cross contamination. But so her point was, even within the facility, it's being limited as to how far it is, but you know you're being exposed to it. So back to the deer that we are we killed that had CWDT after the fact, I'm thinking about blood, I'm thinking about you know, and of course it's not I mean, you have to learn about it all. But you know, the brain and the limp nodes and the spinal columns where it concentrates to begin with UM. So we're not you know, we're deboning the meat, which you know is kind of my general way of doing it anyway, Um, I'm not eating deer brains, um and uh. But at the same time, you're looking at that deer differently, you know, and you've got blood on you know something, you're cleaning your knife. Is this something they have to worry about it? And again it kind of goes back to the because I knew it was a question that would come up somewhere along the line. Isn't the risk zero, No, it's it's minuscule. And that is one of the things that's really important to remember. It's that you know, CWD has not, as far as we know, transferred to humans. UM. There are similar spongeform encephalopathy's that UM humans get, like Chris felt the Acome's disease, and mad calls another one um Wolu being the third, and those are all in the same family. But it hasn't transferred um as far as we know. And the other thing we don't know is it does how long does it take to affect the human you know, Chrei felt, Uh. The incomes disease affects people in their mid fifties to early sixties, UM, And it used to be thought it was early onset dementia or early onset Alzheimer's. Um, So, how long does it take? You know? I think Steve asked the question when we were when we had Brian on the podcast. I mean, if it's something's going to kill me when I'm a hundred years old, you know, there's plenty of don't even take me before them about it. I mean, that's that's a good that's a good perspective. I guess from my standpoint, it's like my friend said when he got his positive, he goes, well, you know, he's your age. You know, it's thirty year in his early thirties and he's about to have his about to have their first child. And he goes, I'm not going to do it. Guy sixty years old, like myself ended. You know, I can make that decision for myself, but I'm sure not going to make it for my kids. And the decision that I have made is that I'm not going to eat it um um. And that might change, you know, my wife here's this, She'll say the hell it is, but but uh, you know that's that's where that's what my head's at with it. So when I said I made peace with it, one of the best things that I did was to have these folks. I have just an annual hunt always one day in the holiday hunt with some friends that are in the conservation murals and Brian richards Uh joined us this time, so you know, I got to ask a bunch of more questions and follow up on some things. And having gotten that positive, it was more you know, at the front of my my mind, and I felt better about it after the fact. So damn, what do you got? So Okay, I don't know why, but I have this comparison c w D similar to the way people approach cancer, right, Like, I didn't really think much about cancer or or you know, pay too much attention to it until I've had I had a family member, you know, my stepmother died from it. So kind of similar to that way of thinking, what would you say to maybe someone who is either in your area that has not had a positive test yet, or maybe the you know, hunters from other states who don't have positives in their areas, you know they're hunting land yet why is why is it important to be concerned about c w D And kind of how this spread is you know, growing throughout the United States? Well, there are. Well, one is the possible human impact. First, that's the reason. That's kind of what we've been concentrating on, right, But I know what you mean about that feeling about about cancer for instance, And to go back to what I was just talking about my own head, that's actually the analogy that I thought of two as well. Small consigarettes isn't necessarily going to give me cancer, but it is going to increase chances. So I'm gonna change my behavior to decrease those chances. Right. So that's kind of the same attitude that I'm taking about CWB with my own in my own uh world. So why is it important? Um? One of the things one of the first reasons is beyond beyond the possible human health implications is especially in high density areas, UM, we're getting to a point where we're going to start seeing and there is speculation that in some of the areas they are already seeing population UH level impacts UM. Down in the in the south of Wisconsin River in the zone down there, UM, there's been a lot of we're not seeing dear whether kill isn't up, but they're not they're seeing fewer gear And you know, the question is is that having population impact levels Because c w D from UH it's incubation. Incubation period is twenty four months my understanding of it UM and again just had this conversation with some experts about it. Twenty four months. The last six to eight weeks are when it's clinical, when you're gonna see it, and at the end of that sixty eight weeks, dear is dead. So two years if we have does and does say a year a dough fond has c w D, which is happening south of this, that dough is going to die before she has a