The TPH Podcast | Episode 07 | JC Stelzer

i get you to wear a name tag stelzer yes stelzer land and cattle yes nailed it let's talk about the origin of that i think i guess like when did that start did it start with your dad and grandpa grandpa we'd started in the oil field and there around post for decades and yep and decided he wanted to buy a ranch i guess or get some cows and we had a little place we called the farm out north of post and started off with i think 60 cows or something like that and did that for a while you know got it going and got our feet wet yeah and uh place came up for sale over at claremont and he bought it and i guess they kind of dove in head first on that one and started out with uh 400 first calf heifers and that was turned out to be a bit of a wreck they had i mean all kinds of cabin trouble you know it was just a mess to begin with but that was kind of where where things started was over there and uh what about what year was that do you think probably 90 or 91 something like that well the claremont place was but the place we called the farm that was in the early 80s i guess and uh that's kind of how where we're at on that is you know just kind of basically grandpa decided he wanted to run a few cows and it escalated pretty quick from there yeah and [Music] we're still running still got i guess about 260 mama something like that and farm i don't know about eight 850 acres and everything that we do you know if a cow can't eat it we don't grow it so right it's over go ahead is that pretty much all y'all farm for is just feed for the guy yeah that's it so i have as far as like a real cattle outfit i guess i have no clue the ongoings you know we had cows growing up but it was like 20 30 had like you know so y'all farm to feed them obviously and then do y'all sell calves every year like you're on tv you know well we're uh actually raised show steers show stairs yeah and uh that's kind of a not exactly a commercial deal but we uh we'll go used to at one time we were doing a bunch of embryo transfers where they'll take a really good cow or a donor call them a donor cow they'll flush the breed them and flush the embryos out and put them in another cow called a recipe and we'll go did that and got some you know did all right with that but now we're just doing strictly ai and we'll go through and give shots line them everything up to where they all come into heat on a certain day and they'll go through and ai every cow we've got in about four hours maybe and uh what that does that gets your cow you'll get about half the cows ai bread and that what that does is that has your calf crop coming you know the ai calves will all be born in about 10 days or two weeks you know some right it shortens the calvin cycle up is what it does gets them at where we have them at the time we need them and uh done that and how we've even had some done some cloning on cattle we've uh done i guess two bulls and a cow first one we did was uh i think that one was hit the ground in 09 so i mean we've if it can be done with a cow we've done it i didn't even know that was a thing it ain't just for sheep anymore i didn't i had no idea that was a thing so y'all don't sell to any kind of like beef producers or whatever anything i mean take the bottom end of the stairs and the bottom end of the heifers are just sale barn calves but the uh our main goal is to you know get calves for kids to show and do a bunch of keep a bunch of heifers or keep what we want out of the heifers to make cows out of i'm assuming though y'all have plenty of steak always yes my fiance she gets tired of eating beef all the time and well tell her i'll give her my address we don't get tired of it ever we're never short anyway so um about what time of year do y'all start i guess inseminating or whatever the breeding seasons you're what we call breeding seasons usually just before thanksgivings when when things are you know blowing and going with getting shots and sorting and everything else and by then they uh thanksgiving comes around and we're about done usually and that puts us calvin you know the end of august or middle to the end of august you see a lot of people calvin during the winter do you all kind of try to i guess with all the procedures y'all do and all that stuff i guess you are trying to avoid that because winter's a hard time to have calves yeah ideally we try to uh i guess for the shows that we're trying to gear those calves towards that they've got to be born you know more fall born than winter born they'll show you know the major shows in texas they'll be 18 you know 16 18 months old somewhere in there is what what they show and there's some of them that are older than that you know that other people do but ours are fall born calves like this year i guess if they're born you know if that cat's born in august of 22 they'll uh show him in i guess you know february or march of uh 24 so i mean we're looking pretty far down the road on you know from when they hit the ground when they're in the show rings pretty good ways ahead so y'all drop and fall i would assume that also helps with you know camp survival because it's not in the winter right so it just kind of all pans out good i guess the same and it's probably much more much easier on y'all not having to go try and deal with calves during winter yep but we have more trouble with heat you know being too hot on calves than we do here what what got you on the show calves opportunity maybe a little bit of mentality um i don't know my family's always kind of gone big or gone home yeah you know to us i think commercial cattle are just kind of boring yeah you know i mean there's tons of them in texas because we you know we just aren't interested in throwing a bull out letting him cover cows for 90 days and yeah picking him up and you know gathering working them once a year and then gathering to wean and sell i mean that's just kind of not our cup of tea right i can remember when i was