Mark Scheeren-Big Woods Bucks in the ADK

Good morning, welcome back folks, this is Billy and you're here for another episode of pertinent outdoor log talk this week. We have a special guest. Mark Sheeran of the Adirondacks. He is a big

woods

buck tracker and is actually a Maine Big Woods Bucks Team Member, that's how I run into Mark and as we are approaching whitetail season here, I wanted to change the pace a little and have a conversation about hunting in the great forests here. in new york and tracking as it's a great tradition especially in the Adirondacks but it's something I'd like to put to work here locally this winter or this season once we get some snow on the ground so it was fun to have a discussion with Mark and I think you'll enjoy it.

He is a very energetic and passionate guy. I didn't have to talk much during this podcast. He had a lot to say and it was a lot of fun to listen to and follow, so I've got that coming up for you here. As for some updates, I have a fix for last week's episode. My dad called me later just to give me some legal advice. I want to make a point with the beer, so we're doing our thing. the beer is releasing on the 30th, so if you're listening to this, at least it'll be on Monday, whatever the date is, it'll be there on the 28th, Monday the 28th, um, we'll do it, release on the 30th at Windy Brew, so Let's be clear, Wendy Brew is selling out. beer is not relevant outdoors.

I mentioned on the podcast that if you're not going to be able to attend and would like to be able to get the beer, you could let us know what I'm talking about and what's important. because you know is that we can't physically sell you the beer, but you can buy it from wendy brew and we could know if you're someone that I know or that we run past or even if you would like to have wendy brew um we can find a way to get you stuff uh it's a limited batch uh we're getting good feedback on how many people will be there so I suspect between buying the cans as well like buying growlers to go and people buying pints there especially during the end of next week into the weekend , which may not last long, so if you're interested, I definitely recommend heading out for the event or stopping by next weekend.

It will be your best chance to get it, but if you have questions about it, please contact Ben. An excellent answer. I appreciate it all and I hope to shake some hands and meet some people who have been following the podcast. but I haven't been able to meet you physically yet, so I'm looking forward to that Jimbo, uh, Danny will be there, I'm sure Brian, um, and I guess I imagine Dallas will probably be there, so a lot of the guys with the you have been. Heard here I'll be there and I'll be able to put a face to a name, so it should be a good thing for you.

I'm recording this Thursday morning, September 24th, today

mark

s the beginning of our hunting season here. For the pertnear outdoor gang, a bunch of guys are already up north, they went to the Adirondacks last night and they're probably walking into the

woods

right now as we speak to chase that old black bear we're going to do. Same thing left this morning here after the kids get to daycare and Sarah will be home holding down the fort so God bless you she will never hear this but I love you to death and thank you for putting up with my passion. in my outdoor antics, so we'll take off around eight in the morning and head up, we'll actually take the boat, it's supposed to be super nice this weekend, so let's go Take the boat with us and use it to get to where we want to have our base camp to hunt, but we're hoping it'll be in the mid 70's, uh, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, so I think we're going to grab the fishing rods and do some fishing at noon too, when I suspect the hunt won't be too hot when it's in the 70's so I'm really excited about this little adventure we're having coming here, we'll be off the grid so I don't think we'll post much but we'll take some pictures and have some stories and stuff like that to share and we'll be recording some podcasts while we're there, so stay tuned for that.

I have a couple of good podcasts for you in the next two weeks. I'm really excited to post them, a local group and then a basemap from a mobile search app I got. I did a podcast with them yesterday and I'm excited to spread it out to everyone, I think if you've been following and listening to other podcasts you've probably heard of basemap, but I've been using it now, I've been using it for about a year on a regular basis. free. The version that I had on my phone I was just using it here and there, but I bought a membership, uh, in Camel Fire, uh, you can get them to make a deal and he let me know and I want to tell you this now because you can have a chance to take advantage of it. is that they have a camel fire special that plays like every Thursday and you can actually get the full pro membership which gives you access to all of their content for all 50 states for 18.99, that's what.

