Podcast
East Meets West Hunt
The East Meets West Hunt Podcast is your resource for all things adventure hunting. This podcast is for the hunter that loves planning and preparing for the hunt, just as much as the hunt. Whether it's deer hunting for big woods mountain bucks, chasing elk in the Rocky Mountains, and anything in between, we will talk to successful hunters from all over to provide the EMW community with useful knowledge and motivation to continue to live their life through a series of adventures.
- Wilderness chart
- #25
- Episodes
- 520
- Releases
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 1 hr 46 min
- On air since
- 2018
- Latest episode
- 16 hours ago
Episodes
520 episodes, newest first
-
1 hr 46 min
Broadside Shots, Bumped Bucks, and Getting Inside 20 Yards w/ Jared Scheffler
Episode 518
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Jared Scheffler of Whitetail Adrenaline at Huntstock. Jared has spent 19 years filming his own hunts with no sponsor dollars, mostly on the ground, mostly on public land (they added permission-only private a few years ago), and now with a longbow.
That much footage has given him strong opinions on shot angles. He doesn’t like broadside, and he has a frame-by-frame reason. He explains why quartering-to holds up better for him from the ground, what stiff arrows and big one-direction cuts have to do with it, how he broke his own target panic, and why he likes to get inside 20 yards.
Then it’s the rut. During lockdown, Jared’s crew started bumping bucks off does on purpose. In timber, he’s seen those bucks lock her back down within 100 to 400 yards, sometimes as close as 125, and settle in within 30 to 45 minutes. If you bowhunt on the ground, or want to, this one’s worth a listen before your next sit.
In this episode:
19 years of Whitetail Adrenaline, The Reckoning Round 3, and why they still sell DVDs
Running a hunting film company with no sponsor dollars
Longbows, heavy draw weights, and what ancient archers practiced with
Why he doesn’t like the broadside shot
Frame by frame: the arrow was 15 yards out before the buck reacted
Why quartering-to and head-on shots work better for him from the ground (and why it’s different from a tree stand)
Stiff arrows, and why he calls his two-blade a one-blade
How he broke his own target panic as a teenager
Shot process, and why things go wrong faster the tighter you get
A mule deer at four and a half yards that never knew he was there
Moving fast when you can so you have time when you need it
Bumping locked-down bucks off does on purpose, and how far they go
Sunny days vs. cloudy days for still hunting timber
Hunting your way in instead of rushing to a destination
The biggest whitetail any of them have seen in the wild
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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59 min
Day 3, No Deer: How I Decide to Stay or Move During the Rut (Live at Huntstock)
Episode 517
Show notes
Solo episode. This is Beau Martonik’s bowhunting seminar from Huntstock, recorded live, and it’s built around one of the questions he gets most at shows and in his inbox: should I stay in this spot, or should I move?
Beau walks through the framework he uses in the tree to take the emotion out of that call, then backs it up with real hunts from the last decade, including the ones that didn’t work. If you’ve got a week of rut vacation coming, this is the one to listen to before you burn it.
In this episode:
Why the big woods don’t follow the farm country playbook
Why bouncing between spots had Beau chasing his tail
The reasons to stay and the reasons to move
Clean access using roads, drainages, and thermals
A map breakdown of a spot where he watched a buck at 18 yards with his bow on the ground
Why a part owner of a mobile hunting company sits one spot for days
Day six or seven in a lonely funnel, and a noon buck on November 8th
Taking the same approach to Iowa with no historical data
Leaving a spot on day three, driving 10 or 15 miles, and killing the buck he was after
Why early season and new areas need a different approach
How he handles swirling wind during the rut
Q&A: browse species, e-scouting timber cuts, finding old apple trees with LIDAR, and his favorite clear cut age
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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21 min
Performance Coach on Staying Sharp Through All Day Rut Sits w/ Todd Bumgardner Bonus
Episode 516
Show notes
Bonus episode. Beau Martonik sits down with Todd Bumgardner of Packmule Training Co., a performance coach who’s trained NFL linebackers, special operators, and a lot of hunters. Todd wrote an article for the East Meets West journal last October on managing your body and mindset through the whitetail rut, and this is the conversation behind it.
The rut is mostly long sits and patience, waiting on one moment that happens fast. This one is about the small stuff that decides whether you’re sharp when it does.
In this episode:
Why the rut wears you down, and why it matters going into the holidays
Being a body in the tree vs. actually hunting
Stress, and sending an arrow into the next zip code
A quick joint routine at the truck before you walk in
Why 2% dehydration hurts your thinking, and why water keeps you warmer
What Beau carries for an all day sit
Keeping blood sugar steady without giving up the snack cakes
Taking a break when you’re smoked, and a midday nap in the tree
Sleeping better when the nights are short
Prepping stand food the night before
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Pack Mule Training Co IG: https://www.instagram.com/packmuletrainingco/
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1 hr 16 min
Why the Best Funnels for Mature Bucks Have No Sign w/ Jeremy Ballantine
Episode 515
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Jeremy Ballantine at Huntstock. Jeremy grew up in southern Vermont tracking big bucks on snow, has guided moose hunters for over 25 years, and hunts Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
Years of following mature bucks through the mountains showed him they don’t use the country the way other deer do. They parallel the trails, cut through saddles on one contour, and scoot through the funnels without leaving much sign. That’s where he kills them now. This one is tactic heavy, from rattling in crunchy leaves to sitting one spot for a week.
