What about the hunt the mason dixon podcast your host Jordan jones here quick little intro this week we got Thomas on the basement decorator we for good old episode 10. We cover a few things like some controversy that that was brought up whenever he was on the working class bo hunter podcast about the public land stuff i don't know if you listen to that one but that one's a has a good episode that he was on. Whatever he went up the studio and talk to Kurt. Yeah it's a I think this one will be this one will be good we talk about time away from family and kind of how tough it is to be away and and and i'll tell you there for just a quick second it got kind of emotional. Like he talks about his son looking at him like why didn't you kill why didn't you kill a deer dad and and like and how it makes you feel as a man and i think a lot of people can relate to that that listen that goes out of state that hunts. And pretty much even if you go out of state or if you don't if you just leave on a Saturday and go hunt 10 miles down the road and how your kids view you. You know as a hunter as a man as a father and how your wife usually you know taking time away from your your family. But this episode was a good one I really appreciate it having Thomas on he lives about an hour from the hour and 15 minutes from in and he made the drive over here into the basement studio. Yeah but yeah it's a right now it's july the 18th this launches in the morning i'll have all this launched tomorrow morning at five a.m. On the 19th and the next week after that got another guest on that's that what i recorded with the next day after Thomas comes in that's going to be a good one to a controversial hunt like i like the controversy i do i like to call people out like with Thomas when we talked about his controversy. Like i didn't i don't agree with everything he says but that's a good thing is about the podcast it gives us an avenue to be able to have that conversation. To where we agree or disagree and we're all men here. You know a lot of people like to talk shit but want back it up you know and in a lot of people like to talk shit about what. Your opinions are but they won't say it to your face cuz they're scared about how you react and and the good thing is is what i would i appreciate about Thomas is i can look at him and said hey man i don't really agree here and and Thomas we had a great conversation about it. I'm really looking for to you guys listen to this and and and letting Thomas have his moment to be able to elaborate on what he said with. Curt and them up at the working class bo hunter boot or at their studio in Illinois there. So if you have any questions i mean fall in on basement decorator on instagram he's on tiktok that's kind of how he became famous is on tiktok. Know i think that he would absolutely embrace the conversation whether you agree with it or not i'd like to know shoot me a message on instagram. Whether it's my personal or the hunt and the pod on instagram there shoot Thomas a message on the basement decorator and i think that he would definitely be willing to have the conversation with you. And any questions that you may have about his life and how he's able to travel and what he does for work and and how he's able to be able to go out in the woods and just a lot. I really do believe that Thomas is a breath of fresh air when it comes to. Being open and honest and being able to say controversial things and not really care about your opinion about it. And that's that's hard to find in this day and age because so many people are so worried about why can't say this because it might piss this person off and that's it's really hard to find somebody that's willing to put. Basically his name that he's made on social media and trying to get into the the hunt industry or whatever you want to call it. It's so hard to find somebody that's willing to say those things so i really do believe that you like this this podcast. Man we really got into it got into some deep conversation and. Please reach out reach out to me reach out to Thomas reach out to curtain and let me know how we're doing i know it's like a broken record i say it on quite a few podcasts i've said it before and i'll keep saying it. Please give me some feedback on how i'm doing because i'd like to better i'm growing i'm only 10 episodes in this thing and i'm trying and i think i'm starting to catch the hang of this thing i really i really do believe that i'm getting the hang of of of having people on having conversations that you guys have sent me messages about and i want to ask it it's it's been. Think it's getting better would say that i think it's getting a lot better but yeah let's let's get in the episode with Thomas here and and yeah let me know how it goes. (music) That was just like too much of a name hunting the south of the mason dixon then just screw it you think of the south whenever you think of it you know it made perfect sense yeah i loved it and i loved it and i loved it. i loved it whenever Kurt you know it said hey what's what do we do with another podcast i was like hey that's red next from the south we want to be a part of it and it worked out. Let red next drink beer and talk about deer hunting that'll work out and you have oh really that's crazy because i'm getting ready to fly to yeah i was like what are the freaking chances dude like what are the chances that it happened like that and that was a cool experience for me because like it's a different place and like i know you know them a little better me but like when i walked into the studio. i'm not gonna lie i was nervous i was because i've been i've been listening to them for years and when i started basement the basement decorator started right after covid and my wife i told her i was like you know i've loved hunting for a long time and i didn't know anything about social media i didn't know anything about it and my brother and my wife were helping me create an instagram they were like well what would you call it? and i swear everything you see online is something something out doors right and nothing against that i'm sure they're in the lot of them have grown to a really big fall on this but i'm different i'm a very different human being and i was like i want something different and my wife said well what do you think about when you walk up to a deer i started looking around and i'm looking at all these deer right now and i was like i guess the first fucking thing i think about is how's he gonna look on the basement wall. and she goes well you're the basement decorator and i was like that is just weird enough to be me you know it's catchy you never expect it you know because i had heard about you from jordan jason and that's what i'll like whenever you go a little bit whenever you walk down here in the basement you said yeah you are a basement decorator but you didn't see the turkey beard right there behind you i don't know and there's this whole room in here it's full it's full of deer heads and and and. and and just a box of deer horns and stuff in there so it's pretty cool i like it i mean i mean for us guys that there are hunters and then there's people that hunt yeah you know and. for the people that are hunters this is what we think about oh absolutely not not deer season 365 24 7 yeah it's all we think about and. if i ever ran out of wall space i fucking knock down a wall and build another room you know because it this is and you can call me a trophy hunter you can call me all that i eat every damn thing that i kill i love venison. but there is nothing like getting that mountain back going down having spot picked out and put it on the wall oh i know dude like well so right here right where my two big deer are upstairs i got most of my cold bucks well not all my wife and we bought this house she said no deer heads upstairs so then i graduated one now i graduated at two and i probably. staying at two for a while but i thought about like knocking that back room off upstairs and building that making a big hunting room on get like a diamond pool table put it in there and build a bar in it like i thought about building a bar in here because now i mean i've got the room to build a bar down here and it's. if i'm podcasting down here would just not be a hell of a place to do it this is bad as to yeah i've got the i've got the TV there i mean playing a lot of telegram and and you know it's a it's a. that's why it worked out with this podcast stuff is because i do have a good place here to be able to talk shit to people and we get to look and at my decorations down here oh yeah and in like to do something like this you gotta be able to talk. i mean we're we're both in sales for a day jobs and i remember the first time we ever message each other i think it was on tick tock yes it was right after you admit i commented on your lives yeah you did yeah and you would. you started saying check out this book i missed him but i'm still getting him on camera and i'm sorry i mean we all missed a year if you say yeah you're fucking liar yeah um but. i think we talked back and forth for like literally like three hours that night yeah it was it was instagram it went from it graduated from tech talk messages to instagram messages to just phone numbers and we were having two separate. well i don't know why people do this but i do it all the time we have an instagram message going on and a text message it's two different conversations. it's weird we talked to them much yeah we do especially about your own yeah yeah yeah it's i mean that the basement decorator inspiration that's really cool i like the i like the concept of it you know because. what what do we think of like you just said is whenever you get to a house like okay so i'm in pest control and i do a lot of termite inspections for people buying and selling homes yeah every house i go into i'm thinking where would i hang your head yeah i mean i'm in i'm in banner elk and these two to three million dollar homes i'm thinking. man i don't i don't like his house i think much place to hang a bunch of deer heads yeah yeah where you looking along you go why don't why doesn't he have a fucking deer on that wall i mean i know you may not but by god why don't you put a big ass elk or a moose or a deer head there yeah just buy one if you have to always go into people's houses and i'll say oh man where'd you kill that deer i'm not my uncle got that deer you know i'm well tell me the story on it i want to hear it but. i'm Thomas uh how did you do this season is killed good dearest year to do this year was. i i've always said this i think whenever you get cocky and you act like you're the best hunter in the world and you get real confident the woods comes up and. smacks you're in the face if you're a believe in man that's the lord he's got a sense of humor yeah he's a he's a he'll humble you and i've always said this too like when you're in the woods there's there's no place where i feel god more yeah you know and. he uses the woods to humbly oh absolutely so in 2022. every state i hunted in i got a buck yeah a good buck yeah couple of more great bucks yeah so going into this year i added another state i was hunting west Virginia Texas Missouri North Carolina. and my goal i would say goals before the season my goal was to at least have an opportunity in each state i didn't think it was going to happen in each state but i wanted an opportunity. so i got to Missouri and November the fourth at 941 a.m i can't tell you where my keys are right now but i remember that. you know isn't that funny what was the bare magic pressure 30 point you're on to 22 degrees so we had this deer that on the first night we'd had him on camera all year would call him brows and first night he came in and i was like and we thought he was a three and a half year old and our rule there is. four and a half or higher and he comes in i look at my camera man i said he is not fucking three and a half yeah he was a tank yeah and we thought he was about 130 inch deer and he was probably 145 inch deer so he walks by and i'm like i'm going to regret that pass. and he had brow times that were about eight nine inches each so the fourth day of the hunt he comes in high in the dough he's just grunting and growling 14 yards bough i put it right in the pump station. we see him run off we can literally see blood pumping out of them so we go back to the house everyone does that right yeah especially me because i get real anxious and nervous and everything so we go back to the house second gas in yourself. yeah but we had it on film and that's my favorite part about filming is looking at the shot and i always use lit knots so you know exactly where it went in and we're like it was a little back but it was probably double long liver. so we gave him four hours we go back we find a lot of blood we find a bed nothing. nothing gone and then we even called in a thermal drone he looked for like three miles nothing i mean it it fucked me up for a long time i mean it just slapped me in the back it was coyotes maybe got on him. i have my theories where he was running we were probably about 100 yards from property line i heard a guy that was like the worst deer hunter in my life up there he literally rattled all morning like every two seconds he. You know just playing with me i'm not i'm gonna stop you there i have been that guy before i have sat there and that tree stand just because i'm bored and i'm cold and it warms me up yeah well i mean i don't. And i was listening to thought about it but people are going to think i'm lying about it it was at least once a minute oh yeah that's that's that's too much i was thinking like maybe once every 20 yeah yeah i mean it's that's what i would do because i'm cold. So where this deer was running and the way he walked off you know you see him do the tail flicker that in my world that means dead yeah he dead it don't matter where he falls he's gonna die yeah he's gonna die so when we saw him walking off he was doing tail flicker he's about 100 yards away. And we go to that last spot and there's blood everywhere and i'm like he maybe maybe we jumped him when we came in it could have been more liver and one lung. My buddy in Missouri hangs his stands like 30 feet high so the angles are tough yeah but i will also say at that high they don't ever notice you either so i think that deer ran over there in the guy took him. Really because this thermal drunk guy that came out was incredible i mean we saw every square on the woods i mean that service i've not there would have been dead you would have found in 10 minutes yeah yeah. So i think he died because he was on camera from August all the way till the day we shot him every other day and after that he was done. Oh shit he never came back so you know it is what it is if that did happen that's not something i would ever do but i don't know the person who did it if they did do it and i'm not in the business of judging other people's motives and maybe he needed me maybe i helped family out i don't know. I said wait there was one time my dad and i were a rifle hunting there was snow all over the ground and so we just walked the woods all day we didn't ever come out and we found some acres that were still like they were on the ground is too big ass widows this middle of December. They weren't following but they were acres just everywhere big a corner still to this day might be the largest deer i've ever shot in north carolina mid 130s eight point 130 down and 35 inch a corner shoot the deer. And the deer was walking i had like one more foot i was 19 years old shoot the deer he crumbles gets up and runs off in this holler you can see it's snowed. So we like gave it an hour i call he's just gonna be right right to the holler and he's gonna be dead you know i got him well do we track that deer for like a mile i shot him in the front shoulders and we got to where all there he is and he jump up and run off. And so it's super easy to track this deer well we get to