Deer Hunting – Archery Maniacs – Zach Herold

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Deer Hunting – Archery Maniacs – Zach Herold

We’re heading up to Wyoming to a friend up there, Zach Herold. He is the Owner, Founder and Chief Host of Archery Maniacs and we’re going to get into a lot of things. Zach, welcome.

Thank you so much, Bruce. I appreciate you reaching out to me and inviting me as a guest. It means a lot.

I’ve been around a little bit and I always like to find out and talk to other people that do have hunting-related podcasts. Yours is based on archery and archery is for everything. I understand you do tournament and DIY hunting. Let’s start there. Why did you start a podcast?

I started the podcast because I feel that archery is definitely one of those things that someone might get interested and as soon as they start getting interested, they don’t know where to go after that. They give up basically. Archery, absolutely 100% you learn on your own. Most people are taught by somebody, taught by YouTube videos or taught by a podcast. I’m so passionate about archery and where it has taken my life and the opportunities that it provides me to be out with my son, my wife, other friends and family that I want it to be able to share that and move that forward. I started a podcast, which was immediately followed by a YouTube channel. We launched an online series on the YouTube channel, which is all of our hunts. We have episodes one through eight. I also have an online magazine for the exact same reason, telling some hunting stories and things like that. It also dives into tips, tactics, gear reviews and everything like that. On the YouTube channel, we do get reviews as well. All of it can also be found at www.ArcheryManiacs.com. I’m hoping that it gives people the next step in archery so they continue learning, growing and enjoying it rather than getting frustrated and giving up.

It’s a learned art. I can remember my first days, it was a simple fiberglass, stick and a string and then moved up to our compound bow. I can’t even remember what they call it then, but the Jennings bow and he started it all. I once read an article about how he did it. He was a tinkerer and he kept on wanting to get his arrows to go faster and faster and he figured it out. It was interesting how the whole thing came together and look where we are now. It’s unbelievable. Technology-wise, what gear do you like to use?

I choose a compound. I switched over to a single pin Hogg Father sight. When I had multiple pins, my target panic was a lot worse than it is with a single pin. I shoot with a single movable sight and then I have a fall away arrow rest and obviously, a detachable quiver. I shoot with the front stabilizer right now but I clearly see the benefit of a back stabilizer as well. I have switched from an index finger style release to a thumb style and I’m in the process of making the switch there.

You get a lot of stuff going on.

I enjoy it though, so it’s a plus.

When you think about all the gear that you do have, I learned a long time ago, the simpler you can make it, the better one because I call it animal show up panic, not target panic. Just when the animal shows up, I go, “What am I going to do now?” If you can focus on that one spot, it sure works. The old axiom, “Aim small, miss small,” has stood the test of time, that’s for sure. When you start practicing, we’re in the prep season, the tags are starting to come in and people are knowing where they are going to be hunting. How do you practice? Let’s talk about that and spend a little bit of time because everybody is probably in the same boat now. They’ve got to get focused on the species they are hunting and start getting on because some season opens up in August.

I’m not the guy that is going to ever tell anyone that I practice every single day because I don’t. I shoot my bow probably three to five times a week. Whether that’s go out and shoot ten arrows or go out and shoot 100 arrows, it varies. It depends on what I have going on during that day. When it’s that close to actual hunting season, I’m not shooting my broadheads. I spend most of my time from 50 to 100 yards shooting my bow. Sometimes they’ll get to 40, but very rarely do I go up to 30 and 20. I’ll be shooting those and then as the season starts getting closer, I have some practice broadheads. I shoot fixed blades. I have practice broadheads that I screw on and then I shoot exclusively broadheads all the way even during hunting season.