In this episode:
Hunting Vermont, and why tracking and stand hunting feed each other
Why bucks love to bed above their own backtrack
Using rattling antlers to get a buck’s attention when he can’t hear a grunt
Two bucks he wouldn’t have killed without antlers in the tree
Why the brawlers die young and the true giants are mellow
Wide Clyde: a three year chase, a hot doe, and eight seconds on snow
Frustration rubs, and why not every rub means something
Doe groups, trail camera history, and four day rut windows on some mountains
Bucks that winter 15 to 18 miles from where they rut
Why you have to treat mature bucks like a different species
Why the best funnels have the least sign
Sitting one funnel five or six days dark to dark
Why he shuts his cell cams off during the rut
Swirling wind in a funnel, and his favorite rut dates
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Jeremy's YT - https://www.youtube.com/@InPursuit365
Jeremy's IG - https://www.instagram.com/inpursuit_365/
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1 hr 40 min
The Real Cost of Killing Giant Bucks w/ Dan Infalt & Johnny Stewart
Episode 514
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Dan Infalt of The Hunting Beast at Huntstock, with Johnny Stewart as co-host. Dan has been asked about bedding areas on every podcast there is, so this one skips the tactics and goes after the story behind them.
Dan learned to hunt alone in southern Wisconsin, chasing one buck for three seasons, finding his sheds every year, and figuring out that if he wanted to kill him, he had to be close to where he bedded. On Thanksgiving morning, a rock off the hood of an old junked car finally pushed that buck out. He went on to a 15 year run of giant bucks, and Dan is honest about what that run cost his family, and why he started giving everything away.
In this episode:
Why hate online means you’re doing well
Learning to hunt with no mentor and a dad who couldn’t give a compliment
Finding a buck’s sheds three years running and learning his bedding areas
Crosswinds, a junked car, and his first giant on Thanksgiving Day
Giving away the “secrets” and the kickback that came with it
Making people better hunters and hunters better people
Johnny, Beau, and a wind bump at deer camp that turned into Beau’s biggest buck
Helping his longtime hunting partner kill a 170 inch ten he’d been chasing for years
Timber the raccoon, and why hunters care about animals more than people think
Losing some of the want, and the birthdays and Halloweens it cost
Why you have to earn luck
How putting his spots on film has cost him
Why 5% of hunters kill all the deer, and the confidence nobody can sell you
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Dan's YT - https://www.youtube.com/@thehuntingbeast
Dan's FB - https://www.facebook.com/dan.infalt
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1 hr 57 min
10 Days of Archery Elk in Wyoming (Big Bull Down) w/ Tyler Martonik & Derek Testerman
Episode 513
Show notes
Bonus episode from Wyoming elk camp. Beau Martonik sits down with his cousin Tyler Martonik and cameraman Derek Testerman at the end of a 10 day archery elk hunt on general tags.
The plan for day one was to take it easy and acclimate. By 4:30 that afternoon, a cow walked to within five yards of Tyler, he looked over and said “bull, Beau, bull,” and Beau had a 6x6 coming around the knob. What followed was a five hour trip out in the dark through blowdowns and a thunderstorm, and another full day to get the rest of him out.
From there it’s Tyler’s hunt. Learning one drainage over most of a week, waiting for thermals to settle before moving on bedded bulls, a wallow found on LiDAR, close calls at 80 yards, and wolves in camp at 3 AM.
In this episode:
Burning seven points on a Wyoming general tag
Acclimating without sitting in camp: camp low, hunt high
The cow at five yards and the bull behind her
Butchering a bull on a slope he kept trying to roll off
Five hours of rain, cliffs, and blowdowns on the first trip out
Why bugles are closer than they sound in thick timber
Waiting for thermals to settle before moving on bedded bulls
A wallow that only showed up on LiDAR
Elk staying low for water in a hot, dry year
Wolves in camp at 3 AM
The herd bull play where everything went right but the bull
Gear that worked, what’s getting replaced, and boiling a skull for Wyoming’s CWD rules
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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1 hr 36 min
Why Deer Follow His Tracks Right to the Stand (233 Bow Kills) w/ Jim Gallagher
Episode 512
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Jim Gallagher at Huntstock. Jim is in his 50th year of hunting, has been bow-only for close to 40 years, and has killed 233 deer with a bow, almost all of them in the swamps and thickets of the Northeast.
His system runs the opposite direction from most. Instead of trying to leave nothing on the walk-in, he wants deer to find his trail. Store scents and cover scents didn’t hold up, so for about 35 years his boots have gone in fresh rabbit droppings, later with tarsal gland hair on top, a buck tarsal hangs seven feet up over a mock scrape, and he walks past his tree and hooks back so a deer following him in gives him an angled-away shot. Then he calls, every sit, on a set schedule.