It prompted me to throw myself into it. I thought, "Well, I really can't turn down this offer, so I bought it and I was pleasantly surprised and I'm very happy with the performance of it and you'll hear me talk about it with Ed." uh in a few weeks so check it out keep your eyes peeled for camel fire. Make sure you use our link if you're purchasing from camo fire, that will help us get a small commission and keep the podcast going so uh. That brings me to that, if you're enjoying it, please go ahead and give us a subscribe, give us a comment, like or rate the podcast wherever you're listening, those things help so we're.

We're gaining some speed here and heading into hunting season and it definitely makes a big difference to have those reviews. I'm just starting to learn so if you could do that that would be great, you could use the link in our bio. So when I say if you're on Instagram, if you go to our main profile page, there's a little website there and it's called a link tree. If you click on that link tree, it will take you to a separate website that has a We put a lot of different stores there and different links, so we have our own stuff there, but we have links to some stores that we all use and with which we have some affiliate codes, so if you just go and click on those links and buy from there, you will actually be purchasing from relevant outdoor places and we will get a small commission for that.

It's a small commission, but every little bit helps and we've had some good months in a row where we can actually have enough to cover the expenses of the podcast, so it's fantastic and we really appreciate your support and what you're doing in that regard. The other way you can support us right now would be by shopping. some merchandise so we have a couple new hats that arrived last week and we were crushing them so I bought limited quantities. I'm not trying to run out of inventory so I bought 24 of each so we're down to nine of the orange caps we have a richardson orange trucker cap with a rubber patch uh very sharp cap um I really like it it's comfortable uh it's like a 112 but it's a I think it's an 882 but maybe it's the color but it fits like a 112 so we have a few left and then we have another one that has a more relaxed fit.

My wife picked it up at a big gym or dad's Jim D Augustino, he's a close friend of the podcast and Jim, Jim's wife actually bought one and it fits great so first of all it's good for you, Jim, and second, it's a good hat for your wife, so I gave one to me. wife, I tried to get her to pay for it, she refused and, well, that's another story, but my wife has one, it fits her well, so if you're looking for an outdoor hat for your wife to wear, I would . Say it's a good fit for that, so that's it and I'm sure there's more, but you've probably heard enough from me, so let's get started with this podcast, enjoy, have a great weekend.

Well I'm going to have a good weekend, you'll hear this next week, so have a great week, stay healthy, wash your hands and keep feeding them. Hello, yes, yes, that's your name. Great gym. Really, very, very, very cold and funny. It's good that you think that because that's what hunting typically is cold and fun yesterday morning. I'm looking at the pass and I see the movement of these deer and I'm like the deer are moving, suddenly I saw this person with his head down, dragging his ass in shorts and a t-shirt with a backpack I'm like he's like this hard my dad always talks about floating in the woods like the fall breeze so robert, when you're 275 pounds, I don't know how you do that, but the Freightliner is like a vine you're like in a corner watching what's happening you know what it is Like you know it's up there, is it hot?

How did you know the actor's name? That's right, I know what you said. his name she herve belichicks do you know what pertineer means if you know what britner means and you live in America, you're also a redneck? Welcome to the log talk podcast brought to you by pertnear outdoor, okay, let me set this up, wow. It was quite an effort, right? Yes, zoom is not intuitive in many ways. It always gives me trouble because there are like 15 ways you can do it. Yeah, and I'd rather do it over FaceTime or something, but anyway. um so yeah I'm ready okay so I won't butcher your name it's Shiren that's how you say it Shira Sheeran okay like Ed Sheeran I was just going to say she's your cousin no unfortunately .

It's not right, it's fine, I would ask for money, yes I know, we all would. I mean, that's just human nature, yeah, yeah, so thank you, thank you Mark Sheeran for joining me today on the Log Talk podcast with Pertineer Outdoors, so we're. We're approaching our 2020 whitetail season here in New York and I started thinking about, you know, big

bucks

in the woods and hunting in the Adirondacks, it's something I haven't done before. I had never hunted deer in the Adirondacks and so I was a little inspired to try to find someone through social media who could talk to the hunting of the great Adirondack forests and trace the culture and lifestyle, so i did a little searching and found the big woods team. from Maine and I reached out to them and they ended up connecting me with you, who live here in New York and you're a member of that team, so that's how you and I connected and so on.