where the road is you can see where the blood crosses the road goes up on the ridge and so and this is. Like way backwards backwards i'm gonna keep on going i was like dad go get the truck and i said meet me right here. So we go 25 yards up that hill and there's a tree stand up that hill i'm like oh shit and i know who hunts there and he don't care he's like yeah go shoot i mean i don't i don't care what you do. i'm like oh shit there's a tree stand right there i hope he wasn't hunting or i didn't hear any gunshot or anything but i was also a mile away but you can hear that i mean it's quiet yeah whatever. Well i go about 30 yards past his tree stand there's a pile of blood and drag marks all the way down. Could have been guy that was bow hunting like i mean that guy's a big bow hunter i know who he is and my deer there's there's drag marks there's no doubt it's a blood trail leads right to that point. Bunch of blood you can see where a deer took off to the left running and then you could tell where a deer what they found a gut pile and drag marks all the way down to some tire tracks and i'm like maybe he doesn't know that that deer was wound or he knew it was wounded maybe didn't know i shot it. But that deer got got taken me i'll say this and it brought a thought up to my mind and i know this to be true. Some of the best human beings i've ever met in the world are deer hunters. Oh 100%. Some of the worst human beings i've ever met in the world are deer hunters yes like in there's no middle ground. I agree there's either he's either a son of a bitch or your god for your great person. Yeah you'll do whatever you can to help people or your like that's a that's a that's a that's huge for me because i've always said this like i've always been the guy that try to like help people. And like i'll do whatever i can and as i've got older you know i've got kids and i'm trying to like okay maybe i don't take as many people as i used to or hey if you shoot a deer i'm the first person there to help you drag it do whatever i'll sweat and do whatever and it's it's hard to find people that are like that anymore. Yeah honestly because of social media because that there's so many things that kind of goes on in life you get judged for everything you do. Yeah no i mean it my son is going to be hunting for the first time this year and it's going to change what i do but i love it. But back to the season so that Missouri story just really just wrecked my psyche for a little while. Good news was we can have later i got to go to west Virginia for a week. So we saw a ton of deer my buddy from Missouri who owns the property in Missouri shoots under this. When i people are going to laugh this when i say giant six pointer. Oh you showed me a picture of it. Horse. There's 130 at six or any. Yeah all day. Huge. I mean he was in in these bow only counties in west Virginia the deer look like mid west deer they're two sixty two hundred and seventy pounds so that. This guy came in growling so he shoots under him we didn't get another opportunity and our goal there was we flip a coin in the morning see who's hunting or filming. We didn't care who killed it be just excited if i was behind the camera or i was behind the bow and so then my Texas trip in January. So by this point i've killed two does the year before i killed three bucks and you know however many does and you know had a great year. So we go to Texas and i'm like god if i don't kill a deer in Texas i mean if you've never hunted south Texas it is you can't even describe it. And i'm just extremely lucky my cousins range yeah and it's a cousin by marriage and i've been many many years and it's hard to describe like. You'll have ten hundred and forty to hundred sixty and steer out in front of you all times and it's not high fence. Is it because of the the deer density plus zero food zero food and extremely high their deer population is so high. That when you put a tag on the deer you don't even have to turn it in now they changed it last year but in years past. There was there was not even account at the end of the year how many deer were taken well that's kind of like how Mississippi was like my dad first started going Mississippi you could kill three bucks but there was no tagging system or something like something. You didn't tag the deer you just it just went off good faith yeah yeah it's wild and so i go in there and boat boat hunting is different there and. The game in Texas is don't shoot the first one forty that you see yeah you know you're looking for the one sixty one seventy class deer and you can really be picky. And we had a deer on camera that another guy that was with us it's one of my cousins friends who ended up killing is a hundred sixty seven inch deer. Well i'm going through cameras and i always go back to my North Carolina roots. And people understand unless you've hunted a lot of Midwest like me and you have. And you've spent your whole life hunting in North Carolina one thirty is a giant to us oh absolutely it and it is a very hard thing to attain in North Carolina people will look at it and then laugh at it all the way. A gross pope and young deer in North Carolina is. You've done some yeah absolutely and the guys that do it consistently. I have a lot of respect for it because it's very hard thing to do so we're going through cameras i always take on myself cameras Texas we're only there for like five days. And this seven pointer pops up. And he was one of his brow tones was broke the other one was like eight inches. And i was like he's probably a hundred and thirty five inch deer but i looked at everyone i said. When am i gonna have a chance to kill a seven pointer this big ever again in my life yeah and they were like never. And i was like that to him going after so i get in the blind it's the second afternoon. It just shows how my season went i'm setting up the camera i got a tripod i was hunting by myself so filming. And i go click and i look up and that's some bitches at fifteen yards. And i'm like in the camera could not have been in a worse place it's like dead center my legs and i'm like. And they're not like super spooky though give you a lot of chances down there they'll spook they'll come back but i was like. The way everything's going i cannot fuck this up so. I lean and i was in a. It's like a tide we see through blind and it's kind of short and i was in one of these big blind chairs. So i get to full draw my cam his top of the blind. Oh your bow hunt i thought your rifle hunt bow hunt yeah so. I'm like you can't fuck this up it's fifteen yards you've taken a thousand shots this year fifteen yards and you've never been more than this. You don't want to call the ball yeah yeah. So thump i hit him he mule kicks and i'm you know. A lot of people laugh at this at all the stuff i feel my good nuts and they think it's an act and i'm like no i'm that way every time. It's a dream window and i mean i absolutely lose it and so i'm going nuts and then the deer gets about sixty yards and he's just staying in there and i'm watching blood pump at him and i'm like. Oh he's going down he's going down then he keeps walking keeps walking about that time i go mother fucker i get out the back of the blind with my bow and i wish somebody had been there filming i'm chasing after the deer. On foot. One of the dumber fun thing next year i'm chasing after him he stops at eighty yards i'm at forty there's there's brush and needles and you know cactile on the way. And i'm like alright just back out what the fuck it is can happen again i mean there was there was pools of blood from the eighty yards that he went so we get in there and. I look on my hands and knees for about three hundred yards i get to the last round blood and i'm like you got to be fucking kidding me. So call we call the ranch next to us and there's a guy it's a really big operations like a sixty some thousand acre ranch and the guy that runs it i said who is the best fucking dog in Texas. And he gave me a name his name is John Schulte and he shows up and i'm like this is couple hours later i'm just all my friends are worried i'm gonna find tall bridge and jump off of it because they know how much it means to me. And he gets out the dogs get out and they run the complete opposite direction and i'm losing my shit i'm like what the fuck is your dog doing. Like why is he not on the trail and he's like let him use a bathroom he just made a two and a half hour trip here. This dog what is his name mingo turns around gets on the path and they had these trackers on him he gets on the path and at like eight hundred yards he starts barking and they go he bays him he bays him he bays him and i go. What the fuck does baton mean i don't know you didn't know that i didn't know that term i mean i said trade a deer yeah well i just didn't know. And they said about a ninety nine percent chance that he will hold that deer there. So we had to go over there crawl in there and we got him. Did you really finally got it yeah. So it was a. It just couldn't be easy you just say twenty twenty four or twenty twenty thirty just couldn't be easy for you the thermal drone was five hundred bucks. Yeah the dog service was four fifty that night i was like i like deer hunting a cheap i made it the most expensive fucking year deer hunting ever because i suck. But yeah that happens and honestly it refocused me it got me. Back into remembering that i'm not great. Because like i'll contest that it's not that you're not great you gotta have those years because if you don't have those years like twenty twenty two for me. Was dude it was it was tough yeah it was tough on me twenty twenty three was my good year i mean it was a killed a deer like the second weekend in North Carolina season killed a deer. Like the first day in my Iowa trip i could have killed a hundred fifty inch deer if i didn't have a long bow in my hand and i'd have just reached over grab my compound in Ohio and it's nineteen yards. I just thought hell i could how many chances you have to shoot a hundred fifty inch deer in Ohio with a long boat you just it doesn't happen so i could have that was the second or third day that i was there and i had twelve days there. Yeah it was a hill i'll try and but you gotta have those years because you can get on a high you can get on a high so much to the point where it's like i mean for people like us i mean if all we did was hunt for eleven it's maybe it may be a little bit different. But i mean you're a not an average nine to five guy i mean we work in sales so we kind of make our own schedules but still i mean we work when we're working we work in our ass off and trying to think like how can we take this time the way i look at it is. You're taking that time away from your family going out west you're not just hunting behind your house you know you're going out west and that makes it even worse. It does and you feel like a failure and like the hardest part for me when i got back from zuri was my six year old seven now. Ran up to me and he's a dad. Where's the deer. And. Do that that hit me in my core because he wanted me to be successful you know. And i just i told him story but it really led into real life lesson about you can do everything right it doesn't always go right. Because i didn't practice he was i didn't prepare unlike i prepare every year just didn't happen. And it also kind of put in focus that maybe deer hunting was too much in the forefront for me. You know like my my pages over the past four years. I've grown a pretty good following and you start listening to people that you don't even know. You start you start believing the hype you start believing all this stuff that you did this you did this you did this and i'm just Thomas. I'm not a professional or i don't make any money doing this and you start to build a persona almost like Rick flair did in the ring. Of that you but it's not really you yeah so it kind of like slap me in the face and this year my process of getting ready for season. Has been a lot less stress and a lot more enjoyable and focusing back on you know what really matters and you know i can't wait to teach my son how to hunt. Yeah yeah that's and that's the biggest thing is like what i have noticed with like my little boy he's just going why didn't you shoot a steer. Yeah like like daddy why didn't you kill one this why didn't you kill one it's like well buddy it's not that's not how it goes i'm not going just to shoot one like. Buddy i'm going to just have time to myself have time with i mean if you're if you're a religious person most people in the south are. I'm having my time with God i'm having my time just to get away and if a big buck comes in it comes in but it's like it's so much different whenever it's a location and you're going out of state. You feel like you're the timeline. Oh yeah then this getting away from the family and stuff like that and this is kind of funny i mean i even said this my wife i was like you think it's a vacation. You think that i'm going to Iowa or Ohio or Kansas or Illinois it's a vacation it's not i'm waking up i listen to the south eastern outdoors when they had a guy on them kept causing. Yeah and he said he said this he goes i go to bed earlier than i've ever went to bed. Oh yeah he said and i wake up earlier than i ever wake up and goes and i'm busting my ass for it and so like i like i understand like it hits me in the fields to whenever you say like whatever my little boy walks up two minutes. It's like if i'm not successful like my little boy said well daddy you are going for 14 days and you and kill one deer yeah and i'm like shit and i killed it on the first day i was gone and i'm like. Sorry buddy like the link with the rest of time exactly like i mean like i honed hard in two states and and and i'm like gosh i might be like so it puts it in perspective and and i do agree with you it's kind of like. I put to kill a big deer is my number three priority my number one priorities make sure my family safe and taking care of my number two priority is my religion and. My my faith in God my number three priorities to kill the biggest buck i can every year yeah not the biggest buck in the woods not the biggest not bigger than my buddies dear it's the biggest buck i can every year. But sometimes like whenever i go on these out west trips number one is me killing the biggest buck so whenever you let that person down or let that down is just like it kills you on the inside. Yeah it eats you alive and so let's fast forward to turkey season talk about kids teaching lessons. So he was ready to do his first first use turkey hunt. And so we went out in practice with four ten single shot he was a dead eye he was all over it so we get to the blind and it wasn't my blind and the window is a little higher than i thought it was going to be. And i was setting up one of the bog tripods and i thought i had at the right height he had to stand up to shoot. We didn't hear gobble all morning. And then i should you know on this he looks at me and he goes dad can i do my turkey call. And i said yeah go ahead buddy i mean that's eight thirty and we are birds so and he goes. Just with his mouth two seconds later here comes three gobble. What's the chances i mean i'm sitting i'm in shock and i had all this film gear ready to go didn't hit one button because i was in such shock. And turkey comes up gets the 20 yards absolutely a salt or decoy he could not have seen a cooler thing. So i look at a maimin and he's standing and i had it in a place where he's a taller kid he had to lean over. And you know when you're shooting shotgun if you lean over no matter where you put that bead it's gonna shoot high. So he shoots over it so i grab it i put another one in shoots over it again. And then it runs off and i am just absolutely distraught at this point like i mess this up i didn't put the tripod the right way we're walking all the woods and he goes dad. Just stop and i was like what he said i really enjoy just looking at the trees