Hey guys, welcome to Unleashed where we are the resistance.
Man today, there's a guess we're going to be having on here that I've known for a number
of years that I have the utmost respect for.
His name is Don Higgins and I'll bring him in here in just a second and Don when I get
done with this, I didn't want to do too big of a bio because you got a huge bio with everything
you've done.
But let me kind of give you a little bit of background about Don.
I mean you're going to discover, I think you're going to love him.
He's a no-nonsense guy who is in high demand.
When I speak, doing game dinners, they've all said can you get ahold of Don Higgins if he
hasn't already been there?
Like would you, we want to get him back or whatever because he's just a wealth of knowledge.
He's got an extensive agricultural background.
He's an author, he's an outdoor writer.
I'm sure if you hunt the Whitetail Woods, you've read his stuff.
He's a Whitetail property consultant, a speaker, and a business owner and that's just a name
of few things.
But here's one of the things Don that I love about you.
You don't buy into all the smoke and mirrors.
From what I know about you from our conversations like at the ATA show, you're really humble,
you're very down to earth, which I think surprises a lot of people when someone starts gaining
the platform that you have.
You and I both know it can begin to change people and a lot of people will go ahead and
say, hey, I'm going to get all these sponsorships because I have the name now.
Sponsorships means money.
You don't go that route.
You are the one that says they have to have integrity and that's at the very top of your
list.
One of my favorite things that stood out to me from your bio.
It says that your integrity is important to you and it's not for sale.
Don's a patriot.
He's a passionate Christ follower and Don knows dear and he knows what he believes and
stands firmly on that.
So, buddy, good to have you here.
Well, thanks for having me, Brent.
I'll tell you, you did a pretty good job describing me.
So I guess I'll have to slip you that $100 bill when this is over.
And I'm guessing that $100 bill isn't going to come out of the shorts you're wearing right
now.
No shorts for this country, boy.
My legs haven't seen the sun in many, many decades.
Don's got a podcast with his co-host Terry Peer.
It's called I'm Chasing Giants.
And on this week's episode, as I was watching it this morning, Terry was teasing you about
not wearing shorts.
And that was just funny.
Sorry, you guys.
A little inside joke there.
Well, Eric, you've got something for us here.
Yeah.
I got a couple of questions here from both of you guys.
Uh, these are both pretending to archery.
Um, Steve from Ohio wants to know what if you're left eye dominant, but you want to
shoot archery?
Do you shoot lefty?
So the guy's right handed, but he's left eye dominant.
You know what's weird?
I'm right eye dominant and I bow hunt right handed, but I shoot a gun left handed.
Isn't that interesting?
When I was a kid, I think in my mom, I think I was left handed when I was a kid growing
up.
My mom wanted me to be right handed because back then it's like, Hey, we want you to be
a righty and everything.
Right.
And so I just kind of adapt.
I play pool left handed.
Um, I mean, what's what are your thoughts on that, Don?
Well, you know, guys, of all the questions that could be asked of me, that is probably
one of the worst ones because I am not an expert at archery whatsoever.
I'm self taught back decades ago when I was a kid, I had no one to show me the ropes.
You know, I went to the local hardware store and got my first bow and it was all self taught
and I picked up a lot of bad habits along the way.
Still have them to this day.
And I'm telling you, if you lined up every celebrity or whatever you want to call them,
every person within the hunting industry and had an archery tournament or 3D tournament
or whatever, I promise you, I would be in the bottom 25% and maybe the bottom 10%.
I'm just not that good of a shot.
And I think that's one of the reasons I became a decent hunter is because I was such a poor
shot.
I had to get them deer close.
So I had to really sharpen my hunting skills to make it happen.
So when it comes to archery gear, I'm probably the last person you guys ought to be listening
to.
Well, but you know, dear, that's, you know, what was it?
Dr. Dave Samuel, you know, he's bow hunting, hall of fame guy.
Dr. Dave, you know, that was one of the things about what was his, what was his, his column?
Was it, man, I can't remember what it was about knowing deer, but that's exactly what
I would actually interviewed both of you guys.
I think it was about 12 years ago.
Don, I had read your book, Hunting Trophy, White Tales in the Real World.
Is that right?
I think that was the first one.
Yeah, that's it.
And I mean, I immediately was drawn to that because it was kind of how you are.
You're no nonsense.
You and I have both seen so much smoke and mirrors in the industry and there's, there's
too much of it to go into, but finding out what really works.
You know, whether you were a, you know, great, you know, archer or not, you've been able
to put it all together, which very few people have, not in the way that you have.
So yeah, I don't know whether that, that question was, that's kind of all I can really
think of.
Yeah.
I have no idea.
So yeah, whatever you guys think, what else you got.
Okay.
So this is Ray from Edmonton, Canada.
Hope it's, is that right?
Oh yeah, I've driven through there.
I know that there's actually, I don't know if it's just Ray, but there's, there's several
episodes being played there.
So this is good.
He wants to know what are some general bow hunting strategies for white tales?
We're going to get into that.
We're going to, we're going to touch on that stuff.
You know, one of the things that I would love to, but maybe Don, and if you've got some
great ideas, man, you just throw them in here, but you know, a little bit later on, the whole
game is not being seen, heard or smelled.
I mean, that's the whole thing.
And this is one of the areas where I know Don is an, is an expert with this.
So we'll answer that as we go into the podcast.
If that's okay, is that work where you done?
That works great for me.
Okay.
Awesome.
Well, man, we met, I can't remember what year it was at the ATA show, but when I interviewed
you after reading that book, I had done a recording and I think I had, I had Charlie
Alzheimer, I had you on there.
I had Dr. Dave Samuel.
Um, who also had Eddie Clay, you know, Eddie Claypool.
I'm not real well, but I do know of him and I'm spoken to him a couple of times.
Amazing hunter.
Uh, he's, he's writing is it Peterson's bow hunting magazine?
I think I see a lot of his stuff in, right, but we met at the ATA show and you know, we
would go over and just kick back and have lunch and just talk about the real world.
Not about hunting so much, but just about life, you know, our families, what's happening
in the world.
Um, it was just, it just gets to know you that way.
I think it was so good rather than, you know, having this, you know, when you see some of
the big names, um, you're not even really sure what to talk about.
And it was a quiet respect that I had for you for years.
And I had been with Whitetail University with Wade Nolan, you know, Wade passed about
four years ago now, but I started with him with Whitetail University back in 2005.