I just wanted to bring you out here and shoot the breeze a little bit and get a little bit of a different taste of whitetail talk, different than hunting for food plots and, uh, in the cornfields, yeah, yeah, sure, well, I can tell you a little history. about how this all came about. I grew up in farm country, I grew up on a farm and uh, my hunting partner and I, Bob Bob Dunbar, have hunted in the southern part of New York since we were probably nine and ten years old. old and um and it was a lot of fun and but I was a Bob kind of kid too, but mostly me, I didn't really like being in a tree or sitting um, so it was the early '80s and I don't think I had a license. hunting until the age of 21.

I mean, we had so much land around our house. We only hunted when we wanted to be honest. You know, it was like, you know, old school. where all the neighbors let you hunt on their property you had your gun in the back of the school gun rack even you know that no one cared I remember hunting groundhogs literally in a field the only thing separating us from the school was a chain - Link close and baseball practice was on we were out there shooting shots with a 30 30 and everyone was just looking up we're 30 feet from the mound you know and no one killed her you were in the game We were just trying to keep the groundhog holes down control, that's right, so anyway, I was always tracked, even as a kid, I was fascinated, totally fascinated by tracking and, uh, and I was pretty good at it, you know, and I could get close. to the deer and uh, I educated myself, I wanted to be an Indian, you know, and eventually I was building a company and I had other interests and girls came into my life and that all slowed down and then as I was building my company During my 20 years old I didn't have much time to hunt, but now I was going hiking in the Adirondacks and I was totally in love with the mountains and then I read Benoit's book, you know, Bryce Towsley's big money, the binoid.

And I said that's what I want to do, that's what I do, that's my inclination and then I started hunting up north and I realized this is a big place and I don't see as many deer, but I could. I can't get over how completely beautiful it was, it was like a time warp. You know, I was in the same forest that the Indians were in, there was no difference and that seemed totally romantic and beautiful to me and I was able to get away from life because My life was very stressful building a company, and then I finally looked for someone to help me learn to track quickly.

At that time I was 36 years old and I said: "You know, he hasthere must be someone out there to teach me." and I called everywhere I called the Benoits I called you know everyone who was in the game and then I found Hal Blood and in 2006 I was in Jackman for a week and we hunted together, you know , and that was like the crash course right in big woods because in big woods you have to expand your thinking completely and it's very different than initially it's very different from hunting in the food plots and in the little patches of forest that you can have in the southern parts of the northeastern states and yeah, I thought I had to learn that and we can talk more about that as it goes, but that's basically how I learned and then you know I've basically been following since then. , yes, so you answered that that was the most important thing, the first thing I want to mention was your beginnings and experience in hunting and how you started, so it is and I will admit it to you because I would feel guilty if I sat here and told you that I read the cover of your book, so first of all, you have a published book. it was called learning to track and hunt wild whitetails and you were kind enough to send me a copy of that and as a father of a newborn and a two year old, I have had a really hard time finding time to read, but now I read.

I'm right up there with the first hunting story, so I really enjoyed reading your background and how you got to that point where you touched on a lot of that stuff just in your opening there, but I do. I find it interesting because I think a lot of kids know that if you grew up outdoors, even if you weren't a hunter, you can relate to cowboys and Indians and want to go out in the woods and get lost or you know, play. with your friends it's very natural and you realize that you were a tracker from the jump, you know that you seemed to have something that trapped you there and I like how you explained it being nice.

