The MeatEater

This week, Tony explains why all buck sign isn't the same, and how in-season scouting right now can put most hunters on a solid pre-rut pattern.

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This week Reid and Dan host a true texan and country music star, Randall King, out in God's Country. Randall starts the show by exposing a fun hobby about himself most people don't know and the guys have a field day with it. The three of them cover dove hunting tactics and the unorthodox way Randall's family goes about Jug fishing at his family reunions. King struggles to give his Texas Country Music Mount Rushmore and they all dive in on how Pure Country is one of the greatest movies of all time. The episode ends with a gravorite that only could be pulled off by Randall King himself.

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Dramatic and inspirational western landscapes have been a powerful feature of western history throughout time. During and after the Civil War, a group of adventuring artists and photographers helped divert America’s gaze from the horrors of war by seeking out the most dramatic western landscapes and painting or photographing their scenery. By the 1870s most Americans and many people around the world knew about the Wind River Range, Yosemite, the Colorado Rockies, the Tetons, the Grand Canyon, and other iconic features of western topography. As Dan relates, since Albert Bierstadt and other adventurers first portrayed them, all those places and many more in the West have never lost their magic and now make up some of the most famous scenery in the world.

Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck.

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Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men"

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In mid-September, I saddled up for my first whitetail hunt of the season. I’d yet to shoot a public land animal with my bow, but I was full of piss and vinegar. I live in Kansas—the heart of deer country—and I wanted a big buck. One week later, I was a shell of a woman, begging the universe to send me anything resembling a deer so I could remember what they look like.

If you hunt long enough for pretty much any game, you’ll eventually find yourself in a slump. A humiliating, demoralizing, and frustrating dry spell. Every failed attempt feels like getting a psychological swirly from some divine bully and makes you wonder why you didn’t choose a more mundane and predictable hobby like golf or stamp collecting. For better or worse, being wired to hunt is not a choice. So what can you do to save your deer season when you’re drowning in a sea of disappointment?

Make like a Marine: improvise, adapt, and overcome.

It’s hard to let go of a dream scenario. I spent weeks picturing that perfect moment on the corner of a soybean field, where a Pope & Young buck would come sauntering in for an evening snack. I scouted dozens of public bean fields in August, and picked the most secluded one, which also showed the heaviest browsing. I hung two sets for different winds and started counting down the opener.

My opening week consisted of six sits in and around that bean field, and I didn’t see a single deer. It wasn’t bad luck, but instead an entirely strategic error courtesy of my own stubbornness. I put all of my eggs into a basket full of holes because I wanted that fantasy more than the deer wanted to be there.

I knew the browse lines in the soybeans were the cumulative result of an entire summer and not an indication of current activity. There were no fresh droppings and a very unconvincing number of fresh tracks around the field edge. I was hunting solid setups for the wind, but the deer never showed.

I should never have hunted that field, and I certainly shouldn’t have waited a full week to bail on it. But it was my plan A, and some dumb part of me wanted to die on that hill rather than pull the chocks and find something better. Desperation finally drove me to scout again, and I immediately struck whitetail gold–a hot white oak.

I went from zero deer sightings in six sits on the bean field to nonstop action and a punched buck tag in just three sits. The moral? Don’t get married to plan A.

If you hunt public land, you probably shouldn’t marry your standards either. You might not want to hear that, but it’s true. When you’re in a whitetail drought, hyper-fixation on big bucks becomes a toxic relationship. It can make you break the golden rule of never passing on the first day what you would be happy to get on the last, but more importantly, it poisons your entire hunting approach.

I know I’m not the only one who has found a pile of generic deer sign—beat down trails, beds, steaming fresh poop—and kept walking because I didn’t see a neon sign flashing “BIG BUCK HERE.” Sure, it feels good to sit over a line of shredded saplings and car-hood scrapes. But when you’re in a dry spell, constantly searching for a fairytale buck can ensure that it keeps going.