I think it was.
And when you came, you know, really into the scene with that book, um, man, I was just
drawn to, to a lot of what we're going to talk about here.
So let's go ahead.
We'll just start moving into some of this stuff.
Um, you know, that first book that you had, I felt you didn't sell out to sponsors.
Um, and all that, like I said, smoke and mirrors that were in the industry, but it was just
really, it was, it was more than science scientific.
It was your real world approach to being successful, what you have tried and tested that you know,
from your experience, not from what someone else has told you.
So give us a little bit of background about, you know, how you got into this place growing
up and you're, you're, um, where you grew up.
I think it was, it was in Illinois.
I know that.
Right.
Yeah, I grew up in a small town in central Illinois, 250 people and my grandparents owned
a small farm about three miles outside of town.
And I seemed like I spent as much time on their small farm as I did at home and you
know, it had a creek going through it.
So I would trap and I'd hunt squirrels and small game and such.
We didn't have deer in our area back then really.
But, uh, you know, for me, it all comes down to my roots and my upbringing.
You know, we were simple country people.
I call myself a simple country boy to this day.
And uh, you know, uh, our word was worth something.
A handshake meant more than a written contract and you just, you didn't want to ever go back
on your word.
And, you know, I really got into writing based on the fact that I read everything that came
out about deer hunting every magazine that hit the newsstands.
I bought it.
If it had anything, had a single deer article in it, I was buying it and reading it.
And what happened was I was taking that information that I would read to the woods and try to
apply it and it almost never worked.
You know, the story sounded good in the magazines I'd read, but it just didn't work in the
real world.
And so at one point I just realized that, Hey, I think I know about as much as most
of these guys writing these articles, maybe the time I've tried my hand at it.
And that kind of got the ball rolling for me to start my writing career.
And yeah, I was, I'd written for, I don't know, probably 10 years or so before I wrote
the book that you referenced.
And I had articles published in North American Whitetail, deer and deer hunting, Peterson's
bow hunting, just about every hunting magazine I've been in at least once or twice.
I've had hundreds of articles published over the years, but it really started with the
fact that what I was reading and trying to apply just never seemed to work.
Tell us a little bit about, you know, everyone knows you now for shooting big bucks.
I remember reading about how one of your goals was to shoot 150 inch deer early on.
And then it just, it really progressed to now I was watching the episode the other day
and you were talking about letting, was it, was it male or smoky that you kept letting
go by?
I think it was male.
It was.
Yeah.
And you were, you were driving back from somewhere and you had seen that deer.
And I think if I remember, you can, you can tell the story, but it was something about
if that deer didn't have a bunch of points broken off because you knew how big it was,
this was the year if you could, if you could put it together.
Yeah.
So, you know, when I started, any deer was a trophy and it was my target and quickly
it became bucks only.
And then it became bucks with at least eight points and then it would have to be bucks that
scored at least the 125 Pope and young minimum and then 140, then 150 and so forth.
And you know, it wasn't like it was one year to the next.
Each one of those steps took me a few years.
I mean, I wanted to get to the point where I could do that consistently, whatever that
goal was, and then I would raise the bar.
But you know, I got to the point where I felt that I could kill any buck that I hunted as
long as I could get access to the property I needed to for that particular buck.
And you know, in 2020, I shot my biggest buck ever.
He actually ends up being the number six all time typical with a bow and a buck I called
Mel after Mel Johnson, who holds the world record.
When that buck was a yearling, he had a 10 point rack, a real small 10 point rack.
And I thought, man, if that buck lives, he has a chance to be something special.
Well, the very next year when he was two years old, I got pictures of this clean six
by six typical and I didn't recognize him.
And the thing is, I pretty much, I know the buck that I'm hunting.
I mean, I learned them.
I watched him grow up through trail cameras as well as actual sightings.
And when that six by six buck came along, I couldn't picture what buck is that, you
know, I just eat from the previous year.
I just couldn't picture which one he was.
And then one day had dawned on me.
That's that good five by five yearling from the year before and I ran to my computer and
I started comparing pictures and the rack from both years.
And sure enough, it's definitely the same buck.
He just exploded from a little tiny 10 point rack of a yearling to 160 inch two year old.
That was by far the best two year old I'd ever seen.
That's crazy.
It still is to this day.
Well I would have never believed he was a two year old had I not known it was the same
buck from the year before.
And people see the pictures of the buck as a yearling and they don't believe he's a yearling.
But I know for a fact he is.
If I would cover up his antlers and people just saw his body, they would, nobody would
argue whatsoever.
He had such a nice rack for a yearling, but you know, I'm moving on.
He went from that.
Well, the year he was the queen six by six two year old.
That's when I named him Mel because, you know, Mel Johnson has the world record typical
with a bow.
And I thought, man, if that buck just lives five or six years old, he might challenge
Mel Johnson's world record.
And so I called him, started calling him Mel as a two year old.
Well the next year as a three year old, he blew up even more over 200 inches, but he
was pretty non typical.
I threw a lot of non typical points.
And boy, I had a big decision to make and I just couldn't bring myself to shoot a three
year old.
No matter how big he was, I knew if I shot him, I would spend the rest of my life looking
at him on the wall thinking what would he have been if I'd let him live?
Don, how many people would even let, you know, something over a 150 walk and you're
talking over a 200 inch deer.
How did you ever come to the decision to not, I mean, I just, I can't even fathom that.
Well, I've, you know, I kind of mastered every step along the way that I described as I continually
raised the bar.
Today I'm really looking for world class bucks and they're pretty hard to find.
I don't have one to hunt every season.
In fact, if I can find one about every three years, I'm doing really good.
But you know, I remember the first time I let a 150 walk and I didn't know at that time
there's a lot of guys that 150 walk today.
But back when I did it, I did not know of a single other hunter who'd ever let a 150
inch buck walk.
And I just, I don't know, God has given me a kind of a different mindset that I don't
need to impress anybody.
And I found that I've learned more the years I don't shoot a deer than the years I do.
Just those seasons I spend a lot more time in a tree observing if I'm not feeling a tag.
And you know, my goal is always to end the season as a better hunter than when I started.
I can start the following season, you know, better than I did this season before.
And you know, I got to the point where the kill was literally not nearly as important
to me as the chase.
And it's the hunt.
And I've shot enough of my target bucks that I know once I shoot that buck, it's over.