It's kind of romantic because I feel like most hunters once they get out of that 40 acre mentality and into that big woods environment or whether it's the mountains of the West or the big woods of the Adirondacks or in Maine or New Hampshire. vermont Whatever it is, it changes you, I think once you get out there, if you've experienced that from anywhere, it changes the way you think about what you want to pursue and what you perceive as a successful hunt, you know that you can you can come back to a corn field and having the best honey of your life as far as seeing deer and hunting deer, but you just don't feel as satisfied as when you walked, you know four or five miles and covered a lot of ground and tried to put together a story based on what you're seeing with signs and footprints and things like that, so I think that's what I wanted to bring someone like you here, it's just that there's not much. discussion going on now, after I reached out and we got in touch with you, I found out that I had heard the name Hal, but I had never really known much about him and what he was about, so I started to hear. their podcast and I'm in love with number one, their accents are just addictive, you know, the main North Woods accent is just fantastic, so it's amazing, but then you hear that they just sound like they're having a lot of fun. all the different experiences that they have there in the big woods with elk and bear and and uh and deer, you know, it's totally different than what we experience just a couple hundred miles south here, you know, it's two different ones. worlds are two different worlds but here's the crazy part whitetails are whitetails they are whitetails or whitetails right, they don't know how to change because they are in the forest but they think they do things differently, but yes Put it in the context of that they just adapt to the environment, whatever the size of the environment, for example, you know, obviously, a suburban deer could live on five acres, it's a lifetime, you know, and it dives from this development to that development right in a ravine in the middle. or something like that and they can become monsters that way and you know there are guys in Jersey for example who shoot absolute monsters that way so you get a little bit bigger maybe outside the suburbs you have some cornfields and some deer land is going to be in a square mile, then you go a little further and it's two square miles once you get to the Adirondacks.

I personally believe that hunting in the Adirondack Mountains is the most difficult place to hunt whitetails anywhere I have hunted. it's, uh, the lack of access, the lack of vlogging, um, there are entire regions of thousands of acres where you might not see a deer track, yeah, because because it's a climax forest, you know there's no understory. , there's no food and people can really uh They get discouraged when they go there the first time they don't see deer for five days in a row because they're hunting and they think they have that one or two square mile mentality, you know, maybe even five miles. square and that deer could be that.

A lot of money could travel on the day there is no snow in the area you are hunting, so if you don't know what you are looking for where you have it, you need to expand your mind and there is a way to connect. points to narrow down the property where I hunt it's usually basically four different areas and they're all over 50,000 acres um and those whitetails that can swing 20 to 25 miles a night during the rut um I don't like the rut I hunt it a lot. and I have changed here in all of God's creation, but I prefer to be at the beginning or the end of the season.

I like muzzleloading season. Actually, yes, yes, so yes, the way you divide the area is what makes you successful. and that's something that Hal taught me because we didn't have snow, but the first day it melted, so we still hunted, so we had to connect those dots and find signs and find the deer, um and uh, yeah, so it's completely different. way to collect data and create a search, yeah, if you're someone like me who doesn't have experience in big forests like that in New York or any of the states where you know big blocks of wood like So what's your game plan ?

If you're new to this, you know maybe you have experience hunting deer, maybe you don't, but let's say you have some experience. How are you? Let's say you have a weekend to hunt or a week to hunt, how do you connect those dots and cross out those areas so you can try to have some success because you let most guys maybe don't have vacation time and they're going to hunt Saturday, Sunday and that's it and then maybe come back the next week like, where to start? Well a couple of things first, I think you have to know how to navigate so you don't die, that's what keeps most people out of the big forest or in the big forest but without success because you'll only go as far as you can still hear. the path and let me explain to you what I mean by that.

I've hunted there in the snow enough to see human tracks and I've known about it for a while. fact that 90 of the hunters will go up a ridge and as soon as you get to the other side where you can no longer hear the trail, they will stop and turn around. There is security in knowing that there is a path there, so first thing. What I would do is choose a place that has a main road in Adirondacks Maine. It's a little different because there are forest roads everywhere. So that's a different beast, we can talk about that, but in the Adirondacks you would find a place where a path goes in one direction or another at least twice the distance you can walk in a day, that is, a straight path that goes from east to west or whatever the direction is, it's a consistent direction and then you just take a compass reading and you know which side of the road you're on so you know which direction you know if you're on the north side of the road if you're heading south you're going to get to the road you're going to get to that road yes that makes it incredibly easy you literally couldn't have a map I wouldn't ever suggest that but you literally couldn't have a map and if you knew the road was going 40 miles in that direction and was constantly traversing the mountainous terrain that way, you know which side. off the road you're on you can get off and then the other thing I would suggest is when you get out of your truck you count the telephone poles because they're a quarter number so when you get five miles off the road you know which way your car is facing , that's it, yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great advice, yeah, count the telephone poles, yeah, so if you're at pole 400 and you come out at pole 450, yeah, you know.