in the woods it's beautiful. And then it gets better he goes and don't worry about that dad you know how many opportunities i'm gonna get on turkey. I was like damn talking about a full circle moment right there bam a seven year old acting like that i mean it just. I needed it god knew i needed my son knew i needed and we went several of the times he had another opportunity we weren't able to get the birds to come in but it just it really like shifted focus. For me and you know i'm always going to be the type personality that if i'm doing i want to be the best but if i don't get the deer it's okay. You know so it i needed that because you get social media has a way of tearing you down and building you up and if it builds you up too high. Then the woods need to bring you back down and they did so who knows i might go to every state and kill this year and that would be great if i don't i'm going to enjoy the woods and. Just have better perspective that's awesome dude like and that is my neck that has tugs and it's tugging at my damn heart string i mean you're looking at me right now i'm a grown man and i don't cry much that makes me tear. Dude i trust me i'm fighting it i'm fighting it because no one that my son whenever we were whenever we sat in the blinds first time like we everyone hunting together we go up in my camper and we stay and he's playing all around the camper i don't let my kids play on electronics i just don't. Because i'm there annoying as shit because of it but then we went there hundreds twenty four degrees that next morning we're in a blind i had a heater and i'm like hell he can watch my iPad for a little bit yeah you have to. Well the evening before there's a bunch of those come out he goes are you going to shoot him bad i was like noted buddy i'm waiting on a big book and he's like well i want to watch my sponge problem. Yeah if if you're not going to shoot him yeah buddy enjoy the woods enjoy the woods next morning here comes out a nice book. I put him on my lap and i put him on the on in the crosshairs i put the book in the crosshairs and i'm like i have buddy can you get on it can you see it. And what i did because my old boy was glasses you saw he's blind is a bad dude yeah he can't see two feet in front of his face. I moved the crosshairs intentionally off of the deer. To see if he would lie to me i said can you see it in the scope he said yeah dad i'm right on it. But what i saw was he was looking above the scope ok and i was like ok now you have to see the deer in the scope blah blah blah. I'm sitting back down and he's just like his eyes are that big he's like kill it daddy kill it daddy i'm like no we're going away you know we're going to wait. And and he was like well if you're not going to shoot it i'm going to sit here and keep watching sponge. I'm like alright well he's five i mean he was he was four at the time so i'm trying to like get a four year old to understand and see but. Like i'm ready for him to get in that this year i'm going to take him a couple more times and just get him to get him to learn that because that boy will stay in those woods all day he absolutely loves it when we go back here all the time we take the side side behind the house and. And we walk in the woods and everything he's like daddy i don't want to go back home i just want to take sticks i just enjoy the quiet i just enjoy spending time with you out here and i'm like. I don't like i want to kill a big deer but also now just yeah screw to screw killing big deer i just want to sit with my little boy and watch a four pointer just because that's what he loves i look at my. Missouri Texas was west Virginia trip now is my chance to kill big deer you know if you get one in North Carolina it's boss yeah and but like with him going into this year i told my wife that i was like any. After like i don't want to force him to our morning house right now because i think you know couple are good like it was funny the first time we went out he was like dad i feel dizzy and like. That's called getting up at four thirty yeah and he's like how do you do this every day i'm like cuz i'm a nut job yeah yeah yeah yeah like i said it's not. Yeah yeah yeah the fun happens when we finally see the deer but yeah and then when we shoot the deer it's not fun until we get it back and we're cracking open a cold beer with our buddies at that hunting camp yeah or back at the house my buddies are my house oh yeah yeah and that's that's when it's fun for me and he made a comment me the day is like dad i want a big buck this year and i said nope. Yeah that's a good that's a good segue because i was going i was going to ask you. Are you a believer cuz i'm not are you a believer in letting your kids shoot big bucks as a first deer let me be clear on this hill no. That's pretty pretty straightforward i think i think if they start out with a big buck. It's it's like anything if you get out of college and you got a business degree or to to student and in this firm comes by and they are for you a $300,000 job. A year job you're not going to work hard you think everything just as handy to yeah and i think especially with deer hunting especially if they're going to live in North Carolina yeah. They need to understand that this ain't a year to year thing unless you're one of the greats yeah you know and. A smell of a boy could have at four years old could have killed that i mean could have killed 100 to 110 inch seven pointer. Yeah as his first deer a seven pointer and it took me it took me to us 15 years old whenever i killed this deer out here. That's a first like big right book i killed i hunted for. I started hunting when i was 18 i didn't have anyone teach me i just love that i've been mesmerized by deer my whole life and when i turned 18 i went and bought a rifle got permission on 25 acres. I had a year where i went 36 times and saw zero deer when i tell you i was bad i was really really bad and i just kept going i just kept going and then i killed my. And then i killed my first doe and then i killed my first five pointer and then i'll never forget when i got my first eight pointer. I said yeah i hate to keep bringing a break flare but i sounded like him in the woods i would just. Yeah give it all to me i was yeah i was going nuts and. I think that's why i still love it is because like. You're if you think you know it all in the woods. You will be humbled you will be humbled i mean from year to year there's new tips there's new tactics there's new things to try. And in like you know i'll get haters on my page i'll get people like my page whatever even the haters if they give an idea. I'll try to because it might be right. You know i know and that's like. Don't hear my problem i've been hunting since i was eight years old and i'm 33 now so twenty five years a man that can kill some some big deer and he's killed a lot of big deer. I found myself all the way up until and i will say this up until just maybe a year or two ago like you can't teach me anything because of who i learned it from. You can't teach me well here in the last year to have kind of been like all right hold on a minute let me take a step back like. I'll listen now to a lot more people like even people that just started learning the hunt. I'll listen to like what they're doing and it's but i guess it might be because i have opened up where i go hunt and how i like a lot of people that i noticed out in the west they don't hunt deep in the timber. They hunt the fringes they hunt the edge of the fields or they'll go just a little bit in one of my favorite videos that i saw. As of recent news i think it was last two years ago lee lokoski was in the timber and he killed that one big buck and they were like all chasing those and it had like a row of times is just a giant you know mid one seven hundred eight inch deer. And i'm like you never see that on hunting videos anymore you just see watching over a food plot or a cornfield or something like that being filled and i'm like. I wonder why now i'm hunting a lot out in the west like maybe i try that instead of maybe going to how deep in this timber or going going to Iowa. There's no going deep in any timber in Iowa or Illinois there's just not I mean you have big blocks of woods you know couple hundred acre blocks of woods. But you don't have that and that's i have i have taken these last couple years and. It kind of implemented that i don't know everything i thought i did i was i was a cocky little shit and i thought you you ain't going to know more than what my dad does there's a lot more people that know just as much as he does if not more. I think you become a better hunter by. Hunting multiple states yeah because what you do in Missouri is not going to work in North Carolina what i do in West Virginia is not going to work in Texas. So you learn all these different styles of hunting you have different goals in each state and you just learn to kind of roll with flow you know i agree and with the context of mean you have with the people that we've met across the country. It's really cool to bounce ideas off off each other i'll absolutely know did this work for you did this work for you how does it work in this state because a lot of people i know hunt multiple states a lot of people you know. In the middle states and and and i say it like the Midwest is Texas is by far the best place i've ever do you want it the Midwest is if i was drawing a picture of what i wanted hunting to be during the rut. It's our is way to get out and i'm going i've got three preference points so i'll be there in a couple years well i can't really speak on one hundred five hours you know four four hours in Iowa so i can't really speak on one hundred five hours. So i can't really speak on that mean the experiences i had is just just our and you know i went there in the rut yeah. Hunt now what is very tough i just had prime forms you know i could go well and and these people are thinking to show up and kill on that is totally false that you're are still jumping there they will still win you they will still run off they're just bigger. I think it's fast see i've even said this podcast listen the people in the south think that we're the best year hunters in the country and the only reason that we think that's because we have to work the hardest. Yeah it's it's not even working artists it's walk them farthest because of i mean we're there's people out in fucking Utah that laugh at the people in the south of think you think you have mountains you know we have mountains mountains and and it's. We don't because it's a completely different style and it's just like the people that hit on corn piles yeah. Mean yeah i think would say the same thing i would love if they got rid of baiting in North Carolina but we also know that if they get rid of baiting only 30% of us will stop being. I don't even know if it'd be that it's well yeah i'm just being nice probably all i know is is i have to leases that i would give up if i couldn't be yeah because in the south if you don't have corn out. There are years on great properties where you will see two deer. Yeah and i see i have a cut through property that goes through mind that if i don't have bait i'd be very very lucky to even see a deer and now i'm a i'm an oak owner i hunt. Oaks and everything i hate hunting corn piles i'll throw out one and it's the one not too far from the house i don't bait hardly anywhere unless it's from my wife or my kids to see deer or whatever. Because i like i like hunting on natural sign but i know that i'm not a i'm not a believer in oh if i don't shoot in the neighbor will i'm not a believer in oh if i don't have a bait pile the neighbor will have a bigger bait pile to me but what i do believe in is if i'm going to take time away from my family i want to be successful and being successful doesn't mean killing a deer but it's i could have. Yeah yeah i could have and see whenever my wife and i first started dating she was like you see all these deer but i didn't shoot them. Yeah well honey that's not what i'm here for. Like why do you even go if you're not when she was like well honey i'm going for a big buck and i'd send her like a BDS snatch out of like a six point she goes is that not a big one. I'm like honey look at all my deer that i have mounted i know they ain't much bigger than this one but shit i'm like i'm not i'm taking my time away from my wife and my kids i don't want to be i don't want to come home pissed off that i took my time away from my kid. And my wife and my fuck i didn't see a deer for three days. Yeah i mean with the corn pile thing like all my properties i'm but i use them strategically. You're not just going to a pretty place and just throwing out a corn pile in some random spot you're like right here's where the deer is supposed to be or where they are. I like to so i had a guy teach me this couple years ago or not couple probably ten years ago. I look for the oaks but like last year in Stokes county i've got a couple properties there we had zero acre and crop zero none. So in the years that you don't have the acre and crop i like putting the corn at the base of the oaks and then you know in the thick areas that transition from you know really good betting into that one. That's right there. But also even in the years that there is a lot of acreans all do the same thing and you know in North Carolina i don't give a damn how you kill it. Yeah like it'll matter it's just like if you go out and you come back like i killed about a couple years ago it was about 131 inches. For two days of my tailgate down i mean it was like you said you shoot a pop and young deer in Carolina that's our pop and young in North Carolina is like shooting a 160 150 to 150 160 in the Midwest it's a big deer anywhere you go. I mean still i'm putting young deer there's a reason why there's that standard. Oh yeah there's a reason why that there's that standard but i'm also very glad that i learned to hunt here. Yeah because i do feel like i'm not one of the guys the things you know we're better than the Midwest centers because like what i've learned in the Midwest is. They're better at certain things that i didn't even know you need to do. You know like they're better i think in the Midwest seeing the south there's a lot of. Uh parallel and yeah there's a lot of uh they are very good and i've learned a lot in the Midwest of reading sign of uh you know hunting the old something you know doing stuff like that but. If they find a scrape on the edge of a field i would walk past it a hundred times in North Carolina because we just don't see a lot of deer until after dark in the field most summer in the woods. They will set up something right there and by god they'll kill deer on and it's just it's it's. Yeah like whenever i think of scrapes in the edge of a field i think that's not time. Yeah if i find a scrape line in the middle of the woods that's not not time to me i mean i have a lot of successful success on them but. I agree there's aspects where i learned from the Midwest guys or is how they play the wind. Yeah so so around here there's a lot of variables because of the because of the terrain and everything like that like it can say a west wind. And then you go there and when you get to where you go it's going directly out south and out there it's it's learning how they play it because they have not a lot more but more consistent wins. Yeah right and so that's how i had to learn how to play the wind was from guys out there and how they do it and accessing through wind and and because at home that's just not. It's big here and i've and i've like Kurt even has said this before he's like if you're not playing the wind that's the number one thing that you have to learn. Oh yeah if you if you don't know anything about your home play that wind first yeah. Yeah i think that's a huge thing but like you said here. Good luck yeah playing the win i mean it's and people get that either about south like when you're hunting haulers