Pre Season Food Sources

  You know the drill. We set up in early bow season on trees we have always hunted in the past, but the acorns just don’t seem to be dropping. Been there, done that. I have found that the large mature acorn trees will not produce every year , regardless of the rain that they have received. I love hunting the large gigantic acorn trees in bow season, but I have found that the mid size trees produce more frequently, and for the most part, are easier to find in clusters along the hardwood ridges.

  There is a tactic that you can use to get a leg up on the acorn crop for your area. Its really simple. Take a pair of good clear binoculars and glass the trees in your area and find out which trees are loaded with acorns. That can be done now. Granted you may look like an idiot in your scouting party for “stargazing”, but I guarantee you will find the best acorn trees to set up on. You may find a tree loaded with acorns and just a few unused trails leading into it from previous years. There will also be trails that are wore down to the dirt on the trees that produced last year. Don’t pay as much attention to the trails that are hammered out now if there are no acorns on the trees that the deer are traveling by. The deer will pick right back up on the unused trails from a few years back once the acorns start falling.

  Another trick I like to use is to find the first feed trees out of the bedding are where the deer are coming from. Allot of times, the deer will come out of there bed and feed on the first acorn trees from the bedding area. It may even be still a little thick, but get in there with them and hunt the feed trees in the thickets if you have too. It is a great buck tactic if there is a little pressure on the deer you are hunting such as leases and hunting clubs. Also, those bucks will respond a little better to calls since the area is thicker and holds the security a big buck desires.

  Find the trees loaded with acorns now, and then pick out the trees closest to the bedding area. It just may be the tactic that leads to you harvesting a trophy buck that has been eluding you.

Summer Spots

It is hard anticipating where the fish will be for the early morning topwater bite, and if thats not enough, try and locate where they go from top water down to 20 feet of water. It’s no easy task. We fished this morning and didn’t get a bite until 9:30. Now take into account that the high today in north Georgia was 97. After 9:30, the blistering sun on the lake is the last place I care to be. However, I do like to catch fish and also have a hard time leaving the fish when they start to bite. We didn’t have a fish early and then landed 6 keepers in 45 minutes on the same rock wall. We finally figured out why.

  These fish were on top early and it takes until about 10 AM before they move back down deep which is suitable for a finesse worm. When the sun gets up and heats the surface temperature up enough, the fish will go back deep on the bottom. We noticed on the graph that the fish were consistantly showing up deeper and deeper until finally they were holding to the bottom. People throw crank baits at these fish all morning long, and we did also, but with no consistancy. It’s random at best. We fish allot of rock so it works really well for the worm bite.

 Here is a trick I learned for fishing rock with a Texas Rig worm. Take a toothpick and slide it inside your bullet weight to make it tight on your line. This will help with hang ups. It won’t allow your weight to fall into the crevices of the rock as you jig the worm along the bottom. Also, use trick worms or floating worms on the Texas Rig. This is the first year we have done this and what it does is cause the worm to float up with the bullet weight on the bottom. It makes the worm stand up so to speak. It works well when fish are finicky in the summertime. I know several fishermen that avoid the big chunk rock and slag rock due to getting hung up so much. If you fish rock walls, give this method a try. It works.

Trapped? In August?

  When I think of fishing a Rattle Trap, I think of springtime mornings over the top of budding grass beds. I never really think of fishing a trap in the middle of the dog days of summer. Go with what works, I say, and don’t be afraid to take a chance on a new possibility.

  We unloaded the boat at Carters Lake and launched well before daylight and made our way to the first shoal marked with numerous bouey markers. We threw some various cranbaits off the edges of the shoals of rock with no luck. Fish were blowing up all around us on the shoals, but never really got on them too good. Actually, we didn’t get on them at all.

  Daylight came and we motored to the next cluster of bouey markers and shoals of rock. This time we decided to try another trick that worked back in May. I tied on a trap and Zack, which is pictured with my fish, tied on a worm. I made a few casts and hooked up on a nice three pound spot. Two casts later, another spot. This time, it was a four pound spot. We fished it out with no more bites, but what a nice start to on good sack of fish. We fished on and caught another good spot on a Deep Little N and Zack added a three pound chunk of his own on a trick worm.

  We ended the day with seven keepers caught in depths from 3-25 feet deep. Be as versitile as you can in August. It may just work out that the last three months of patterns comes back into play.