Let's say it's a north-south highway that you're on, you're north of your car, that's right, okay, that's now, I think in places like Maine it's like I said, it's different because you have forest roads everywhere. if you have a map the gazette here is usually updated every year I take out the pages of the gazette here I copy them and then I laminate them I fold them and put them in my pocket and any page of the gazette here goes To be bigger than you can make in a day, by far, it's a big piece of land and it has all the forest roads and, yeah, so navigation, I don't want to take in all the talk about that, but that's that's that's crucial, you have to be able to use a map and a compass, yeah, that takes away the fear and then, so the first thing I would do is find a place like that, if I was a beginner where the path is consistent, then I would do it.

I would look for any edge habitat. Edge habitat in the Adirondacks is very definable. It's not like when you search an area, all kinds of things show up correctly and all kinds of bushes and eyebrows, and in Maine, deer, right? go and travel a long distance to get to that beech or that beech forest for example, or in the eastern Adirondacks you might have a place full of acorns and the deer will travel to get there, the does will be there in much the same way to the southern area. Maine's not like that because there's a lot of logging, it's kind of a food species that's everywhere, you know, it's uniform, um, and there's more deer, so in the Adirondacks I would look for edge habitat, I mean, look, look. a topographic map, look for swamps. for the edge, then in Google Maps or Onyx you can look at satellite images and see where that green growth in the lowlands matches up with the hardwoods because that's that 50 yard space between the black spruce swamp and then that hardwood ridge that those dollars love it.

To run them, the other thing I would do is try to find a bunch of small spikes that are relatively close together in an area like that which, I guarantee, will be a hot spot if you have four or five small spikes bordering a swamp right with a swamp in the valley um those

bucks

will run up the ridges and they know they'll be close to the feed, they know they can and especially they'll run down the west side, you know, or sorry, probably the south I guess it would be the east side, the side southeast, they'll run waiting for the wind to come over those mountains and swirl, they'll be about two-thirds up and they'll just run up that ridge, so I'd go from a swamp.

I would go up, try to cross those ridge runners, yeah, and then I get on a track and go, um, and if you can navigate your way out, you'll find a track, that's it, it's so fascinating. You talked about mapping with a compass and you're wearing a shirt in x um, so how has that changed your approach to mapping? Do you trust a lot in the use of the cell phone and that as a tool or while? Are you hunting or is it more of a scouting tool before you go out? Do you like how important that cell phone is in your hand now?

Are you using it as much or more than a map and compass? I'm still a little old fashioned I like the map and the compass just because I use the cell phone I also have a GPS but I think you know onyx is amazing for exploring it's amazing for hunting it's also amazing especially in Maine because of the logging roads so know that you have that map, you can see all the features and you can also know where the property lines are, which is important, that's a little less important in the Adirondacks, it's so big that everything is always wild, so don't I usually trust him. technology as much as I set up a game plan and then I get lost I don't worry if I know the path is there I know I have a compass I don't worry about where I'm allowing myself I have a game plan I say okay I know there are four peaks this way two peaks you know depending on the size of the mountain maybe a certain peak maybe I'm just going to go around a big giant mountain um and so I set it up and then I just let the track dictate now if I'm still hunting uh it could be a little different I could use onyx more um you know to find hot spots but there's a big giant uh you know, the oak tree here That's a little different from all the red oaks and I've noticed there's a lot more action there, that's a southern thing from the area, yeah , so I'll

mark

that spot because I know if they're there, I might be able to follow a lead. or shoot a buck, so I think it depends on the situation, basically, if there is snow on the ground, I will have a compass in my hand, a map, I will set everything up, look at the onyx, maybe once or twice, mark some points on the onyx that I think they are is going to be fine.