and stuff like we do like. I hunt stokes counting yakin county uh summon wilks county and. Yeah it's there's there's so much yeah now getting back to like corn piles all right so i want to use that as a transition. So we used to debate all year run minerals all year we could do anything that we wanted to do when it came to trying to get pictures of deer trying to keep deer on our farms. Now that's all changed yeah like they banned baiting up until labor day they've done or the first that sent him first yeah they've done all that how has cwd. Do you believe in it do you how has it played factors in it how i mean. Rent so i'll say where i hunt in Missouri is the number one county in Missouri for cwd they had 44 positives last year in this one county. I have never seen a deer dead on the ground. That we turned in that was tested positive for cwd about here in Missouri Missouri yeah also here. We walked through a lot of woods i've got a i've got access to 1800 acres i don't know how much land you got have you ever found the deer just dead out in the woods that you turned in to be tested the tested positive. The only ones that come in positive or hit by car or killed by a hunter last year we tested 39,000 deer and we had 13 positives that is point zero zero zero three percent. What the fuck are we doing taking away minerals does nothing but her fonts does nothing but her gestation. For the for the does it does nothing but so there are mineral companies out there now they have ingredients that attacked the real disease hd which we're going to deal with this year. We have not seen the hd yet but it's been super dry it's been so dry your corn look more dehydrated than me after a week in Myrtle Beach i mean we had no rain yeah. And so there are companies out there like analogics that have ingredients in it that combat hd and I have found on properties that you know we had a hd come through probably six seven years ago it was awful. We found it was it was just like how it is is so dry yeah yeah and that kills a ton of deer now i will also say as hard as it is to hunt here our population is crazy. Oh we have a shit on the day we have a shit we have i bet we're in the top five states of deer population yeah but we have nine does one buck or it might be 15 does one buck. Yeah i remember like in the back in the books i used to put like a lot of ratios versus what was killed versus what you know and. Yeah i just think that this whole cwd thing so Tennessee got in trouble i think it was last year for inflating their cwd positives you know why they were inflating them because they get $19,000 for each positive. From that go get that much money get that much money. And it's it's ridiculous that in stokes county yackin county wilks county. Allegheny County ash county ash county all these counties so i live in david county if i go home stokes county i can't bring a deer home to clean it. What the have you ever seen a deer eat a deer. And after it's dead it can't spread yeah so and and it cannot spread that they prove that it cannot spread to humans. I read a study the day that said that you know the whole deer pea thing. There was this whole thing where there was people in washington that were lobbying for all the dope companies and everything which i didn't know there was a thing but they would have to drink something crazy like. 3,000 gallons of pea or something to contract cw that's a weird there so freaky there but but the thing is like there are other states. Whether or not it's something that we need to be super worried about i would just say go to colorado because colorado either had the first test that was made or they found the first positive in 1967. How many people you know this year that are going out there to hunt a servant. A lot. Yes and if it was decimating populations 1967 to 2024 i'm not good at math let's just call it 70 something. Yeah they'd be gone yeah. So it doesn't do with the fuck they say it does. And it just. I think it's a government fundraiser i also think it's a way to like in stokes county this year i was talking one of the deer processors just totally shut down because nobody's hunting. They all think that if they eat deer meat they're going to get it there's never been a human that has contracted cwd from eating a positive deer. I guarantee you've ate a positive deer i guarantee i've ate a positive deer. There's no way i haven't. Yeah there's no way i haven't because i mean as many as much deer meat as i consume to my life. Yeah i ain't saying i've consumed it i'll probably eat 150 to 200 solid total deer in my life. Yeah and just like from from asshole to freaking lips i mean i have eat so much deer meat. Well i mean you think about all the millions of deer that get killed and eaten on a yearly basis and nobody's ever got sick from deer meat. Yeah so what they're doing is they're actually making it worse because they keep forgetting about they say you know well if they eat in the corn pile what if they eat in the same food plot. Well everybody remembers the infamous tadnugent. Yes licking branches yes little ponds little you know all these things that they in deer or social animals they stand around lick each other. Yeah so it's hell this may be vulgar but bucks eat pussy. Yeah they do they live it they eat pussy. There's a flip. Yeah i wish that we were videoing that. I mean i swear i mean it's funny a buddy mine said that tell me one time he goes you know whenever them them bucks i get up everybody behind it and they lick on that thing before they stick it in and but it is funny as vulgar as it may sound. It's the truth i mean these deer are constantly all of the time licking each other the the the foams are licking each other the or the mother and the foams and the books and the it's the licking branches is probably where they're going to get it the worst. Yeah and all these decisions are made by unelected bureaucrats. Mmm biologists half of which don't even hunt. Yeah so how can we make the state more money well if i say this is this is this is this this is this is this maybe it's going to push for for us and and listen i'm not saying cwd isn't real. And i need i know it is real but i think it's like how they inflated covid but but whenever they say a deer 100% dies. Okay what studies are done on your are they done on wild deer no no because you can't study a wild deer unless you tag it unless you got all the time resources to fall around all the studies are done on pin deer. Are you telling me that a pin deer has built up antibodies the same way that a wild deer has when he's drinking out of fucking shit creep down the road. No yeah i mean well i mean fence deer they're getting grain they're getting all the minerals that they need to combat that ship. Yeah but if they're studying on a deer that is not wild i believe in the wild i don't believe in evolution but i do believe the animals evolved to deal with what they're dealing with. Okay okay i see what you're saying i see what you're saying like like these deer are evolving and which evolution if you believe in it or whatever not there's some form of it. I mean it's it's been since the sixties and how deer or i mean because i think deer have evolved from from cameras and the amount of minerals that we do put out. I guess the better word is they are taught how to deal with things well they're they grow up into it. Yeah yeah yeah yeah so i just think that what we're doing is we are if you look at the licenses sold just in North Carolina. The highest number we probably ever had was during covid none of us had shit to do so there was a lot of people about hunting licenses but ever since it has become a focal point. People can't take a deer home. So you can't take a deer i cannot take a deer literally five or ten minutes from my house is Alexander County. Yeah Alexander County is part of the northwestern which is one of the secondaries but from 15 minutes 10 minutes if you go right down now Alexander County is is eight minutes total from my house i have to debon it. Yeah to bring it here eight minutes from my house and i think that's total do i agree with the state to state. Okay we can have a conversation state to state but we live an hour from Virginia. An hour from Tennessee where i do i live an hour i can be in Virginia hour and ten minutes from my house Tennessee and fifty five minutes from my house in South Carolina you know at forty five minutes to an hour from my house. And i have to i have to debond the damn things it's tough for me with cwd because there's so many things that i grew up doing. And between hunting and i can bring the deer home like you're taking okay let's just look at it from from a face value or like just not even really that deep. I want to be able to show my deer off to my buddies exactly all my buddies live off the mountain where i hunt is up the mountain so the biggest part of me is bringing my deer home call my buddies hey drive to the house i just killed a giant. Come to my house show the deer oh yeah here's a skull cap. Like it's taken away a tradition well and not to mention that may sound crazy it may sound stupid no no it is it's taken away a huge southern tradition absolutely because like all of us have done it where we go to the local gas station we got the tailgate down we're showing off joe schmo. Yeah people that don't even hear like man that's a big book yeah and they just will never be able to like convince me that transfer of a carcass is the problem. Yeah because we're we taking it i'm putting it in a fucking double trash bag and throwing it away it's going to the dump. Exactly you know after i cut the meat off i grind it myself i like i enjoy the processing part of deer is one of the things that's kept me doing it so long i love the fact that i know we're food. I love the fact that if i make something and people go and they're not hunters and they go this is a great burger i love going that's a deer yeah you know and now there are so many people that are uneducated on cwd and they're scared death to take a bite i mean i know venison is a big part of y'all's diet is also a big part of my family's diet. And last year at the end of the season when it was on volunteer testing i had to take it to this processor because i did not have the resources to debon it in the dark. Yeah and he goes would you like to have a test it and i said it's not mandatory and they said no but i said are you getting paid to test it that's the other thing they were paying processors and taxiderm is twenty dollars a deer. Did you notice licenses prices went up this year who the fuck is paying for that. And in like people act like i'm just pissed off guy talking about it now but you passionate i'm passionate about it because they're attacking what is important to me and i think there's a bigger motive i think the motive is in north carolina if you look at bow hunters and gun hunters what would you say the split is. I'm gonna say probably thirty seventy thirty vote hundred seventy percent of those people how many of them are passionate gun owners. Five percent exactly so what do they do when they decide they're not going to hunt anymore. Mm hmm sell the rifle mm hmm it's a way to arm and it's a way to take a food source away from people. And i always and you believe that cwd is a start. I think that if you call me i know i know i love the conversation that's the reason i'm i'm i'm playing devil i'm not it's not a devil's advocate because i do agree with you to a certain extent. I do like i do believe that it is a government funded thing the way to take money out of my pocket and and and not me not be able to have the freedom of that we've always had to do her. I'll say this is it a real diswandering is it a real disease sure yes. Do i think it can kill a deer sure yeah do i think it kills a hundred percent of deer no no. And that you're saying hundred percent of the deer that contracts contracts it yeah and was just like we we get cancer in our body every day ex our body is made to our body is made to kill off that disease and they get it and their immune systems are way better than ours. You sent a deer with a cold or the food no exactly their immune system is made to kill that off it's some some dears are weaker than other but. It's just cwd i just don't like the way that the state is handling now i'm not in the government i don't have anything to do with the wildlife other than what i contribute to between license sales and and and how much money i spend doing it. Do i think there's a way that needs to be improved yes and hopefully i'm on a platform now to wear if it is so if the right person hears it i'd love to have them have a conversation exactly and no game wouldn't have a conversation with you about well and i want to say this i want to be clear about this i support in c wildlife. I support in c game wardens i think they have a very tough job you're always approaching somebody with a gun yeah they don't make a lot of money and they do the best they can we have one game warden per county. Which is crazy so they can't cover everything and i think a lot of times on these rules they're not real clear on what they're supposed to do you know and i would just say to the state. If i were to suggest anything look at what the Missouri is done. Missouri is a destination for a lot of people to go home they have over over the counter tags it's an awesome state and kill two bucks it's volunteer testing. So like if you're worried about it go get it tested. That's a good point like don't mandate yeah need to do all these things before the deer when it when it comes to the deer hunting yeah but if you're like hey i'd like to know yeah and then we can see the results in the year. Yeah and and i also wish that they would take a deep hard look at minerals do they show whenever tested they show all the counties that where where the positives were so i think the highest number of positives were. I want to say it was in stokes county there was three on the eastern part of the state there was a couple out out i think there was three or four cases out of all gaining and there was three or four in wilks. And yakin was the highest one and i think this year don't quote me on this i think this year they only have like one. So yeah there was zero on call well there was zero on target there was zero on ash there was no i think there was one case in ash there was and. That's what i'm saying thousands of deer thirty nine thousand think about this thirty nine thousand like if we're talking about probabilities let's just go back to freaking ninth grade math. Yeah thirty nine thousand thirteen positives point oh three would you make a change for point oh oh three percent no well we did with coven. And that's where that they still have that in their forefront of their mind yeah and i think you know and i honestly i really do i think it's. Okay if i call me i'm not a conspiracy therapist i'm not a conspiracy theorist or a political guy whatsoever. But the handle the same way that the country got handled when it came to coven. I think that they want to see stop it how will people fall in line and and let me be clear on this i am not telling anyone to break the wall. I am saying if there is a rule that is put in place by the state that you should follow you should absolutely follow but you have every right to question it i've had people hate on me. I've had people tell me that there are people with fake accounts that follow everything i do because i've had videos that have gone viral speaking out against us and that they're looking for something that i'm doing wrong keep looking. You're not going to find anything i follow every rule to a tea if i know of the world. Mm-hmm and i don't know i mean you can argue this you have to Thomas yeah you actually have a name in the end if you could if you want to call it an industry or whatever. You have a name big enough to where if if you come crashing down on you you're going to come crashing on hard i'm i'm affiliated with. Arguably one of