Even though it may say, “It shoots like a field point on the box,” they’re all lying. It literally would have to break the laws of physics for it to fly like a field point. It has different wind surfaces and air surfaces. The way that’s going to be catching wind drift and spin. All of it’s going to be different no matter what. It’s not possible. I shoot exclusively with broadheads as I’m getting much closer to season and the confidence then goes through the roof. When I can step back at 80 yards and have three areas with broadheads touching, that makes me feel extremely great with everything that I have going on. I know that when I screw a sharp broadhead on rather than a dull broadhead, it’s the exact same thing. It’s just sharp. I started doing that as I’m moving closer. Another thing that I do is I will take my arrows after I pull out of the target and I’m walking back. I’ll start throwing my arrows along the walkway to where I’m shooting. When I shoot those arrows, I pick them up. I look at the target and I try to mentally figure out what the range is and then I range the target and see how close I was and that does a few things.

Very rarely have I talked, elk whispered or deer whispered and said, “Please stop at exactly 50 yards. I would appreciate it.” I’ve tried hard but they don’t seem to listen very well to me. By going along and throwing my arrows out like that, they land at 43.5 and 58.2. All these really weird yardages that your animals stop at. I pick up that arrow, I look at the target and I mentally say, “This looks like 37 yards.” I range it and it’s 44 and I’m like, “I’m judging short. I need to get better.” I dial my sight and I draw back and I shoot. Not always do I dial to the exact yardage. That’s going to help me do a couple of things.

If I’m shooting a single pin slider sight, if I get used to having my sight, not always do I adjust to the specific yard is when I’m in practice. The reason that I do that is because if I don’t have time to adjust my sight, then I want to know where I need to hold. Sometimes I will purposely leave my sight at 50 yards and I will shoot 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65 yards all while it’s set at 50 and learn where I need to hold so if I get in a pinch situation, I don’t need to move anything. That’s some of the stuff that I start doing as the season is moving forward. I will also shoot with an elevated heart rate, with weight in a backpack and things like that.

I love what you’re bringing up on the subject and I’ve been guilty of it through the years, but I soon learned that all the elk I came in contact with, all the whitetails I came in contact with, all the other critters that I came in contact with, one, they weren’t my backyard. They weren’t in a range. They weren’t in any environment that I have ever practiced in. You can go to some of the silhouette and three-day target places and uphill and downhill, and that’s all good but it’s not sage brush. It’s not oak brush. It’s not a black timber and all those things. All of a sudden, the sight picture, even though you’re looking at an elk and you get your pin, the whole surrounding is different. I think that takes away from our accuracy. That’s one reason a lot of people miss because they’re not used to that environment. “Our race is these 40 yards but there’s a tree I have to stoop under.” I have to kneel on the ground and shoot my bow kneeling to get through that opening.”

I practice shooting off my roof as well. I practice shooting on the steepest slopes that I can find. In Wyoming, I’ve seen whitetails even there at the 8,000-foot mark. I’ve seen whitetails up high in Wyoming and I’ve hunted them up there but it’s the same thing. You’re not standing on perfectly flat level ground. A friend of mine, they were practicing for Redding. They were taking sandbags and just throwing them in a pile and then standing on top of that pile of sandbags and practicing. That seems like extremely smart to me because the likelihood of both your feet being perfectly level when you’re hunting is very slim. Getting used to standing one foot up and one foot down or your legs spread out farther or kneeling down and all that stuff is really important.

On top of it, you’re getting used to shooting with an elevated heart rate. Whether you shoot from 50 yards and you run up and you touch your target, come back to your bow and you shoot again or you have a pack with 50, 80 pounds in it and you shoot and you walk up a small incline behind you. You come back and you’ve got your bow and you shoot again. All of that is going to force you to shoot different than when you’re standing there breathing normally on level ground. When an elk or a big whitetail comes out, everyone knows your heart rate elevates and you’re breathing harder, you’re not as steady and everything. If you could simulate breathing harder when you’re practicing, when it comes to crunch time and that 170 whitetail steps out, your heart being elevated isn’t going to be different to you because that’s how you’ve been practicing at home.

The other two things you really want to focus on is where your anchor point, your peep is lighting up and the grip on your bow. When that animal walks out, the adrenaline kicks in and you have a tendency to grab on your bow with all your might and then jerk your bow back. You’re probably pulling more pressure against it than usual. You want to focus that when you’re looking through your peep, you have the same view of that sight housing that you’ve been viewing all practice. You want to focus on not torquing and grabbing that bow because it’s obviously going to torque it and then away it goes.

