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PODCAST

East Meets West Hunt

The East Meets West Hunt Podcast is your resource for all things adventure hunting. This podcast is for the hunter that loves planning and preparing for the hunt, just as much as the hunt. Whether it"s deer hunting for big woods mountain bucks, chasing elk in the Rocky Mountains, and anything in between, we will talk to successful hunters from all over to provide the EMW community with useful knowledge and motivation to continue to live their life through a series of adventures.

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All Episodes

95:47

Ep. 512: Why Deer Follow His Tracks Right to the...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/10/06

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

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128:02

Ep. 511: What Deer DNA Reveals About Which Bucks...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/09/29

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

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76:04

Ep. 510: He Won’t Scout Before Opening Day, and He...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/09/22

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

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65:45

Ep. 509: Lee Ellis on the Blizzard Buck, Self Filming...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/09/15

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

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125:00

Ep. 508: How Hunting Less Put Them on More Good Bucks...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/09/08

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

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66:09

Ep. 507: Why Your Camo Pattern Matters Less Than What...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/09/01

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

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100:50

Ep. 506: Deer Biologist Explains Why Scrapes Peak Two...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/08/25

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

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120:53

Ep. 505: Lee Ellis Kills a Giant Every Year in a...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/08/18

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

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129:50

Ep. 504: Building Grit, Breaking Hard Hunts Into...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/08/11

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

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144:49

Ep. 503: A Full Season on Iowa Public Land,...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/08/04

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

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36:00

Ep. 502: What GPS Collar Data Reveals About Buck...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/07/30

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

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114:59

Ep. 501: Treat Trail Camera Data Like a Scientist,...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/07/28

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

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129:24

Ep. 500: 50 Years of Big Woods Hunting Lessons w/ My...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/07/21

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,

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101:59

Ep. 499: The Hardest Deer We've Ever Tried to Bowhunt...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/07/14

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

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52:29

Ep. 498: What Deer See at Scrapes That You Never Will...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/07/07

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

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132:17

Ep. 497: Giant Bucks in Mountain Laurel Nobody Else...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/06/30

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

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142:39

Ep. 496: Summer Scouting Mountain Bucks — Trail...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/06/23

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

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122:28

Ep. 495: Wild Game Cooking Deep Dive — Bear Fat,...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/06/16

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

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92:39

Ep. 494: What 6 Years of PA Public Land Hunting...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/06/09

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

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120:34

Ep. 493: Arrow Flight, Forgiveness, and Penetration...

East Meets West Hunt ·

2026/06/02

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

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