Just Beyond the Treeline : Part 1

  Our stands have been stowed and the stories have all been told. The what weres and the what should have beens lay fresh on our minds in the midst of the reflections of another season that has come and gone. For some, the season brought success. For others, I suppose some regrets. No matter what the case, our daily countdown has begun to the coming fall where we can get back to square one, just mano y mano with that trophy that eluded us for some three months this season. Some of us spend nine months of the year preparing, scouting, and getting ready for the upcoming season.
  Some of my greatest finds have come shortly after season had ended during stints of small game hunting with my children. Some of my finds have been helpful, while others were a painful reminder of how I hard headedly stuck with a bad stand location. After a month or so, the what could have been woes are gone and preparation begins for next season.
  At least in my case, the single most factor that keeps me from the woods in summer is the fact that we have forty seven different types of poisonous snakes crawling around. There is nothing that spoils my day more than having to dodge a snake. I have a friend that was struck by a copperhead while scouting in mid July. Luckily for him, he was wearing chaps and snake boots. Of course, I know another fellow patron, while coon hunting, was struck in the forehead while walking along a trail at the base of a rock embankment. I haven’t found a snake proof hat yet, but if someone makes it I am sure to have one. Needless to say, I am a huge fan of clean trails going in and out of the areas I hunt, which in turn, allows me to visit several areas without leaving the ATV. I am far better at dodging snakes with 350cc under me. This is just another reason that I prefer to do my scouting in the colder weather.
  Small game hunting is an excellent time to explore new terrain. Deer season in north Georgia ends on the first day of the year, which means the second day of the year, we can be found trailing behind packs of hounds chasing rabbits in and out of the briar thickets. Small game hunters are rarely denied a right of passage from anything that grows from the ground, which with a few Band-Aids can provide useful information for later.
  This January 2nd was no different. We planned a hunt over on the lease where I had been deer hunting for most of the fall. We started in at the head of the swamp and moved in to my proverbial “honey hole” that I had been hunting. I told the crew that we would have to turn in shortly due to the fact that the scrubby trees were just too dense to pass through. Without giving too much information to which tree I had perched from, a friend of mine walked over to the scrubby trees and attempted to plow his way through.
  I had been answering the questions about the deer I had seen from this area, and I had to say that the numbers were rather modest from what I was expecting. Shortly through the conversation, our buddy had disappeared in the mangled madness and began to call back to us.
  “Are you coming?” he asked.
  “No, I think we will go around and meet you on the other side. I really don’t want to tromp into the middle of a brush pile.”
  “What brush pile are you talking about? Once you step through those few trees, it opens back up into a meadow of green grass in the corner of this swamp bed for a couple of hundred yards,” he replied.
  My heart sank. As I moved over and through the trees, I noticed it was just as he said. Tender green grass grew as lush as any food plot on the lease. The saw grass was about waist high with trails coming from every direction. Trails were on top of trails and tracks were inside of tracks. The edges opened up into a mature pine meadow with grasses growing like a pine wood pasture.

