Ep. 508: How Hunting Less Put Them on More Good Bucks w/ Jameson Curtis and Kelly McGraw

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