He also gets into why he aims at the very bottom of the deer, going back to around 1986, when he and Gus Park tallied their misses at a picnic table in Pennsylvania, and 30 of 35 had gone over the deer’s back, and a long list of stories from 50 seasons of doing it his way.
In this episode:
Tracking deer in Maine snow and going bow only
39 foot stands and seven busts in 17 years
The calling sequence: one nostril, fawn mew, grunt, rattle
Why store scents failed and rabbit droppings didn’t
Tarsal glands seven feet up over a mock scrape
Shooting out the side of the peep in low light
Why a deer blowing at you can be a good thing
The night bucks fought under his stand in the dark
Straight down shots and where he aims from 39 feet
The J hook that turns a following deer into a quartering away shot
His biggest buck, a 212 pounder that followed him for a week
The Pennsylvania picnic table tally and the barn test on deer ducking the string
Checking the swamps after the first October snow
A broken arrow rest, two lost bucks, and why you shoot your bow after a bad hit
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Jim's YT channel - https://www.youtube.com/@jimgallagher4939
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2 hr 8 min
What Deer DNA Reveals About Which Bucks Breed w/ Dr. Steve Ditchkoff
Episode 511
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Dr. Steve Ditchkoff at Auburn University, where he has run the deer lab for about 25 years and has been studying deer for roughly 35.
He did not grow up hunting deer. His father quit about the time he was born, so he grew up fishing outside Detroit, found a fisheries and wildlife degree at Michigan State, studied wintering deer in Maine on snowshoes, and did his PhD in Oklahoma on mating strategy, which was a question deer biologists mostly weren’t asking then.
That question is what this episode is built on. In 2007, he built a 430-acre facility at Auburn, fenced, with about 100 adult deer in it, because hunting shows had spent years telling people which bucks were breeder bucks and nobody had studied which individuals actually breed. His group tries to capture the whole population each year, pulls a tissue sample off every deer, and builds the family tree out of DNA. They can look at one buck and count what he sired at one, two, three and four years old, and see which does he bred with.
The answer is that it isn’t random. It’s partially driven by similarity in body size and age. He also has data showing a doe increases her movement substantially right before she comes into heat. What he flags as belief rather than data, and he flags it himself, is his hunch that a dominant buck is targeting specific does rather than wandering. Then the hunting consequence: if you knew the exact peak of breeding, that’s the worst week to sit, because that’s when the most bucks are locked down.
The other half is pressure. He doesn’t believe gunshots are what deer respond to. He believes they respond to the sign we leave walking in and walking out. Two of his studies sit under that, one in South Carolina where daylight use of a hunted spot dropped the day after a sit and took about a week to recover, and one in Alabama that found the best day of the week to hunt.
In this episode:
Why the Southeast ended up leading deer research
Where AI helps wildlife science and where it goes wrong
How he ended up handing his data to Bill Thompson
What confidence actually does to a hunter in the stand
We train deer to avoid us, and the sign we leave doing it
The South Carolina study, and the week it takes a spot to recover
The best day of the week to hunt, by the data
72 square miles of ammunition plant, and what those deer acted like
Why bucks move more where the deer are thin
Why the peak week is the worst week to sit
The breeder buck question nobody had ever actually studied
Inside the 430 acre facility and the family tree built out of DNA
Whether a dominant buck is choosing which does he breeds
The walkabout a doe goes on before she comes into heat
Bucks that moved two and five miles and never came back
Whether you need to know how many deer you have
The three things 35 years changed about how he hunts
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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1 hr 16 min
He Won’t Scout Before Opening Day, and He Kills Bucks in Week One w/ Lucas Benoit
Episode 510
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Lucas Benoit, a bear houndsman and guide out of central New Hampshire, with Johnny Stewart in the co-host chair. Recorded live at Huntstock.
Lucas got into hounds around fourteen with two accident-litter beagles, bought his first two finished bear dogs off a guy who was quitting, treed about sixteen bears that first season, and has since had a year of just over a hundred. Ask him which he’d rather do and he says deer hunting, a hundred percent.
He has killed mature bucks on September 21st in back to back years. Johnny spends most of the episode refusing to let him call it luck.
The argument underneath it is worth the listen. The first week of the season is the best week of the year to kill a mature buck, because if you can find what they’re feeding on, they aren’t far from it. December gets almost that good, and he’ll tell you he still struggles then. The reason most people never cash that first week is that they go scout it the week before and blow the place out. Lucas does not pre-scout. He finds sign in real time and sets up on it the same day.
Then it gets specific. Ten white oaks on a hilltop spine, three or four of them producing, one or two acorns under each, and bucks routing through to check every one. How to look up into an oak and read whether it has produced in the last couple years. The stand he hung over a pattern he called a slam dunk, then left and came back the wrong morning. Blowing a buck off a hill on opening day, staying out five or six days, then parking a mile away and climbing a steep hemlock face because it was the only way the wind worked. And a 170 inch buck that stood up at fifty yards, crossed a clear cut, looked at six dogs and three men for five minutes, and bedded back down.