little my dad parents they showed showed dogs and uh i think you know they've all dad's dad especially he's always had a thing for better you know yeah good stuff good animals what it didn't matter if it was a german short hair dog or a cow yeah you know and they wound up uh i think in 85 maybe they had the number one short hair in the country back then so it's kind of you know playing average stuff's just kind of boring right to us you know it just kind of i guess the mentality we've got or i might call it the mentality some people may say we're snobs but snobby show people a bunch of uppity people what's the main differences between how y'all run y'all's outfit and say like the people that are just selling what do you i mean what do you even call that beef cattle i guess you know at the end of the day it is you know i mean what we're doing it's basically a market cattle you know i'm assuming like beef cattle industry that kind of kind of that fit because i hunt a pretty big beef cattle outfit in oklahoma and they have all their calves during the winter and all that stuff i'm assuming you're kind of just like you said more focused on quality and which is why what lead you all to it's probably dare i say a more lucrative market to be in yes and no i mean at the end of the day it does pay a little better but there's also trade-offs and uh time and input costs you know you don't see many uh commercial cattle guys checking cows when they're calving every three or four hours know for days on end but yeah you know that's what if you're gonna do something that's what you got to do to yeah get it done right and get those live calves on the ground yeah um you know it's not not uncommon for me to you know have to call a vet in the middle of the night or any of that and you know some people some of them you know that just comes with the territory and that's also why some it ain't for everybody either y'all know when when you calvin you're pretty busy yeah i don't don't go anywhere or do much other than check cows and sleep so how many if you don't mind me asking how many acres does it take how many head of cattle you say y'all running i'm about 260 how many acres you all run just under 12 000. but we're starving the experts at the with the government say we could run 400 but we've always uh always ran stocked lighter than what we quote unquote could you know just keep from hammering their pastures on account of wildlife and everything else and when grandpa was live he was a diehard quail hunter yeah i mean that's that was his thing and you know lord knows we we had we could the cows could do without but those damn birds they they weren't gonna be neglected at all so do y'all do y'all kind of y'all do the old cowboy ways you get out horses and all that stuff i know people are gonna be wondering no we when i was a kid growing up we did but we figured out dad his uh knees were bad and we bought one four-wheeler you know yeah i don't know 20 years ago before he had his knees replaced and we figured out pretty quick then you know that was a little easier deal for everybody yeah you know we do there are some things that you know we have to get day help to help us with but as far as the day-to-day stuff there's not a lot we can't do with a feed truck and a four-winder yeah probably probably not as romantic right i'm looking from the outside in but it's not like i've seen going off that tv show jc what are y'all doing y'all kind of constantly like how's the what's the process do y'all want want them to end up up around i guess you'd call it headquarters or you're working pens by birthing season or y'all constantly moving across the ranch you're not over grazing one area too much or honestly we get about the we've got probably 700 acres a week you know as long as the wheat is a lifesaver for us and then uh you know this year even as dry as it is we were put cows on wheat probably the middle middle of november and uh we've still got cows running on wheat now so i mean that that lightens the load on our pastures a lot and when it comes time to calvin we've got a couple fields that are all probably 140 acres something like that total that we'll calve we'll sort them by how they're bred on sonogram and the early caverns will go to one field and the lake caverns will go to the other one and that you know by doing that that saves the lake cavers we don't have to check quite as often but they still get checked but the early coverage they're up close to the house and you know if they have trouble they're relatively handy to get to a lot or help them pull you know if they need help we can pull calves or take them to the vet for c-sections if need be but they uh you know that's the thing we got a lot of pasture to run them on but we the way we're the way we've made it work by having less cows than we could you know we get by with a lot of farmland and it just makes like say takes all the you know most of the stress off the pastures you know which is good for the deer the quail you know everything else i don't think we'll ever have it perfected but we've got it got it pretty good so far yeah you know but at the end of the day if it doesn't rain it don't matter what you know you're still at the mercy of the rain mother nature y'all y'all have quite a bit of water there on your ranch or from what i remember as compared to this one for sure uh y'all don't do any kind of irrigation to the fields or anything like that has ever been a thought like has there been a time like man we should there's lots of wishful thinking but it you know the water we've got isn't good enough to irrigate with yeah or i mean i guess you could if you did a big ro system or something of that nature but it's you know the ro is not a real practical approach either with the you know the waste and everything else on it so yeah all we do is stick seed in the ground and cross our fingers it rains yeah well it definitely seems like you'll get a little bit more rain than