Then I'm on a three year search for the next one.
And that's really kind of the down point of that cycle, if you will.
When you've found a world class buck and you're chasing him, that's the fun for me.
Getting those trail camera pictures, you know, spotting him in velvet, coming out on a soybean
field or whatever.
I get such a thrill out of that that I don't really need to put an arrow in one anymore.
Because, you know, I don't want this to sound arrogant because I don't mean it that way
at all, but I've tagged way more than my per share of giants.
And one more is not going to, it's not going to change my reputation among other hunters.
It's not going to change how I feel about myself.
It's just not going to change me.
So the need to kill another giant is not there.
Another desire is there, but the need is not there.
You know, one of the things that I talk about on here is identity and where our worth and
value comes from.
And that makes total sense because when you're not getting your worth and value from all
the people in the hunting industry because of, you know, how many big bucks you've shot,
it doesn't, it doesn't press you to try to go and kill the next, you know, 180, 190 because
you're not out there to impress anybody.
It's, it's, it's your game.
This is what you're doing is for you.
It's your passion.
And you can stay as patient as you want to because you're not trying to get anybody else's
good opinion of you.
I mean, that's, it just really goes along with a lot of what we talk about on here.
No, one of the funny things, and if you guys, if you want to see, he's, he shot an amazing
video on Mel.
It's on the, it's on chasing giants, but what was, I don't remember if there was, was there
an episode number?
Was it just about Mel?
It's on the chasing giants with Higgins Outdoors YouTube channel.
You can just go through the hunts and I forget the title of it, but yeah, I've watched it
a couple of times.
I think it's just simply Mel.
I think, I think it is.
And one of the things that I think it'd be interesting for the viewers out there to know
when, when, when Don finally took this buck, you had COVID.
Yep.
And so here's the, one of the funniest things.
I don't mean to give this away, but when, when you shot Mel and you, and you knew he'd
gone down, you know, you hit him through the vitals and you heard him crash.
Did you run right over and see Mel?
No, I actually went back to the house and called my grandsons.
I won my grandson.
They live in Indiana.
So they live two hours away.
I wanted them boys to be with me when I walked up on him because I knew that there was probably
very little chance that they would ever get a chance to walk up on a 200 inch buck with
their grandpa in their life.
So you wouldn't take a nap.
I did.
And you know that video that we're referencing here, it's got almost 2 million views today.
And I get so many, it was professionally done, not by myself, but by Steve Shields,
a good friend of mine.
And I'm telling you, he did a fantastic job.
I didn't give him much to work with being a simple country boy.
I'm not, you know, Mr. Photogenic or anything.
Like that, Mr. Charisma, get on the camera.
And he took what little I gave him to work with and he turned it into a masterpiece.
It's excellent.
It's guys, you got to go and look that up.
It's an amazing video.
It was really well done.
And then so smokey.
Now, what year did you take smokey?
That would have been 2017.
And he had was a 20 points.
I know he only had 13.
What was the one I'm thinking or was that?
Well, I shot one in 2004 that had 20 points.
That's what I'm remembering.
Yeah.
And that one scored.
Was it was it 214?
Yeah, it was 214.
Yeah, man.
So how many over 200 now have you taken?
Three.
And this is, this is not, you know, this is not high fence stuff that you're doing.
No.
And so, no, I'm not sure.
And so, no, it's they're wild.
Never since the word.
So you know, when I was a kid, my dad would take me hunting and I talked about this.
I think in a couple episodes ago, my dad knew nothing about hunting at all.
You know, he wanted to be with me, which now I value that.
I go back and go, you know, he didn't care anything about him, but he wanted to be with
me, but I'll never forget the first time we went out.
He went back in the house and came out and I could smell something.
I said, dad, what is that?
And he says, well, I put on old spice.
He was a school teacher.
We saw nothing that whole day because that's what he did.
You know, he's went in and put on old spice.
He didn't know anything about it, but his passion to be with me just helped fill my
fire, you know, for white tails.
So let's let's touch on something for a minute.
So I love talking about, you know, the three things in the game is don't be seen, heard
or smelled.
Obviously, don't put on old spice, but going back to the don't be seen part.
I've heard you on a lot of your podcasts, you know, talk about, you know, entrance and
exit, you know, all those different things touch on the, on the scene part of that, if
you would.
Well, you know, I think most deer hunters don't realize it, but most of the time they've
run their hunt before they ever climb into their stand.
They've alerted the deer in their hunting areas that they are there.
And before they ever get into that tree and you know, the deer either sees them, smells
them or hears them.
So, you know, access or entrance to your stand location is very critical for success.
And I don't think most deer hunters recognize just how critical it is because if that deer
sees, smells or hears you before you get there, it's over.
He's not going to be walking past your stand.
And I know you do trail cams a lot.
So like a lot of guys out there are doing them, but they're like, they're going back
every month and they're accessing it.
Now they have, you know, the, you can do them through your cell phone.
But what are you, because I've heard you talk about this, but touch a little bit on
pressuring your property.
Well, I also use my, my cameras different than most hunters.
I think most hunters are putting those cameras out there and they're running back and checking
them on a fairly regular basis.
And they're looking for that buck to do something that they can immediately take advantage of.
And so they go, they pull their car, they come home, they throw it in the computer and
oh man, my target buck has come by in daylight hours.
It's time to start hunting.
Well, no, you're already late to the game.
And the time to start hunting was right there before he started moving in daylight.
And so then they go back and, you know, they're probably taking a stand in with them and cutting,
shooting lanes and, and they're bumping the deer off.
Well, I use my trail cameras to gather annual data.
So if I see a buck, I get a picture of a buck at a particular location at a, whatever date,
I can pretty much figure that that buck is going to be in that area the same date the
following year.
And it's really uncanny how a mature buck has an annual pattern.
And I'm putting that pattern together years before I hunt that deer.
And in some cases, four or five years, there's one buck that I watched for six years and I
went in and I killed him the first morning, a hundred point when he was six and a half
years old.
But it's that annual day.
I'm not, when that buck is going to move past my stand, that stand has been in place for
at least months.
And in some cases, a couple of years, just waiting for that prime opportunity.
And then when that comes along, you know, I'm getting in there and it's my first trip
in, I didn't go have to go in and hang a stand.
I didn't have to go in and hang trail cameras.
I just know the buck's still alive.
He's going to be doing this and that on these dates or close to it.