faun. If you think about it in the terms of how quickly you know she's a fawn, She's sure not gonna breathe. She might break this fall, but she's gonna likely go through the following year, and then when she's hitting two years old, it's supposed to be dropping her first fond. That's when she's probably gonna die from it. So and the next thing. So what about that year and a half old though, who's going to die from it? In two years? Well, I know we've had I know we all have this. Every hunter out there has this who spends any time observing whitetail dear, you get that old go out there and she's the matriarch of a little herd and the little group, that family group. Um you know. So I mean, I don't we kill the deer a couple of a couple of years ago, it was five and a half years old, and you certainly see him that age. But a year and a half old, she's not gonna get to be five and a half. She's gonna have the disease. She's gonna die at three and a half. All of a sudden, those animals aren't dropping that one fon or those two fonts anymore. So you can see where it's going to have a population level impact. Not that it's killing dear, but it's killing dear that are having fonts. So that's a big concern about it, um and one that I've really just started learning about in the last few months. And when they say population level impact, I'm like, well, but so it's killing some deer, I mean, and so they're going to still keep reproducing. Yeah, But if the deer who are doing the reproducing aren't there, how are they getting to reproduce? So um that I find the particularly concerning um in our area. The other reason for well, I guess it's not not your maan to CWG. But there's just conservation we have. We have some population issues, um, and we just need to reduce the herd just from an overall health standpoint. But UM, I can tell you one thing that I've learned about c w D, and this is how is a science. If you don't have it, you don't want it. Um. And uh, it's it's so anything you can do to either stop it because that ultimate game deer hunting of the population collapse that I'm talking about, that I never stop it, which of course is some kind of cure. The only one is the slow it spread. Um. And how do you slow it spread? Well, it sounds a little strange, but what you do is reduce the population so the population doesn't collapse. Um. I guess that's a Vietnam analogy, as we burned the village to save the village. Um. But you do that and uh, and then you're looking at the demographic as well, and that that's an interesting, you know, dynamic. And that's why I took off the the nine buck next year restrictions. The sunburrow there in the sunbrero if you follow that, we have this hat that you have to wear if you make a mistake, and or you when you had where um, if you made a mistake, I'm killing too small of a deer. And then where we're you know, shooting a knob and that kind of stuff. That's where we were, you know, four or five years ago and not now. Um. So the demographic is who's the who who are the most widely traveled? Uh demographic and a deer hurt young bos right, So that's the hard part when it comes to a lot to kill big anther deer um, which I love to do. All right. Before we move on, we're going to take our final break of the day to hear from our partners at Matthew's Archery. But today rather than hearing about their new bau the Try Acts, which just came out this fall, we're actually gonna talk about arrows, and again, as we have over the past few weeks, we've got Mark Hays, a design engineer for Matthews, with us to talk about that. And after asking him to help us, I want him to help us understand what things we should be thinking about when choosing our arrow, you know, arrow weight different things on those lines. He gave me so much value. I guess when it comes to what he provided, I realized it would be it would be a shame if we had to cut what he told me down to like a minute and a half or two minutes. So so think about this less as one of our ad spots, and actually it is more of a segment because what I did here is I decided to keep the entire answer to my question. It's about a seven minute long segment. So if you don't care at all about archery or choosing the right arrow for your bow, feel free to just fast forward from this point about seven minutes forward, and then we'll get right back to the interview with Doug. But if you are an archery guy and a bow hunting guy and you just want to get a little more insight into how to make the right decisions about choosing those arrows and matching them up properly to your bow into your pursuit of choice, I think you'll find this really valuable. So I'm gonna stop yapping. We'll throw it over to Marquey's here. Give that a listen if you're interested, and then we will be back shortly with Doug discussing his future plans for management in dealing with the c w D issue. Sure, so let's start with stealth. Um. You know, it's fun for us because we are so focused on stell self stealth. Everyone was building their hunting arrows this year extremely heavy and extremely purpose built, really silent veins and all this stuff. Because once you have a bow that's incredibly silent, you want your arrow to be just as silent. So a heavy arrow is going to be quiet. The reason for that is actually twofold. Uh, the bow itself is going to be more efficient