In this episode:
Beagles to bear dogs, and why hounds are the honest way to manage a bear population
Why running dogs is the best deer scouting he does all year
The rub line he found on a bear chase, and the buck that walked it in daylight
A 170 inch buck that bedded back down in front of six dogs
Why the first week of season is his best week of the year
Why he doesn’t scout the week before opening day
The slam dunk stand he hung and then didn’t sit
Same spot, same date, years apart
Reading which oaks are producing before you ever look at the ground
A September buck killed in the morning, on a spot he’d already blown out
How long to stay out of a spot once you’ve bumped a buck
Five bucks on the last day of the season, and whether that’s luck
Lucas' IG: @nhbearguide
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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1 hr 6 min
Lee Ellis on the Blizzard Buck, Self Filming at Negative 18, and the Tree He Didn’t Want (Part 2)
Episode 509
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits back down with Lee Ellis of Seek One for the second half of their conversation, which is one long story. Lee saw a buck with heavy brow tines one time in the summer, across a rolling bean field, and then didn’t lay eyes on him again until the first week of November. He spent most of the season putting time into a different deer entirely.
Then the season ended in a blizzard. Lee walks through almost hitting that buck with his truck five days before he killed him, watching him feed in a cut cornfield for an hour and a half in cold that left his fingertips sensitive for weeks afterward, and asking a neighbor for access permission rather than hunting permission so he could keep a tree line between himself and an island of timber full of eyes. He gets into the tree he wanted, the tree he settled for, and why the second one is the only reason the hunt happened.
Also covered: the does blowing and then coming back, a lung liver hit that looked perfect on camera, backing out for a sleepless night, dragging the deer out a mile on a sled at negative 18 with a frozen beard, and the deer’s other close calls.
Part one of this conversation is episode 505.
The Wilderness Society - https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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2 hr 5 min
How Hunting Less Put Them on More Good Bucks w/ Jameson Curtis and Kelly McGraw
Episode 508
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Jameson Curtis and Kelly McGraw of Wild at Heart Outdoors, the two guys behind Pursuing the Allegheny. It’s their first time on the show in eight years.
They walked away from making hunting films, and Jameson walked away from hunting almost entirely for a couple of years. He says getting off social media was the reset button, that seeing 15 guys out of thousands post big bucks had him convinced everybody was killing except him. Kelly puts it more simply: when you drop the ego, you think more freely.
What came out the other side is two guys who hunt less and capitalize more. Kelly has been on four mule deer hunts without the big one he’s after, and instead of counting them as four failures he counts them as 28 total days of learning. Jameson laid in the weeds for six hours waiting on bedded bucks rather than push a stalk he knew wouldn’t work. They both stopped hunting individual buck beds off theory and moved to hunting whatever sign is hot that week.
The tactical run in the middle is worth the listen on its own. The one hidden corner of a cut cornfield that the biggest bucks hit in daylight within a couple days of the combine leaving, every year, regardless of the calendar. Why bucks buffer off a field edge and sprint 60 yards before they feed, and the young oak Kelly had planted at 23 yards to fix it. What a 2 a.m. scrape picture usually means about the next afternoon. Why Kelly would rather bump a buck out of his bed than stay a step behind him. And the only weather trigger either of them will get out of bed for.
In this episode:
Why they stepped away from hunting, and what getting off social media did for it
Pursuing the Allegheny, eleven years later
What changed out West in twelve years, and the advice from Jared Lyle that stuck
Kelly’s mule deer math: 28 days, not four failures
The lunch break set that killed a buck that same evening
What a 2 a.m. scrape picture usually means about tomorrow afternoon
The corner of the cut corn the biggest bucks hit in daylight every year
Target panic, and a raghorn at 20 yards in Wyoming
Where buck bedding stopped working for them, and hunting hot sign instead
Bumping deer out of bed and hunting them anyway
The only weather trigger either of them will get out of bed for
The transplanted scrape tree, and why bucks buffer off a field edge
Managing a farm after years on public
Hunting for yourself instead of for the internet
The Wilderness Society - https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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1 hr 6 min
Why Your Camo Pattern Matters Less Than What It’s Reflecting w/ Dr. Karl Miller (Part 2)
Episode 507
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits back down with Dr. Karl Miller for the second half of their conversation, and this half is entirely about what a deer sees. Karl was part of the original work that got inside a whitetail’s eye to determine whether deer perceive color at all, and he later worked with Sitka on a camo pattern developed around deer vision rather than human vision.
He starts with the hardware. A deer’s pupil opens about three times wider than ours, which alone is roughly nine times the light-gathering ability, and a reflective layer behind the retina called the tapetum bounces that light back across the rods and cones a second time to roughly double it again. The pupil is a horizontal slit rather than a circle, and it rotates to stay level even when the deer drops its head to feed, so a deer eating acorns is still watching the horizon. They see roughly 310 degrees, whereas we see 120.
Then the tradeoff. Deer have no fovea centralis, they can’t accommodate for distance, and their visual acuity at a stationary object comes in somewhere around 20/40 to 20/60. Karl’s line is that they’d almost need corrective lenses to drive. What they do have is motion. Their eyes stay still and let the image travel across the retina engaging new cones, and they process that visual information roughly four to five times faster than a human does, which Karl suggests means your movement looks to them something like slow motion. That leads into a long back and forth on jumping the string, whether a deer is reacting to the sound at all, and whether it might be seeing the bow flex or even the arrow itself. Beau brings his axis deer footage from Hawaii into it, where the deer were on the ground before the arrow arrived at 25 yards.