we do well that it doesn't take much to get more than a bedroom texas no it just always seems like it always goes around us here for some reason but i know i mean it's still still pretty dry out there well we're we do get we do get more rain than what they get here for sure but seems like we you know typical grass is always greener on the other side if we were we were 40 miles east we'd be sitting oh yeah yeah you know yeah the further well i mean pretty much the further north you go from there yeah east you go from there you start getting into where it rains pretty often yep there's been three or four times this year already that we've seen it build up and smelled it and watched it take off and head east you know that just kind of part of where we live you know part of being where we're at it'll be quite a bit of you know got some big whitetails there is that something you want to talk about or no i'm i'm gay i know you have a lot to do with that you know you do a lot of the colon feeding stuff like that how long how long have you all been quote unquote managing that ranch you know 10 or 12 years something like that what do you feel like are the key ingredients to growing big whitetail oh lord we're going forever about this yes but i don't know the biggest thing i can say for anybody anywhere is age yeah you know that uh you know if you're killing your two or three you know your three-year-old deer is a old deer somewhere they ain't ever going to get as big as they could and reach that potential that's there you know and i don't you know so some places a 130 inch deer is a big deer even at six years old you know but if you're killing those same deer at three they you know yeah you're shooting yourself in the foot yeah y'all feed you around corn and protein protein you know during the warm months and i think a lot of those deer i think get in the hay grazer that we planted cattle yeah between the hay grazer and the summertime you know the warm season hay grazer and the cool season wheat they uh they don't do without very often yeah they've got plenty to eat drink there um you know and we do some supplemental feeding with protein and obviously they do the corn you know hunters will put some corn out or half corn feeders going but the uh biggest deals you know i think that's you know age and nutrition is probably the biggest best thing they can we can do for them i'm assuming y'all got pretty good hunters they've been there for a while we do and that helps a lot yeah yeah that helps tremendously you know good genetics and all that people that hate you know ain't what i would call killers and you know they're happy to see deer get you know grow and get big and look forward to seeing them next year yeah you know this year we had a good year start you know things just worked out where we did get to shoot some bigger and better deer this year rather than just old nasty coals yeah you know but you know some years or some years or like this year was and then there may be years that we don't shoot any big deer to speak of yeah um you know but whatever whatever we kind of decide as a group that's what we go with yeah you know we do the helicopter surveys and you know we'll have a pretty decent idea of what's out there before the season starts y'all run a lot of trail cameras yes quite a few pretty annoying aren't they they can be i just just this last season i swamped over to the cell cams [Music] and it still annoys me to have to deal with that i'd much rather sit in the stand because you know you probably know as well as i do a lot of those big mature bucks sometimes i just circle around you know i like to spend more time to stand getting you know an idea of what's coming in when all that stuff although the trail cameras are pivotal to you know say if a buck's coming in and he's on your shooter less this year he can kind of not have to go the stand as much kind of get an idea when he's going to be there and stuff like that but it's still out here you know when you got tons of deer you're going to be looking through tons of photos yep and i just i'm complained and moaned about it but i finally made swap to sell cameras this year and i'm glad i did it well that's it saves quite you know oh just kind of like everything else there's a better mousetrap you know and i think the cell cameras are a better mousetrap than having to check cards all the time or pull cards yeah that's for sure i mean and they like their programming i guess is what you call it's getting better every year like there's all kinds of stuff mom will do and i haven't even figured out yet yep like to where it only saves certain kind of photos and when i first got them i was just running like my normal cameras and take pictures all the time and then i started figuring out like uh maybe turn down this camera time where it only takes pictures at certain times yep you know when i'm kind of some stands i'd let it run all night and some stands i just turned on that feeding times to where i didn't get quite as many photos i'm sure y'all got the same problem we do i mean but kind of a deal with it send you know pull it up on the app and go to scroll them and something looks good it's what you know yeah look but i do a lot more deleting pictures than i do saving pictures oh yeah during from which i mean i got them down right now because i need to go through they sent out some update and pull them all in but yeah i was a little bit slow last year because i was watching them from the stands but you know from like october through gets real heavy october first through the end of deer season every morning four hours in the morning just strolling through pictures and i'm like yeah i can't wait till i make someone else do this but i mean they are handy uh don't get me wrong i mean we our culls that we took this year was i had because i wasn't able to spend as much time in the stands as i normally was because we got so busy with munitions all our coals this year i was