And when the conditions are right, I go in and hunt.
How like with your height on your deer stands, you know, you doing all the above, you know,
ladder stands, lock-ons, climbers, or do you kind of stick with one and what height are
you typically going at?
I've got every kind of stand ever known to man, including enclosed elevated blinds.
But the height varies by the tree.
I think it's way more important to be hidden that tree.
I mean, I've got stands that I can literally almost reach up and touch the platform.
So there may be eight foot off the ground and real thick, brushy trees and also brushy
terrain where you don't want to get too high or you just lose all your vision.
And then I've got other stands are 30 feet, maybe 35 feet even high.
So it just, it varies greatly by the tree more than anything.
I don't know about 35 feet, buddy.
I don't think I could do that.
I mean, you know, I was, I don't have many like that.
Oh, I got certified as a tree stand safety instructor back in 2007.
I think it was, you know, we had to do investigations and different things with guys.
And there was a guy in Louisiana who, uh, he was Cajun background and he had a tree
stand 60 feet off the ground.
And he obviously he fell and he passed away.
No safety harness.
I still do this day.
And I even believe someone wasn't wearing a safety harness up there, but 60 feet.
That's nuts.
But I think, oh, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I don't have very many that even are 30 feet today, but I have
in the past had a lot of them over 30 feet older.
I get the more, uh, more, I love the ground and stay close to it.
So do you play the thermals into the height of your tree stand for morning and evening
hunts?
What are your thoughts on that consideration or more just being covered up and play the
wind?
Uh, it's more about playing the wind than anything that terrain that I'm hunting is
fairly flat.
I don't have big hills.
So the thermals don't come into play near as much.
Although I do understand that, you know, you get 20 feet up in a tree stand and it affects
there's effect from the thermals as well.
I mean, a lot of guys will say, you know, they swear a certain sent control product works
because they had deer downwind of them and they didn't spell them.
Well, you know, my explanation is pretty simple.
The other days when, you know, you can see your neighbor's burning his leaves or something
that smoke is going straight up in the air.
And there's other days when that smoke is, is hanging down on the ground and your scent
is doing the same thing.
There's days when you can be in your tree and the deer can be straight downwind of
being your sense going right over the top of them.
One of the companies that, that, uh, you know, I've followed, actually, that's how we met.
I was working for them at the ATA show was a company.
It was called Attsco and this isn't, I'm not trying to do a plug here, but the research
and again, I love them all and I think they make great products, but the research in, in
dead skin cells, you know, when we're exfoliating, you know, like with a glove, you know, getting
those dead skin cells off, you know, that.
Respiring of that specific body odor that we have, you know, it's funny in white tails,
the amount of receptors that they have compared to a human is, is what is it?
They say that a white tail smells up to 10,000 times better, um, you know, than we do.
And I always say it's like this when I, when I, you walk into grandma's house at Thanksgiving,
right?
And you can just smell this amazing meal, but a white tail walks in there.
He doesn't smell an amazing meal.
He can tell you every single thing it's cooking that sweet potato pie, you know, that's turkey,
that's dressing that because he can identify everything.
And so, you know, a lot of the smoke and mirrors that I, I discovered early on was a lot of
these companies that promise you, you know, all these different things, you know, whether
it was a cover cent or whatever it was, um, he smells it.
He goes, that's raccoon urine, that's fox urine.
Uh, you hung your stuff outside of a smoke, you know, wood stove and that's a human scent.
He can identify every single one of those.
So I don't buy a whole lot into, you know, the whole game with all the cover cent stuff,
but I do love the, uh, the camel that you were wearing in that video.
Who makes that?
Oh, was that the Ocio Camo?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Ocio.
I love the guy.
Joe Miles, a great hunter out of South Carolina, came up with that camel pattern.
Oh, I, when you were standing in the one tree, I think it's when you shot Mel and I was looking
at that Camo and I went, man, I really liked that Camo.
I mean, I love the pattern.
Now that would have been a different Camo.
Which one was I trying to think what, or maybe it was smoke.
I can't remember which one it was.
Uh, it was probably, it was probably Mel, I'm guessing.
But I love it.
And one of the things I'm always looking for in Camo, and I don't know how you feel about
this.
I don't know that I've heard the episode with you talking about it or not, but like with
you be dies and brightners.
What's your take on that?
Well, I think there's definitely something to it.
Um, it's, you know, there's, there's a lot of things that I think we, we understand that
it has some effect.
We just don't fully realize what effect.
And it's kind of like the red moon.
I get questions about the moon phases all the time and how that affects your movement.
I do believe there's something to it, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to put my finger
on exactly what it is.
And I think it's the same way with these UV brightners.
We don't know, I personally don't know specifically how a deer's eyes work.
I know that they can pick up movement very, very easy.
And yet there's times where you can stand still and they'll almost walk right by it
a few feet.
So, uh, you know, one of the long-winded way of saying, I don't know how your eyes work.
We did, I did some experimenting just like you.
You said, I remember when you got some sync control stuff and someone had sent you some
things and you said, I'm going to try them and these things.
I'll let you know what I think.
I did some testing with, with UV on blaze orange and I had a blaze orange vest.
I went out during a gun season back in Pennsylvania when I was living back there years ago and
man, I'm telling you, I was at the edge of the field and they saw me.
And one of the things that, you know, I think it's the University of Georgia did the study
on all this stuff, that behavioral research, um, that deer do absolutely see ultraviolet
powered, um, what do they call them?
Optical brightners way better than we do, but they only see in two colors, according
to their research, and that was blue and yellow.
And they did some kind of an experiment with food to get them to come.
That's how they were discovering all this stuff.
But I had these deer spot me or blow on stop and I had the wind in my favor.
And then someone had done a drive.
We were doing experiment and I was, I went into the woods and I put on a different blaze
orange vest that was, um, UV dead.
We treated it to get the UV out of it.
And those deer about ran me over.
It had no clue I was standing there.
So I know I've had it happen, like being up in a tree stand and you see that maternal
doe walking through and all of a sudden you didn't move the winds right.
And all of a sudden she just pops her head and looks right at you.
And I mean, I understand it's their bedroom.
They know everything that should or shouldn't be in a certain area, but I think there is,
you know, something went something to that, but let's move on to the herd part.
You know, we, we talked a little bit about, you know, approaching the stand and now you
had, what was your sponsor that was the bike that you had getting in and out quietly to
your stand?