Just Beyond the Treeline : Part 2

  “Is this where you had your stand”, one asked?
I turned back and replied in true honesty as bad as it hurt.
  “No, I was on the other side of the tree line”.
He stood with a look of confusion as he sized up the area I told him where I was as it related to where we were standing.
  “But how could you see this area from the other side of the tree line?”
I just let it go at that and chalked this one up to experience.
 A common practice regarding scouting is finding a “highway” trail that looks really good and setting up camp immediately. Most of these types of trails are night trails and will be very unproductive. The area looks really good, but doesn’t produce the numbers of deer that is usually expected. Bucks rarely travel these trails, but nine times out of ten, there will be other smaller trails crossing these night trails. These are the ones to set up on. Just as I found out, a little more searching could uncover several details that are useful in determining the patterns that will produce a mature buck.
  Hunters get too hung up on the fact that the deer population will pick up and move daily as if to be nomads looking for their stay. Obviously, setting up under feed trees is seasonal at best, but a very productive way to take an approach at harvesting a deer. I prefer to distance myself from the feed trees and hunt the travel ways. What I have found over the years is that deer very rarely change patterns in travel ways. Granted it is a little thicker in these spots, but it makes for a consistent stand location. It doesn’t matter what the food source if you set up to intersect the deer on their way to it.
  In order to find these types of areas, you have to get off the beaten path. Depending on the terrain and geographical location, it can be a little intimidating barreling off into the pine cutovers or dense hardwood forests. There is nothing worse than being lost. I have been lost before, but had an idea of the general vicinity to my whereabouts. I have also been lost before, and after five hours of walking, finally came across civilization and had to ask someone to help me with my whereabouts. Technology has come too far now to be getting too far away without some sort of GPS devise. Like everyone else I suppose, it doesn’t bother me to get a little turned around in the daylight, but is quite the contrary in the dark. On one occasion while hunting in southern Georgia, I made my way into the edge of a swampy bottom. I never saw water on the way in, but was over my boots on the way out. Luckily a train passed by and gave me a sense of where I was. I was walking directly in the wrong direction. GPS units can also be incorporated into scouting as a tool used for marking those hidden sanctuaries that are stumbled across and never found again. Take advantage of the technology, especially when it makes your adventures safer.
  Scouting can be a methodical endeavor to say the least. There is one key factor that has helped me more times than not. You have to get away from the hunting pressure. It can be done, but it is going to take some leg work to do it. We hunted an area during a management hunt when I was younger. We stopped in a few weeks prior to the hunt and a ranger gave us a tip on an unhunted tract of land. We inquired about a map and he turned and said, “Well, it’s the track behind the check in station.” That year, the track of land produced a really nice eight pointer and a missed opportunity on a massive twelve pointer, but we had to cross a very deep creek to get to it. Look for the things that might turn other hunters away. Be smart with your scouting. Be aggressive in your scouting. Last but not least, be safe with your scouting.

Braden Arp

A Series of Unfortunate Events : Part 1

                                                                                                    After my first couple of seasons of getting my feet wet, literally, I set out go where the ducks are. I have a friend who has some family in Stuttgart and told us that we could come over to his place and hunt with him for free. I was all about some free so we planned to go the following winter. He had some great swamps to hunt and had access to even more flooded timber if we didn’t have any luck on his spots. We loaded up, four of us in all, and headed for Arkansas.
  We arrived after about an eight hour drive on Friday evening. We walked in and introduced ourselves, the ones that wasn’t family, and were immediately invited in to the table where his wife had prepared gumbo. I was impressed already. I had gotten myself into a strange place and was at the table eating in less than twenty minutes. If that isn’t hospitality then I don’t know what is. After dinner, we unloaded our gear and headed up to our rooms to turn in. Now take into consideration that we don’t have a dime in this hunt yet. We had hit the gold mine of hunting.
  Morning came and we drove down to meet our guide for the morning, which turned out to be a friend of the family. I was ready to be adopted at this point. We walked in to his camp where there was a hot fire and breakfast waiting. We waited around there for a half or so, and then we loaded up into a wagon type trailer that was pulled by a small tractor. As we were loading our gear, the teenager with our group made it known that he had to use the bathroom so he began untucking and unbuckling all that had been pulled up and stuffed in. He was gone for twenty minutes or so, but then was ready to leave. I noticed walking out of his camp building that the temperature was a balmy five degrees with a stiff wind to boot. In case you are from Arizona, that’s cold.
  We made it to the flooded timber and had a short walk in after getting the details of the morning’s hunt from our guide. As we slowly made our way in, the youngster went down and went down hard. I had his jacket in my hand and was doing all I could do to keep him out of the water. It was of no use. One arm broke free of the jacket and then the other arm slipped out, and then the splash. One thing we all found out was when it is that cold outside the water will actually warm you up, provided you’re not submerged in it. We also found out that if you are submerged in the water, you get significantly colder very quickly. His father took him back to the camp to get dried off and get his clothes as dry as he could. I learned when we got back that day that if you place wet socks on a wood burning heater, they will still burn.
  The morning’s hunt was really a disappointment as far as a numbers standpoint, but no one really cared because we were standing in a swamp in the duck capitol of the world. How bad could it be? About mid morning, a single ring neck flew in and cupped just in front of the blind. We never figured out who killed the duck but we did figure out who shot, all of us. That poor bird didn’t have a sporting chance. That would be the only duck in hand for the morning hunt.