The back half is camo, and it’s the most useful stretch of either episode. Karl lays out the two jobs camo has to do, explains why pattern detail matters far less than most hunters think and why outline and spectral match matter far more, and gets into whiteners and brighteners in fabrics and detergents that take ultraviolet light and re-radiate it into exactly the part of the spectrum a deer sees 20 times better than we do. He explains why he stopped wearing blue jeans in the woods, why a whitetail’s tail is white in the first place, why old army camo is actually good camo, and why a shiny fabric can beat you even when the color is right. He also walks through how Sitka’s Cover pattern was developed and what it was actually designed to solve.
He closes with what he calls the take home: hunt the deer’s brain first. There are only three questions in a deer’s head, and everything it does traces back to one of them.
Part one of this conversation is episode 506.
Topics:
00:00:00 — Part two intro
00:07:16 — A deer's eye is built for two jobs, and neither one is looking at you
00:11:32 — Pupil size, and nine times your light gathering ability
00:13:31 — Their eyes rotate to stay level when their head goes down
00:14:23 — The tapetum, and 18 times the light
00:21:21 — Blue cones across the whole retina, and 310 degrees of vision
00:24:49 — 20/40 to 20/60: they'd need corrective lenses to drive
00:27:39 — Flicker fusion, and why your movement looks like slow motion to them
00:28:40 — Jumping the string: the sound, the arrow, or the bow
00:34:29 — Drawing on a quartering deer, and why they don't look up
00:37:20 — What camo has to do, and what it doesn't
00:40:39 — Whiteners, brighteners, and camo that glows
00:42:53 — How Cover got built around deer eyes instead of ours
00:50:08 — Fabric shine, old army camo, and plastic blaze orange
00:54:03 — Hunt the deer's brain first
Dr. Karl Miller’s published research: Google Scholar, search “Karl Miller deer UGA”
Part one of this conversation is Ep. 506
The Wilderness Society - https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
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1 hr 41 min
Deer Biologist Explains Why Scrapes Peak Two Weeks Before the Rut w/ Dr. Karl Miller (Part 1)
Episode 506
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Dr. Karl Miller of the University of Georgia, where he spent 40 years leading deer research and mentoring close to 100 graduate students. Karl grew up hunting the Pennsylvania big woods before he went south for his PhD, and much of what hunters take for granted about rubs and scrapes came out of his lab.
The core of this conversation is signpost communication. Karl walks through why bucks make rubs in the first place, and what one of his students found when he ran a chemical analysis on forehead gland secretions: 67 different compounds, and not one of them in higher concentration in dominant bucks than in subordinate ones. No dominance signal at all. What varies is the mix, deer to deer, which means every buck is leaving something closer to a name than a rank. He also explains why the loser of a sparring match will walk up and lick the winner’s forehead.
Then he gets into scrapes, and the finding he clearly loves most. Scraping activity peaks about two weeks before peak breeding in almost every study ever run on it. Karl’s hypothesis is that this isn’t coincidence or anticipation. It’s that buck urine deposited in scrapes may be acting as a priming hormone on the does, pulling their cycles into synchrony, and the two-week lag matches the length of a doe’s follicular wave. He and a graduate student demonstrated the same mechanism in Eld’s deer using a control group and a group exposed to male urine, and the treated group entered estrus together with enhanced hormone profiles. Then he flips it and explains flehmen, the vomeronasal organ, and how a buck taking doe urine into his mouth routes it past the smelling part of his brain entirely and straight to the part that runs his reproductive physiology. Both sides priming each other.
Also covered: 3,600 rubs per square mile on an unhunted Georgia herd, roughly six per acre; the interdigital gland and the 11 compounds that actually do track with maturity; why a tarsal gland’s smell comes from bacteria and not from the gland; the staph and listeria living on it; the castrated buck that ran an entire rut in two weeks on a testosterone dose they overshot; young bucks making 15 percent as many scrapes as mature bucks; and a stretch where he and Beau land in different places on whether there’s any point in doctoring a scrape.
This is part one of two. Part two is deer vision and camo, and it’s out Tuesday, September 1st.
Topics:
00:00:00 — Intro
00:19:25 — What everybody had wrong about rubs in the seventies
00:25:04 — 67 compounds, and why a rub isn't a dominance display
00:26:09 — Why the loser of a sparring match licks the winner's forehead
00:38:32 — 3,600 rubs per square mile, and how many one buck makes in a year
00:49:08 — The three things a buck does at a scrape
00:52:56 — Why a tarsal gland actually stinks
01:01:45 — 39 bucks on one scrape, and 85 percent of visits after dark
01:04:30 — Scrapes peak two weeks before the rut
01:06:24 — Priming hormones, and synchronized estrus
01:10:09 — Flehmen, and the does priming the bucks right back
01:21:59 — Adding scent to a scrape, and whether it does anything
01:35:00 — What a broken age structure does to the rut you're hunting
Dr. Karl Miller’s published research: Google Scholar, search “Karl Miller deer UGA”
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2 hr 1 min
Lee Ellis Kills a Giant Every Year in a Different State. Here’s the Pattern. (Part 1)
Episode 505
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Lee Ellis of Seek One, who has been at this since 2015 and says roughly 90 percent of the deer on his wall are deer he had more than a year of history with before he killed them. Lee is upfront that it’s very rare for him to kill a deer he hasn’t been following, and this conversation is mostly about what that actually costs.