I'll go out, if I don't get a clue, I go back to Onyx and say, okay, I'm half a mile from here because even with a map. Sometimes you don't really know where you are, so you can measure thenothing went well. Everyone else, I think almost everyone in the camp shot a deer or shot a doe on the first day, so it would be Saturday, the first day of arms. or that the next Sunday morning everyone felt the tag and, except for me and I, I came down from my stand and started hunting and I wasn't giving the signal, I didn't see any deer and it was almost noon and I was able to meet all of them. texting we're back at camp they're back at camp having lunch so I'm like my mind I'm like I'm getting frustrated I'm like damn I'm like I have this plan I haven't put anything down but everyone the others have been successful and of course I decided to hunt back to camp and am heading down the logging road that leaves the top of the hill and descends in a zigzag pattern. the hill and we use that road that's cut into the hill and it's a very steep hill and the deer like to sleep on the downhill side of that logging road and we have places, you know, where throughout the season we still hunt and you stick your head out and look over the edge and then you get back on the trail and you can stay pretty well hidden and I'm going down that trail and I actually hear my dad and my uncle coming to get the load to get the my uncle has a load side to side with firewood so I hear the four wheeler coming down and uh and immediately I'm like oh my gosh like I'm having this perfect hunt there's still a little bit of snow on the ground and here you guys come I can hear you talk, they're riding the ATV and they won't stop, I hear them throw the wood at the back of the On all four wheels you can hear it hit the bed and I'm totally defeated, but I stop and look down the hill.

I'm in a place where I can look and I see it. I see a couple of deer moving. snow and they're just feeding, they're not far from where those guys are actually, but these deer are just doing their thing, so I kneel down and, sure, I put my sights up and I'm looking at the does and here comes that group of like four or five does, here comes a nice eight point buck along with them and suddenly I'm back in the game and I jumped up and got close to the hills they couldn't see me and I ran until there was a water bar in the way and I knelt down there and sure enough, dodo dododo, they came through my shooting lane and here comes that deer and it got right up to his nose I went out to smell that doe's butt right in front of him and I touched it and you know I smoked it, I hit him right in both lungs and he ran down the hill and died and those guys were 300 yards away and they heard the shot.

They got there before I even got there to get to the dollar and it was like I could have easily walked out and was very, very close to doing so, but it was such a good feeling of accomplishment, but also reflecting on it made me realize that I felt like I was in a bad place, I was getting emotionally angry, I was putting myself in a bad state of mind to try to make something happen and so, and so, the opportunity presented itself and a lot of times I start. talking about this but I'm thinking about all the different guys I've killed especially with my gun it just happens literally in a split second and if I wasn't ready I wouldn't have gotten that shot and there have been enough times where I can think of where I wasn't ready and I didn't make the shot because I wasn't ready, so there are as many success stories as there are failures in that happening, it's a big part of the mindset.

In that situation, yeah, I think if your attitude is to win and stay focused, that's it because without that you're doomed, yeah, I mean, you're doomed, so it's just random luck and random luck will give you maybe two good. dollars in life, that's what you're going to get, yeah, yeah, you know that for sure, uh, I wanted to, I just have a couple of things and then we'll get this over with, we're going to be here for about an hour, um something. That's intriguing to me is like the speed of your tracking, that's something I'm really interested in what you think about as to how fast and I'm sure that's in your book and I'm not there yet. but, uh, what you go out there, you know, you do your mile-by-mile block where you try to find a clue, you come to a clue, so now, how do you analyze that clue and try to figure out how?