A Series of Unfortunate Events : Part 2

  The following day brought the same numbers and the same opportunities. With only one hunt left, our family guide decided to make a few phone calls and got us hooked up with another guide which had several flooded rice fields and no one to hunt them. We were in. We met at the edge of the fields where we would meet up with the president of the club that leased the rice fields. He unloaded his four-wheeler and began taking us in one by one. I decided to go first and help set up some of the decoys when we got there. I will never forget how my heart sank when I was told that I had to ride on the front rack. He was in an extremely big hurry. I found this out right away. I held on as tight as I could with the same grip used by a professional bull rider and with about the same expectations of falling off. That four-wheeler bucked and twisted, but I managed to stay on for my eight seconds.

  It didn’t take us long to get the decoys placed, and then he was off to retrieve another poor soul that thought riding would be better than walking. In the mean time, I walked over to the blind, and on one end, was a small opening roughly two feet by two feet. Without hesitation, I crawled in and set up on the end as to be out of the way of the other hunters. As the next hunter arrived to the blind, I gave my instructions for entrance to the blind. He did just as I did. Now when the third hunter showed up, we took a turn for the worst. He told us of how he really didn’t think he could hold on to the front rack any longer and how the driver had to steady him so he wouldn’t fall off. As he approached the blind, we told him to crawl in just as we did. He let out a sigh of disgust, but bellied up to the opening and started in. Upon getting halfway in to the blind, his waders got stuck on one side. As he tried to free himself, the other side of his waders caught. Now he was stuck and I mean stuck. We unsnapped his waders and pulled him in while his waders slid off, but nevertheless, he was in.

  The rest of the group showed up with the dog, and I noticed the dog making a direct path to the opening where we had entered the blind.

  “No way,” I thought to myself. “I know we didn’t just…..”

  I looked at the other two, and we silently agreed that there had to be more to this than we were aware of. Just then, the dog shot in through the opening, or dog entrance and the rest of the hunters walked over to the end of the blind and lifted a small piece of rope. The gate to the end of the blind opened and the hunters walked in. All three of us simply stared at the gate and then at one another.

  “How did you get in,” the guide asked. “This gate looks like it hasn’t been opened.”

  “Just like that,” we said, not wanting to reveal our secret ignorance.

  The rest of the afternoon, I spent answering the silent looks of disgust and embarrassment from my fellow hunters. We never told anyone any different so don’t you go telling anyone either. That turned out to be the highlight of our hunt. The ducks were circling extremely high and there hadn’t been many of the “new” ducks, as the locals called them, coming in to the swamps. Just as it is called hunting, the experience was all we thought it would be, even though we didn’t take limits of ducks that we thought we would. It was true southern hospitality at its best and I am forever grateful for the stories that came from it. I don’t remember taking the shots that I took over the weekend, but I will never forget the look on their faces as we watched the end gate fling open. It was priceless to say the least.