They get into the buck he called Derp, four years of waking up every day thinking about that deer, and the night after he finally killed him when it hit him hard enough that he couldn’t sleep. Lee explains why he thinks a fresh camera picture of a buck working a scrape means you’re already behind him, and how finding one center point in a deer’s rut range beat chasing that deer across seven or eight camera locations. He also talks about a 188 inch public land buck he knew for about four hours and why he says a 140 would have gotten the exact same reaction out of him.
Also covered: taking February through May completely off from deer hunting for the first time in years, patterning Pokémon card restocks with the same brain that patterns deer, what changes when your team grows and other families depend on the season going well, deer that show back up on almost the exact same date year after year, the summer reconnaissance lap he sees in the third week of August, twenty years of door knocking for 95 percent no’s, and why he doesn’t think you call a truly big deer in.
This is part one of two. Part two is one long story, the buck Lee killed in a blizzard at the end of last season, and it lands September 15th, right after Seek One’s film on that deer.
Topics:
00:00:00 — Intro
00:14:16 — The room, and what every mount in it represents
00:18:16 — Obsession, Pokémon, and stepping away from deer hunting
00:31:05 — Burnout, and what changes when people depend on your season
00:40:13 — Branching out, and why a 140 hits the same as a 188
00:48:36 — Derp: four years, and the night it finally hit him
00:57:08 — Why hunting one deer makes you better on every other deer
01:04:01 — Storytelling, the two and a half hour video, and putting the phone down
01:20:41 — Does Lee track any of this, or is it all in his head
01:26:45 — Deer that show up on the same date, and the third week of August lap
01:32:11 — Twenty years of door knocking for 95 percent no's
01:36:24 — Leaving a camera a full year, and the spot in the middle of a rut range
01:44:29 — Cell cameras made a lot of good hunters worse
01:47:56 — Deer personalities, communication, and why you don't call in a big one
01:55:16 — Part two is coming
Lee's IG: https://www.instagram.com/the_roy/
Seek One IG: https://www.instagram.com/seek1productions/
Seek One YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SeekOneProductions
Seek One Website: https://seek-one.com/
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2 hr 10 min
Building Grit, Breaking Hard Hunts Into Small Pieces, and a Kodiak Goat in a Whiteout w/ Adam Foss
Episode 504
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Adam Foss, the youngest bowhunter to complete the North American sheep slam and a photographer and filmmaker. Adam grew up west of Calgary in an archery only zone, killed his first ram at 18, and says his main focus right now is backpack hunting stone sheep with a bow in northern BC.
Most of this conversation is about the mental side of hard hunts. Adam is upfront that he's never run the numbers on his own sheep success, but figures it might be under five percent, and he thinks the pressure to define a hunt by whether you killed something is something we build in our own heads. He walks through how he keeps himself in a trip on day eight when the pull to go home gets loud, the 20 steps and five breaths method he and his wife used packing a ram uphill through shale, and why he thinks any of this applies just as well to elk hunting, running a marathon, or being around more for your family.
Also covered: the SITKA photo contest where he critiqued Beau's finalist photo back in 2017, a mountain goat he shot at 31 or 32 yards on Kodiak Island in a whiteout with his hood covering one eye, the whitetail does he ground out on pressured southern BC public land on the last day of the season two years running, and Migrate, the travel and bowhunting company he launched with his hunting partner Luke.
Adam hid a code word in this one. First person to comment it wins an arrow case from Migrate. It's near the end, so listen for it.
00:00:00 — Intro
00:04:20 — The SITKA photo contest where Adam tore up Beau's photo
00:10:03 — Subalpine, Barklow, and the early SITKA years
00:12:38 — Youngest bowhunter to take the North American sheep slam
00:14:43 — Growing up in southern Alberta with a bow and a camera
00:27:08 — Frankie, the three hour flight, and the shoot he couldn't say no to
00:35:03 — The hardest anyone has ever worked for a whitetail doe
00:41:24 — Hunting low density sheep country on purpose
00:48:07 — Letters to outfitters and 30 day pack strings
00:50:28 — Jack O'Connor, and looking up from the book to see it
00:53:35 — 16mm sheep footage from the sixties
00:55:51 — What makes sheep hunters this obsessed
01:04:24 — Is grit something you're born with or something you build
01:05:45 — It doesn't have to be sheep hunting
01:07:32 — Beau's first elk hunt and getting humbled by the steepest deepest
01:09:30 — The float plane leaves and you make the next best decision
01:15:21 — Aging a ram, and what the horn rings tell you
01:16:36 — Nobody cares if you kill a ram
01:18:41 — You picked it because it was hard
01:19:17 — Beau's 14 days on an Alaska moose hunt
01:22:52 — Snack times, burpees, and 20 steps at a time
01:32:22 — The Kodiak goat stalk in a whiteout
01:44:01 — Migrate, and the problems nobody was solving
01:48:19 — The unforced error that costs people animals
02:00:11 — Why five arrows beats no arrows
02:03:41 — Where to find Adam and Migrate
Adam's IG: https://www.instagram.com/fossman8/
Migrate IG: https://www.instagram.com/migrate_gear/
Shop Migrate in the EMW Gear Shop: eastmeetswesthunt.com
Migrate Website: https://www.migrate-gear.com/
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2 hr 25 min
A Full Season on Iowa Public Land, Self-Filming, and Knowing When to Pass w/ Joel Burham // Whitetail Fit
Episode 503
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Joel Burham of Whitetail Fit, who moved to Iowa, got his residency, turned down an invite to a phenomenal private farm, and hunted public ground and only public ground for the whole season to see what it would teach him.