the biggest hunting podcast in the industry the biggest yeah yeah i mean the one has been doing it longest and. Dude i gotta follow every freaking rule i have to because i'm not putting a bad name on me i'm not putting a bad name on Kurt i'm not putting a bad name on any of those guys. And and and i agree with you like if there's a law that comes out i'm going to follow it you have to i'm going to follow it doesn't mean i like it. Yeah i mean they just changed so that's something i don't like to change and it's not even for me because i'm a bow hunter i love to bow hunt now when it's gun season i can carry rifle my hand don't even know i like after all this all those months of chasing with a bow. I have a boom stick in my hand and me too but they took away gun season on Thanksgiving day. They made it muzzle order kill in the western part like this county right here that you were sitting in. So the so it used to be the Monday like the county where now the Monday before Thanksgiving started rifle season and it was most season i went to that point well they had an early muzzle order middle of the season or like middle of or end of September early October. They pushed it to beginning of November. Okay i agree with that because nobody i don't want to be out there on the skittas and muzzle order in my hand. But what they did was they took away the guy now they have to go by muzzle order because maybe they didn't muzzle order hunt at all and the only day that they can hunt is Thanksgiving. And so now you're taking away a lot of because there's a ton of kids out there that that hunt on Thanksgiving that might be the first day they ever hunt. It's the biggest tradition in the south. Exactly on Thanksgiving day you've got a rifle. Here's the thing how many seven and eight year olds is going to put a 50 caliber to their shoulder. No. Exactly and it's because it kicks the shit out of them. And it's just taken away that. And they took the late bow season that we had and made it now all gun season from what i understand. And I don't I hate to say this honestly but it's the truth. NC Wildlife does not have a focus on white tail deer hunters. They have a focus on deer hunters and bears. And don't get me wrong. I'm a big supporter. Please God do whatever you can to protect these bears. But I fucking hate a bear. I don't I hate it. Come to West Virginia. Yeah that my buddy Trent and he's been on podcast the time or two and and he was talking about he said you cannot throw out a corn pile. See we do we fight him. Yeah yeah he said well in Ash and Allegheny County. I've got I've got there's one property I can I have six bears in one picture and but but still like going back to it the wildlife they do their best. I know they do because I don't honestly think I think the south has a lot of people that like to bitch and wine. But don't want to do anything about it. I mean I mean let's just be honest. This is a great description. Like the south has a lot of people that like to bitch and wine but they're not willing to stand up and go. I mean there's meetings that they have and who knows if they're if they hear them or if they if they actually speak up in these meetings or what the what they want to do behind the desk or you know but we just want something to bitch about. Yeah yeah I mean it's in our culture and I think I think I think it goes all the way back to 1865 but you know. Not many people is going to understand what you mean by that. Yeah yeah Appomattox but so but yeah so real quick can we hope can we pause this. Oh you got a piss. Yeah we got a fist. Yeah. Yeah we'll be back in two seconds. Yeah. All right sorry guys we had to take a little piss break there. But man it's kind of like go back where we were and I think I know how you want to transition to this. Go ahead just you know what we were doing the whole CWD we've we've done it. I want to have somebody if anybody it's in the wildlife of North Carolina South Carolina Tennessee Virginia. If y'all just listen to this and you want to talk about it and I would love to sit down and just have a conversation about what's in what's in the wildlife's head and it's give you the opportunity to talk about it. That's what I want. I think they need to have a forum like this a podcast where like you said you bring in a biologist you bring in a bean counter you bring in a decision maker you bring in a hunter and you got a host. Yeah. And you said let's have a debate. Let's just talk. Yeah let's just talk. Like I want to tell you my perspective my perspective is it sucks that I cannot put out minerals and listen I'm not a big baiter but it is camera candy for me. Like I maybe let me put out a 50 pound bag of corn every month like once a month because people bait in their backyards all the time just to see deer and they have corn feeders and you can't regulate that if you try to do that. Like I talked to one game morning he said I don't like we care about it I'm not going to say his name not going to say what state or whatever he said I care more about people that bait turkeys I don't give a shit who has minerals out. Like I just care more about people bait in turkeys than anything. Yeah they really care about turkeys here which which I'm glad they do because our turkey pop past five years not to get on a tangy but it turkey and it's gotten a lot better. It finally has because three years ago it sucked. All right Thomas I'm not even going to segue it you do it do it. So I'm betting you want to get on a certain subject that went crazy when I was at working class. Yes I am so we covered this with Travis. Yeah and the reason why I want to get on this because I'm the guy that has a shit ton of private land I mean between in five different states. I'm not going to say how much I do but I have I have enough to where should it have offended me what you said. Yes did it no because I'm a fucking man I mean I'm a man and I love that started the conversation. Thomas say exactly what you said and the way you said it and I played it on Travis Chavins if you've listened to it I played on his the video but for the people that didn't listen to Travis's that want to listen to this say what you said and I want you to elaborate. Okay so I'm working class we got into my rants one of the things that is kind of made me famous not well it's got you it's got you some following. Yeah is I will speak my mind but I also understand that other people have different opinions yeah yeah and but I know that if I put my opinion out there that you have every right to question it. So what I said was if you have a lot of private land. I believe that is unfair for you to go hunt public and here's the thing that a lot of people missed and I did say this in the original statement. If keyword if you're only going on public to come off and beat your chest and say I killed a deer on public. I never said that you shouldn't go hunt public I said that it I know that you're not like that I know that when you send me a deer picture it's a deer. So that shows you that a clip yeah a clip can be taken so far out of context yeah like like what you said was hey if you're just going on a public just to say I killed a deer on public fuck you. If you've got thousands of acres you're taking away that okay I can agree with that but also I'm a hey it's government land if you want to do that go to it I don't give fuck because it's not affecting me because I have private land everywhere. In the opinion so let me back it up even further and I'll be completely honest have I ever a hunted or killed a deer on public. No I haven't I've never needed to I've always well I've not always had a lot of private but it's grown over the years and through relationships and stuff I've got great place to go out of state and everything. So first if you're going out of state of course you got on public. Yeah unless you unless you're lucky and you have a good connection you don't you don't you don't have you know connection or whatever but but it really goes back to this hunting public when they first got big. I don't know let's call it five years ago six years ago. They made hunting public really really cool. They are excellent hunters they're great at videography they're great at putting the story together oh guys they're cool guys everybody wanted to be just like them. So there were people that had never thought about going to hunt public who had access to all that private they were like damn it I gotta go kill a deer on public. And my only thing against it this my opinion really comes from my passion for deer hunting and growing the sport. I think that a lot of people that are new hunters they don't even know who to ask to get privately and they don't even know how to start the conversation they're definitely not door knocking. So they're showing up to the public and I think you'll agree with me on this. When you go to public now versus 10 years ago is there more trucks now than there was 10 years ago. It's insane it's insane public land hunting used and it still is good it's still it's still great. And you can still kill giants on public. The problem is is places that like where I killed that deer over them on the right of higher deer. A hundred there four days never saw a truck. That was a 450 acre piece problem. That would never happen now. No and the reason it would never happen. There are guys and this is the whole basis of my opinion is the psyche of or what is coming from your heart or what it is you're feeling. And you know what if you want to go out there and walk around and I hate it I hate it I hate it. Let me just say this clearly I fucking hate it when I kill a deer and somebody goes who's up public or private. Who gives a shit. Yeah it's a deer. Why is it better that I is it better that you killed a hundred and thirty inch deer. Are you saying it's small for private but big for public. And I had people attacking me over the statement and they were saying well you're liberal you're a Democrat you're you're you're a piece shit you can't kill a deer on public. You know me pretty well you think I if I wanted to could I figure it out and go kill it here. Yeah would I struggle probably in the beginning yeah I'll admit that. Because you're hunting North Carolina. Yeah yeah anybody seeds and hunters struggle here. But I'm just saying it goes back to the whole reason that you're out there. And that was the big thing that people miss all they heard was if you have a lot of land and a lot of people would say well how much land counts is a lot of land. I don't fucking know or or you know there was just so many things and it wasn't a lot of people that were attacking me but there was a certain few. Yeah really fucking pissed me off. Well and I'll say this like from okay this is not playing devil's advocate. This is from somebody that does have a lot of private land and how it seems right. If I see if I'm driving down the road and I'm passing one of the three top game lands on the ash county and I see 135 inch deer and I'm driving to my 1600 acre farm that I haven't crested. And I see 135 inch deer 140 inch deer. What it seems like is like oh so you're just telling me that I'm a piece of shit for going after that deer and that's how that's how people took it. That's how that's that's what people heard and that's how they took because I mean it's just kind of like I mean you watch any social media and you see you see a woman get smacked in the face and you're like God damn I beat his ass. But what you didn't realize is she was hitting him with a baseball bat you know on the other end of it and that's I see how it pissed off a lot of people. Well and I'll say this you're allowed to have your opinion. Yeah everyone. You know what I love the most about it. Yeah. It's because it started to come. I love controversy controversy that you can have a conversation about and that's what I loved about that comment. Did I 100% agree with it? No. But did you hear the if? Yes I did. Now I heard the if because I know I know. But I know that when you're going to kill a deer on here's the thing if you call me and say I saw a 150 inch deer run across the road in public. My first statement would be go kill him. Yeah exactly. The big thing is if you're only doing it to go to the art so big thing itself we just talked about this go to the gas station. If you're only doing it to go to the gas station go I killed a deer on public. Yeah it's you know public but like drives me nuts some of these social media influencers that every two words they say public. Yeah a deer. They killed it out of the saddle. Kurt Gire says it best. Why would I leave deer? To find deer. To find deer. Well say like I've always said this like it's all it's it's always been a fad. It started to be a fat. I think the people that made it cool was Watteau Journal and Jared Cefler. He made it cool. He is like bad. He is a freaking bad ass dude. I have hung around Jared enough now and talked to him enough now that that is a genuine public. Like he's like I know I can go kill deer on private but I'm showing you that you can do what I'm doing. So before you go any further there was a so you remember when working class was doing the jewelry series. It was like yeah yeah yeah Kurt brought this question up to Jared Cefler. Well and Jared Cefler's reaction was I can kind of see what he's saying. What what question? Oh the public versus private. Before it went big. Yes. Yes. Because I put it out on video and Kurt saw it and talked about it in that episode this before he had ever even invited me to be on the show. I just think that like and let me let me make another statement. If you have three like I have access to 20,000 acres throughout this great country and people were like why would one guy have 20,000 acres on those 20,000 acres. There's over a hundred people behind it. Yeah I mean because you think about your West Virginia lease is probably 15,000 acres of that. Yeah well it's probably 30 people on it 30, 40 people on it. Yeah I mean so West Virginia we have 20 people Texas we have about 10 people down there. We have in North Carolina each lease has five, six, seven people that I mean I mean it's a lot of people in the land. Between taking the kids and taking fathers that's because it's all there's yeah exactly. Yeah let's see like in in my opinion like when I when I okay I'll go back to what I'm saying like with it being a fad. I watch all these videos and the people that are killing deer on public you have your one off somebody shoot a booner. So I shoot a 150s 160s and as you usually the die hard hunters probably 50% of die hard hunters 50% are the people that first time they ever stepped foot on the property they could just kill a giant. That happens whether it's private or public. The thing to me is I said people after five to eight years people are going to start getting tired of spending on spending all their hard earned money and time away from their family to chase 115 to 120 inch deer in Ohio on public land just to say they did. And there I mean I'll be honest with you I've been very fortunate I've got a lot of big deer from from my short first young as I am. If I was going to Ohio every year shooting a hundred inch eight pointer my wife would sit there and question me as a deer hunter. Say well you can shoot those deer here why are you doing that like why are you leaving me for 10 days or leaving me for two weeks just to go shoot a little buck like can't you do that here and then be home with me every night. Like people do it I do agree with you people do it just to beat their chest. Now there's a lot of people like you said go out of state you're going to have to start somewhere you have to start somewhere. But me this is the devil's advocate. If I want to go beat my chest. I have every fucking right to because I pay taxes and I pay the license and that like whenever I said that like and this is what I love about you and love about the topic. If I want to go beat my chest and shoot an eighty five inch eight pointer I'm going to