Not quite yet.
Yes, talk a little bit about, you know, not being heard.
Well, I mean, a mature buck is so in tune with his surroundings that, you know, he knows
the difference between a squirrel running through the leaves and, you know, another deer coming
through the leaves and a human coming through the leaves or whatever.
It's, he just, it does you no good to address everything else and not address the sound
that you make.
So you can be totally sent free and you can be camoed up, but if you make too much sound
getting to your stand or while you're in your stand, the hunt's over.
A mature buck is just not going to come and investigate like a doe a lot of times will.
You know, she sees you move.
She's not, she's not leaving until she figures it out.
She'll circle around downwind and then she gets your scent.
She'll stomp and blow and tell everybody I mature bucks, see something that he don't
like, he just turns and walks away.
So they're just totally different.
Mature bucks are totally different animal.
I think that's another thing that probably holds a lot of deer hunters back is I think
they're too successful at hunting other deer that it's really hard for them to change their
tactics to hunt older mature bucks.
Do you move your, do you move your trail cameras around a lot with, I mean, you used to have
multiples now, but I was like trying to find it.
I'm trying to remember.
It's been a while since I read that first book of yours, but trying to understand their
patterns through each season of the year.
And you said something, and I do remember this, that a mature monster buck, he finds
that place that he knows nobody else is going to pressure.
And one of the goals is to try to find that.
Oh yeah.
I believe without any doubt that every mature buck alive today has a sanctuary, a place
where he goes when the heat's on.
If he didn't, he would have never made it to maturity.
Someone with the odds would have caught up with him.
His luck would have ran out and someone would have shot him.
But and I don't think that these bucks are smarter than other bucks.
I think a lot of it is luck.
I think when they're young and they're dispersing, you know, those yearling bucks dispersing from
their birth area to find the new home range, I think some of them just get lucky and they
settle into a sanctuary area, maybe where there's no hunting allowed, you know, or there
would be a small property or a big property.
And they get to older age through luck more than anything.
But once they do get to older age, they have figured out, you know, where they're safe
and where they're not.
They know where they encounter humans.
And they just avoid those areas during daylight hours.
I had one guy come up when he was talking to me about, you know, he rakes the leaves
to all of his stands from about 75 yards out.
I just don't do that.
To me, it just feels like any disturbance that I'm doing in the forest like that.
It's I mean, it's it's it's a it's a sign.
It's you know, it's a hey, humans been here, but I don't know whether I mean, I've had
guys say they mow, you know, one path through a field, which so they can get quietly and
not be seen to their stand and those kind of things.
But yeah, I think the approach to the to the stand is about as important as any.
I'll take a turkey call with me on the southern Indiana.
And I know that when I'm walking, I try not to walk in a way that is going to sound like
a human walking.
And I'll even scratch the ground with my foot a little bit with my mouth called.
I'll be talking a little bit.
And sometimes even if I get up in my stand, if I make a little bit of a sound, I'll take
my hat off and I'll smack it on my leg and do like a fly down.
You know, like, like there's a turkey down there.
I've actually seen dough.
I made a noise one time when there were three was a two maternals in a yearling.
And when I was up in there and I did that, I watched them at first, they were like perking
up and then I did that little fly down thing pretty soon.
They stood up tails.
You know, they were just wagging their tails feeding.
They were good.
But yeah, but they pay attention big time.
They're in tune to their surroundings.
No doubt about it.
What about let's go to let's go to the last one.
We talked about not being seen, not being heard.
What about not being smelled because you are probably so well known for saying you got to
play the wind.
Yeah, you know, I have tried every single gimmick that that there is or product.
I may be a shunt on gimmick because I do believe most of them work to some degree.
Thirty years ago when I went to the woods, I did it all.
I mean, I took a shower before I went.
I even took the chlorophyll tablets for a month before season open.
All my gear was kept in a tote plastic tote.
I changed my clothes outside my vehicle when I got to my hunting area.
I sprayed down.
I did everything.
I even tried to bottle the pee in.
Well, you know, one day I looked at that pee bottle in my stand and I thought this thing
has got the stain.
There's just no way it can't.
I've been peeing in this bottle every day of hunting season and we're two months in.
And I started by throwing that thing away.
I thought I'm going to just try peeing out of my stand seeing what happens.
And you know, this is almost a God thing.
The next time I went hunting, I peed out of my stand.
I'm telling you, Brandon, it wasn't five minutes later and eight point buck comes by, sticks
his nose right where I peed and started eating the grass.
Well, I've been peeing out of my stand ever since and I slowly gave up every other, you
know, sand elimination product that I ever used.
It's all about the wind.
And here's the other thing is, you know, everybody thinks that the wind has to be right for you
to be successful.
And in reality, the wind needs to be right for that mature buck and you need to figure
out how you can give him the wind he needs to be comfortable up on his feet moving and
yet still not be able to smell you.
Where are you going to have your stand along that route that he's comfortable moving?
Because if he's not comfortable with the wind, you can have the wind 100 percent your favorite.
Yeah, he's not going to smell you, but he's also not walking by because he's not comfortable
with that wind.
And once I started figuring that out, then my success just skyrocketed.
What do you do in the mornings?
I know early October, I've heard you talk about it.
You're not a big morning hunter in early October, neither am I.
It's just a lot of time spent, a lot of making noise and smells in the woods.
I try to stay away from that.
But sorry, I'm here a little bit of noise going on outside the studio here.
So sorry about that.
I got distracted for a second.
Back to what we were talking about.
So when you're going in in the mornings, do you find yourself, do you go in?
How long before daylight are you one of these hunters that wait until they get back to their
beds and go get in and then wait to get in when they come out feeding?
No, I like to get in early, but I don't want to get in too early.
I don't want to sit there in the dark for an hour.
So I try to get in there about say on average 20 minutes before shooting light.
Yeah, that's, I know guys are going an hour before and I'm like, I don't want to be sitting
up there freezing and everything else for the next hour.
But funny, when I was a kid growing up, you know, we would always, my dad, we would go
out.
I told you he wasn't much of a hunter and there was a, there was a family with us and
we were out hunting together, another father and son.
And he went in, I don't know, it was like some crazy early hour and he was in there
so long he had to go to the bathroom and he told his dad, he goes, dad, I got to do a
number two.
His dad said, well, listen, go over there.
He said, dig a hole and he's with your heel.