Braden Arp

All in a Day’s Hunt

  Several years ago, I thought it would be an adventure to strap on a pair of waders and head into the mucky marsh swamps in search of a limit of ducks. There are not a lot of video on this one so you pretty much have to wing it so to speak. I’m pretty good at winging it and decided the first thing I would need is a pair of waders. I found a pair at a local sporting goods store, and to my surprise, was fairly inexpensive. Later I would find out why. They had everything from brush resistant waders to thin fishing waders. I opted for the thin waders to go aver my hunting clothes. After all, water doesn’t poke holes in waders. Nonetheless, I had a pair of waders and equipped my shotgun with a choke tube suitable for shooting steel shot. I was on my way. After purchasing license and stamps and shells and socks and a half hearted duck call, I was ready to go on my first duck hunt. I really didn’t want to invite anyone just yet being that I wasn’t sure of what to expect. After all, if I was to fall in and drown, I would hate for someone to be there with me to see it so I went alone.
  A friend of mine had some swamp land just over the hill from where my father and I had been working. I inquired to him about trying my luck in his swamp and he graciously agreed. I went down to the edge of the swamp during the middle of the week to try and get an idea of where I wanted to set up and try and get a pathway mapped out in my head of how to get in to where I wanted to be. As I arrived to the edge, twelve to fifteen mallards flushed from the back of the cove where I was planning to be. Everything was coming together smoothly. I had found a spot with ducks and also had found an entrance in that seemed to be a path cut out in the water. It almost looked as if someone had been there before me and had taken the trees out of the walkway for easy access. All I needed to do was follow the bushy tree line all the way in to the back of the cove. I had seen all I needed to see. I was ready for the weekend.
  The weekend didn’t come soon enough as it rarely does. That Friday night, I gathered my gear and got ready for what was to surely be a great first timer duck hunt. Saturday morning came and I was up early getting my gear loaded. I made my way to the swamp about an hour before daylight so as to get set up while it was still dark. I put on my waders and extra jackets and hat, and headed for the swamp. There was a brief walk through a grown up field to get to where I needed to be to enter the swamp. I noticed on the way in that it was a little more difficult to walk in the waders than it first had seemed in the sporting goods store.
  I made it to the edge of the swamp and started in slowly. I could feel the fallen logs under my feet, but I stayed steady in my pursuit. Taking one small step at a time, I made my way to the opening that would lead me to the back of the cove. The water level was manageable. I was around two to three feet deep and making it just fine. All of a sudden, I felt my left foot get extremely cold. I had stepped over a beaver hewn tree that had been chewed down when the water levels were lower. Chewed to a nice sharp point, my waders found the edge which made about a two inch gash directly in the side. That was the exact moment that I began to appreciate the brush resistant technology and was really wishing that I had bought into it. There was nothing to do but keep my direction and move forward. I made it to the bushy tree line, and hanging on to the limbs, started down the opening through the water. After a couple of steps, I noticed the water level had gotten up to be about waist deep. On the next step, I realized why there was an opening through the timber and bushes. My left foot slipped. I tried to catch myself with my right foot by taking another short step. It was no use. I was sinking like the Titanic. I had stepped off into an eight foot wide creek channel. On my way down, I knew instantly that this wasn’t going to be a good thing. Turns out, the channel was around seven feet deep. I know this because I made contact with the bottom. I am roughly six foot two so you can do the math and figure out where the water level was in accordance to my head.
  I pushed my way back up and reached out and grabbed for one of the bushy limbs and it snapped. I went down again. This time, I grabbed for the base of the bush when I surfaced and made it to the edge of the channel and back up to a manageable level. I had a drain system now from the earlier experience with the cut down tree. The water exited my waders down to about knee high. By now it was breaking daylight and I had spooked everything from the swamp back to the river. I wasn’t about to let a near drowning experience dampen my chances at a limit of ducks. I proceeded on by a different route to the back of the cove and got set up. Wet and cold, daylight came, and as shooting time approached, I noticed that the ducks were starting to dive bomb into the swamp despite all the commotion I had caused.
  With shooting time here, the first two ducks came in. I raised my gun as the ducks cupped their wings and shot. The first duck folded. I shot two more times but missed. Within seconds, more ducks flew over the cove where I was set up and after circling, they flew in as well. Three more shots produced two more ducks. I reloaded and soon fired again, this time, at a pair of woodies. One of the woodies fell and splashed over to the edge of the swamp. Upon gathering my four duck limit, I noticed that all my ducks were drakes. What are the odds of that? I had taken my first hunting trip and had folded four drakes within an hour.
  Back at home, my wife was preparing for the birth of our second child which would come soon in the spring. As we did with our first child, she picked out one name and I picked out the other. I had been trying to come up with something but was drawing blanks. This was a pretty big decision and I knew I didn’t want to blow it and give my son a horrible name. I pulled up into the driveway and was admiring my harvest when my wife met me on the front lawn.
  “Have you thought of a name for our son yet,” she asked?
  “Actually I have,” I responded.
  I was dead in the water. I was supposed to be out to spend some time alone and think about my decision. With the morning’s events, that never happened. I had to come up with something fast. I made the best decision I could, and so we derived at my second son’s name, Joshua Drake.