Sometimes, you need to hit the reset button and just hunt. Nothing makes me appreciate fresh sign like removing the trophy filter after weeks of blanking. Your hackles might have raised the second you started reading this section because you were expecting me to tell you to start dusting spikes. Spikes are delicious, but that’s not my point.

You should always shoot what makes you happy. But if you set the bar too high, you’re likely to overthink the entire process or productive setups. If you want to be picky with deer, do it when they’re in bow range. In 14 years of public land whitetail hunting, that’s the most important lesson I’ve learned.

When you string together a series of blank sits, lowering your standards can revive your deer season and restore your confidence.

It’s an insidious thing, and you might not notice while it's happening. But when your setups aren’t producing the results you hoped for, it’s easy to start losing faith in them. Maybe even in your own skills as a whitetail hunter.

In my hunting career, a lack of confidence has manifested itself in three ways: sloppy setups, carelessness on stand, and skipping sits. All the primary ingredients for tag soup. When you start believing it won’t work out anyway, you start working against yourself in imperceptible ways. Maybe you get out the door a few minutes later. Maybe you shuffle your feet and check your phone more than you should. Every tiny slip lowers your odds and fuels your slump.

The easiest way to hunt with confidence in the deer woods is to hunt with high odds of success. That’s where lower standards come into play. If your definition of success is a booner, your odds of success start inherently low. Move the bar to a decent 2.5-year-old buck, or a mature doe, or my favorite option—whatever tickles my fancy in the moment—and it’s suddenly a lot easier to stay locked in.

I started my season with the firm belief that I would not shoot a buck under 120 inches. But, 15 days later, I was standing over one that I will never measure. Probably because he wouldn’t break 40, but I’d do it again tomorrow. A layup was exactly what I needed at that moment, and that goofy yearling gave it to me. I rode a high all the way home that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Roll your eyes all you want, but it’s true–the trophy is in the eye of the hunter. And when you just need a win to bust out of a whitetail slump, punching a tag becomes a trophy in itself.

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a petition to review the corner crossing issue, effectively upholding a lower court decision that legalized the practice in six western states.

The March ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals made it legal to access sections of public ground previously considered “corner locked” within Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

This means that in those states you can legally “corner cross,” which is the act of crossing from one block of public land to another at the points where the blocks meet. Corner crossers do not set foot on private land, but until now, it’s been unclear whether the action is legal under federal law.

After his loss in the 10th Circuit, the plaintiff, Fred Eshelman, owner of Iron Bar Holdings, filed a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. He wanted SCOTUS to review the 10th Circuit’s decision and, if he got his way, strike it down.

On September 17, 2025, the legal team for the “Missouri Four” filed their own brief with SCOTUS.

“We filed a brief with the Supreme Court explaining that it does not need to review the Tenth Circuit’s careful and correct decision that landowners may not eliminate public access to public land. The Tenth Circuit’s commonsense conclusion doesn’t need to take up space on the Supreme Court’s limited docket. But if the Supreme Court chooses to review this case, we are ready for that fight,” Ryan Semerad told MeatEater.

Semerad is the attorney for Bradly Cape, Phillip Yeomans, John Slowensky, and Zachary Smith, the Missouri hunters at the center of this case.

While the justices did not explain why they refused to hear the case, they obviously agreed with Semerad and his team on some level. As of October 20, SCOTUS declined to hear Eshelman’s appeal.

“The Supreme Court’s action affirms a principle hunters and anglers have long understood: corner crossing is not a crime,” said Devin O’Dea, Western Policy & Conservation Manager for Backcountry Hunters & Anglers in a press release. “Access to 3.5 million acres of public lands has been secured because four hunters from Missouri took a leap of faith across a corner, and the Wyoming Chapter of BHA stood up in their defense. It’s a victory worth celebrating, and a key domino in the fight for public land access across the West.”

This decision leaves the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling intact. So, corner crossing remains legal. However, Semerad cautions the hunting public to use the narrowest legal description of corner crossing, should you choose to exercise this right in the 10th Circuit’s jurisdiction. Only cross at corners, only on foot, and make it clear that you are going from point “A” to point “B.”