shooting a heavier arrow, and therefore it's going to have less sound and vibration, which we were talking about earlier. So the heavy arrow itself is great, but there's some myths associated with it. People think that a heavy arrow is more kinetic energy. Now, if we're talking just out of the bow, it's really not much more kinetic energy. And the only gaining kinetic energy from a heavier over a light is the increase in efficiency, which is only a percentage point or or so, depending on how big of a gap you're you're thinking. But a in question I get a lot is hey should I shoot a hundred grain broad heads, or should I put tip weight to get more kinetic energy? And if you're doing it for kinetic energy, the answer is almost always no. UM. You should be setting out for a certain arrow weight that you're comfortable with to get the speed that you want. UM. If you're talking about kinetic energy, though, you shouldn't be talking about more kine energy out of the boat. Where you should be talking about is down range. So we've done a lot of arrow testing in the past. But what your goal. I guess in my goal when I build an arrow is one have an arrow that uh, I think it's heavy enough to impact the target correctly and get good penetration. Then also, I don't want to sacrifice a lot of speed. I got twenty eight and straw. I want to keep as much speed as possible. UM. But with that end heavy arrow, it's going to keep more kinetic energy down range and that's where the differ prints is going to be, not out of the bow. And I think that's the big myth that everyone is UH has a hard time understanding, is that out of the bow it's only I don't know. I've I've done a couple of tests but let's take forty grains for example, it's only point four foot pounds of energy more out of the bow. But down range, let's say fifty yards, I'm looking at sary here, it's one and a half and it's going to keep increasing as it goes down further. Now, that's still not a lot of difference. And that's kind of where I'm talking about those myths that if I just had thirty more grains of front, I'm gonna have more kinnegic energy downrange. Yes, but not a lot more, is the true answer to that. But I will say one thing. Front of center is huge for accuracy, So, regardless of the kinnectic energy, regardless of the momentum debate, front of center is huge for accuracy. So yes, I'm going to tell that guy that asked me, should I put thirty more grains up front? Absolutely, because your arrow is gonna be inherently more accurate because of that, but not necessarily because of the kinetic energy. Can you can you briefly explain front of center and why that's important. Yeah, So it's the measurement of the balance point of the arrow, which is, you know, the mass of the arrow wherever it balances is going to be the center of mass, and the goal is to get that as far away from your steering as possible. What your steering is your fletching. We measured in front of center. Um. That goes back a few years of why we do that, but basically the calculation is how far is my center of gravity the balance point in front of the center of the arrow, and that's the percentage we give. Now. Really, like I said, it's it's the trying to get the center of gravity as far away from the steering, which is your fletching, as possible, and it's the further you can get that away. The straighter arrow is gonna stay down range perfect. Now what about you know, if if you had to choose people like you talked a lot about the benefits of the heavy arrow, um, but then the benefits of the lighter arrow that some people might look at is just the speed or maybe that's going to be a flatter trajectory. Um. Is the heavy arrow always the better choice because of some of the things you mentioned, or is dependent on some of the other factors like how fast you want to be shooting, or your draw length or different things like that. Yeah, it definitely depends and as you can probably tell from this conversation, it's always give and take. So, like you mentioned, a light arrow is going to be faster and if you can get that front of center um correct, Uh, it's gonna shoot good too. Um. So it depends on what you think your maximum ranges. So you have to have an arrow that will get to that range without hitting your site. As you're dropping your site, you're getting closer and closer that arrow. So you don't want a big, lobbing arrow. You'll never get out to the yardage you might be able to achieve with a different arrow. However, the light arrow is going to be harder in elements, and one of the biggest elements obviously that we can think of is wind. Um, A heavy arrow with little veins and good front of center is going to buck the wind way way better than a light arrow. A light arrow is gonna carry um. And I think you know the goal for me personally is I want to arrow. Actually an arrow is specific to what you want to do, but let's talk out west or when you're shooting long distances and the elements like wind, you want to arrow that's heavy, good front of center, and little veins that can steer your broad head. So there's a lot of given takes in there. You need veins big enough to steer your broad head, but small enough not to get bucked by the wind. Um. But in the timber you might get away with bigger your fletchings and and uhum, with a different kind of broadhead as well, because