How old are you? How far is it? Darling. What are you doing? As? Where do you go from there? Well, the age of a track is something that only experience can teach you. I can explain all kinds of things because the age of attracting is important, let me tell you that first, but when you start trawling, you will trawl books that are a day old and you didn't know it, and then you will learn that you will be like, oh my gosh, you know that you arrive at the end of that day and you leave, I've been chasing something which is that deer that hasn't been here, it might be 20 miles away, right, you know, because it depends on the conditions, so, um, if you have fresh snow, you just have to keep an eye out for when the fresh snow came and after that period of time, if there's a clue, you know it's at least within that window, so that's the best of all the situations where you have good three. to four inches of snow came in the night there's a new track you know you're in the game automatically now if it's those three weeks of the grind um you know from early November through December in that area you can be running at points after that deer, you know, because they travel, you know, and if he goes in a straight line, I say it like that for whatever reason and he just goes and that cadence is like the army you're in for a long time. day my friend, unless you have caught him at the end of a track where he met a doe, but she won't travel like that, she is a lady, she will dance and play, and they are flighty and then they can join a group of deer. so you have to make a big long circle to move or sometimes I sort the footprints, sometimes I pass the time, it can take me two hours being in pain or sorting the footprints because I know they may be lying nearby, um.

It really depends on what I'm finding, you know, so if there's a good lead, he's with a doe, I know I'm in the game, I'll slow down a little bit, conserve my energy, try to be as consistent as possible. maybe stop eating my sandwich and continue on that path, the other thing is that probably one of the most important things about kryptonite for the tracker are the rivers, you have to decide if you are going to cross or not, most guys , I won't do it? and I'm not worried about getting wet if I wear wool all the time I've gotten excited I've fallen into ponds all kinds of bad things have happened to me but you just take off your socks and get on with your life um and if you do things right, like bandage the part bottom of your pants, you can go through water up to your waist pretty quickly and not get wet, you know, not wearing your boots, wool is pretty water repellent for a while, um, it stays warm too. when it's wet, so anyway, back to tracking, I look for a track that's, uh, I'll chase a deer that's doing that because a lot of times it'll lead me to another deer or it'll come across a bigger deer track that I prefer. . being on a track that doesn't, yeah, it's rare that I don't take a new track, one that was done the night before, I've also taken tracks that have a day if it's later in the season because I know I might not ride anymore about a mile, if I see it feeding and find some beds and it's the last week of November or early December, I'll follow an older track because, heck, it might be a shorter track than the one I did two weeks before, since you know, even though it's a day old, I could catch it, um, the other thing is Adirondacks if I have a 30 30 shell or a 308 shell and it fits sideways into its track, that's good money if I'm in Maine, it's a 30 out of 6 or my 35 sideways whale on the track, that's kind of the litmus test for me, I just take the shell and say, oh yeah, that's a good buck, you know?

And I want the wobble or the distance between your footprints to be six to eight inches in both cases, um. you know, track on one side, on the other, what's the width of that and then I look for where they urinated because I've tracked some pretty big does from time to time and I spent half a day tracking a doe and then I realized wow ! Buck just squatted and peed his ass, that's not a dollar, okay, explain, okay, explain that, explain how you can tell the difference between whether he was squatting or standing, because he never I had thought about that.

It's fascinating, okay, well. A lot of times you have to remember two things: a buck will pee on the hocks, and his feet will be close together, and even if he doesn't make a direct scratch, sometimes they do, they just do it and the p is going to be splashed all over them. sides because he has a penis, um, a deer urinates from behind, so she literally squats, her legs stick out like a dog, she squats and pees behind her legs, it's not always so obvious, but it's a lot . a lot of times it's if you have a hole to pee in, you know like that, it's probably a doe, that's funny, the other thing is when a buck urinates afterwards, some of it will drip as he walks, that never happens with a doe, it just doesn't it?

No, the anatomy is not there, yes, so you have to look for those little drops of urine that jump on a log. You'll see when he lands, a little bit also sprays off his hock if he just peed on his hock. He will literally splash his fur, yeah, and that won't happen with a doe. Now there's this idea too that hawk spots, that orange spot on your bed indicates that a deer also has hot spots, so sometimes that's not the best indicator, um and I'm not good enough to smell and say that. It's a male and it's a female, they all smell the same to me just when I discover it I take it and rub it on my pants and it makes me smell like a deer and at the end of the season when you smell quite disgusting, but I prefer to smell like a deer which like me, you know for sure, yeah, so those are the things I look for, that wobble, I'm not so worried about the pace because the pace changes depending on how fast they're going. um and no, I don't care if a deer is short, you know, a lot of times a deer will be short, it doesn't have a long stride, but it's built like a bowl, you know, um and uh, I look for that. deer thick, wide, heavy and uh that's what I care about and making sure the track is as wide as that shell, yeah very straight so using the straight line is important to gauge how fast that deer is moving , how fast you move.