able to like get a good time down when that's coming into a certain stand and be able to get people over there all off the cell phone camera so it is handy it's just annoying yeah and we've talked me and fitz talked about this a lot well i wish someone come out with a program i wish we could come out with the program because you know whitetail hunting is a big industry to where you can take a photo that you get off your cell phone camera upload it to the program say another app and it'll give you you know one it'll save the photo and it'll give you a good accurate agent score like there's no reason why ai's gotten so good facial recognition all that stuff there's no reason why they can't start applying that to these whitetail just you know because aging and score is something that everybody every year whitetail hunters still stare at photos and try to you know get a good idea and all that it'd just be nice if you know some of these companies might tell hunting's i'm sure a billion dollar industry pretty easily i don't see why they wouldn't put some money into that because that's like you know that's what everybody every deer hunter you run into during deer season generally has a picture how old do you think it is and what do you think it scores it's like this big debate on facebook and all that anyways that's just my ramblings about that whole thing kick around that one would be uh you know when they get rutted out yeah um you know our deer at home even i don't know how far they move in a day or how far they will during the rut but they you know this year was super hard on the bucks it seemed like they lost you know a ton of weight real quick yeah um you know if it's uh you know some of them are hard if it wasn't for their horns they wouldn't even look like the same deer from 100 you know one month to the next what was y'alls as far as like body weight wise do y'all ever weigh in you don't have to waste stuff for the mlb don't you we did not they change that where you don't have to land now but we used to i mean we've weighed tons of deer up until the last two or three years maybe when they don't remember when it was when they changed it but it didn't hurt my feelings that we don't have i imagine yeah you can just get it get it done so then you record all this data and all that this year you know this year pre-season the mature bucks we took were they're up to like we're averaging 200 to 250 pounds which is awesome for this range i mean it's pretty barren out here and you know i was pretty worried about because last winter we had was pretty rough lots of snow when they nearly run me ragged feeding them suckers but like from late season couple coil bucks we shot 150 and we're talking about on the hoof not right not gutted you know there's i get nervous we had a few shooters i was gonna you know let people shoot like you go from pre-rut to you know towards the end of the season when they're running down pretty bad like you're sitting here looking at the picture like is that the same damn deer he's lost that much weight because out here uh the i had one buck who traveled from the north end plum the west side and that's a good seven eight miles yeah which is pretty crazy i don't know why he went that far uh usually it's pretty typical out here for most of them travel four or five miles pretty easily just going off cameras they may go further but right with that one that sucker got around but it sure seemed like they they were on the move pretty heavy this year yeah and they fought a lot more this year i don't yeah which they say it has a lot to do with i've always been told that you're it's because your numbers are off like you're bucking no ratios off they'll find a lot more i'm not sure if i believe that because we've got our numbers looking pretty good right now our buck the deal ratio is looking pretty good they still fought a bunch you know which i mean i don't want to get into all that too much because you can it's just like coyote hunting you can go on about theories forever about the stuff i mean there's there's some things to me a lot of people get way too serious about whitetail management like they get they're looking for things and when it's just don't shoot babies shoot crappy deer yep once they're of a certain age i mean you don't know i think i don't even get into that one yet uh heard you know herd health it's not like your does are making the babies i mean i'm sure y'all it's just like with y'alls cows you're not neglecting them and just pay attention to the yep you know all of you know a healthy cow is probably going to make a more healthy right it's pretty simple water and feed take care of your herd you know that's the way i look at it but moving on uh y'all shoot quite a few pigs every now and then let's get into that a little bit because you know it's something we neglected quite a bit big hunting just because i've done it so much for a while it kind of got boring to me but seems like there's more and more people in it every year let's get into i guess my first question is what's your preferred rifle like platform and caliber in thermal obviously you're in thermal yeah um a shot of ar like most people you know a lot of people do shoot at ar um i'm on first i guess it was probably four or five years ago i was in virginia and got to hunt with benton bowman over there you know went with him and that was where i first got my eyes looking through a thermal and you know it wasn't a month later and i was two thermals deep in it you know and i'd had an old uh dpms-243 that i had a a uh gen 3 d760 on that i'd killed quite a few hogs with you know just green night vision and uh you know when i got into the thermal deal or got thermals it got a little it escalated pretty yeah pretty quick from there yeah as it will you know i knew we had hogs and knew we had quite a few hogs but um never knew and realized how many we had until thermals came out or until i had thermals to take and uh but that you know