you're not dealing with that wind. But so you know, I look at my wife too. I'm not gonna give her a heavy arrow, even though I know the benefits of it for me, because she needs an arrow that's gonna shoot at least two hundred sixty second or two and forty, just so she can. She doesn't have the gap as as fine. Uh you know the difference in her sight compared to mine. Her twenty thirties huge. She even has a twenty five because of how big it is. So if you had to be so fine and aiming because your arrow is heavy and slow, that's gonna be difficult for her. So I would rather have her a light arrow that her pens can be more normal gaps, so then her margin of arrows way way smaller. All right, So hopefully you found that helpful and If you would like to learn more about the Matthews Tryacts, you can visit Matthews Inc. Dot com. What specifically are you doing now? You've alluded to a few things like changing your buck management strategy, but but can you layout exactly what the new management plan is going forward now that c w D is there? And then why what are you doing? And why? Uh? Well? Put Uh, the first thing is we're encouraging So I'm on the County Deer Advisory Committee and population. Uh, we have population issue in the county, not everywhere in the county, but uh, we estimated we have seventy per square mile of habitat in Micheland County. Uh. Some would say more than that obviously, some would say less than that, but I don't can. I'm following the science. So you know, it makes sense that the more of doom you have, the more interaction you have, the more likelihood. So let's reduced the population um and I've been doing that on our farm. We've been trying to do that on our farm for a while. And the reasons for one, the fewer dear you have, the percentages are still gonna be the same of c WG. But there are gonna be a few deer who are fewer dealing these fewer ten percent of a hundred years ten, ten, fifty years five, So there are fewer deer with the with the possibility of having a disease. That's one reasons for us to do it. We've always tried to kill more dear because of our um our habitat concerns. UM. We don't manage our property only for white tailed deer. We manage it for forest regeneration, multiple species UM. And we've seen detrimental effects from too many deer, you know, as a result, so that's reducing the population. Being on the County Deer Advisory Committee, we gave four antlerleist tags with every buck tag. Um of guys out filling for antlerleist tag. Swell, this guy filled tree. Um. And if you get a buck pig for bow, you've got four also. And I get a conservation patron's license. So I actually had a go to bamtlet of the stags if I wanted to use them, and I wanted to, and I didn't get as many as we didn't get as many as we've wanted to. So that's one of the things. So UM to reduce the population for multiple reasons, but from the CWD perspective, to just knock down the numbers to to slow the spread. So the other one, which is a little more difficult, is to take off those restrictions on shooting whatever buck you want to um and uh. I thought to myself opening the rifle season, when I saw I saw a buck, I couldn't get a shot at him. That excellent came in and he's a two and a half year old, and I thought to myself, if you are really gonna do this, you need to shoot that deer. Five years ago I had gotten run off the farm pursuing that here, and I would have been the guy running me off, you know, So why am I doing that? That's the year that's spreading UH, that is most likely to have the disease. So that year and a half old buck, for instance, UM you know. You know again, as we know dear family's dynamics, the dough at the end of her first year is kicking that buck fawn away. The doe fawn was going to hang around and he'd probably be a part of the family group. But young buck goes off to uh to spread his goodwill around the around those countryside and they are the ones who travel the furthest and so when you first start having uh c w D show up in an area, the first positives are year and a half two and a half year old deer. Uh and in the case of the southern one of three and a half year old deer. The two that we got we do m not crazy amount of monitoring with trail cameras, but we have trail cameras out my my buddy, my neighbor and I and uh, you know if we've got fixed R eight cameras out. We had both of those deer on trail cameras and they were one was two and a half, one was three and a half. The two and a half had a distinctive split on his g two on the left side. Never saw the deer before, but dad has showed up with it this year and a half. Well maybe not. The other one had a very distinctive palm nation and uh that definitely would have showed up in a year and a half and we had not seen the deer before. And we also saw these deer were also on cameras. Um, we have our farms four acres that my life and I own w thirty, my buddy owns forty. I controlled some more lands, so we controlled about a section. You know, we control about six d agres. And uh, these both of these deer came from the northeast part of the farm where we had him on camera and where the highest concentration of deer are just off of the farm. So did those deer. And and it's also a connect connector to the next big valley over um you know, so how did that all all happen? And it's it's are our farm