Corner crossing bills have been considered at the state level both inside and outside the 10th Circuit, setting a good example by following that narrow letter of the law. Acting like the Missouri hunters did is our best chance of seeing positive legislation in the future.

Note: The feature image does not depict a corner crossing, it’s just a good old-fashioned fence crossing.

Steven Rinella talks with Spencer Neuharth, Brody Henderson, and Seth Morris. 

Topics discussed: Our brand new Season 13 of the MeatEater TV show is out now! Listen to Steve and the crew share stories from a year of filming Steve hunt and fish around the world.

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On October 2, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) announced the Border Lands Conservation Act, a bill that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to enter into cooperative agreements with the Agriculture and Interior secretaries to build roads, install “tactical infrastructure,” and operate aircraft and motorized vehicles on any federal wilderness areas on the U.S. border that lie within a 100-mile radius from that border. Lee and cosponsors have marketed the bill, which would amend the Wilderness Act of 1964 to make all this possible, as a measure to strengthen U.S. border security.

It is unclear whether other federal public lands that share boundaries with border lands and fall within the 100-mile radius would also be subject to the rule change. (Sen. Lee’s office did not reply to a request for clarity.) In a press release about the bill, he blames “open-border chaos” for environmental degradation and unsafe conditions on public borderlands.

“Families who want to enjoy a safe hike or campout are instead finding trash piles, burned landscapes, and trails closed because rangers are stuck cleaning up the fallout,” he writes. “Cartels are exploiting the disorder, using these lands as cover for their operations. This bill gives land managers and border agents the tools to restore order and protect these places for the people they were meant to serve.”

In the Lower 48, a distance of 200 miles — 100 from each border — constitutes anywhere from roughly 12% to 17% of the distance from Canada to Mexico as the crow flies. Additionally, much of Alaska’s border with Canada falls along the edge of a wilderness area.

If the bill gets anywhere, the amount of wilderness impacted in these regions could account for almost triple the acreage of Lee’s budget reconciliation selloff proposal. In the Lower 48, a known total of 3,318,773 acres across Washington, Minnesota, California, and Arizona would be impacted. Alaska would provide an additional 6,242,479 acres across five wilderness areas. This total does not include Alaska’s two largest border wilderness areas — Wrangell-St. Elias (9.4 million acres) and Mollie Beattie (8 million acres) — where single units of continuous wilderness stretch further than 100 miles from the border. This makes it hard to accurately calculate how much additional acreage would be impacted in these two units, but the order of magnitude would likely be in the tens of millions.

The following totals come from data and a map maintained by Wilderness Connect.

Northern Border

Washington:

Minnesota:

Southern Border

California:

Arizona:

Lower 48 total: 3,318,773 acres

Alaska (bolded entries would be subject in their entirety):

Known total: 6,242,479 acres

The language of the bill also stops both the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior from impeding, prohibiting, or otherwise interrupting DHS activity in these places as long as that activity is related to the prevention of unlawful entries into the United States — either by people deemed “terrorists and unlawful aliens” or by “instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.”

In other words, it gives DHS complete freedom to conduct these activities without federal land management agency involvement. (The National Environmental Policy Act still requires DHS to analyze the environmental impacts of its proposed projects and conduct a public comment period.)

The Trump administration’s definition of “terrorist” has proven subjective in recent months. In September, he used the phrase to refer to “antifa,” an umbrella term for a decentralized political movement that opposes fascism and far-right ideology. More recently, he and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the phrase to describe occupants of boats the administration claims is smuggling drugs from Venezuela across the Caribbean Sea. At the time of publication, U.S. Special Forces have killed 27 boat occupants in a series of attacks on five vessels, prompting the early retirement of U.S. Southern Command leader Admiral Alvin Holsey. The vague nature of a phrase like “other contraband” also raises questions. Lacking more concrete definitions, DHS could potentially interpret these terms in myriad ways, then use those interpretations to justify developments in wilderness areas.

With the exception of conducting searches on foot, Lee’s suggested list of surveillance measures consists of actions that are either illegal or highly regulated on all federal public lands, especially those designated as wilderness. This designation can be applied to “an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions,” according to the Wilderness Act.