killed a lot with that 243 and finally got tired of carrying it [Music] i think i weighed it one day and it was like 16 and a quarter pounds and well i don't know how far are we walking tonight but yeah you know it was more than i wanted uh i had the gu had a uh 6'5 grendel built and killed quite a few with it and you know that was about the time we got hit with covid and you know everything supply-wise went you know crazy yes um you know and finally got to where i was having trouble getting ammo for a while for the grendel and uh you know started looking around and thinking trying to think of a plan b for you know to keep hunting and killing hogs and uh wound up finding a uh 762 by 39 piston driven ar that that's what i've ran for the last little while now and i guess you know for what it is it works but you know if uh cost or availability wasn't an issue i'd probably stick with that grendel yeah um yeah i just i don't know if it's the caliber of the rifle i'm shooting a 16-inch grendel on like a 12-inch 39th so i mean it's kind of two different animals that i'm comparing quite a bit flanders shooting on the green light imagine a little bit so what thermal are you running currently uh trijicon mk360 it's what i shoot with and scan with a trijicon reap and on the uh on another rifle i've got a ira that i'm running to so i've peddled with a little bit of every you know got a few different setups that i run yeah and you're obviously shooting surprise because you are civil yes absolutely so are y'all basically just shooting them all there on your ranch or are you going other ranches or we're shooting a bit this year the big end of them are on me and right around me on the neighbor you know on neighbors were probably within a three or four mile radius right there around me that we're killing them on but a couple years ago they you know we were all over for probably three counties yeah that we were hunting you know quite a bit but they uh i don't know we talked about it some me and some buddies that you know last year we could go we'd go out and we'd kill 15 or 20 and think man that's you know that's kind of this is fun but this kind of sucks yeah um you know and i wonder if it was the if maybe the uh deep freeze we had and uh 21 didn't kill a bunch of them yeah you know it seemed like after that lower number it was either you know something's changed yeah you know i talked to some guys from up from richital falls down to abilene then back over to me nobody saw as many after the deep freeze that you know as we had been in years before well i know it it didn't they got thicker here but then soon as you know our little lake dried up they kind of just started moving on like we still got some but it ain't like it was last season or last year i like killed 3 400 pigs out here it was been you know but that was all due to the lake filling up and we used to not see 510 hogs right and then all of a sudden the floods came and it was like they followed the water yep well we've got a river that runs through the middle of our place part of the brazos and we've got a pretty steady stream of hogs that you know we're moving up and down that river i think yeah it's a little more hog friendly up there than it is out here in the desert yeah they pretty much just well i mean one time i killed one here at the house which is completely weird and out of the you know they usually stick back there in that lower looser soil areas and stuff like that how about y'all's predator population this year what'd it look like well until contest time rolls around it seemed like it looked good but you know in this year's for the first time and i don't know how long i haven't even hunted a contest it seemed like ever you know my parents they're getting up in their upper 60s and they're getting to the age where they uh you know i tell them they're huge fly fishing fanatics yeah they uh they just got back from chile for fishing for golden dorado um i guess they came back the 11th over this month and you know that's why i tell them i'm like man if y'all if there's something y'all want to go fish for catch y'all get after it because they're you know one the day's coming where they won't be able to yeah um you know between them being gone to mexico for a couple weeks in january and february and just random stuff i wasn't able to you know didn't get the hunt contest but we uh we still got quite a few i think you know i know feeding and just driving and doing what i you know just day-to-day stuff we still see quite a few coyotes and you know the deal i can't keep wondering is what happened to the cats yeah our cats were significantly non-existent this year as compared to other years you know i don't know and that seems to be you know numbers seem to be down on weights weights number you know just seem to be down in general and you know i don't know there's everybody has their ideas on hows and whys and everything else and you know i don't know i just don't think it was a good year for breeding as far as last year because the you know speaking our area you know i don't know how everybody else's winter went and they're probably these animals out here definitely aren't used to the kind of winter we had last year right though which the deer varmints and stuff like that i just don't i think i just don't think as far as i know why my numbers were lower on this ranch this year just because i killed so many pears because of that last snowstorm i jumped out afterwards and put it to them pretty hard and i expected that which is good for deer but as far as our cat population we haven't even shot a cat out here in a couple years uh but did not see nowhere near as many this year we still have plenty of cats don't be wrong but it's not like the previous years i think they probably just dispersed a little bit more due to the fact that we probably lost i mean we lost at after that last winter i went around looking pretty hard by the time she had started dropping like that's