and you have no right to tell me I can't. Right and that's what that's what that's what I love about the topic and how it was brought up in the people the fact that you had hate and the fact that you and the fact that you had people that supported you because I do I have a shit ton. I mean I have access to 30,000 acres probably 25 to 30,000 acres across seven states and but if I want to go hunt this 10,000 acre public over here and shoot a four pointer on it. Fuck you I'm going to. You know what this topic did. What? This is gonna piss a lot of people off. It brought out all the postseason deer on the people that I was talking about were the ones that got the matters. Oh okay and the reason I say that is if you know me and you know how I'm not an unreasonable person. I do have opinions but I also will listen to other people's opinions. The thing that really like me and you come from a generation of southern boys if you want to buck this buck. Yeah yeah absolutely. Let's put our chances together and let's be man about it and talk about it. You got a problem with me nor am I. Let's buck and the thing that really pissed me off was when people started like I get a lot of negative comments on social media. That's just part of it. Yeah and most time I laugh at I don't do response videos. I don't do any. Yeah you don't need to. Yeah I just laugh at it you know it's funny like thank you for making my page be. Thank you for bringing attention more to my page. More in the algorithm you know but when people were coming at me and calling me things that are against my core. It's like come on like yeah like all I said was and it comes from the it comes from we need to grow the sport. The new hunters in the south a lot of them were losing private farms are selling to developers right and left. Private land is diminishing so if you're bringing a new hunter in and not everyone's like me and you that will take a new guy hunting. Yeah most guys aren't. They'll say yeah I'll teach you how to hunt but that's where you're going. And then he shows up and there's 20 trucks in the parking lot and 18 of them could have been on their 600 acres and they have every right. This is the key they have every right to be on that public land. They pay their taxes they have every right to be there but if their motive is only to be there to come out and go I'll kill the 85 inch. Again they've a right to do that just like you said but it's still fucked up. It's fucked up and I believe in deer hunting there's a community. I believe in deer hunting we are supposed to take care of each other I believe. Did you ever watch us want people. Oh yeah. Do them. Yeah. Do the thrower. The thing I learned and you know they didn't teach me anything about hunting or anything but what I learned from Troy Landry was. I can tell you how many episodes he would drive past someone that was having problems they couldn't fill their tags. Or their engine wouldn't start or something like that. He 100% of the time would stop and help his neighbor. He would give up what he had just to make sure that they were okay. He would. He would not. He would know what was okay this is completely off subject. You know that none of those guys ever took a dime from Discovery Channel. Well that's dumb. None of them ever got paid. They didn't because they didn't want it because that's not their way of life and that's why I love that show. Yeah, I understand from what I understand there was it that they interviewed. I think it was Jay Paul. Maybe. Maybe. And they said no none of us are Willy. No is Willy the the guy that always through the hook. Yeah. The thing is said no we don't we're not getting paychecks from this because that's not our way of life. Our way of life is this and you guys want to come here and look at this. But that that speaks to kind of going back here like I don't I don't need recognition if I take a. A new guy and he goes and shoots a 150 or a spike and there's no just as happy. Yeah, I need zero recognition. I got a buddy of mine. He's from California. He moved here. I helped him. He killed a couple of nice bucks with me now. I know Cody will listen to this right now and he's going to be like fuck you dude. Like hell yeah. You were with me. We sat together and he was with me whenever I missed that big 140s temp owner. But there's no recognition that I need from that. And in the recognition that you need from that man and I know what you're saying where you say like. If if I'm saying hey listen the only place I have to take you is over here and then I pull up there and there's. There's five guys in Sitka and and all they have is. They have $3,000 crossbows and they they want to just go out there and say yeah I just shot a little one. Whenever they have a lease they paid $5,000 for. I get that. I do. I do 100% get that. This statement will piss people off public hunting in my opinion has become CrossFit. It's kind of like how saddle hunting was CrossFit and it's like public hunting was is. If you don't kill a deer on public land and you weren't in a saddle and you didn't. You didn't watch three YouTube videos while you were in the tree stand of about it. Yeah you're a piece of shit or you're not a real deer hunter. And I think my opinion like it wasn't something that I just woke up one day and was like hey you know. It formed after I was on social media because there were so many pages like now I will say this. There are guys online that are. All they do is hunt public and I have a lot of respect for those guys because there's a tough road to. Yeah they don't they don't choose to knock on doors are like no I'm going like just like Jared Scheffler. That's why I love Jared. That's all they do. He holds his values. There's there's a guy in Pennsylvania his nickname is Moose. He's on Instagram. I'll have to send you his page. This dude is an absolute badass and Pennsylvania is not like a destination hunting state. And the dude gets it done every year on public land. He kills studs and he goes six seven eight miles back and I have a lot of respect for him. That's not Bo Martonic. Yeah. Salah Bo Martonic man. Yeah. Yeah. He is a true blue deer hunter. He's a stereotypical first like wearing saddle hunting. But he is a killer and he's he doesn't he doesn't fall in it. Yeah. Yeah. I think the thing the reason I think social media kind of more this opinion for me is I got so tired of seeing the guys that talked about public tactics. Here's how you do it on public like literally said public every two words. And then they would go kill deer and none on more on public. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. You're right. And it's like well. You know, great. I love all the tips and tactics, but obviously they didn't fucking work. Well, you'll see why. Yeah. You see why this is a tactics podcast. Yeah. Because every other southern podcast you listen to is about tactics. And I'll tell you this, if it was tips and tactics, I wouldn't have listened to the first episode. Yeah. You know, because like tips and tactics come from it for me, it comes from rebuddies. It comes from the people that you trust because deer hunting means. Now I'm not saying that you can't learn something from like the southern outdoors and guys that I mean, Jacob and Andrew. There's good guys. I've talked to Jacob before and I'm not saying you can't learn something from that. You have to have that some part of your life because you may not have a big deer hunter. Like I got influenced from like my dad and stuff like that. You may not have that. So you got to have that, but you also got to have this. You got to have an avenue to be able to speak your mind, speak your truth, have some entertainment. We drink beer. We laugh. We have a good time. We drink beer. No bullet. Yeah. You just cracked open the first beer. Bush peach. Yeah. I don't know. I know what Kurt would call me. Yeah. Yeah. It's all right. But seriously, man, it's, I love that you said what you said. Here's what I love. I can disagree with you all day and we can still be buddies at the end of the day. 100%. We can still be buddies at the end. Yeah. Listen, I'm man enough to look at you and say, I love that you said it. I don't have to agree with it. Yes. But I think you probably have a better understanding of what I said. Yes. Like, I don't take, like, I don't, I don't, like, I'm going to process what you say or what I'm going to make you do is elaborate. Like, what do you mean by that? Yeah. And I don't know. Like, I listen to that podcast and I can't remember every, every bit of it. But I don't think that you got a chance to really elaborate it. Like, you talked about it, but like really elaborate because I think what happened was it just, you, there was, there was just so much conversation started happening. Well, Ross made a point. Mm-hmm. Ross. But I love Ross. Dude. I love that guy. Call it. Yes. He is salt. He is a southern boy that lives in Illinois. That's exactly what I thought. And I just didn't know how to put it in words. He's a son. So that's exactly what I thought. Yeah. That's the reason why I like, I mean, Austin's the same way. They're all great. That's why I was glad that my buddy Cody introduced me to these guys. Because of him, dude, I would, we mean you with me in my basement talking right now. Yeah. I don't think talking Instagram, but I, I love that it can be a conversation. I got a guy coming on tomorrow. Very controversial guy. And yeah, he's a very controversial guy. And I want to give him the opportunity the same way. Like I say, a basement decorator Thomas freaking tell me what you mean. The guy that's coming on tomorrow, it's the same way. Like he put out like he had, he made a video, the word he put a lace chip on his shoulder and just started just talking shit. And then like, and I love that dude, like I don't have to agree with you, but I love that you are willing to say what you mean or say, talk your feelings and you don't give a shit. What comes about it? Like this is how I feel. And that's why I love this podcast, dude, I can say whatever I want to encourage, encourage it, he loves it, he loves the conversation and, and how many avenues do you have really to where you can speak that opinion, not many other than TikTok, where you get hate. Yeah. Yeah. And like, and people need to back up and realize that this is America and the first amendment, bud. The coolest thing about America is whether or not we're totally aligned. Like, like when I meet, like we have gotten to a point in this country politically and I'm not super political leader, but we've gotten to a point in this country where people will literally shake a man's hand and go, who'd you vote for? Mm hmm. I don't give a shit who you voted for. Yeah. Because I shake a man's hand, I figure out who he is from his character, from how he treats me from the, you know, we've heard this before, from the contents of his care, you know. Yeah. I hate that we're out of place, and I think social media has done this a lot where people feel like some of these people that said things, these things to me would never say in my damn face. I mean, you're a six foot three, two hundred and fifty pound man. Yeah. No small valor. I'm glad you said two fifties. Really like two sixty five, two seventy, but, uh, thank you. Yeah. There's been a few bush lights, but, um, you know, and that's not a threat or anything like that. Like where did we get to the point where different, like the best societies throughout history had different opinions? You know who the worst societies were, the ones that had one opinion. Mm hmm. And socialism versus capitalism. Exactly. It's okay to have different ideas. It's okay to disagree. Gosh. It's deer hunting. Yeah. It ain't live. The one thing like me and my number one hunting buddies, my buddy Petey, and used to, we agreed on everything. Cause man, we were young growing up. Hell yeah. Let's do this. But as we got older, I'd say, hey, Petey, I think right here and he about not, I don't agree with that. I think over here. And you know what? We took two guys that grew up hunting to eat them together and then he learned from a guy and I learned from a guy. He learned from his dad, I learned from my dad and we put those two minds together and then we come up with a solution. And that's as we get older and older and older, we disagree more and we're more successful because we disagree more. Yeah. People don't realize that actually the more you disagree with somebody, the more you will become successful because you will either take this avenue of I'm going to put all my effort into proving you wrong or if I, if I really am wrong, then this guy just taught me something. Yeah. Yeah. What kind of man is always told that he's right? Yeah. Listen, I'm never right. I'm married. I'm never right. There's a subject we are not getting into, but you're right. Like, like, and I think that's why God made it that way. He knew that we needed difference of opinions and I was like, this is completely off topic. Man, I questioned my plate for a long time. Did you? I did. I've been in points of that. The day that my little boy was born was the day I believed in God was because I was like, oh, because he was a NICU baby, he was 35 or he was, he was born nine weeks early and I even looked at my wife dude and I was like, I am sorry because I lied to you on the altar. As I said, I would love you through God's love and I lied to you with all of it because I did not know what it was and when I saw that little boy, I was like, okay, I know what God's love is for me. Yeah. And so I questioned, okay, we're human beings, we're meant to question. Yeah. We're meant to try to learn more, gain more information. And so like, I may tell you, I disagree with you, but I actually don't, just so you'll elaborate. Yeah. Now I'm being forefront honest with you and say, when you say like, just if you want to beat your chest, I know what you're saying, I still don't agree with it because you can do whatever you want to as long as you pay taxes, which, which I agree with. Yes. But still in the standpoint of I do also, what I do agree with was nobody actually cares if you kill one on public or private. Yeah. Nobody gives a shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of like the unfair thing. It wasn't don't do it. It's unfair. Yeah. You know, and it's like, but there's so many things. It's just kind of like it's unfair that a millionaire hits the lottery. It's unfair that people that don't know how to deer hunt have a shit ton of money and they have the best deer hunt land around because they have a shit ton of money. Okay. Here's something that I want to cover. Yep. There is so much hate on people that have money that deer hunt. Yeah. I know. Yeah. And as I've gotten older, I can't stand it because I saw a listing. It was an Illinois lease, $15,000 and they're asking for two people for that year, $15,000. Now it's $7,500 per person for one year. Yeah, it's not cheap. That's astronomically high. Yep. And people are saying like, Oh my God, you're an idiot. You think people will pay that? Okay. I bet he got five offers. Yeah. One, the very first comment said PM Santa. Yeah. What I mean by that is there's so much hate on people that have money that deer hunt is if you, if you whoever's listening or whatever, if you hit the lottery, you did the same thing. These other people are doing buying thousands, a thousand acre farms and doing this and you'd be that guy now that's receiving hate, the guy that you used to be that would hate on people that have the money that can afford that. But then you hate on the guy that pays $5,000 to hunt somewhere for five days. Yeah. If it was two more thousand dollars, I know you have a place for a year. And I've just, I've always, I used to be the guy that hated like, you're asking, that's so stupid. Yeah. Why would you spend that much money? But then now, now that I look at it, it's like, hold on a minute. I don't, I'm not broke. I have, I have money. I make money. Yeah. I make good money and I spend $4,500 a year in leases and then I just spent 30, almost $4,000 was my turkey hunt to shoot a 20 pound chick. Yeah. Yeah. And to go, to Wyoming to shoot a 20 pound chick and basically. And I get people say, why in the hell would you pay that much money? Because I love it and I have the money to do it. Why hate on me? And that's where, but whenever I started developing or getting money to be able to do stuff like that, I'm like, why do people hate on people that actually have money? Because if they had the money to do it, they would do it too. If I hit the lottery right now for $100 million, I'm buying a farm in Iowa. Well, everyone's mental health comes with a certain cost. And people, people either decide to go to Aruba for a week for 10,000 or they go to an outfit or for 6,000 and we're both trying to achieve the same thing. Their vacation sitting around with my ties, mine's working my ass off the whole time. We both probably come home with the same mental state, but it's two different avenues. If you send me to Aruba for a week and give me my ties all week, I come home not mentally stable. I just know that you drank a lot of liquor all the whole entire week. Well, no, I think that there was nothing accomplished. There was nothing accomplished. Like, and I also would say this, like a lot of your hunters that have money did not start out with money. There's very few that started out with money. They had a dream and they had a goal. Lila Koski is the greatest example. The dude was an engineer and then he started going out his food plots with a riding mower. Yeah. Yeah. I will never understand because he left Minnesota to go to Iowa with not a little money, no money. Yep. And I think Tiffany was working at the post office. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I look at guys like that and I'm just like in awe because they took a leap of faith. They took his office. She was a flight attendant. Yeah. They took a chance. And everyone, and I'll just say this, everyone has different dreams. Everyone has different goals. Everyone has different things that when they happen, the cobwebs clear, I had two hunts last year and I spent a ton of money on leases. I spent a ton of money on an estate license that I spent a ton of money on flights fuel everything. I had two hunts last year, which was, this has never happened before, but I used to look at people that had anxiety and be like, you're weak, you know, you're weak and then my kids started getting older and work started getting harder and then I'm like, my name anxiety. You know, I had two hunts where I got to the tree and I sat at the base of the tree. Couldn't climb the tree. You just breathe in so hard. I couldn't climb the tree. I just sat there and I needed to sit in the woods and I needed to clear my head. So what I do or what I don't do with my money that I have worked hard for because my parents weren't rich by any means. We had food every night. We weren't like, you know, super poor or anything, but I did not grow up with like this spoon fed thing. I've gotten to where I've gotten with my work and my career and the income that I make and I have chosen what I love to do. And if you don't like it, fuck you, I don't care. And it's just like Jimmy John that he had him on. He's like, I'm a billionaire. I spent $600,000 on a governor's tag, but fuck it, I have the money to do it. And all that money went to conservation anyway. Yeah. Yeah, my wife is an amazing woman and she she knows in your wife would say the same thing. It's hard to be married to a hunter, not a guy that hunts. They're single. They're single from October to December. And she knows that if I'm home, it's out there anyway. Yeah. And she encourages me. She wants to see me be successful. And I'll never forget this. We had our first son. He was this bad plan on my part. He was born. He was born October 25th. And I got married on October 29th, and I had to say so in that, but I realized I didn't have a say so in that at all. And two weeks later, Friday night, we're both zombies sleeping two hours a night, and she goes in tomorrow, opening a day, a musler, and I was like, yeah, I'm not going. And she goes, I think you should go. Damn, what a woman. God, do you hit the lottery on that one? That's a keeper, you know. And she just gets it like she knows that when I come back from a week-long hunt and I'm a better dad, I'm a better husband, I'm a better lover, you're a better every person, you know? And this is something that men don't talk about a lot, and it's not something I don't know if I've ever talked about a lot, but there are days where you feel like you have a boulder on you. You know, my wife stays home, and it was a decision we mutually made, and being the only incomeer, you just feel like you have to succeed, you do all this, and we're fine. I do very well with work and all that. But you need an avenue as a man where you're alone to work out the cobwebs. And when you look at the suicide rates in men, it's exponentially higher because so many men are neutered the day they say I do. So when you marry a woman who understands that you're a man and you need to do man things, that's a magical thing. Dude, you know, because that woman up there, that sent up her, rang one of these two young back and forth up and down this house, and I know that you've heard it. That's hard. She's letting me. And I am man enough to say she is letting me have this conversation with you. She when I was offered this podcast, I told card, I said, listen, I can't tell you yes without talking to my wife first, because I already take a shit ton of time from September to December away from my family. And now I'm being asked to take even more time that has something to do with hunting. My wife will tell you, like, oh, I'm a single mom, especially in November, especially in November, but from September, because our season last basically this Saturday after Labor Day to January 1st, she says, I'm a single mom until my wife is done with deer hunting after the first, after, after November, she's done with it, December is the nail in the coffin for her, right? But my wife lets me do this, and I will fight anybody. I will look them straight in the eyes and say, if you to your face, if you will make fun of me for being dictated what I do from my wife, but my wife is also my biggest support system. My two little boys mean more to me than anything in this world. And she lets me do this and lets me go to the woods. And when I say let me, I mean, she doesn't give me issues. She supports it. Exactly. She doesn't give me issues whenever I do say, hey, honey, I'm go to Iowa, then go to Ohio. I took three weeks off in November last year. I was gone for 17 straight days with my wife completely done with it. Absolutely. I said to me, hey, honey, do you mind, we have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. Hey, honey, it's really hard because of the two-year-old. Five-year-old is fine. It's really hard because of the two-year-old. Can you please not go 17 straight days? What am I going to say? Yeah. No, I'm going out there because a deer means more to me than you know. No, my wife and my kids mean way more to me than any deer that's in here. Yeah. Seriously, they do. I always said that I would never, I would never choose a woman or kids over a deer until I found one that doesn't make me choose. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I always tell people when you're getting, when you start dating a girl, my wife will last one. What's her name? How much honeyland do you daddy got? Well, that. Let's do questions. And our first date, I told her, I said, I'm a deer hunter and this is what it means. I think what helped my wife was she was raised by a man that is, he is really, he's really focused on his time. Yeah. And she was raised by a man that was that way. Yeah. They got divorced. Well, my wife was like nine years old and she was primarily raised by her father and her mom's a great woman, just primary raised by her father because he's a all about his kids. And this woman sees her dad, she goes on Sundays. You don't talk to my dad, you don't bother my dad when football is on, when Steelers are playing, you don't, you don't even walk in that bedroom unless there's an emergency. And so I think that helped me in a lot of ways because like my wife is like, when it gets deer season, you don't bother this man. His whole entire life is about chasing these deer in April. She knows I'm chasing turkeys and there's basically five months to where I have a priority of as long as there's no emergencies, my wife doesn't need anything from the, I'm chasing an animal. And if anybody that's listening to this is a single man looking for a woman or any woman at the one, probably point zero, zero, zero, three percent of women that listen to this, the more that you're okay with me being gone and doing this, the more I want to be home with you. Yeah. You come back in it with like if you come home to yelling, I'm going hunt more. It does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like it gets to a point where like I've, and I've been, there, there've been times where, you know, no person is perfect. Like your wife is going to get agitated. All wives do if they're married to a hunter, but you kind of have to, you have to like take yourself down to the level and go, you know, what it probably did suck with me going. And but, but more times not in this, this is why she's just perfect for me is like how to go, you know, she, she doesn't understand anything about it. Yeah. Did you get a deer? Did you know, stuff like that. My wife killed this deer with her bow. I was looking at that deer is cool. Yeah. My wife killed that. So she, she sees that she, she's killed 13 deer. She's killed nine of them with a bow. And yeah, she's killed, she, she during rifle season, she's like, can I take my bow with me? I'm like, no, we're taking the damn book. Yeah. The thing is, is like she sees it, she doesn't care for her sake, how much I'm going. She cares for our kids sake. No, yeah. Yeah. Like after one day of me being gone, my kids are crying, daddy, where are you? Like my five year old is killing him that we're down here right now. He wants to be sitting in my lap talking to this microphone. Okay. I recorded a little podcast with him. It's funny as shit. It's 20 minutes long. Yeah. I'm like, buddy, we're getting a little bit too crazy here. We got it. We got in this. Yeah. Like our goal as men is to provide for our family, bring our kids to God and to make sure that we have a mental headspace to where we can do that right. And hunting can be that avenue for that because you have all the quiet time you want. I speak to God more in a tree and listen, I'm not a religious person. Yeah. I'm not a religious person at all. Yeah. I just found God just a few years ago, to be honest with you, I'm not a religious person and I don't want this to be a religious podcast or anything like that. But the quiet time, the mental health, the hunting has brought me to a point in my life to where I have something that I can be successful in. If I fail in everyday life, I know that I can be successful in the woods. Yeah. And I think that may sound pompous, but no, it goes back to this too, it's like I'm a super competitive human being. I was born that way. It doesn't matter for playing cars. It doesn't matter for playing basketball, bowling, whatever, I want to win. But it's a weird feeling when you have a son, of there is nothing that I will not do with the rest of the time I have on earth to make him to be prepared, to be more successful in every avenue that I just spoke of. Preach. I want to like reach it. Like preach it. Like even my best buddies, like if they ever stopped talking shit to me, I'm worried, right? It's like if you're not talking shit to me, I'm absolutely worried, right? But with my son, I want him to always come to me, be honest, and I'm going to do everything that I can to make you successful. And not that I'm going to make you successful, but I want to teach you the ways to be successful and I want you to be better than me. And he's the only man on earth that I am okay with being better than me. Yes. Anything else I want to, I want to be. I hate to, okay. I hate to say this. Like I don't want to ever, I don't want to ever seem like I try to be pompous or anything like that. But if my son is better than me, I can say that I was a part of it. Yeah. Yeah. Just like me taking somebody hunting. Yeah. I don't care if I kill the animal because if I take somebody hunting and they kill, and they say that, okay, say I took you hunting Thomas and you just shot that 145 inch 10 pointer that I missed. You could have shot it and killed it. I don't care that you killed it because I can promise you this. I can go home every day and say you would have never killed that deer for me. And that sounds, it sounds bad, but I got to be a part of the story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's all we want to be a part of the story. I think is what everybody wants. Yeah. We all want to be a part of the story. And the reason why so many people like they say, oh, I'm friends with this guy. I can't. Okay. I cannot stand like, oh, yeah. Yeah. You know that guy. Well, he's my buddy. I talked to him every two or three days. Yeah. I mean, he's like, like, like just trying to show off that you know somebody. Yeah. I don't give a fuck. What do you know that? But if I can be a part of a story, like I'm a, my buddy from California, like I said, some of his big bucks and some of his bucks that he's killed here in North Carolina, I'm a part of that story and I'll hold that on my shoulders for the rest of my life. Yeah. When my little boy kills probably most of the deer he'll kill in his life, I will be a part of that story. God willing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that's what I want as a father. Yeah. I'm okay with him being killing way more deer than me. Yeah. I hope he does. Cause whenever he gets to killing deer, yeah, I don't, I don't give a shit if I ever kill another one in my life. Yeah. That being a husband, being a hunter, it's tough. It is because like the fundings, your dinner, you want to look at it. You want to look at it. You want to look at it. And I'm not going to lie. I'll look at it more than I don't. But every second that you look at your phone, you're taking that second away from your family. And your little boy, little girl, they see that and your wife sees you looking at that sand. Damn. And my wife calls me out on that. Because when social media got really big for me and, you know, thinking you got to make a post every day and talk about this subject and that subject, she's like, is your phone more important than us? And my first instinct was to argue the point, no, it's not. But when you sit back and you think about it, it's like, yeah, it was. It was at that time. We can't lie to ourselves, man. Yeah. You can't lie to you. Because then, you know, you just have to learn how to compartmentalize when you're in the field, being in the field, when you're home, being home and sell cans and five made this easy. But my wife, it was funny as now she's got to her, she'll check my phone, wait, my wife doesn't get on my phone or anything like that. But she just, she'll say, Hey, you got deer pictures. What are they? Yeah. And, you know, and I've tried to, because I'm in sales, you're in sales. So we live by our phone, like, you know, who knows that that missed call you might have might mean $1,000 out of my pocket, you know, like, so I have to have my phone. And so like, we, we try to do the same. My two year old will not eat, like he just doesn't eat if he's out in front of the TV. Young and for not eating. That boy don't eat. I swear he don't. And, but we, we take our, and it's 15 minutes, man. Yeah. It's 15 minutes. And we, we go sit at the kitchen table and he'll eat. Yeah. But I find myself, if I don't leave my phone on the couch, I'll look at it as soon as that phone, cause my phone constantly goes off. I bet I've had 20 snap chats since we've had, since we started this podcast, I bet I've had five emails, two or three texts and a couple of missed calls. Now I have my phone on airplane mode, which I'm a Wi-Fi, so it'll still come through. But yeah, it's our phone, like, okay, we'll say this and I'll segue into one more and then we'll probably end this thing. Our phones have created a life for us that takes away from everything else. And I say that to say this to segue into this. We didn't have phones growing up whenever we were there hunting. I don't see how I made it in a deer stand, in a tree stand, like the best thing I had was a, was a Nokia brick phone to play snake with, you know, and, and, but I think a lot of people miss a lot of opportunities at deer because they have a similar hand. Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had, so I can take it right to the story. I was in Missouri two years ago and I was finishing a basement decorator Instagram post and the guy filming me goes, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, big deer, big deer. And this year comes running down this road, we were, we were in a tree line. It was in between a bean field and a CRP field and there was a road. He came running down the field as in Missouri and we had never had this deer on camera. We've been running so camera since August. He had flyer stickers, extra times. I mean, he was just everything you dream of. I grabbed my bow. I could not get my phone in my pocket. If I'm sitting there, you know, trying to shove the phone in my pocket, couldn't get in the pocket, finally get my bow. Then I couldn't get my release to attach to the dealer and all this. I get to full draw. He gets behind a limb gone and I'll hit a laugh when he hears this. I was up in the tree literally saying, I am the worst deer hunter alive. I mean, I was just like everything I could say bad about myself. I was saying, and I wasn't saying it quietly. I was saying it loud. I was so pissed. Well, 45 minutes later, there was this deer that he wasn't a super giant. He was, I think he was 137 inches when we taped him out, but he was mature. He was a five year old deer and we had said if we were going to see him, we were going to shoot him. I'm not picky. Like if it's a deer that I'm told I can shoot, I'm going to shoot him. Am I so heart thump? Yeah. I'm going to shoot her a redneck heart. Yeah. I'm going to shoot it every day and time. And so he starts coming in, I get my, you know, full draw, shoot him at seven yards. We see him fall down. I mean, it was perfect. And immediately I start going, I'm the best deer hunter alive. So, so within an hour, I was the worst deer hunter alive to the best deer deer alive. He's just up there just laughing his ass off. But my cell phone screwed me out of probably the only chance I've ever had a boomer. So it was, I mean, he was, I can't say this cell phone ever cost me a deer that size, but it did me. I was going to shoot a doe for Camp Leet and Iowa this year and I'm sitting there watching TikTok. I want to say I'm just scrolling through TikTok through all the, the twerking videos and the deer hunting that it's either, it's either twerking or deer hunting. There ain't no, there's nothing in between and scrolling through that and I looked over and there's a Camp Leet standing under me and I'm like, I can't move. Yeah, you can't move. Yeah. I mean, cause I pride myself. I've got huge ears. You know, and I'm like, Oh man, I can hear, I can hear him come in. He can't hear a freaking 300 pound deer unless it don't give a shit. Wow. I know. I know. That's right. But. All right. So last thing, and it's not even really a thing. Is there anything Thomas that you would like to cover? We can make it quick. We can go 20 minutes on it. Don't matter. Is there anything that you're passionate about between social media, deer hunting, turkey hunting, family, mental health? Is there anything that you think that you need to get off your chest, whether it be what we talked about earlier with, with the controversy at, is there, is there anything that you say, man, I'd really want to cover this? I think in the day and age that we're in and hunting, in the attacks coming from all over, trying to get rid of hunting that all hunters need to have opinions, but stick together. I think that we are very close and we are, who was it, Reagan said, we're one, we're one election cycle away from losing what's important to us and people don't understand what we do. People don't understand our passion. People actually hate our way of life. So we need to stop hating each other. I like to shoot big deer, but if somebody shoots a small deer, I think we should celebrate it just the same because you don't know what it did for the mental health for that man. You don't know what it did for that person. I think we also need to step back and realize that, just because you're not in front of that person, when you type it and enter it, you could end that man's life that night. And there are things that people take to heart that don't have the gumption that me and Jordan have that don't know how to handle things that aren't even so-called influencers, which I don't consider myself that or I don't think you consider yourself that. But we need to fight together to keep this way of life together because if I did not have hunting, I'd be in a ditch somewhere. And there's a lot of other men just like me. I'm right there with you, brother. I am the one good thing is that I'm a very opinionated person, and this podcast has given me an avenue for that. Now I don't speak on my opinions a lot. I may talk about myself or talk about things I've done and I may say my opinions and everything like that, but I don't get into it because I'm obviously I'm interviewing guests and I want their opinion and I can tell you the one thing that I will never stray from though. I will never stray from whether I'll tell you your I think you're right or you're wrong. I will tell you, hey, I don't agree or I do agree with you. The best thing that I heard and I know like I go back, go back to it or not. Kurt said something to that guy, the social media guy a few weeks back, and I actually love that. There's a lot of people that couldn't stand that podcast. I actually loved that podcast. I listened to every second. But Kurt said something that I loved. He looked the guy. He said, man, you just sound like a hater and whether or not the guy is a hater, whether or not the guy was right or wrong, this avenue with the podcast is a great avenue for me to be able to just to say it to you. I can tell you like I mean, I told you earlier, I don't agree with everything you say. But that's okay. It's okay. We build. We become buddies from it. We build like you know where I stand. And I'll say this, don't be afraid to one call somebody out and tell your opinions. Do be afraid of talking shit and not being able to back it up. Do be afraid of talking or saying something and not having any evidence to back it up. Do be afraid of if you're going to call me out and I come back you rebuttal and you have nothing. So if if I'm going to tell you I disagree with you, yeah, I'm going to have I'm going to tell you my reasoning. That's America. That is America. We make the great exactly. And this avenue here, listen, everybody that knows me knows I love to talk. I love to have conversation with people. It's how I make my money is I have conversation with people develop relationships and things like that. This has helped me develop a lot more relationships than I ever thought I would. What I love is with this avenue is I can have people on and tomorrow with a podcast tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to it because this guy gets a lot of hate. Yeah. He gets a ton of hate. He feeds off of it and he goes forward with it. And I'm like, I'm giving the guy a chance to say, is this guy an internet personality that does it that just or is he actually a really good guy? I'm not saying that he's not a good guy. I'm just saying the way he portrays himself, he portrays himself like he wants hate. He loves it. He feeds off of it. And that's how that's where he gets it from. But like, and you you're a very opinionated guy. Yeah. You're a very opinionated and you have the opportunity here to actually speak your mind and why your opinionated part. Yeah. That's why I love it. And the funny thing is social media is what you make it. Some of my like we have this TikTok turkey on competition. Yeah, with Brandon. Yeah. And there's like 11 of us. I talk shit to Brandon at this shoot. I'm like, you don't want me in there boy, you ain't got a chance if you got me in there. Yeah. And like so many people have like been all over us, but it is amazing. Eleven guys that are from probably 11 different states, there's a lot of different states. We have all become really good friends. Do we agree? Like we have arguments like cats and dogs on our text chain. It's hilarious. Like we have different opinions on a lot of things, but we all got each other's backs. If we're at ATA together and someone starts a fight and it's one of them, you better watch out. All 11 are coming. Well, you know what buddies are friends with each other because they're the ones that are given to each other the most shit. But it's like, I'm going to look at this big tall goofy motherfucker that's walking around here. Sometimes you walk out the door and say, I love that guy. Yeah. I mean, like if my buddies ever stop talking and I'm not telling people to stop like having opinions or stop doing this, but there's a difference in opinions and hate. Yes, I agree. And give an opinion, have a debate. There are people that follow me on TikTok, Instagram, stuff like that, who called me out on stuff and I always engage those people and I go, okay, tell me what you're thinking. If you call me a piece of shit, fuck you. Yeah. But if you say, Hey man, I'm not, I'm not a huge fan of what you said because of this. Exactly. Yeah. And like there's several guys online that the whole relationship started on a different opinion, but we talked through it through a keyboard and we were both respectful because you got to understand there's a man on the other side of the line. And anywhere else, like if I'm in a bar and you call me a piece of shit, I might smack you across the face. Yeah. That's going to happen. Yeah. And, and, but you know, there's keyboard warriors, but you just, you don't know where people are at, you know, and have different opinions. Be okay with shooting little bugs, don't be okay with shooting little bugs, but you don't know what journey that human is on. When I first started hunting, I shot everything in the woods. I'm picking now. But that's my journey. That is what I've evolved into. Let's go. Let's say this. You have money now. Yes. You can go do whatever you want to know. If a five day African safari hunt go, or a seven day African safari hunt, go. Yeah. Money now. Don't hate me just because I, I, I have a career choice. That's what I was getting to earlier whenever I said like people hate on people because they have money. Don't hate me. I'm going to speak for the people that grew up with money. Don't hate me because my dad made great career choices and he has a shit ton of money and he bought 500 acres. I'm not, I'm not saying this is me, my dad don't have that kind of money, but there's people out there that has a dad that has 500 or 1,000, 1,500 acres or their uncle has five, 5,000 acres and they go and hunt and kill giant deer. Don't hate me because I don't have any money and the only thing I can do is go hunt public lander. Don't hate me because I chose a career choice that, to where my boss owns this land or I can afford to go on these outfitter hunts. Well, I'll, I'll take it back to high school. I played football and I played baseball and whether or not I was right or wrong, me and the soccer players used to always get into it because I'd be like, you know, you're playing a communist European sport. I'm playing, you know, a real sport and all that and quote on quote, people would call that bullying, but it was bullying without hate. It was, it was bullying with friendship. Yeah. I'm just talking. And we have lost the art of being able just to talk shit and have fun as well, you know, and like I'm going to call you, like you pulled up in your, you put up in a company called I'm going to call you gay like God, I thought, yeah, you're a six foot three guy. I'm having a Ford Explorer. Yeah. Yeah. What the hell are you doing? Yeah. I mean, when you see me out there, my, my company called Subaru, like people say, like my, the owner of my company, Nashville, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a lesbian woman. You know, like the, the owner of my company gives me shit about me being the most redneck person. I'm not a, I'm a manly man. I'm a redneck man with man driving to Subaru and he goes, how do you feel pulling up into a, to a house that little Subaru, you know, but it's just giving somebody shit. Yeah. And, and I think the whole point I'm trying to make is let's have opinions, let's debate opinions, but let's come together and let's fight the powers of being, let's keep hunting around. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You know, and it's there's such a force coming after us and there's more in fighting now than ever. And it's stupid. The whole, like, the people that are like, so came, shut up, shut up. If you could afford 30 cellcams, like I got running, guess what you'd run into. Absolutely. If you hit the line. It was the first thing going to do. You won't go buy a big farm. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's it. We'll do the man. Thank you for coming to the house, driving over here, which I mean, it's an hour from your house or whatever. No, this has been fun. I think did you get everything off your chest? I did. Yeah. That was a blast. And I hope we can do it again. I want to have you, because what I like about you is you're an opinionated guy and you're not afraid to ask the questions, because you don't, you don't fear the consequences. No. That's, that's, that's the biggest thing is about being a podcast host is I don't fear the consequences of the questions I ask. Now, I'm not going to ask you certain, there's certain questions I just, I won't. I'm not a piece of shit, but I'm not afraid to ask you the tough questions to answer. And I know how to navigate that because of, of my job, you know, but that's what I like about having you on, because you're not afraid to ask that. And so yeah, absolutely. I'd love to have you on more as hell as a guest host. Yeah. I'll get a show. Yeah. You know, it'd be fun. But, well, we, we, we, maybe we'll get to the Iowa deer classic next year and show them Midwest boys had a drink of beer. Yeah. They don't know. I turned it on a little bit too strong with the Iowa deer classic this year. So I'm going to, I'm, I'm not, I, I drank too much liquor. That's why they end. Yeah. So yeah, that, that, that'll happen. But, but yeah, if you would, absolutely, thank you for coming on and I've had a good time with this one. Me too. And, uh, boys, you know the, I guess the, the gone catch a phrase, I know it ain't quite deer season yet, but go make one dig taters when it comes time. Yes. All right. (clapping) [BLANK_AUDIO]
On Episode 10 Thomas, the Basement Decorator, and Jordan discuss Thomas’s life as a rising hunting social media influencer, hunting out of state, family, and some controversy. Thomas is a great friend of Jordan’s and a friend of the WCB crew! Thanks for listening!
https://www.workingclassbowhunter.com/
The HMD Podcast is part of the WCB (Working Class Bowhunter) Podcast Network! Check out the other awesome shows in the family:
Working Class Bowhunter The Victory Drive Firearm Podcast Tackle & Tacos - A Fishing Podcast!
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