Everything we’ve talked about, we’ve unfortunately done this in one shape or form. We’re guilty of it and it’s amazing to me. Some people say, “He was right there in 30 yards and I missed him.” It was a ten-degree angle. Ten degrees is really steep. I know guys that’ll put up a telephone pole in their backyard, hang their stand and climb their stand and shoot out to their kill rate, whatever, 30, 40, 50, 10 yards, 20 yards, 32 yards or whatever that is. They’ll lock in on their own 3D target, they’ll do it and they’ll do a 180. The guys that I know get into this. They’ll move the target 180, they go up to shoot a group of three or whatever, then they’ll move it. They’re shooting from left to right or right to the left so they get used to those twisting in your stand. You’re in your stand, you’re in your harness and you’re twisting and everything’s set up as if you’re in your hang on. That helps because the moment when Mr. Wonderful walks out, then you’re ready. You don’t have to think about all this other crap.

On top of it, it’s crazy. 100% you need to have a harness on, but you also need to realize in practice with a harness on. When you go to turn in and that lanyard starts getting the height and pulling you one way or the other, you’re not shooting like you’re shooting on the flat ground anymore. It’s a whole different feeling. That’s a good point to practice with a harness on as well. When you get up there and you clip that harness and you’re like, “This feels great.” When you get clipped in, nock an arrow and try drawing your bow back and feel how restricted you are with what kind of coat you have on, how tight your harness is, how tight your lanyard is and everything. Make sure that you can even draw your bow back because you might need to loosen something up.

This is good prep we could come up with because it’s great content. People don’t think about it. You go out and you’re drawing at 100 yards. You’re just stacking arrows. You get a Robin Hood, you trashed a $6 and it’s all well and good. You get in the actual situation and it’s all different. That type of practice, I remember I used to practice from the hay mount and shoot down at the bales of hay. That’s ten feet or fifteen feet, anything to change up the angle and to make it work for you. The muscle memory and all that, it’s somewhat neutral because when those critters come out, my heart rate goes through the roof.

You’ll learn to what you start shooting from the roof or from sloped angles or setting up your tree stand and shooting from there. You’ll learn quickly how important your third axis suggested on your sight is. The third axis is hard to explain. The dovetail on your sight housing and your sight box need to be at a perfect 90 degrees. If they’re not at a perfect 90 degrees, then as you raise your bow up or point your bow down, the level is going to be reading incorrectly to it being level because that sight is not at a perfect 90 degrees to the dovetail. You could be fourteen or twenty inches off at 40 yards if you have a steep downhill or uphill shot. It’s crazy.

These are some great insight tips. Are these some of the things you get into on your podcast?

Yes, absolutely. We dive deep into all kinds of stuff like this. Before I even knew what the third axis was, I went out and I was shooting at a target that I had placed down in the bottom of a draw at 40 yards and I started shooting. I aimed right in the middle and I hit ten inches to the right. I thought to myself, “That’s really weird.” I shot again and I almost hit the same arrow. I was also shooting like quartering away the angle and I was like, “That’s weird.” I had no idea what the third axis was and the importance of it. I thought to myself, “That’s so weird that when I shoot down the hill and quartering away, I need to aim farther to the left.” I had absolutely no idea. I started learning more about it and now that I look back it makes perfect sense. My third axis was completely off, no wonder why I couldn’t hit the target.

I shoot a crossbow because I’ve got some pins on my shoulder. Thinking about that now, everything has to be balanced. That’s the hardest thing for some people to realize. The traditional archers, they always cant their bow and it was all instinctive. They took a lot of things out of play by having very simple gear. That’s one reason that I always enjoyed shooting traditional gear because there wasn’t anything. It was just me. If I have the memory, I take the shot and we go from there.