when i really pilfer around a lot around the stands i found at least one uh doe carcass first stand and that was me feeding them just about every day you know they didn't make it through that and you know it's like they're not used to that kind of cold weather and the snow and all that stuff so i'm just going to run under the assumption that we probably lost a lot of little vermin like pack rats and right well obviously the raptors died off a couple years ago but i just think you know they probably dispersed moved on just because there wasn't as much for them to eat and yeah you know when those those hard winter storms came during their breeding season so that could have had effect like maybe some of the females didn't even get bred but everybody can just speculate we don't actually know i mean i keep telling everybody i'm like you know individually individual property wise give me some background what did you do to it last year i can tell you individually probably what the issue is if you're not seeing if you hammered on most people last year got out after the snowstorms and hunted everybody every predator hunter wants hunt after a snowstorm or during the snowstorm if you got out when they are paired up and shot a bunch of pears don't look for you know the same kind of numbers it may take a minute for it to recuperate and that goes for bobcats coyotes when it you know anything but as far as as a whole i also keep telling everybody like as it pertains the big mob cat contest this year all three of them seemed like it was just terrible not terrible days and nights behind whether it be it was unseasonably hot super calm foggy what have you you know obviously some people had good nights but it seemed like it was just terrible times i'm like you're waiting like you're basing your sorry folks [Laughter] i think we got it squared away a little bit of an interruption there has yes geek squad guys going again back to it i mean we're talking about kyle hunt and we're talking about the numbers and i was jamming on thankfully it was nothing too awfully important i think the the switcher said we don't want to hear this anymore it's going to pretty much turn myself off pretty much so let's get into y'all obviously contest and we're kind of leading into that you and lane generally hunt together how long have you all been hunting contests together how'd that all get started i guess both grew up in post and he's obviously on the verge of being an old man so i mean he's he was a few years older than uh we were you know than i was growing up and we you know kind of knew each other growing you know when we were kids and growing up and he'd hunted with uh some other people you know when i was still in school or in high school you know all back when we were when i was growing up you know i still hunted and just kind of did my own thing and they uh him and another guy that uh we were all all went to school and post and a guy named sparky and uh sparky i guess was in between me and jones age-wise but jones was you know graduated and did it was doing his thing and hunted with some guys out of colorado city well they quit you know quit hunting and quit hunting together and jones was basically looking for a team you know people to hunt with and we all kind of got together and started hunting and you know they uh you know like a lot of people when we first started hunting we we were donating more than we were you know and we were winning and you know we've probably been that had to have been probably 06 or 07 something like that we started hunting together um you know we hunted they had hunted some of jones's country you know when he had the other guys he hunted with and uh you know they once we kind of me and jones and sparky got ever you know started hunting together and kind of figured each other out and it's like anything else you know the more you hunt with somebody the less you you know the better it just jives and you know works um you know and then you know back then we were hunting and there was a ring of fire chairs and uh you know we've hunted you know like any other teams you know that have hunted together for a while you know you don't say you know don't even have to say a word you know what the next person's thinking or what's fixing to happen yeah you know and i think when you get to that level that's when you kind of start having some success or you know whatever you want to call it um you know it was it was kind of rocky in the beginning for all of us on getting stuff in the truck but you know once you hunt with somebody you learn what works and um you just figure out a system and that's you know any team once they figure out that system that's when they start you know doing better um don't matter what you're hunting or what you're doing it's you know the system the quote systems that you know the uh kind of where things change or things get serious that's what being a guy we were went fishing with a buddy of mine in uh matagorda during spring break with the what fiance and kids and um that's what he was we me and him were talking about that even on a boat that him and his buddy that they go out and fish all the time and he said yeah that him and josh have us you know everybody has their place does what they do and it's when you're not with that person or that team everything's out of whack kind of clumsy yes it's just yeah awkward and you know yeah knocks it out no i can completely relate to that just out on a boat yeah um you know but me and jones we've been hunting a long time um you know that's what i was asking about that wt called and hell jones still he still pulls his out every once in a while of course he does a little bit old-fashioned well he's getting better he might start shooting that 22-3 more by the time he retires and goes to the retirement home yeah i've been trying to talk him into it but he's slow to learn sometime he likes that 22 to 50. he does we've got a lot of stuff with them oh yeah you know