Few better examples of wilderness come to mind than the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area in northern Minnesota. Paddlers, anglers, hunters, Tribal communities, and local members of the tourism economy have spent the last few years working to stop a proposal for a copper-nickel mine upstream from the wilderness area. Now, Lee’s proposal has become another concern, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) tells MeatEater.

“Americans want to see our public lands protected, but Senator Lee’s bill overwrites important protections in the original Wilderness Act and could result in serious harm to our wild places, including the Boundary Waters,” Smith writes in an emailed statement. “The Boundary Waters, like so many of our national parks, is one of this country’s great natural treasures, and I’m going to do everything in my power to fight any piece of legislation that would threaten this precious place.”

This bill does more than just reaffirm Lee’s desire to wrangle more centralized, uniform control over what happens on federal public lands. It also puts him back under the microscope of a public lands advocacy community that has proven pan-partisan time and time again. Earlier this year, his proposal to sell off over 3 million acres of federal public lands through the budget reconciliation process was opposed by one of the most politically diverse protests in recent outdoors history.

This could be bad news for someone who was elected to represent a constituency where 56% of voters oppose giving state governments control of federal lands, according to the 2025 State of the Rockies poll from Colorado College. Utah ranks the lowest of eight polled Western states in this category, but even the Latter-day Saints' influence over Utah politics is growing more interested in environmentalism and public lands stewardship as a more climate-conscious generation comes of age. Now halfway through his third six-year term, whether Lee runs again is yet to be seen. If he does, the Utah he will need to win over in 2028 — a presidential election year, no less — will be different than the Utah that re-elected him in 2022.

This pattern begs a simpler question. Who is Lee trying to please? With every proposal to retool the federal land management system, he loses more clout with the public lands community. Western Republicans from both chambers of Congress have taken steps to distance themselves from this effort, which has quickly become one of the most weight-bearing beams of Lee’s platform. (Remember when a bunch of them helped form a bipartisan House caucus to fight the very idea?)

Meanwhile, the elected officials who do publicly back these ideas are scarce. In the BLCA, for example, his cosponsors include just a handful of Republicans from deep-red states that lack any border real estate — Wyoming, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, and Tennessee — plus Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who took almost two weeks to join as a cosponsor. (Texas lacks designated wilderness along its southern border.)

And yet, the odds that Lee — or any other elected official who supports his approach to federal public lands — will face backlash in the voter booth are slim, says longtime public lands journalist Hal Herring.

“He will pay no price,” Herring tells MeatEater. “How many of these [lawmakers] will actually be voted out by single-issue voters for public lands? That demographic is not big enough for any of them to worry about. They’re counting on the fact that we the people are not devoted enough to this topic … because we’ve had access to public lands for so long, we can’t imagine them changing.”

Even with these grim odds, it’s unclear whether the Border Lands Conservation Act will find traction in Congress. Its first stop is the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Lee chairs. Other ENR members who cosponsor the bill include Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). The next ENR committee hearing has yet to be scheduled, according to the committee’s website.

Steven Rinella returns to the coast of Louisiana to spearfish and bowfish with Ronnie Collins and Greg Fonts. With ideal conditions, Steve receives a last minute invitation from Ronnie to spearfish during the reintroduced spring Amberjack season. Afterwards, the crew stays up for a late evening of bowfishing for red drum. Presented by Ram and Can-Am

We're getting down to the meaty part of this Manitoba moose hunting tale. Brent left us all on the edge of our seats with his cliffhanger last time just when he'd gotten to moose camp. Rest assured there's no tricks this week and the rest of the story is waiting for you to push play. It's moose shooting time on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.

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Hosts Brent Reaves, Seth Morris, and Cory Calkins interview Craig MacCarthy of North Mountain Adventures about the nitty-gritty of a fly-in moose hunt, have a round of MeatEater Show and Tell, go Craigslisting for outdoor gear, and chat with John Pantuso and Tom Taylor of Case Knives.

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