You’ll hear people talking about shooting in the wind. They say you have two ways that you could shoot in the wind. You can either hold off your point of impact or you can hold on your point of impact and you can cant your bow into the wind. Think about that. When you cant your bow, it is basically allowing you to shoot your arrow the way that you’re canting your top cant. If you’re leading it to the right, your arrow’s going to go further right. If you’re leading it to the left, your arrow’s going to go further left. That plays directly into your third axis. If your sight housing is not perfectly perpendicular through the rail that is bolted to the riser of your bow, then it is telling you that it’s level. Your sight bubble is telling you that its level when it’s actually not. You’re either canting your top cant left or you’re canting your top cant right, which forces you to be shooting left and right as you get farther distances.

Do you discuss this on the YouTube channel?

We don’t have the videos up themselves. We’re working on revamping all of our tips and tactics where they are all videos. We have a bunch of podcasts out that are in the tips and tactics categories that cover this kind of stuff. Just keep checking back because we’re going to revamp all of our tips and tactics so that they are a video form and you can see what I’m talking about.

It’s why these shows exist because you can learn so much different stuff. Let’s switch it up. I know you do some tournament, but I want to get onto whitetail hunting. You are hunting multi-states. I know Wyoming. I’ve killed some of my own Wyoming whitetails up by the northeast section of the state. I’ve turkey hunted out there in the warm Wyoming portion on the Black Hills and up in that country. I didn’t see any big deer. I saw a lot of deer. There’s a tremendous amount of deer out there. I never hunted by Riverton. I understood that up by Riverton, along those drainages there, you have to be careful of the Indian Reservation. There is some land you can get in the area. Would you say that there are whitetails in all the major drainages in Wyoming?

It’s honestly crazy. Places where I used to never see whitetails in Wyoming, there is now solid populations of whitetail. To the effect that the time you go by, you see a whitetail deer.

We’re going to move out of Wyoming and going hunting whitetails throughout whitetail range, which is significant. In Wyoming, I think you were saying that just about any drainage that’s got the right cover with a food source nearby has whitetails in Wisconsin. Is that from Bozeman, Montana to Cheyenne, Wyoming?

Yes. It’s crazy because in Wyoming there used to be a place where you didn’t see any and you don’t have that anymore. I think it’s cool because I liked seeing the whitetails population growing for sure.

I know a while back, we made a trip and the first time I saw whitetails run the eastern part of the state, they weren’t that big. There were a lot of them and they roam the woods right on the river bottom, right where you would expect and then the mules were down there or up in the prairie or whatever. You knew they were going. I’m just waiting for some hotspots that get up until Wyoming will become the new Kansas.

I think it has the potential. Every year there are several Wyoming bucks that get shot at over 180 inches. That’s a big whitetail.

You can see them. I remember seeing whitetails by the 20s, 30s, 50s on some of the pivot fields and on the alfalfa chomping away. They’re not antelope, but they’re out there and saying, “You can’t shoot me. I’m too far away.”

They’re on private land usually.

This is a pretty much DIY of public land, that’s for sure. If you do not have Wyoming for whitetail, you should. A couple of years ago, I took my grandson up the Crazy Woman Creek Ranch for his first whitetail hunt. I knew it was a slam dunk and we were done quick. He did harvest his deer and that was it. There were so many opportunities. Don’t miss Wyoming. You’re going out Wyoming antelope hunting, traditional antelope, mule deer hunts and don’t forget to get a whitetail tag because if there are any drainages, creek bottoms, there’s going to be whitetails there. I’m not going to say you’re going to see a Booner. I’m going to tell you that there’s a substantial whitetail hunting. For all you authors and writers that are like, “I want to find the next best place to write about,” spend some time in Wyoming. I don’t have any hunting holes. I don’t have any secrets, but I know where you’ll find water, you’ll find cover and you’re going to find whitetails.

Most of the time as a non-resident coming to Wyoming, you’re going to have a tag and you can hunt mule deer or whitetails. If you are interested in the whitetails, the main population of whitetails is up in the northeastern portion of Wyoming for sure. The population up there is insane. You could literally go in a day and see 500 whitetails. They’re everywhere up there. I’ve seen some stopper bucks up there too, probably pushing 170’s. I drove by a field one time and I counted 115 different whitetail bucks up out of Sheridan, Wyoming. It was insane. There was whitetail deer everywhere. We stopped, I started glassing them and they all started standing up and then flagging and running across the field. It was like, “What?” That was super cool. It was northwest of Sheridan out there.