And he had, remember those big, look like a big carrot, the big, like the big jumpsuit
looking, you know, blaze, orange stuff.
And he went over and his dad said, now make sure you covered up really well.
You know, you don't want all that smell going on.
So he goes over and he comes back to his dad and they're standing there and his dad goes,
are you sure you didn't like stepping it or something?
He said, no, he says, I, I stayed away from everything.
He says, I was actually leaning up against a tree and he says, I think everything was
good.
And he says, man, you stink.
He, he pulled the hood up over his head and you can figure it out.
Yeah.
To this day, he still has a nickname to this day.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
I bet he's not the only one that's happened to over the years.
Yeah.
I'm, yeah, we'll just keep it there.
You know, you were going back to the, to like P bottles and stuff.
I think most guys do take that with them, but we discovered we did some, some testing
with scrapes and we were putting different things in scrapes and to see how it affect
them.
It had no effect.
Right.
None at all.
We put WD 40.
We were doing all kinds of different things to see what the difference was.
They didn't care.
And so it's probably been maybe five or six years now.
I'm the same way now.
It's like, you know what?
I mean, I don't usually have to go.
I can be up there five, six hours and be fine, but I agree.
I totally agree.
What a waste.
And you're right.
That bottle probably smells worse than anything else by now.
Yep.
Um, broadheads.
Touch on that real quick.
Um, fixture mechanical.
What's your, what's your opinion?
Uh, it's gotta be fixed.
Yeah.
I knew you were going to say that already.
I just had to put it out there.
Yeah.
I didn't want to run with it too hard.
I might run off a few listeners, but I just see the mechanical as a chance that doesn't
need to be taken.
Well, I think there's, I mean, the benefit when I think about like an expandable is,
you know, if you make a God forbid you make a bad shot, it's happened to everybody.
And so you hit him back.
You have a little bigger of a cutting diameter.
You're still going to have to wait that deer out six, eight hours.
You know, if you get a liver hitter back in the gut or whatever until that deer expires.
But when it comes to like bone, um, you know, I think it doesn't, if you hit a deer in the
vitals, it doesn't matter if you have a two inch cut broad headed, whether you got it
and you know, an inch cut, you know, if you hit them the way you should hit them, they're
going to expire.
Um, long heart shot, you know, they're going to both can be down within a hundred yards.
And that's the one nice thing I do like about fixed is you don't have a problem.
Like if you catch one of those blades on an expandable on a little branch, it can, you
know, open it prematurely and redirect the path of that arrow.
Um, but yeah, I, I mean, I honestly use both depending upon where I'm hunting, but yeah,
there's no doubt that fixed broad heads are probably a little stronger.
Oh, let's see here.
Let's get into something that I wanted to talk to you about.
We'll, we'll finish.
We'll bring God into this in just a minute, but you said at the beginning of this podcast,
you know, you grew up in a small town, you're just like a country boy and, um, you know,
whatever I see you posting, you know, on social media posts, you don't really hold back, but
you're also not trying to rub someone's nose in something, but you're very passionate about
this country.
You're very passionate about God.
You're very passionate about like you just said earlier about your kids waiting a couple
hours for them to get there so you could take them in to see the deer.
So I know family means an incredible amount to you, but we both grew up in the 1960s.
And the world's, the world has changed an incredible amount.
And you know, I'm just kind of wondering, I guess one of my questions would be, you know,
is God in what's happening in this country right now?
Now, where is he in all that?
You know, what's our part?
Well, it's interesting that we're having this conversation today because one of the things
that, that I decided I was going to do this summer was I'm going to read the New Testament
again because, uh, I believe that we're probably in the end times and I want to understand
the book of revelation better, but I didn't want to go right to a revelation.
I wanted to start at the beginning of the New Testament and read it all.
And then when I got to revelation, I'm going to really slow down and take a chapter at
a time and maybe even get a, you know, some kind of study material to go along with it.
But I recently read Romans 13 and Romans 13 talks about, and it was so profound that my
wife and I had a long discussion about it afterwards that it says very clearly that
every government that's in power, God put them there.
And you know, it talks about, you know, give to Caesar what is Caesar's talk to pay your
taxes.
And well, we had a real discussion about that one because obviously as Christians, we don't
agree with everything our government's doing with our money, with our tax dollars.
And you know, when they're doing things like supporting abortions through Planned Parenthood
and things like that, it's really tough for me as a Christian to want to pay my taxes
and to not want to look for ways to pay less.
And that was a real eye opener for me at Romans chapter 13.
So if anybody's listening and they're having the same issues that I've had, I love my country,
but I despise my government and I don't think you've got to look too hard to see that this
world today and this country in particular, there's a battle of good and evil happening.
There's a spiritual battle happening right before our eyes.
And the only way that you cannot see it is to not have any knowledge whatsoever of scripture,
the Bible.
So I mean, I could, I could fill about four podcasts with this one topic.
I know you could.
And you know what, and I'm the one that brought this, you didn't, excuse me, you didn't bring
this up.
I did.
And it's because God's been convicting me to be honest with you, Don, because here's
what I've always been, and I'll continue to be this to a degree is, you know, my role
isn't to try to convince someone, for instance, how to vote.
My job is to promote God, promote scripture, live my life in accordance.
So when people see that, they can see the difference between right and wrong, and I
can build a trust with them.
So now I have a platform to speak into their life.
And so I, I want them to know God.
And I really believe that if they know God, the Holy Spirit will lead them of what they
need to do.
Well, here's what's happened.
You know, this podcast is called Unleashed.
And the reason I made it Unleashed is because I want to see men free.
I want men to understand that their identity is in Christ alone, not from the biggest deer
they've shot, not from what kind of car they drive, how much money they have with their
wife looks like, how big their muscles are.
I want it to be nothing except that I want them to know that your identity, your one
true identity comes because the God of the universe, if you're a believer, is inside
of you.
And because of that, you have everything you will ever need in him.
So whatever he's called you to do, you can do it fearlessly because he's got this, no
matter what.
Well, then when I was looking for, you know, like the subtitle, which is, We Are the Resistance.
You know, I was working with a guy, Nate Sotter, who played with the New England Patriots.
He was on, I think, three of their Super Bowl teams.
He just retired this past year.
But anyhow, he was a friend and we were having a conversation texting back and forth.
And there was something about the We Are the Resistance came up and I said, can I steal
that?
And he says, I'm not using it.