and that's the deal um most of our country if we shoot 150 yards that's a lot you know in the daytime that's a long way yeah um you know i think people i don't know you see it a lot in the groups on facebook you know what's the best caliber of this for you know this that there's not one they are you know everything's country dependent it's the one you're most comfortable with is what i like to say for sure and you know i can i can see his apprehension to swap guns if he's comfortable with his old 22 to 50s uh what do you primarily run 22 creed or 250 yeah you know i mean just kind of the old staple you know not so much the creed but the two you know 22 250 that's just kind of an old staple yeah um you know i know nathan and them or some of the boys out this direction they're running six 284 screaming 70s and yeah you know it's just unnecessary for y'all's country yes you know we just don't need it for 98 of our shots yeah which i mean i like the laser beams just as much as anybody else but i also have a cutoff point and that's getting past anything that's i'm just not going to get into the bigger than the creedmoors i mean though especially if you're loading your own they'll do everything i want to do i mean uh some like the 6284 i have one never even shot it it's just especially since cove and all that came along components got way harder to get and powder is almost non-existent always that that reverted me back to run 223s and uh super efficient cartridges like the valkyrie and the six arc that's basically all i've been shooting for the past two years and it's not you know there's particular times especially night time for me is when i like pull out the creedmoors for sure and like other than that daytime peddling around 223's and stuff like that it's fine with me but ever since cole had kicked off i've just been running the efficient ones just because every bit of the components we get is going to munitions just because you know we got to be able to sell ammo but there's definitely a place for everything and then at a certain point to me you get the diminishing returns and i feel like you get up in the 6284's diminishing returns i say just shoot more shoot better you don't have to have these crazy things that some of these guys get into and you know i can i can get behind being able to point and shoot at something at long ranges but say 22 created more around the 70s or 75s whatever whatever's your flavor a lot of times if zero at 200 it's not that much hold over around 400 yards or 300 yards whatever you're zeroed for it's just crazy how people forget about this stuff um some of them want to shoot dead on to five six hundred yards out here which i mean some places out here that's i mean i think our furthest night kills 500 plus or something but that was with with us barrel burning six creedmoor tin twists but with the way lights have gotten so much better and you can some of these lights you buy they're super crazy it's totally doable nowadays what what y'all's primary e-call y'all run because i know we're gonna get into the questions portion of this podcast probably i mean now i mean i grab a cs24 every time that's what you know jones i think jones runs one two and you know every once in a while he's actually been running a lucky duck i think john this year and he's you know says he really likes it um i've got one i just hadn't had the need yeah you know to use it that much i've got do alright with the fox pro and yeah just get along good with it hey uh i don't remember i've had it for pretty good well i've been running one i guess since we quit running on the wt's um first one i bought i've managed to fall off the rat it managed to fall off the rack new mexico and i ran it over so it wasn't long before i had to pick my you know maybe the next day i had one coming i know that calls pretty a lot of people like that call a lot of people have said they don't make them anymore which they replaced it with the x2c or something i don't know it's just a different speaker essentially it went to like a polymer type whatever so as it pertains to not honey for predators coyotes in particular do you prefer running lights or you prefer run thermals i just like to kill coyotes i think yeah don't really matter not really um if i'm just going by myself i'll grab probably grab a thermal every time but you know where jones he doesn't doesn't run any thermals you know i'm not going to say he's holding us back or anything you know i still like to run a lot too yeah you know part of that comes um you know maybe there may be a little bit of nostalgia looking you know right always you know like enjoy seeing the eyes come in and seeing you know that eventually turn into an animal yeah um you know there's people now that thermal or night vision that's all they know yeah you know that is varmint hunting to them yeah don't really matter to yourself no i still prefer the lights i don't know i like thermal and all that for especially for pigs i mean it's invaluable thermals right for pigs and even night vision a lot of times during their season when we go to the stands and you know look at the deer i call deer watch i'll carry a clip on night vision to stick on there after that it gets dark or i'll carry a separate gun with a thermal as far as going out calling i like the lights a little bit more myself particularly do you see in your opinion do you see any differences between just like running the thermal as opposed to lights as far as how close they get apples for apples say it like obviously on a bright moon night that's an issue they can see very well say on like a dark dark night oh i think you know you've said you know you and several other people have talked about that the lights your camel yeah you know and we've i think so you know to a certain degree it depends on the animal too you know that individual coats you know yeah coyotes are just like people there's some that are you know super smart then there's some that aren't