We’ve done our good deed for Wyoming tourism and tags, but let’s talk about the other states and start with your most favorite out of state whitetail hunting destination.

I have a few in there and they’re all tied. They’re tied for different reasons. I like going and hunting in Pennsylvania and Georgia purely because when I go on that hunt, it’s a hunt to go see good buddies. We go have a good time and we all get to go hunt together and have a lot of fun. On the flip side, I go to places like South Dakota and Nebraska and they’re a lot closer to where I live. They are over-the-counter tags with a bow. It’s like another tag can be in my back pocket. I did draw in Nevada. Rather than hunting in August, I could flip it and take one of those tags and hunt either early season or late season because they offer such a good opportunity. It’s really great knowing that you can go to a state like South Dakota and Nebraska and buy a tag and go hunting. You don’t have to tentatively plan on drawing the tag, you just buy the tag and go. You can plan on it, plan the dates that you want to go and everything. You can make the whole plan, buy the tag and go. Those are the kinds of hunts that I look for. I hunt enough in Wyoming and other draw states that I’m looking for a tag that I can 100% count on and plan on. That is definitely South Dakota and Nebraska.

In South Dakota, is that West River or East River?

I believe it was West River.

I’m talking about the Missouri River. If you live East of the Missouri River, you’re East River, west of the Missouri River and the Black Hills or West River.

Basically, it goes right through the middle of it. You pick one side or the other and get your bow tag. At least that’s what we got. We got bow tags and went there, looked on a map and had some help from some people as well. We found out a big chunk of it public and went hunting.

Do you do any Google scouting or anything or you just roll up?

I do. When I say Google Scouting, I use onX hunt maps probably as much or more than Google for hunts like that. If I’m scouting for high country mule deer, I’m looking for specific land features and terrain and things like that that I can’t see very well on onX hunt maps. Maybe you can, but I don’t know of a way to tilt on any onX maps and look at the lead features. When I’m looking in Nebraska, South Dakota or even North Dakota for that matter, I’m looking for big chunks of public land that are hard to get to. onX hunt maps are gold for that because it obviously shows all the public and private lands. It makes it a lot easier to be looking for big chunks of public land on your computer screen than it does on your phone.

Moving from whitetail and onto a DIY wilderness, we talked about putting 100 pounds on your back and going in eight or ten miles. Most people without horses on foot, five miles is the barrier, depends on how the trail had been set up. If you’re climbing for five miles and then getting where it’s easier access. When you go in at eight or ten miles, that’s a lot.

It’s a way in there for sure. It comes down to two things, your preparation and your mental toughness. That whole eight miles, I can promise you right now, you’re walking in there thinking, “I’m probably not going to see anything. I hope I see some, but probably not. Maybe I should go to this spot over here. It’s closer.” You’ve got the whole eight miles. The mental toughness is probably more important than a lot of anything else. You’ve got to be mentally tough and believe that the spot that you have picked out is the spot that you need to go. As long as that happens, you can go all the way in there. Doing that on an elk hunt, if you’re by yourself, it’s probably not the smartest thing. That’s pretty tough to get a whole elk out that many miles.

A deer, if you bow a deer out and you have your whole camp and everything like that, I would advise you to dump your leftover food out, not the wrappers and garbage obviously. If you’re eight miles in there and you shot your deer, you’re planning on being there for eight days, you shot your deer the second day. If my pack is so heavy that I can pour out twenty pounds of food that were there for the whole trip, I would probably do that. If it’s only a difference of five pounds, I’m going to leave it because I don’t want to buy it when I get back. It depends on the terrain and things like that as well. If you have a good trailhead and some hiking trail going in there, then the hike is not near as bad. If you’re basically breaking trail and going off on your own the whole way, then four miles is going to feel like six or seven miles. It depends.

One comment on that. Use the existing map trail for a lot of different reasons. One, safety especially DIY solo safety reasons because when you finally decide there’s drainage, it’s black swamp drainage that’s where I’m heading. You can leave a rock cairn with a can and say, “If my truck isn’t out of here in five days, then I’m herding him up in the black swamp drainage.” Plus, once you go in the drainage, probably nobody else is up there. You have a reference point even for yourself coming out dark. There are so many things that can happen in the backcountry. I’m about safety and I like using the trailheads simply for that though to let people know where you’re going.