Do what you want with it.
Well, I sat on it for a while.
And as I began to keep reading those words, We Are the Resistance, God started saying
to me, what does that mean to you?
If you're going to use that phrase, it has to mean something rather than a catchy little,
you know, phrase.
And he said, and if it does mean something to you, what are you willing to do with that?
And I said, okay, God, you know, it's like search me and know me.
I want to know what's going on here.
And you know, growing up in the 1960s, you know, I could take my pocket knife to school.
I had in high school, I had my gun rack in the back of my truck and I could have my rifle
hanged, my doors weren't locked, our house doors weren't locked.
And we've seen this country change.
You know, the whole thing, and I've said this and I think you're right there with me.
Guns don't kill people.
People kill people.
And when you take God out of the school system, you've just slaughtered morality.
And then you take the fathers out of homes and all kinds of things that we've been seeing
happening.
And I did an episode here just recently where I was talking about, they had killed these
elephants over in Africa, the older bulls.
And what ended up happening was the younger bulls, when they came into what's called must
when they were testosterone is kicking up, they were going around and they were killing
rhinos because they weren't being mentored.
And that's a lot of what we're seeing a lot of the young people right now, whether
school shootings or the violence or all these things going on is because you take God away
from this stuff.
And you're left up to your own devices.
You're left without a compass being God pointing true north.
And Don, I really believe this.
We are seeing right now in this country, and you and I both when we go and we speak from
men's events, there's a fire that's lighting.
When I went down to Asbury, when the revival was happening earlier this year, and I stood
in line for seven hours to get in there to be a part of that.
But mostly what happened for me was outside of the building with all these people and
the conversations I was having, they were praying for one another.
There were healings happening.
They were singing praise and worship.
There was no racial divides.
It was all about we're here because the God of the universe made us and we're all going
to be together someday as it is.
But this voice that we are the resistance begin to stir me because what we saw growing
up freely being able to go to church, freely being able to speak in our speech and talk
about things that we really believed in, we're now seeing persecution coming.
We talked about COVID earlier.
You had COVID, I had COVID.
But the whole vaccination thing, it divided families.
It divided our nation.
Whether you're going to be vaccinated, whether you're going to be unvaccinated.
And then we've seen so many other things happening with commercials we're seeing on television
that are really going against the core of most people in this country.
But it seems like the less we speak up, the more ground evil gains.
And so God convicted me.
He said, Brent, are you willing to listen to me?
Are you willing to follow me?
Are you willing to be a voice?
And here's the thing.
It doesn't matter who you are, where you've been or what you've done.
God loves you desperately.
That's why he gave his son for you.
He took the bullet for you because he loves you so much.
But we're also called to stand against the evil one.
And Don, I haven't brought anything up like this in any of my podcasts at this point.
But when God brought you into my mind to have you on the podcast, I know how passionate
you are about this.
And anyway, if you, I mean, gosh, what's that song that was a Jason Aldean's got out right
now that try that in a small town?
Yeah.
It's all based on, listen, we are family.
We love one another.
We're willing to die for what we believe in, but it just seems like that voice is getting
silenced and people are just walking around blind.
Yeah, boy, I'll tell you, you've thrown out so much here.
My mind's been racing for the last couple of minutes.
I can take this conversation 50 different directions, but I guess to start with, you
know, you talked about that phrase, Unleashed.
When I started the chasing giants podcast, and I only recently, and I can the last 30
days have shared this with Terry, my co-host, you know, chasing giants was, it had a double
meaning for me.
It was chasing giant white tails.
But also I think most of us at some point in our life have been chasing a demon or demons
been chasing us.
You know, we're, we've all had that vice, whatever it may be, alcohol, drugs, women,
you name it.
At some point, most of us have faced something and it's that giant that was chasing us.
And it's time to, you know, turn the tables and start chasing it.
I mean, I think the problem with this country is not our schools, I think, or it didn't
start there anyway.
I think it started in our homes, you know, back when you and I were kids on a Sunday,
90% plus of businesses were closed.
Families went to church together on Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon.
You'd visit grandparents or whatever.
And today that doesn't happen at all.
I mean, very, very small percentage of people and the failure started in the home.
It didn't start with the government.
It didn't start at school.
It started in our home.
And one of the things that I've tried to use the chasing giants podcast for is to encourage
young men to, you know, stand up and take care of their obligations.
The Bible is very clear that the man is the head of the family and he's got certain obligations.
And I've also got a video out on YouTube where I did a seminar at a church in Effingham,
Illinois.
It's only about 20, 25 minutes long.
Somebody wants to watch it.
But my message was, you know, watch your purpose.
God put us here and we each have a purpose.
And maybe your purpose is just to raise your kids to be good people.
I mean, my parents, I promise you had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
They had no idea that one day I would stand in front of crowds of more than a thousand
people at times and, you know, share the gospel with them or they had no idea that one day
I would have a podcast with, you know, I don't know, probably 20,000 or so people a week
listened to.
They had no idea.
But the only reason that I can do that today is because of the foundation my parents set,
you know, 60 years ago.
And a person's purpose could just be to raise that child to have the values that they need
to make a difference in this world down the road decades from now.
And I think it's a really powerful message.
I share it on my social media most years right before hunting season because I encourage
deer hunters to listen to that message.
And as they're sitting there, staying that fall, you know, we've all got plenty of time
to sit there and think about different things.
They need to think about what their purpose is in life.
Why did God put them here?
You know, I could continue taking this in a slightly different direction.
I've had people tell me that they believe and I thought this myself long before it happened,
long before anybody else said it, that some of my deer hunting success has been almost
unbelievable.
About a good example, in 2017 I shot my second 200 inch buck smoking and then on the very
next hunt, the very next time I went to the woods, I shot a hundred ninety three inch
buck with my number two buck.
I remember that.
So 400 inches of antler.
I shot them back to back hunt.
It was even covered by Fox News.
I saw that.
That's how I remember it.
Yeah.
So, you know, I've had people suggest to me that the only way to explain my success is
that God is using.
He's almost my guide, my outfitter, if you will, and he likes what I'm doing with my platform
and he wants people to have their eyes on me so that I can share the message.
I was afraid.
I had that thought myself and I was afraid to say it and then I've had people say it
to me that they watched from afar and they've noticed it themselves.
There's just no way.
Some of the things, I mean, we talked about me passing up a buck that scored over 200
inches.
