East Meets West Hunt

Beau Martonik sits down with Maine tracker Rick Labbe at Huntstock, with Johnny Stewart along for the ride. Rick has spent his life on big buck tracks in the Maine woods, runs an excavating company the other half of the year, and teaches a tracking school with Lanny Benoit.

Most of this one is the end of the track. Rick explains how he reads a buck that’s starting to feed and look for a bed, why he holds tight and grunts instead of pushing in, where a mature buck comes from when he does, and why yo...

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 pa...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ta...

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...

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 ba...

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 cu...

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 ca...

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 retin...

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 n...

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...

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...

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...

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 ch...

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 — In...

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 f...

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 C...

Beau Martonik breaks down a peer-reviewed study from the UGA Deer Lab published in December 2025 that found whitetail rubs and scrapes emit measurable UV photoluminescence that deer can detect and humans can't.

Beau covers the core finding, what's causing the glow in rubs vs. scrapes (more specific than most coverage reported), a timing detail that most outlets got wrong, and what the study doesn't prove. He connects the science to six years of personal trail camera observations — including a 2020 signpost rub experiment where a buck would show up within 24 hours every time the rub was freshened — and lays...

Beau Martonik sits down with Pat Burns, a big woods hunter from the Northeast who has been hunting mountain laurel thickets for years, killing giant bucks in cover most hunters won’t go near.

Pat breaks down how he finds openings and funnels inside a sea of laurel using leaf-off maps, why he considers all those ladder stands on the edges to be the equivalent of hunting a field edge, how he creates access trails to get a quarter mile deep into the thick stuff without making a sound, and the story behind the giant buck he ki...

Beau Martonik sits down with Johnny Stewart -- a PA-based DIY public land hunter with 30+ years of big woods experience across Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Ohio, and North Dakota. This one is all about summer scouting. Johnny breaks down how he runs trail cameras from April through September purely for inventory (confirming a buck survived the winter), why he almost never moves cameras in summer even if they are not producing, and the pattern he and Beau figured out for why bucks vanish from cuts the moment archery season opens. Turns out it is not always pressure. Sometimes...

Beau Martonik sits down with Allie D'Andrea (Outdoors Allie) and Nick Berger for the first time in four years. A big chunk of this one is wild game cooking. Allie ran a head-to-head venison burger experiment comparing pure venison, pork shoulder, bacon, butter, mayo, and egg. Pork shoulder at 80/20 won. Mayo was last. She also covers how to handle bear meat, how to render bear fat, where to source fat at the grocery store, and what to do with the turkey that's been sitting in your freezer since last fall. Beyond the cooking, they get into bear hunting in...

Beau Martonik sits down with Ryan Leary, a PA hunter who has been grinding big woods public land for six years and put together back-to-back mature buck kills including a 7.5 year old eight point in 2025.

Ryan breaks down both hunts — the 2025 buck he killed at 10 yards after trusting his gut on fresh sign mid-morning, and the 2024 deer he killed the same evening he bumped on foot while hunting with a broken shoulder he probably shouldn't have been in the woods on. They also get into how he reads finger ridges and micro terrain, why getting into the na...

Beau Martonik sits down with Bill Vanderheyden of Iron Will Outfitters — 10 years of engineering broadheads and arrow systems built around what a setup actually needs to do when conditions are not perfect.

They open with Bill's Colorado elk hunt — 10 miles back in the wilderness, a 4-hour chase into dark timber, and a frontal shot at 30 yards through a 3-inch window in the pines. From there the conversation gets into the science behind why that shot worked and what most hunters are getting wrong before they ever get to a moment like that.

Topics include what actu...

Beau Martonik sits down with Pennsylvania Game Commission elk biologist Jeremy Banfield to break down the biggest changes to Pennsylvania's elk hunting program in years.

They cover the new October season that overlaps the rut, once-in-a-lifetime bull tags, the non-resident cap and higher application cost, how bonus points from all three old seasons are now combined into one application, and the completely redrawn hunt zones numbered 301–309. Jeremy also gives an honest update on the current state of the herd — population estimates, bull to cow ratios, habitat improvements, and where CWD stands relative to the elk range.

If...

Beau Martonik sits down with Josh Ilderton and Mason Holz of The Untamed, recorded from the truck on the last morning of a West Virginia turkey hunting trip.

They recap the week — tough conditions, birds that gobbled all day but wouldn't commit, the grind of hunting hard while balancing real jobs, kids' sports, and a weekly YouTube channel. Josh talks about what camp culture means to him and why the relationships matter more than the kills. Then they spot a longbeard and three jakes off the road, sneak up the bank, and Beau kills the longbeard ten mi...

Beau Martonik sits down with Jason Redd of Timber Ninja Outdoors, recorded off the tailgate on the last day of a turkey camp trip in West Virginia.

They recap three days of hunting — birds that gobbled all day on day one, a tom that put on a show for 90 minutes and never committed, roosted birds that got crashed by trespassers on day two, and a quiet final morning that just didn't come together. Good conversation on when to stay on a bird vs. move on, and what makes mountain turkey hunting so hard to predict.