was split by a highway. We more positives on the other side of the road. These two deer were they camp on camera and where they were shot, we're within two hundred yards of each other. So um, you know those are all things that you know are kind of entering into it. So we're shooting. I'm I just letting my guests they have a buck, take shoot whatever buck you want. People are still we we Uh. On Sunday, a forky got shot. Um. Uh the second day of the guns he's in a forky got shot by one of my legend visitors. And uh, he kind of looked at me and I said congratulations, and h he goes. Well, Honestly, I thought it was a dough when I shot it, because it was a pretty good poke and it was with a group of deer, but it was the biggest deer in the group, and he thought it was a dough, so he shot the big dough right out here. It was a little quarky, you know. And again five years ago, three years ago, two years ago, even yeah, he'd be wearing that sombrero. And as we say about the sombrero, where it once everything's forgiven, you wear it twice and you probably won't give a third chance to wear it. So uh so that's all gone. And why we're doing that is because we're trying because the demographic that's going to move it on next, or the deer that is most likely to have it and then move it on is a is a younger buck. And I can't tell you how much it pains me to do this. I don't envy your situation, I am I can imagine I've thought about this, like, what would I do in this situation? How do you how do you move forward from that? And you know, to take a manage principle and practice, even even practicing for so long and trying to see the benefits of that and reap the benefits of that, and then having something like this come in and flip things head over heels. Um man, that's that is UM kind of a worse nightmare. Now I want to read you something dug and get your thoughts on it. UM. The Quality Deer Management Association released a document that is they're recommended practices for deer hunters UM that are dealing with chronic wasting disease and UM and what I think everything I'm written here is is very much in line with what you said. They offer. They do offer one kind of um uh slightly different thought which makes sense in a different situation than yours. And I want to just get your thoughts on this UM. So in here the question asked is should we shoot most bucks at one half years of age to keep them from maturing? And the answer they provide UM. They go on to say that when CWD is first discovered a new area, initial goal include identifying prevalence and distribution of the disease and preventing it from spreading. In this early stage and outbreak, protecting any adult deer can be counterproductive to long term success. One CTBT is established in the deer herd. Older bucks are two to four times more likely to have the disease than younger bucks. Therefore, on paper, the best way to combat CDWD where it is established is to keep density low and the aid structure young. That means not allowing bucks or does to mature at all. However, in reality, hunters are needed to regulate deer populations, and many hunters staying gauge for the opportunity to pursue mature bucks. It's cut Amy's opinion that as long as hunters continue hunting shooting excuse me. As long as hunters continue hunting, shooting antless deer, and helping keep deer herds in check, then it's more beneficial to have some mature bucks in the population than to shoot all bucks at a young age. If mature bucks are scarce, some hunters will become less engaged and shoot fewer antless deer. Therefore, cuting maze recommendation in areas where CTB is established in the population is for hunters to harvest analyst deer to help reduce deer density. Continue protecting yearling bucks if you desire, but apply increased harvest pressure to all bucks through and a half years of age or older. So it sounds like the big thing here is Yes, it makes the most sense from a reducing the spread of c w d's UM standpoint, to kill bucks, to to reduce density, and to kill bucks to keep bucks from reaching maturity. That makes the most sense. But an even worst case in there would be if hunters become less engaged and just stop shooting deer and stop shooting dough. So they're saying, if that, if we need to keep a few mature bucks to keep this from happening, that's a lesser of two evils than if hunters become less engaged. Um. In your case, you're already on board with the fact that this needs to happen, so you guys are taking an aggressive approach. Um. So I guess what I'm saying all this four is I'm curious, what's your opinion on that set of recommendations for the general public. Does that make sense to you given what you're understanding in your situation too, Yes, it does. Um. Ultimately, what I told everybody that hunts with us is you get to decide. Now there's nobody deciding for you, you know, or me, or you're gonna deal with the wrath of dug or whether the here, the sondera or whatever that happens to be. So, but you get to make that decision. Is that a good recommendation? Um? You know, I'm glad you read that mark because I'm gonna look at that a little more closely. Um, what I've decided or what we did this year isn't etched in stone. It's this is this is the action, just like last year. It wasn't. I was like last year, just shoot every antler. Serious, it's