quite on that level yeah um you know it just kind of but on average i do think that the lights do aid you in that yes you know it is i mean i like to shoot behind the lights but i'd also like if there was somebody proficient with the thermal when we were out like being sears hunting which now big cats got toward you and grunt thermal which my biggest thing about that was where i was more excited about it not necessarily hunting with it was retrieval because that is a huge aid in retrieval some nights for sure but so typical night hunting when you're gonna go out with lights obviously you're probably gonna be hunting out a rack but when you run thermal you're still running out your rack you just gotta go around tripod like people do or oh i mean we you know since we've i've we've gotten tripods we go out with a tripod more with lights and thermals more than we you know did before just because we have that option right um you know it at one time the rack was the only way to hook right you know well we did there have been a few times that uh you know but before for the longest time we ran a corded light yeah you know so we were kind of tethered to the pickup you know that or if you want to drag a car battery with you and you know the uh cordless lights that was kind of a you know that was a turning point i think for you know maybe i don't know the industry or people or whatever you want to call it that was kind of you know things changed when yeah you know we got more mobile um you know i remember quite a few times when we got get those old coyote lights when they first came out we'd you know we thought well that was a cat's meow being able to take off walking and go sit on a ledge or a point or you know something basically we'd hunt just like it would be in the daytime yeah um have a guy standing and shining and somebody sitting and shooting off of sticks yeah you know and that's kind of the same thing for tripods that's you know gotten definitely gotten us more mobile and yeah um you know of course hogs that's hog hunting that's what the only way we hunt right um you know strap it to a strap your rifle to a ball head and find them and take off walking until you're 40 or 50 yards from them and let them have it yeah you know i don't know that uh i don't know there's i don't know what what's changed but there's been quite a few change you know several big changes in the last few years you know or um i don't know i think there's more people doing it and um it's probably worth you know the manufacturers or companies see that and it's yeah they can afford to put more into it yeah stuff like that i think as far as tripods i mean we've seen the huge influx in hunters when as far as predator hunt goes when all the predator hunting shows hit tv in just a small amount of time nobody watches tv anymore it's all streaming services and youtube that's changed a lot then you've seen this huge influx and investment put into predator hunting because of the huge influx so you had all these new products and all that race to the market that was interesting times but now it seems a little bit stagnant to me they're not if you talk to the like predator hunting manufacturers that slow down i'm like no you're understanding what y'all did y'all raced to the bottom in my opinion you know they started coming out with higher quality equipment and then it became whose remote would reach 3 000 yards and all this stupid in the cheapest e-caller and uh you came out with really awesome lights because knight hunting really came on the scene hard and heavy and then it was a race to the bottom on price and you know came the pro-staff wars and god all that crap and now it's just kind of stagnant because the money's not there and i'm like no what y'all don't y'all fail to understand was there so many of y'all came on that you flooded the market yeah and then you raced it like a bunch of them are guilty of this they race each other to the bottom for the cheapest equipment so then like it's just kind of staggered right now but as far as like shooting gear rifles you know tripods ball heads uh arca rails all that stuff and optics you know this crazy if you think about in just short time how much better optic you can get now for such less money yep or you know how much how far your money will go now is especially as far as optics are concerned in rifles like just think about all this short amount of time all this advancement equipment i equate that more so to the prs world like with all these arc rails and tripods and all that stuff and hunting in general not just predator hunting has grown substantially in the past several years and it's still kind of climbing due to the i blame joe rogan talking about elk hunting all the time i mean it's good for the industry but thermals have advanced and come down and cost a lot because that has gotten so popular and i would i would equate that to more so the pig hunting in texas because it's pretty much endless well i mean i don't know what the exact you know numbers would be but i'm just thinking about every state in the south you know southern u.s that has decent numbers of whole i mean we've you know even the states that don't have tons they've got plenty yeah oh yeah that'll always be a thing um i don't see the hog numbers going down anytime soon and staying that way no they just i mean it's it'd be like trying to say i'm going to eliminate all coyotes it's impossible and pigs they marsh because they reproduce so quick quite rapidly i mean that's pretty much i guess that'd be a good ending spot for now we don't want to get in too in depth on things so we could do another one at some point i guess we're going to wrap it up appreciate jc coming in talking with us for a little bit see you guys next time

Channel: The TPH Podcast with Wade Chandler

Views: 812

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Id: olE6ISZmIsQ

Length: 58min 20sec (3500 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2022