Two is then you saved yourself hours. Don’t just decide, “We’re going to go to blackbuck basin because I know there’s a big buck in there,” and start going cross country. You can do it but it’s going to take so much out of you. Think smart. Even if you had to walk three miles out of your way on a given field, then come back two miles, that’s a lot better in my mind. You want to be smart in the backcountry because if you fall down, you’re on your own. You might have a sat phone, you might have your cell phone and everything but people get down and all that stuff. I’ve always erred on the side of, “If I go down, I’m going to live, I’m not going to die, but can somebody get me out?”

It depends on what kind of trip I’m going on as to how many of those rules that you just stated that I follow. I always tell several people that I can trust namely, my wife, my dad and a few good buddies, exactly where I’m going. I say, “I’m planning on being there no longer than five, six, seven, eight, nine days,” however long. “If I’m not back, you don’t hear from me by then, this is the drainage. This is exactly where I’m going. Send some help.” Nowadays, there are so many people out there that are hunting and try to follow you to where you go and all kinds of things like that, that finding your own spot is becoming harder and harder. It truly is.

On top of it, I have a DeLorme inReach, so if something ever were to happen, I can turn that on. I could press an SOS button and then a Flight for Life helicopter comes in as well. On the flip side, when I take my son or my wife with me, it’s a lot less daredevil, you could say. We take it a lot easier. My son’s only five. When he was four, we went on a two-night backpacking trip and altogether we walked about ten to fifteen miles but it was all down the trail and things like that. When I go by myself, it’s a whole different ballgame because I’m more worried about hurting him than I am hurting myself, is probably the best way to put it. That’s not like a macho man thing or a look at me thing. It’s more like I know what I can get away with when I’m by myself. Certain people know exactly where I am and then I feel that DeLorme inReach, that’s my safety net. It’s the way that I look at it anyways.

Thanks for bringing that up to about claim jumpers or hunting hole jumpers. I hadn’t thought about that. Sometimes when I was back there and doing what I was doing DIY solo hunting, one, somebody always knew where I was, but I leave it on the plastic thing on the windshield of the truck and say, “If this truck is not gone in five days, something’s wrong.” It has changed so drastically and that’s a point well-taken. You talk about your hunting holes for bass fishing, certainly for whitetail hunting holes or anything. It isn’t the way it used to be and that was really good for you to bring that up because I’m living in a time that it just wasn’t that problem. We didn’t have it.

We’re living in a time where if both of you guys saw a buck, the first guy that saw it, the second guy would graciously be like, “You go for it.”

I’ll now help you drag it out and get it out.

We’ve literally had out-of-staters watch us get into our vehicle after gassing up at a gas station and we had our SITKA on. We’ve literally had them follow us to wherever we decided to park and park right next to us.

I can’t relate to that, but we were at a public fishing lake up in the mountains. We walked in and it was just Logan, my grandson, who is twelve years old. The guy goes, “Take my spot. I’m leaving. I caught five right here. Flip up or PowerBait in five feet. You’ll get them.” We were there and we set up. He was a perfect guy. You can’t ask for a nicer guy. He was gone. It wasn’t an hour later, this group was in, “We had a bite. They’re biting and we’ve got a good place.” They didn’t even ask. They sat down and started fishing and I left. The first thing I said, “Between here and that rock, we’re going to keep fishing there.” I couldn’t believe it, but then I reflected back on it. It’s Memorial Day weekend. Everybody’s out for a good time. They’re not fishing. It’s the sense of it. I can believe guys from out of state would say, “They’re locals. Look at the tags. We’re going to follow them.” If you’re doing that, stop because you’re not hunting. You’re really not hunting. If you’re that insecure, I’ll call you out. If you’re that insecure about what you’re doing, don’t go in the woods. What are you going to do if you get an elk down? What are you going to do if you get a deer down? Go to those guys and say, “Could you help me cut up my deer?”