a nubby buck, that's okay. Um, And to prove it, I shot a nubby buck right away. My brother just looked at But uh, the that idea makes some sense to me. Also, that kind of follows that attitude of the I factor though too, when you go, man, half of your act this disease? Do I only want to hunt him anymore? So it kind of speaks to the same idea. Um, I'm not going to stop hunting deer because of c w D. I might hunt it more aggressively. I can understand where someone who is um, I don't like the idea of testing of the possibility of throwing half of the deer that we kill away, throwing your meat away. I just but but I mean, the reality is if I'm going to continue to follow the CDC and that will health organization ideas, that's what we're probably head anymore. And anybody who has c d w D approaching them, it's just over time, it's going to get there. UM. I love shooting Big Bucks, and I like and I'd like seeling to get to that age where our farm is in our area and given everybody who had all these people who have different uh attitudes about it, my cousin, but I'm not worried about it at all. And I like shoot Big Bucks and if you're not going to eat the meat, you shouldn't be hunt And I'm like, that's your opinion, and I appreciate it, and you know, you do that on your land. I just think that everyone has to make that decision for themselves. And I like the population one. UM. There are experts in the field who say, see, it's not a population based disease, it's a demo and then they failed to say that it was demographic disease. UM, you know, spread disease. So there, you know, there's an argument that's made against UM population and declined again kind of goes back, you're shooting all the you're shooting those, but once those get it, we're not going to have enough here to reproduce. UM. I think q d M is hitting on the head man. I like that. And at the end of the day, you and I both know and all three of us know that no matter what season structure, and no matter how it's set up, the people who are still doing the management are the guys with men and women with bows in their hands and guns in their hands. And the landowner or the h or the leader of the group or or or that person hunting is the one who's making the decision as to how they're gonna how they're going to handle it. What I would say is, please get your dear tested. Please encourage your government officials to uh continue and expand research on this, which actually there's a acting Congress that was co sponsored by Representive round Kind, US Representative Roun Kind who's now my representative, UM on more funding for c w d UM research and very supportive of that. UM. But I think it's a mistake too. UM think that, and you know, and make your own decision about eating eating meat. But I think it's a mistake to say, well, we can't do anything about it. And there are people who are saying this, Um, not anybody who's listening to your show. But but we can't, you know, So we're just going to continue to do what we want to do. People are gonna make that decision, There's no doubt about it. Heck, here in Richland County, the hunting land is privately owned. Well, who's making the management decisions landowners? It's each individual landowner, you know. Um, But I if you're anywhere near c w D zone, I would I think the model that we followed up as it got closer, we got more, we ramped up our testing even and we actually demanded more testing, personally demanded it. Um. Uh. The data is really important for the scientists to have. Um. You know, there's so many reasons to get it tested. The thing you can make your own decision about to meet. We make your own decision about what dear you even shoot too. But I like the I like what I what you read there, Mark, and I agree with it. I mean I'm a little more aggressive than than that. And also in our area, you're not gonna I mean Friday, uh, we we were able to move about a dozen deer. Unfortunately we didn't kill any of them because the best shots that we had at dear we're all antlered bocks. You know. I work pushed some antlered box by by some friends that they're like, these deer came true and every one of them. Yeah, it was an apple the season, so you do to do so you know that that was that was difficult. Um Son, Yeah, I feel like I feel like after all this, I'm still at the same place I was um before we start chatting, which is if you don't have c w D now, you don't want to get it in your area because just just hearing your story of the things that you have to think about now and the changes in your management strategy, and I think I think your situation is something that we're just going to see happening more and more and as we as we go on and more people have to deal with this, they're going to have to make management decisions similar to those that you are, because I think the research is going to continue to show and continue to point to the fact that this is something we have to take seriously. To your point earlier, there's still are people that don't want to take it seriously, but I think that we're just going to We're going to continue seeing that that's just not the case. We have to take it seriously. And if you're going to take it seriously, it will require in some cases drastic changes to to how we hunt. And um, a lot of the things you're going through right now, UM, I