518 episodes
Ep. 516: Performance Coach on Staying Sharp Through All Day Rut Sits w/ Todd Bumgardner
10/22/2026 | 20 mins.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 wears you down, and why it matters going into the holidays
Being a body in the tree vs. actually hunting
Stress, and sending an arrow into the next zip code
A quick joint routine at the truck before you walk in
Why 2% dehydration hurts your thinking, and why water keeps you warmer
What Beau carries for an all day sit
Keeping blood sugar steady without giving up the snack cakes
Taking a break when you’re smoked, and a midday nap in the tree
Sleeping better when the nights are short
Prepping stand food the night before
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Pack Mule Training Co IG: https://www.instagram.com/packmuletrainingco/
Instagram:
@eastmeetswesthunt
@beau.martonik
Facebook:
East Meets West Outdoors
Shop Hunting Gear and Apparel:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/
YouTube:
Beau Martonik - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJon93sYfu9HUMKpCMps3w
Partner Discounts and Affiliate Links:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/partners
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesEp. 515: Why the Best Funnels for Mature Bucks Have No Sign w/ Jeremy Ballantine
10/20/2026 | 1h 16 mins.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.
In this episode:
Hunting Vermont, and why tracking and stand hunting feed each other
Why bucks love to bed above their own backtrack
Using rattling antlers to get a buck’s attention when he can’t hear a grunt
Two bucks he wouldn’t have killed without antlers in the tree
Why the brawlers die young and the true giants are mellow
Wide Clyde: a three year chase, a hot doe, and eight seconds on snow
Frustration rubs, and why not every rub means something
Doe groups, trail camera history, and four day rut windows on some mountains
Bucks that winter 15 to 18 miles from where they rut
Why you have to treat mature bucks like a different species
Why the best funnels have the least sign
Sitting one funnel five or six days dark to dark
Why he shuts his cell cams off during the rut
Swirling wind in a funnel, and his favorite rut dates
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Jeremy's YT - https://www.youtube.com/@InPursuit365
Jeremy's IG - https://www.instagram.com/inpursuit_365/
Instagram:
@eastmeetswesthunt
@beau.martonik
Facebook:
East Meets West Outdoors
Shop Hunting Gear and Apparel:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/
YouTube:
Beau Martonik - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJon93sYfu9HUMKpCMps3w
Partner Discounts and Affiliate Links:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/partners
Amazon Influencer Page
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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesEp. 514: The Real Cost of Killing Giant Bucks w/ Dan Infalt & Johnny Stewart
10/13/2026 | 1h 39 mins.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 buck out. He went on to a 15 year run of giant bucks, and Dan is honest about what that run cost his family, and why he started giving everything away.
In this episode:
Why hate online means you’re doing well
Learning to hunt with no mentor and a dad who couldn’t give a compliment
Finding a buck’s sheds three years running and learning his bedding areas
Crosswinds, a junked car, and his first giant on Thanksgiving Day
Giving away the “secrets” and the kickback that came with it
Making people better hunters and hunters better people
Johnny, Beau, and a wind bump at deer camp that turned into Beau’s biggest buck
Helping his longtime hunting partner kill a 170 inch ten he’d been chasing for years
Timber the raccoon, and why hunters care about animals more than people think
Losing some of the want, and the birthdays and Halloweens it cost
Why you have to earn luck
How putting his spots on film has cost him
Why 5% of hunters kill all the deer, and the confidence nobody can sell you
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Dan's YT - https://www.youtube.com/@thehuntingbeast
Dan's FB - https://www.facebook.com/dan.infalt
Instagram:
@eastmeetswesthunt
@beau.martonik
Facebook:
East Meets West Outdoors
Shop Hunting Gear and Apparel:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/
YouTube:
Beau Martonik - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJon93sYfu9HUMKpCMps3w
Partner Discounts and Affiliate Links:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/partners
Amazon Influencer Page
https://www.amazon.com/shop/beau.martonik
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesEp. 513: 10 Days of Archery Elk in Wyoming (Big Bull Down) w/ Tyler Martonik & Derek Testerman
10/08/2026 | 1h 57 mins.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 out.
From there it’s Tyler’s hunt. Learning one drainage over most of a week, waiting for thermals to settle before moving on bedded bulls, a wallow found on LiDAR, close calls at 80 yards, and wolves in camp at 3 AM.
In this episode:
Burning seven points on a Wyoming general tag
Acclimating without sitting in camp: camp low, hunt high
The cow at five yards and the bull behind her
Butchering a bull on a slope he kept trying to roll off
Five hours of rain, cliffs, and blowdowns on the first trip out
Why bugles are closer than they sound in thick timber
Waiting for thermals to settle before moving on bedded bulls
A wallow that only showed up on LiDAR
Elk staying low for water in a hot, dry year
Wolves in camp at 3 AM
The herd bull play where everything went right but the bull
Gear that worked, what’s getting replaced, and boiling a skull for Wyoming’s CWD rules
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Instagram:
@eastmeetswesthunt
@beau.martonik
Facebook:
East Meets West Outdoors
Shop Hunting Gear and Apparel:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/
YouTube:
Beau Martonik - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJon93sYfu9HUMKpCMps3w
Partner Discounts and Affiliate Links:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/partners
Amazon Influencer Page
https://www.amazon.com/shop/beau.martonik
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesEp. 512: Why Deer Follow His Tracks Right to the Stand (233 Bow Kills) w/ Jim Gallagher
10/06/2026 | 1h 35 mins.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 tarsal hangs seven feet up over a mock scrape, and he walks past his tree and hooks back so a deer following him in gives him an angled-away shot. Then he calls, every sit, on a set schedule.
He also gets into why he aims at the very bottom of the deer, going back to around 1986, when he and Gus Park tallied their misses at a picnic table in Pennsylvania, and 30 of 35 had gone over the deer’s back, and a long list of stories from 50 seasons of doing it his way.
In this episode:
Tracking deer in Maine snow and going bow only
39 foot stands and seven busts in 17 years
The calling sequence: one nostril, fawn mew, grunt, rattle
Why store scents failed and rabbit droppings didn’t
Tarsal glands seven feet up over a mock scrape
Shooting out the side of the peep in low light
Why a deer blowing at you can be a good thing
The night bucks fought under his stand in the dark
Straight down shots and where he aims from 39 feet
The J hook that turns a following deer into a quartering away shot
His biggest buck, a 212 pounder that followed him for a week
The Pennsylvania picnic table tally and the barn test on deer ducking the string
Checking the swamps after the first October snow
A broken arrow rest, two lost bucks, and why you shoot your bow after a bad hit
https://act.wilderness.org/a/26bcpledge-eastwest-1
Jim's YT channel - https://www.youtube.com/@jimgallagher4939
Instagram:
@eastmeetswesthunt
@beau.martonik
Facebook:
East Meets West Outdoors
Shop Hunting Gear and Apparel:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/
YouTube:
Beau Martonik - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJon93sYfu9HUMKpCMps3w
Partner Discounts and Affiliate Links:
https://www.eastmeetswesthunt.com/partners
Amazon Influencer Page
https://www.amazon.com/shop/beau.martonik
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About 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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