Being somebody that hunts in a lot of other states, I also had people come out in Wyoming and do that to me. It’s not like we have any issue helping anyone. A resident hunter has no issue helping a non-resident if it has gone about correctly. If somebody walks up to me and is hunting in Wyoming for the first time and they say, “Tell me where to go please.” I don’t want to help them. If they say, “My son and I are here on our first elk hunt, here’s the tag that we have drawn. Here are some of the spots that we thought would be good. What do you think about those spots?” I would help those people until I was blue in the face. They came up to me, they clearly put in the work. They looked at the maps. They did everything they know to do except went and put boots on the ground.

When you’re hunting from twenty hours away, the likelihood of you being able to make a separate ship to the boots on the ground is very slim. If they came up to me and they saw me there and they said, “We drew this tag. We’re trying to get it done with the rifle or with the bow,” I don’t really care. “These are the dates that we have to hunt. These are spots that we were looking at. What do you think about those spots?” I would tell them not only what I think about the spots, but I would tell them where I’ve seen elk if I have hunted in that area, because they put in the time and they went about it the correct way. If they walked up to me and they would have said, “You’re clearly from here. Can you please tell us where to go?” I’d tell them to F-off. I would have gotten in my truck and left.

I don’t know if you write or maybe we should collaborate on writing an article for somebody because the good part is you and I both would help somebody. They come up to you and they got it figured out. They just need some direction. There’s the other side that’s, “No, I’m not going to do anything. I’ve got to go to work.” “What do you mean you’ve got to go to work?” “I work at the hunting store. That’s why I’m dressed this way.” We’re talking about stuff and unfortunately, that is real. Check your ego and check everything. Once you come out west, be a good neighbor. I learned a long time ago from a rancher and I went out. It was back in the day. You could do what I did. I worked on his ranch all summer and he said, “We do not have a lot of aid. There are the horses, there’s your key. If you need a thing. There are the cabins and have fun elk hunting.” It takes 22 points to hunt that ranch. I hunted it every year that I’ve wanted to hunt or put in for it. He said, “The whole thing people don’t understand, and I got lots of people knocking on my door, is that you’ve got to be a good neighbor.”

That’s a concept. You don’t come over to the guy’s house and say, “I want to use your truck,” and you’ve never talked to him before. Would you do that? I don’t think so. I wouldn’t let Zach have my power stroke if he just came over and say, “I want to take your truck out west and go hunting in it and bring it back.” Eat the crap. If Zach says to me before, “Let’s go elk hunting. Let’s go grab a beer or have a soda or let’s talk about it then let’s figure out if you’re right for me and I’m right for you to go hunting.” We might jump into the power stroke and go kill some stuff. Let us know. Zach Herold at Archery Maniacs and Bruce Hutcheon at Whitetail Rendezvous. I love this topic because this is about hunting. This is one of the reasons hunting is on the climb because people are doing silly stuff that doesn’t force it as a sport. It’s pretty much that simple. How are you going to teach your kids? “This is how you do it. You go wait at the gas station, wait at QuikTrip or Sinclair and you see a local and then you follow them.” That is following the sign, though. How do we get off on that, Zach? Anything to close out on that little segment?

I think the best thing to close out on it’s just doing your work and realize that the people that are out there are killing those giants because they’re putting in the work and helping you if you go about it the right way. If you call up the Brian Barneys and the Ryan Lampers and these people like this and the Chuck Adams and the Randy Ulmers and you say, “Please tell me where you go,” they’re never going to help you. If you call them up and you say, “I was looking at this drainage and it has rim rock and it’s got some aspen’s and it looks like it has a little bit of a water sheet over here, but it’s close to this trailhead. What are your thoughts on that? Should I try to find something with a little farther away from the trailhead? They would help you all day long. That’s what I would do it too. Put in the work and go about it the right way and you’d be surprised at how many people are willing to help you.

Let’s talk about the hunting tradition. Obviously, it’s deep and wide in your life. You talk about your five-year-old son, your wife and let’s talk about that.