Ja...

Beau Martonik sits down with Dioni Amuchastegui, one of the most respected public land mule deer hunters in the country, to break down what it actually takes to consistently find and kill giant bucks in the West.

They cover how Dioni approaches scouting from the macro level down, why most hunters are picking spots before they understand the area, how to efficiently cover country to find where deer actually are, and what changes in buck behavior through the season that most hunters misread. Dioni also explains why deer seem to disappear after velvet drop — and why it ha...

Beau Martonik sits down with Brad Watts, a 15-year muzzleloading hunter and precision rifle competitor who works at CVA, recorded live at the NWTF show.

They break down everything a hunter needs to know about muzzleloaders — how to choose the right one for your hunting situation, the difference between pellets, loose powder, and Blackhorn 209, how to properly clean and maintain your gun, and what actually causes misfires in the field. Brad also explains how competing in long-range precision rifle has made him a more confident hunter at every distance, and why that same mentality applies to how yo...

Beau Martonik sits down with Bobby Worthington — 21-time national and 8-time world archery champion, author of Final Quest, and one of the most respected whitetail hunters alive — to break down the funnel system he's used to kill mature bucks for 60 years.

Bobby explains why most hunters overcomplicate the rut, the exact window when hunting sign matters vs. when to focus on funnels, how to read terrain and natural restrictions on any property, and why hunting hard means committing to one or two spots — not jumping around. He also walks through a real consulting job he did the day be...

Beau Martonik sits down with Jon Lewis, Eli McArthur, and Justin Mueller from the Just Hunt Club crew after a full day of scouting together in the PA big woods.

The conversation focuses on hunting remote terrain that has plenty of topographic diversity but almost no vegetation diversity — steep ridges, drainages, and saddles in mature timber where everything looks the same once you're on the ground. They break down how to find micro diversity in the vegetation, why that's what actually separates good spots from dead ones, and why you have to put boots on the ground to...

Brent Reaves of MeatEater joins Beau Martonik to talk turkey hunting, storytelling, and why the best parts of hunting have nothing to do with pulling the trigger.

From chasing gobblers across the South to lessons learned over decades in the woods, Brent shares stories, hard-earned wisdom, and why patience, tradition, and community still matter today.

They dive into turkey hunting tactics, how hunting styles have changed over time, and why sometimes the best move is simply sitting still and letting the woods work. This episode blends old-school perspective, humor, and real-world experience from a lifetime...

Beau Martonik sits down with Jacob Lishen to talk about the mindset shift that helped him kill two of his best North Carolina bucks to date. They discuss hunting pressure, confidence, community, learning from mistakes, and why mature bucks are so tied to security cover and sanctuary. This episode goes beyond tactics and gets into the deeper side of why we hunt and how the right perspective can make you both happier and more effective in the woods.

Topics:

00:00:00 – Intro

00:04:33 – Catching up with Jacob

00:10:43 – Tough seasons, pressure, and chasin...

In this episode, Beau Martonik sits down with Jonathan “Catman” Boehme at the NWTF show in Nashville. 

They talk through Catman’s background, how he got into hunting, and what learning the hard way taught him over time. The conversation covers turkey hunting in hill country, adapting to pressure, food sources and tree identification for deer, self-filming, and the mindset that comes with experience in the woods.

00:00:00 — Intro

00:04:19 – The Growth of Nashville

00:07:00 – Jonathan’s Beginning To Hunting and Fishing

00:15:25 – Technology and Hunting

00:19:56 – Hunting New Spots

00:23...

Beau Martonik talks with Adam Kristan about his experience battling Lyme disease and why hunters need to take tick-borne illnesses seriously.

Adam shares how his symptoms started, the challenges of being misdiagnosed, and what finally led him to the right treatment. They also discuss early warning signs of Lyme disease, common misconceptions, and practical ways hunters can prevent tick bites while spending time in the woods.

If you hunt, scout, or spend a lot of time outdoors, this episode highlights why early detection and prevention are critical when it comes to Lyme disease.

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Beau Martonik sits down with Andy May, Johnny Stewart, and Joe Miles to break down the mindset behind becoming a versatile and efficient DIY hunter.

Andy shares how hunting pressured whitetails and challenging terrain across different regions has built the confidence and adaptability that allows him to succeed anywhere. The group reflects on lessons learned from tough seasons, the impact of EHD on Michigan deer populations, late-season struggles, and how hard hunts develop mental resilience.

From mule deer to mature whitetails, this episode dives into how difficult hunts sharpen decision-making, build confidence, and create hunters...

Beau Martonik sits down with Jeff Bynum, founder of Financial Outfitters Group, to talk about becoming fiscally fit and building financial structure that creates more freedom to hunt and live on your terms.

After the 2008 financial crisis shifted Jeff’s career from construction to finance, he began helping people prioritize structure over chasing returns and redefine wealth as control over their time.

They discuss strategic approaches to debt, the 15% rule for homeownership, risks of business ownership, spending priorities, and the “Buckets of Wealth” framework to align your money with your goals — including funding hunts and protecti...