They get into the full self-filming rig Joel runs out of a saddle, the buck he figured at 160 that he had broadside at 20 yards and lost to the camera, the two public land giants he found that will never show up in a video, and what happened when he came to full draw on a three-and-a-half-year-old and let down. Joel also lays out the only test he uses to decide whether a deer is worth his tag, which has nothing to do with a score.
Also covered: starting from zero with no hunting family, three miles deep on Kansas public on the last day of a 10-day hunt, hiring his brother as a cameraman and then telling him he'd outgrown the job, and why time is the one thing in hunting you can't shortcut.
00:00:00 — Intro
00:07:09 — Starting with no hunting family
00:12:04 — First deer off a lawn chair
00:15:22 — Where "Whitetail Fit" came from
00:19:57 — Three miles deep on Kansas public
00:22:16 — How fitness changes your access
00:38:13 — What this job really looks like
00:47:49 — The 160 at 20 yards he passed
00:58:28 — Hiring his brother, then letting go
01:11:16 — Self-filming rig for a saddle
01:16:38 — Bodies, lenses, and low light
01:29:56 — Arm height, ISO, shutter speed
01:39:10 — Iowa public land only
01:46:57 — The bucks that never made the film
01:49:56 — Pressure and older deer
01:54:43 — The 190 and a wind switch
02:01:29 — Full draw, then let down
02:10:00 — What makes you grab your bow
02:19:34 — Where to find Whitetail Fit
Joel's IG: https://www.instagram.com/whitetail_fit/
Whitetail Fit YT: https://www.youtube.com/@WhitetailFit
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36 min
What GPS Collar Data Reveals About Buck Bedding | Mountain Buck Scouting Series
Episode 502
Show notes
Every time a mature buck shows up on your trail camera, GPS collar research says he's probably been in that area six or seven times. That one stat changes how you think about cameras, bedding, and whether you're actually hunting the right spots. This is from the Mountain Bucks Scouting Camp where we break down big woods buck bedding from every angle — GPS home range data, how mature bucks choose beds, doe bedding patterns, morning hunting strategy, and why mid-October may be the most underrated window for killing a mature buck.
Topics: 00:00 – Intro 00:51 – Buck bed characteristics — size, shape, rubs on entry and exit 03:06 – Why mature bucks have the best spots (and what happens when one dies) 04:10 – Hunting mornings aggressively over beds 06:28 – Finding scrapes on the fringes of bedding to hunt 07:04 – Camera placement near bedding 07:35 – GPS data: for every camera appearance, a buck's been there 6-7 times 08:44 – The egg-shaped home range — how wind orients a buck's entire world 09:50 – Buck excursions — why they disappear and where they go 14:09 – Buck bedding: smell, auditory, visual 17:37 – Doe bedding — why it's overlooked and how it changes your rut setup 20:01 – Mid-October: the most underrated window for killing a mature buck 24:32 – Second estrus cycle
Enter the Deer Camp Giveway! - https://eastmeetswesthunt.com/pages/deer-camp-giveaway
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1 hr 55 min
Treat Trail Camera Data Like a Scientist, Not Just for Real-Time Data w/ Gregg Farrell
Episode 501
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Gregg Farrell of Tactacam, who's spent almost 15 years in the outdoor industry, a decade of it at First Lite before landing at Tactacam. Gregg walks through why he treats trail camera data almost like a science experiment before he ever locks in on one specific buck, why a big buck photo doesn't always mean a huntable deer, and why a $59 wind sensor might be a smarter buy than another camera. They also cover cold fronts, moon phase, battery life, and what's new in the Reveal 4.0 camera launching next month.