I’ve been hunting for a long time. The first time I went was I rode in the saddle panniers all the way up the mountain when I was two years old to go help pack out an elk. Ever since then, I’ve been going hunting. I liked shooting a great big deer as much as the next person that hunts. That’s super awesome. Being out there and experiencing it with the people that are always going to be around until they’re not is more important. I took him out and he was actually sitting on my shoulders when I shot a cow elk with a rifle. He’s been completely intuitive ever since then. We’re walking up to this elk that I shot and he looks at me, he goes, “Dad, can I pet it?”

Ever since then, it’s been so much more about having him along or doing it with my dad or helping my wife be successful or somebody else be successful for that matter. Once again, I still have the hunts that I do all by myself where it is obviously all about myself. I think that’s important to do because I’m an extremely competitive person and that’s very important for me to do. When I have the hunts where it’s just my son and me where I have to realize that he’s five years old and the likelihood of us putting in altogether with a five-year-old right there is a lot, much more of a challenge than when I’m by myself.

I remember when he was four, we went on that elk hunt and we stayed out in grizzly and wolf country, two nights, three days and walked about ten or fifteen miles, somewhere out there. We saw grizzlies, we had a pack of wolves at 24 yards. We elbow shot two elk and this one elk bugles. It’s really foggy and he lets out this giant scream. I saw more as the tide turns it looks at me and he goes, “Dad, did you hear that giant elk?” That’s something that I will never forget in my life. While I have shot maybe 50 or so animals with a bow and I have antlers all over, I think about that moment in time of him saying that more than I relive all these other hunts with all the antlers. He and I didn’t even shoot anything. It’s important to me to be out there with the people that I love and that I enjoy experiencing it together. I think people would be surprised. If you teach your kids a little bit about being quiet, they obviously can’t walk as fast as you can. It forces me to stalk lower and more methodical than when I’m by myself, which is probably nine times out of ten is a good thing. There’s a time you go fast, but when I’m with him, I have to go slower so that he can keep up. It’s amazing to me how good that works, having forced to go slower.

I’m sitting here playing some of my own tapes. I was calling elk in Colorado with my son. He was probably ten or eleven. He was hanging on the right with me. We were set up and I was elk calling. All of a sudden, there was a thump, a mule deer fawn, I touched her with my arrow and his eyes got huge. It was like the reality of what just happened, even for me that I called in this fawn to no distance. For him to experience that, to see what nature has to give you or what you had an experience in nature. When you were saying that story, I was reflecting back on that same story. He was right there and his eyes got so big and he didn’t move. He didn’t do anything. This doe is sniffing and trying to find the fawn sniffing all around trying to find out what.

With that, I couldn’t end it on a better thing about the hunting tradition. You summed it up, Zach, with taking your kids, two years old, you’re bouncing in a pannier. Your son is out at five years old and mixing it up with wolves and grizzly bears. I can’t wait to do this again or get on your show. I’d love to be on your show and chit-chat more about the hunting. What we are as hunters and what we are as people and in the stories that we have to share because of the critters we’ve chased.

I appreciate everything. I clearly appreciate what you’re doing and your brand. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and talk some hunting. I know what it means to both of us. That was a lot of fun. Thank you.

I’m looking forward to having Jacob Hacker on the show. He’s a regional sales manager for SPYPOINT Trail Cameras, but they’re more than that. They are the technology that will increase your hunting odds tremendously. He’ll be going through and talking about trail cameras and the application of him. He’s going to be talking about SPYPOINT and the features, benefits and advantages of that product line. More importantly, he’s going to be talking about how you can get the max use of whatever trail camera you’re using. It doesn’t matter the brand. What it does matter are location and time. You’ll figure all that out. Jake or Jacob, as he likes to be known, is a passionate whitetail hunter who understands what it takes to be successful and how to zero in on the bucks on your hit list and hunt them one at a time, either the buck wins or you win. I look forward to hearing Jacob share his insights on hunting.

Important links:

• Archery Maniacs
• YouTube – Zach Herold Channel
• www.ArcheryManiacs.com
• onX
• DeLorme inReach
• Flight for Life
• SITKA
• SPYPOINT Trail Cameras