think are going to be an unfortunate reality for more folks. So so my moral of this whole story is that if you don't have it, make sure that you do everything you possibly can from an individual standpoint to slow down the spread in your area. And then, as you mentioned earlier, Doug, pressure and communicate to your representatives, whether it be in your Game and Fish department or the politicians whoever it might be these days that are making decisions around this, to to also take this seriously and support those people that are taking it seriously. UM. That's kind of where my head is at after all this, Um Dan, do you have any final questions for Doug or thoughts on this whole thing. You've been quite over there, feel like you're just stewing and worrying, UM, because I know you you have concerns about this too. It's just something that we all need to be aware of, man, and and uh stay up today. You know, I've mentioned this in uh one of my own podcasts, that it's something that we have to pay attention. You know. Deer hunting these days is threatened from all different angles, whether it's disease or laws or or you know whatever. And we have to educate ourselves as hunters. And you know, it's not just about big bucks anymore. It goes far beyond that. Yeah, well, Doug, uh do you have any final thoughts? I was going to say there was one more thing. That's there's a group out there called the c w D Alliance and you can google them and find them, and it's everyone from White Tails Unlimited to Rocky Out and Out Foundation or involved with that, and they're trying to UM put information out. I posted on my Instagram a photo of it a while ago of their their page. That's a good source. But I'd also say if you want to follow what's going on in Wisconsin, UM, even though we're we need more political strength, I guess to do more about it. The c w D, the d n R c w D website is a real interesting UM source of information. Um So those are two places that I would uh suggest that you go great. Well, Doug, I appreciate you sharing this with us. Um. It's it's one thing to have people tell you about hypothetical risks or concerns about CWD. It's another to hear the story of someone who's actually dealing with it right now and how it's impacting their actual hunting experiences. UM. So I just appreciate you sharing that and letting us know what's going on in your head, what you're trying to do where things are headed. I found it helpful. Um and uh, And I know it's a bummer of course for your actual deer hunting, But as I mentioned earlier, I do think that you are achieving something positive here by at least sharing your experience with others. I think that will help other people. So thank you, Doug. Yeah, well you're welcome. You know. One last thing that I would say about that is yesterday, it was the last day of our season, and and uh, I was out at the farm, and I was taking care of the cattle, and I was doing you know, some farm activities, and I look up and there's a dough and two fonts working across this bowl behind the barn, and uh, I'm like, well, there we go. Um, And I caught myself just watching them with the eye of appreciation and then thought, oh, but you want to reduce the curd, you need to go and get your rifle and shoot that door or one of those fawns. And by the time that I by the time I didn't got right went into the farmhouse, got rifle and then got up to where I could have got a shot at him. They were not in a position or situation where I could have shot at him, and I what didn't want to start chasing him at that point because it was really late in the day. But so I stopped there and sort of appreciated the the beauty of those animals and that some going down behind them, and the whole situation. And uh, I think it was at that moment mark that I settled in my that I made peace with the whole thing. You know that there's still the coolest animal out there, and uh, and I just and uh and I love them and I love it and uh, it's unfortunate this is going on, but when you can, you know, I got to that point anyway, Yeah, I think That's a great way to end this conversation because you're right there, there's challenges, but there's still a lot to be appreciated and enjoyed. And I guess that's kind of the beauty of deer hunting. There's a lot of eight things. There's some challenging things. We have our ups and downs, but they keep us going year after year getting excited about them. And uh, and that's a good thing. Here's to another year deer hunting, Yes, sir, And that will do it for episode number one, nine six of the Wired Hunt podcast, and we'll wrap things up here pretty quickly. Just want to give a big thank you to our partners who help make this show a reality. So big thank you to sit a gear Yettie Coolers, Matthew's Archery, Mayven Optics, the White Tail Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and Hunt Terror Maps, and most importantly, thank you for listening. Appreciate your time, Appreciate you tuning in all of two thousand seventeen, and hopefully we can do things even better here in two thousand eighteen. Lots of exciting news on the horizon. Can't wait to share with you some new things we've got going on, and until next time, if you are still hunting, I hope you're having some fun out there, hope you have some good luck, and until him next time, stay Wired to Hunt m