00:00:00 — Intro
00:01:43 — Gregg's Wisconsin whitetail roots and a decade at First Lite
00:06:33 — Breaking into the outdoor industry as a generalist
00:12:37 — Chasing whitetail “Mecca” and going whitetail crazy out west
00:16:59 — Why a trail camera is a tool, not a replacement for woodsmanship
00:20:38 — Data as “365-day hunting” and time-blocking family vs. hunting
00:36:07 — Thinking like a scientist: broad trends before one specific buck
00:49:59 — Cold fronts, pre-rut timing, and late-season food strategy
00:55:01 — Reveal app analytics, moon phase, and the hit list
01:02:29 — Battery life: instant vs. hybrid settings, lithiums vs. packs
01:14:01 — What's new in Reveal 4.0
01:27:47 — The new wind sensor and wrap-up
Enter the Deer Camp Giveway! - https://eastmeetswesthunt.com/pages/deer-camp-giveaway
Gregg's IG - https://www.instagram.com/gregg_farrell/
Reveal's IG - https://www.instagram.com/revealcellcam/
Tactacam website - https://www.tactacam.com/
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2 hr 9 min
50 Years of Big Woods Hunting Lessons w/ My Dad, Joe Martonik
Episode 500
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with his dad, Joe Martonik, for episode 500, a milestone, listener-requested conversation that’s been a long time coming. Joe’s been hunting Pennsylvania whitetails for almost 50 years, watched deer densities crash and slowly rebuild, and built a lifetime of lessons most hunters never get from a single season.
They walk through three deer that define Joe’s 50 years: an 11-point he shot off the ground long before digital trail cameras, an eight-point that Beau and Joe hunted, but Joe ended up shooting a couple of miles away, and a buck named Stickers that took five years to close the deal on. Along the way: the giveaway announcement, a gift for Joe, and what almost 50 years in the woods actually teaches you about patience.
00:00:00 — Intro
00:08:00 — Joe’s Reaction to the Podcast and Why Passing Down Hunting Knowledge Matters
00:13:00 — The "Right to Hunt" Fight and How the Podcast Started
00:21:19 — Bringing Dad on for Episode 500, the Giveaway, and a Custom Case Knife
00:26:21 — Almost 50 Years of Hunting: Joe’s Start and Early Hunting Days
00:32:06 — PA Deer History: Clear-Cuts, Restocking, and Chasing a Bigger Rack
00:34:51 — Getting Back Into Bow Hunting and How Deer Patterns Changed
00:42:39 — The Homemade Trail Camera Era
00:45:10 — The 11-Point Buck and the One-Roll-of-Film Scrape
00:52:24 — Beau’s Early Deer and the Lowest Deer Density Years
01:00:28 — Learning to Trust Your Gut and Beau’s First Trail Cameras
01:04:19 — Handing Off a Buck: The 2010 Eight-Point
01:07:32 — GPS Nostalgia and Beau’s First Heartbreak Deer
01:11:20 — Beau’s First Archery Buck and the Shot That Hooked Him on Bowhunting
01:19:44 — "Stickers": The Five-Year Hunt and Strategy
01:28:16 — "It’s the Only Place You Haven’t Been"
01:35:45 — Recapping Joe’s 2025 Season
01:43:36 — Broadhead Talk and a Saddle Platform Scare
01:56:01 — Joe’s Biggest Lessons from 50 Years in the Woods
Enter the Deer Camp Giveway! - https://eastmeetswesthunt.com/pages/deer-camp-giveaway
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1 hr 42 min
The Hardest Deer We've Ever Tried to Bowhunt w/ Collin Heaps
Episode 499
Show notes
Beau Martonik sits down with Collin Heaps of MTN OPS to recap a bowhunt for axis deer in Hawaii. Collin has hunted this ground before; Beau hadn't, and figured his whitetail and mule deer experience would carry over. It did, but mostly didn't.
They cover what makes axis deer so much harder to approach than anything either of them hunts back home, a doe Beau recovered after e-scouting a saddle and getting busted the first try, a missed shot on a mature buck that looked different on the drone footage than it did in the moment, and Collin's own gut punch: a doe he was sure he'd killed that actually walked off, and the call he had to make to his three-year-old son to admit it.
Also covers: camp life with no AC and a wild dog running through camp at night, gear that held up in red clay and thorn brush, and Collin's line that stuck with Beau the most: don't chase butterflies.
Topics:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:23 — Collin's Background and How the Trip Came Together
00:06:22 — Camp Life in Hawaii
00:10:25 — What Makes Axis Deer So Hard to Hunt
00:23:36 — Stalking Axis vs. Mule Deer
00:30:41 — The East vs. West Competition
00:33:14 — Beau's Doe Stalk and Recovery
00:47:52 — The Buck Stalk and Missed Shot
00:53:25 — Collin's Humbling Loss
01:08:02 — Gear, Broadheads, and MTN OPS Picks
01:23:06 — Don't Chase Butterflies
01:28:39 — Closing and MTN OPS Discount Code - use code BEAU to save 20%
Resources:
Collin's IG: https://www.instagram.com/collinheaps/
MTN OPS Affiliate link - https://rstr.co/mtnops/10619
Instagram:
Facebook:
Shop Hunting Gear and Apparel:
YouTube:
Partner Discounts and Affiliate Links:
Poncho Outdoors - Poncho Outdoors makes tough, sharp-looking, no-BS apparel for hardworking outdoorsmen who put in the time year-round. Go to ponchooutdoors.com/EASTMEETSWEST to save $10 and free shipping
Amazon Influencer Page
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