And as much as we want to feed our bodies with this nutrient-rich meat, I think it's filling our souls as well.

A hundred percent.

I'm glad you brought that part up too, because a bear is one animal that I've harvested that I was, it's almost a sad experience is almost the word I would use.

I don't know if sad's the right word, but I got, I know it was funny.

Like I, uh, I have a sister-in-law, uh, bless her heart.

She's a sweetheart.

She, uh, she's from Serbia and she, uh, is such a family oriented person and always asks how, you know, things about people.

We may not have as much ups and downs, but we do have little lakes that need to be ice fished.

Are you seeing that pretty often during that last week, but seeing the really good ramp up to that timeframe?

Potentially.

I have a hard time saying definitively yes or no to that.

What I would say is...

I think scrape hunting, people miss the best opportunity most of the time because they find it for some reason.

And I think it's because of what we just talked about earlier, the whole October lull thing that people talk about.

I think people find sign and I've done this.

What do you think about that? How do you think people can predict their wind to go as the foliage comes down and depending on what type of country they're hunting in?

[laughs]

So I, I, I, we meandered up and we- we're...

Usually what it is in, in these drives in Pennsylvania, we, we push these big side hills, and they'll be covered with thick mountain laurel and rhododendron.

They're thick, steep, and nasty, but man, they, they hold, they hold bears.

They really do, especially when there's a good mast crop there.

And they'll usually go from one holler and they'll, and they'll push that side hill around to the next hollow.

It just makes a perfect, you know, starting and stopping point for those drives.

That was a lot of it that I looked forward to, that's for sure.

But what other food source is getting opened up that they're, they're migrating in on?

Sure.

So number one, I can't answer this for, for certain, but I- they just love swamps.

Uh, they don't, they're not afraid to get wet.

You know, throughout the summer, in the heat months, um, you know, you could be 90 some degrees out, and you get into some of those wetlands, bogs, and stuff, and you step into those low spots, and it'll be 10 degrees cooler, and they love that.

The other thing too is it's, it's not impenetrable, but I have been in some situations where you look at going through it, and you think only a bear could go through that, and they don't mind going through some of those places.

There's a lot of safety and security there.

I am, I am definitely excited to see that happen.

So is that areas like that? Are they even worth trying to manipulate in your opinion?

Sometimes I think it really depends on how wet, I mean, are we talking consistently wet, wet land, or is it a place that every now and then it gets a heavy rain, it sits a little bit wetter in a low land.

Uh, You know, that's that's tough.

I've seen people you can plant some annual species and do OK with wet feet perennial stuff.

I don't really like doing like alfalfa and clover in those wet feet situations.

They just die out quicker.

You could plant annuals and sometimes they're successful and sometimes they're done.

So is there anything like that that you're looking for? If you're going to plant trees, what kind of trees are you going to plant right off the bat?

and now you got too many spots where you got too much uh not enough time to hunt all the spots you got but man what's uh what's your plan for the summer i mean what do you got going on what's uh You got any deer on camera that you're like chasing from the previous year? What's kind of your style of hunting? Will you kind of shoot whatever makes you happy or are you one that will, if you have a good one, you're going to try to go after him?

yes yeah um so i i've been fortunate to take some some nice deer um some older age class bucks i've i've been fortunate to go after deer that i knew were four or five six years old and you know nice size rack deer and um you know i've built myself up to the point where i've wanted to i'll pursue mature deer that's what i wanted to do And don't get me wrong, I still want to shoot a big mature deer.

But I have taken the approach of I want to enjoy the hunting that I do as much as I possibly can.

So I'll give you an example.

The first sit last year, I hunted a stand that my buddy pointed me to on game lines.

It was like the second week of archery season, first time I got out.

And right at quitting time, I had a really nice...

To stay, obviously, undetected.