Braden Arp

Trophy Class Isn’t Always World Class

  What is the true measure of a trophy whitetail? This is a question I have asked myself for years. Is it measured by the technical data driven scoring system that is used for the standard of the class of the animal? Could it be the dominant nature of the animal that was harvested? I believe, as do many others, that a true trophy animal is in the eyes of the beholder. A trophy class deer doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be world class. Now sure, I think every outdoorsman would jump at the opportunity to hunt on the world class operations in Texas and New Mexico and other places that offer a chance at a record book buck. However, the fact of the matter is, that is just not the reality for most of us, yet I still find outdoorsman that end up frustrated and distraught because their trophy class bucks don’t measure up to the world class standard.
  I had a guy tell me one time, “I won’t pull the trigger on anything less than a 140 class deer. My response to that was, “Wow, you must not shoot much”.
The fact of the matter is, if we only hunt to take a world class animal, we will likely burn out long before the satisfaction of a trophy harvest comes.
  Now don’t get me wrong. I believe heavily in management programs and am very much involved in the program we have set up for our lease. I also believe that if you let a deer grow, you will produce mature animals, in which the odds will increase drastically for taking a trophy deer. The fact of the matter is, allot of hunters are harvesting mature whitetails that don’t have the gene pool to reach a world class standard. Being from north Georgia, I can attest to that. I think it is common that hunters alike would choose to harvest a four and a half year old buck over a two and a half year old buck. I think that would go unsaid. However, I have hunted several areas that produced sixteen inch eight pointers at four and a half years old.
  I harvested a really nice nine pointer a few years ago in archery season that was a true trophy in every sense of the term. A friend of mine looked at his structure and said, as you have all heard, “That would have been a great deer next year.” In my eyes, it was a great deer for this year. I put in the hours it takes of scouting and preparation and harvested a four and a half old mature whitetail buck.
  I was fortunate enough to hunt with Fred Law at the Enon Plantation some years back. As we were unpacking and getting introduced to the staff and my personal saviors, the cooks, I asked Fred, “Have you harvested any 140-150 class deer here?”
He said, “Sure. We have taken some really nice bucks, but I want to tell you how we run our operation here. You are paying for the experience of a lifetime, not a world class mount. If you are fortunate to harvest a trophy deer, I want it to simply put the icing on the cake.”
  Instantly, my idea of a true trophy was changed. You see, Fred understood that there was something to be said for the opportunity to be relieved of the everyday nine to five and take a few days to relax and breathe in a breath of fresh air and hunt such an awesome creature. Let’s face it; time is of a higher priority now than it used to be. Don’t simply judge your trophy by the numbers. Judge the class of a trophy by the total hunt. Ten years down the road, that is what you will remember.

Braden Arp

Beagles…. A Year Long Affair

  The season on small game hunting in the south is around 4 months, give or take a few days. If you plan to hunt behind a pack a beagles, and have in the past, then you probably already know the frustrations that come with getting your dogs in shape while season is in progress. There is an alternative. We have a pack of registered beagles that we try and run about 10 months out of the year. I prefer for our beagles to be in good shape before the season begins. This is no easy task due to the efforts it takes to get them where they need to be.

  We like to run early mornings, and if your pack allows, late at night when the temperature cools down. Now I’m sure you are hanging on the “if your pack allows” part. If you have beagles you will follow what is coming. If you are just getting into rabbit hunting, listen carefully. After dark is a great time to train dogs, as far as beagles are concerned. There is little “training” done outside of putting them with a clean pack and turning them loose in a rabbit infested thicket.

  There is, however, a downfall. If you are training young puppies, you may want to reconsider the night training in the beginning. Beagles will slow down a bit in the dark which makes it difficult to tell if they are running trash or are actually pushing a rabbit across the cutovers. It all sounds great when you don’t know what is the culprit to the race. I have heard some great rabbit races by a pack of mature beagles after dark, but have also heard some great races by a pack of young dogs that are full bore into running a deer. Same sound. Same pace.

  We like to stick to the early mornings so that we can tell what is actually going on. This will leave no doubt to whether a young dog is running trash, or simply running around barking at the other dogs. This can be valuble information to a handler, especially if the handler knows this when it happens. When this happens on a consistant basis, you can split your pack up and put the younger pups with a slower lead dog so that the pups will have time to understand what is happening. If its an older dog, you still have time to find a replacement.

  At any rate, your pack will be stronger the more they run. I have found that most all beagles, if they are legitimate hounds, can run a rabbit with moisture on the ground and if there is thick cover that they are running through. Where you see the benefits of running year round is the downtime your pack has when they cross a dry track or you have a rabbit that insists on crossing dirt roads and such where the scent is light to say the least. Believe it or not, your lead dogs will pick up on the tendencies that the rabbits have in the area you hunt. If this isn’t enough reason, its just plain fun and beats the heck out of working!