If you're on a trail that goes straight, I'm just going to think of scenarios that I've been on straight with open hardwoods that were probably done at night, in the dark, and that deer covered a lot of ground is kind of what I've heard and what I'm learning because I found myself. I made the mistake and actually uploaded all of that over the past year. He would find a clue and he would be. Like, oh, I'm right, but that deer made that trail at four in the morning and he was covering, he could have gone two miles between four and six in the morning and I'm there at eight in the morning. and that deer was there and gone. for hours and he could be at the next property and you could tell me he could spend six hours following that lead thinking I'm on that and I'm not even in the ball game, that's true, yeah. you want to hurry you want to hurry and um also bucks in the Adirondacks and in the big forests travel all day long, it's not a nocturnal thing, they lose 20, 20, 25 percent of their body mass in three weeks so no.

They don't care about daylight, that there's no alfalfa, they feel like there's none of that, you have to get all that out of your head, you just have to live by the track and say, well, this was done right now and you I'll give another one. example I want and this is my book if you have crusty snow, for example, and I had a buck that traveled the day before and then traveled that morning on crusty snow, the snow was old, so there are all these footprints everywhere and both days the snow was crunchy, you know, it froze and melted a little bit it froze again, I mean, it was unpleasant and he walked in his own footprints and the only reason he knew which trail to follow was because he followed the footprints of the day before because the footprints from The day before actually looked fresher than the footprints from the morning if they were separated, they walked side by side.

I would have followed the oldest tracks and have tracked many deer. You know, that's an example where I learned what to look for and I never forgot it and since then, even in the crunchy snow, I can understand it and the key was when his helmet hit the glass that fell forward they weren't frozen in the snow because when that pitch is even cold it will stick eventually. molecularly to the snow in the front and the only way I knew was by comparing the two and literally going down, getting really close and looking and touching the granules, you know, and I thought, oh my God, because that's how it was.

It doesn't look good. , so there are all kinds of things like that that you will learn by following the deer. The best thing you can do is follow the deer, which you think is a good lead, and then follow them, so my speed is very fast when they are. going fast, it slows down um and you see it takes a 90 turnin tracking I'll be up there for sure we'll hunt uh early bear there so I'll be up there hunting early bear um in a few weeks and uh I don't know we'll see how the off season here changes and maybe you'll know if the weather permits, I'll try to run there, but we'll see.

I mean, I always try to plan more than I can realistically do, so I have a lot of opportunities here at home and with the young family. I don't want to burn too many bridges, but we'll see what happens, but we go to Dad's every year for a long weekend during the rifles. It's kind of a little adventure in the woods that we do there with a big group of guys, so it's fun, but yeah, I'll have to do it. I'll hit you if I'm going to take a trip up north. I will hit you. Up and I'll let you know, so when we close, publish your book.

Where can people buy this? I would definitely recommend it. I'm enjoying reading so far. I think it's a great little book of stories, trials and tribulations. Yes, at bigwoodsbox.com you can get a copy there or at any bookstore, but go to Big Woods, it's easier that way and I also have another add-on I want to make. I am an addiction expert and there is a book. I called it the addiction freedom model and I've done it for 31 years. I started the first non-12 step program in the world and if you want to learn how to overcome an addiction and move on with your life without getting stuck in recovery. for the rest of your life we ​​can show you how to do that and that's at freedommodel.org awesome well you heard it here guys check it out get some books learn and go out and follow a new path hey thanks. for inviting me yeah thanks marcus great to meet you okay good luck we'll talk soon okay sounds good man see you around.