There's no way I could have ever dreamed that was going to happen.
Another message that I've always got for young people is to dream big because it doesn't
matter how big you dream, that dream, as wild as you can imagine, God's reality is even
bigger and I'm living proof of that.
There is no way on this earth that I could have possibly dreamed that I would accomplish
some of the things that I have.
And that's all the glory goes to him because it's not me.
I was kind of the vehicle, if you will, or the messenger that he's allowed and, you
know, man, I can just keep going.
Do this for me.
The other thing is in the Bible, I was just saying, in the Bible, God used, he doesn't
use the mightiest, the wealthiest, the kings, the queens.
He uses the least likely.
And that's me.
I mean, I'm telling you, Brian, if you would go back to the kids that were in my high school
class, I went to a small school about, where's that 40 in my graduating class?
I'm telling you, I was the kid that was voted the most likely to end up in jail.
I mean, I was in trouble all the time.
But there is absolutely no way to think that I would somehow have a platform that I'd be
using for God.
That was just totally unfathomable.
Nobody in my class would have ever, ever believed that if you'd have told them that when I graduated.
And God can do amazing things with the most unlikely people.
And I'm just living proof of it.
Do me a favor, we're going to be wrapping up here in a second, but I wanted to give you
an opportunity to talk about your business.
Because when I saw you at the ATA after things that really picked up after shooting some of
these big bucks and your seed company was taken off, I saw you and I walked over and
you said, buddy, it's going nuts.
I mean, things have just exploded almost overnight.
And just talk a little bit about your company with real-world wildlife products and just
kind of let the listener know maybe who you are.
We know what you represent.
And yeah, just tell them a little bit about that.
Well, you know, my, with my passion for white tails and land management, habitat management,
15 years ago, I started a company called real-world wildlife products.
And it's almost a story in itself.
I had a partner, a really great guy, Christian guy, but 10 years in, he decided that we needed
to part ways.
And we had never had issues, but the company got big enough that where we could quit our
jobs and do this full time.
And I think the stress of it was too much for him to handle.
And he decided for whatever reason that one of us had to go.
I thought it was going to be me going.
I thought that I've got so much going on, no way I can run this company by myself.
And we struggled for about six months.
I mean, it was terrible, terrible situation.
And finally the tables turned to where I became the buyer and bought him out.
And I'm telling you the night, and I'd been six months or so, I hadn't slept a night.
But during that time, you know, my wife and I prayed for my partner and his family and
his kids on a regular basis, almost every night when we went to bed.
And the prayer was sincere.
You know, we, we really cared about these people.
They'd become great friends of ours.
And we just couldn't understand why any situation couldn't be worked through.
Well, I ended up buying him out.
And the day that we signed that contract for me to purchase him out, I didn't purchase
it all.
There was another person that came in and purchased some too, but I became the majority
owner where it had been 50-50.
But that night I slept like a baby for the first time.
And it was almost like God confirming that the reason it had been so tough for six months
was God wanted me to have that company.
He had plans.
And I recognized that and I decided that, you know, we'd talked about it before.
We'd done good things before.
But we really, really became at that point a Christian-based company.
The young man that had bought in to the company with me was Wes Delks.
And I don't know, you should have Wes Delks on because I'm telling you, this young man
came in at Christian, young man.
He held my feet to the fire as a Christian.
It's like, and it was almost reverse roles because he's young enough to be my son.
But yet there was times that he was, he had the more mature stance on certain issues.
And we just, from that point on, you know, we wanted to be a company that not only talked
a good talk, but we wanted to follow it up.
I mean, the fact that we do things like support your ministry, we pay tithes on everything
we make.
And every person that we deal with, whether it be a customer or a vendor, gets treated
with the utmost respect just the way we would want to be treated.
We strive for long-term relationships with everybody, a customer or a vendor.
We just, we want to use our company the same way I use my platform to glorify God and all
that we do.
And when we turned that corner, and we weren't a bad company before, we were doing things
right, but we took it to the next level.
And when we did, God took it to the next level.
And to this day, I'm always mindful of where my blessings come from.
I know it's not me making these things happen.
You know, when we started working together, just a little over a year ago now, when I
got a hold of Terry Peer, your co-host with Chasing Giants, you know, I was, you know,
being at, I'm a speaker and do a lot of game dinners, and I was, you know, looking for sponsorships
and different things and people I believed in.
Terry said to me, he goes, Brandon goes, I don't care if you put these brochures out
the table or even talk about us.
He said, we believe in you and we want to support you.
We know what God has done by us supporting other people and we're all about helping other
people's ministry.
That spoke everything I needed to hear.
At the very beginning, when you said your integrity is not for sale, you know, that's
the people that I know about, you know, in your company, they're like that.
And guys, if you're listening to, you know, what we're talking about with this seed company
and everything right now, Don, what's the website on that?
It's realworldwildlifeproducts.com.
And you've heard in this conversation, the kind of a person in a company that you're
dealing with, American based company, love God, love country.
And I just want to, I just want to invite you guys to put your trust and your pocket
book, I guess, behind that and support these guys too, because they're making a huge difference
out there.
And Don, if you can send us some links, we can include the links to the mail, to the
company.
We can put those all in the description.
Guys can just click and go.
Yes.
Well, definitely do that.
So wrapping things up today, God made everything there is.
He made the white tailed deer.
He made the great white shark.
I always tell you, the black mom with a line, the mountains, all these things.
And he made us above all those things because he loves us.
And we're living in a time right now.
Guys, this episode may be bigger than any other episode for the first time we've really
opened up.
We are the resistance.
And I want to invite you in this episode, if you don't know God, to know that he loves
you no matter, like I said, who you are, where you've been or what you've done.
He absolutely loves you.
And he has a purpose like Don was talking about for your life.
But he's saying, give me your life and I'll direct it in ways like what Don just talked
about that would blow you away.
You know, there's a quote that says, you know, hard times make hard men.
Hard men make easy times, easy times make soft men and soft men make hard times.
You are needed right now because we have been going through a time where this country and
so many things we've seen have become soft and we're seeing the enemy do whatever
he wants to do right now.
And like with no resistance, it's time for that to stop.
Guys, we are the resistance.
Your strength is needed and you have what it takes if you have the God of the universe
in you.
Don, thanks so much for being with us today.
Well, thanks for having me, Brent.
It's been a pleasure.
Absolutely.
See you next time, guys.