Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 294: How Deer See, Hear, Smell, and Survive with Pat Durkin

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Ep. 294: How Deer See, Hear, Smell, and Survive with Pat Durkin · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:12
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
0:19
Speaker 1: your host Mark Kenyon. In this episode number two D
0:22
Speaker 1: and today in the show, I'm joined by freelance writer
0:25
Speaker 1: and whitetail hunter Pat Durkin to get back to the
0:29
Speaker 1: basics of white tail deer and how they see, here, smell,
0:33
Speaker 1: and survive. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
0:43
Speaker 1: to you by on X, and today in the show,
0:45
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Pat Durkin, who is an outdoor writer
0:48
Speaker 1: and avid deer hunter, and I want to have him
0:50
Speaker 1: on the show to discuss dear themselves, not just you know,
0:54
Speaker 1: all the fancy strategies to chase him and the gear
0:56
Speaker 1: to help us kill them, but actually just talk about
0:58
Speaker 1: these animals and how they do what they do. And
1:01
Speaker 1: I thought Pat would be the perfect guy to do
1:03
Speaker 1: this because he's an actual journalist. He doesn't just whip
1:06
Speaker 1: up an article based off of his own crazy ideas
1:08
Speaker 1: like I do. Sometimes. He actually meticulously researches his topics
1:12
Speaker 1: and he consults multiple experts and then reports back on
1:16
Speaker 1: what the science says or what the real data says,
1:18
Speaker 1: and when that has come a fascinating insight into what
1:21
Speaker 1: makes white tailed deer tick. So that's what we're chatting
1:24
Speaker 1: with Pat about today, all that he's learned over the
1:26
Speaker 1: years about deer as he's researched and study these creatures,
1:30
Speaker 1: stuff like how they see and how they smell, and
1:32
Speaker 1: how they hear and lots lots more. So with no
1:37
Speaker 1: introduction today, we're just gonna get right into it. So
1:40
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to think a couple of partners,
1:42
Speaker 1: and then we will get chatting with Pat. All Right,
1:46
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have on the line with me today,
1:49
Speaker 1: Pat Durkin. Welcome the show. Pat, he Mark, thanks for
1:53
Speaker 1: having me. I really really appreciate it. It's been fun
1:57
Speaker 1: over the last a year or two to get to
1:59
Speaker 1: chat every once in a while as you're working on
2:01
Speaker 1: different articles and things and with your involvement with Mediator now,
2:05
Speaker 1: but this will be our first chance to do an
2:07
Speaker 1: extended long conversation, So thank you for doing this. Well,
2:12
Speaker 1: you bet I was looking forward to for the last
2:15
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. Yeah, me too, And I guess what
2:19
Speaker 1: brought you to mind for me? As someone who I
2:21
Speaker 1: thought we should have a chat with. Is that so
2:23
Speaker 1: often when you look out there in today's hunting media,
2:27
Speaker 1: or even listen to podcasts or even sometimes this podcast,
2:30
Speaker 1: we get so hyper excited about the latest and greatest strategy,
2:35
Speaker 1: some new trick, some new trend, whatever it might be. Um.
2:39
Speaker 1: But when I go and I look at so many
2:40
Speaker 1: of your recent things that you're writing and focusing on now,
2:43
Speaker 1: you do a great job of bringing things back to
2:46
Speaker 1: what really matters the most, which is the animal itself
2:49
Speaker 1: and research about the animal. And I don't know, you
2:53
Speaker 1: just have this extremely deep well of information and experience
2:57
Speaker 1: with dear, giving your background, and then you do such
2:59
Speaker 1: an inter in jab of talking to other people that
3:01
Speaker 1: researched dear that you just get these perspectives that I
3:04
Speaker 1: think are really really helpful. Um. So I kind of
3:09
Speaker 1: want to talk about a lot of things related to that.
3:11
Speaker 1: But before we get into Dear, I do want to
3:14
Speaker 1: make sure we lay a little bit of groundwork for
3:16
Speaker 1: people who maybe aren't familiar with you, which is which
3:19
Speaker 1: would be shocking if they're not. But if they are
3:21
Speaker 1: new to Pat Dirkin, can you give us the cliff
3:23
Speaker 1: notes on kind of how you got to this point,
3:26
Speaker 1: what you've done in the dear world and what you're
3:28
Speaker 1: doing now. Yeah, the thing i'd say too is I've
3:32
Speaker 1: never um, I've never hurt or whatever insults of people
3:38
Speaker 1: haven't heard of me. Because the one thing I've I've
3:41
Speaker 1: always knowing about writing reporting is that most people don't
3:46
Speaker 1: read by lines. And this goes back to my days
3:49
Speaker 1: I started that. I started at the Ashcosh Northwestern newspaper
3:53
Speaker 1: in east central Wisconsin back in still work UM in college,
3:58
Speaker 1: and I always remember the first thing I wrote for
4:01
Speaker 1: the college newspaper back then, UM was a column about UM.
4:07
Speaker 1: I think it's about hunting or fishing. I can't even
4:09
Speaker 1: remember anymore. But anyway, the thing I remember about Mark
4:12
Speaker 1: is that when I went to I was all proud
4:15
Speaker 1: and happy about getting my first piece of UM writing published.
4:20
Speaker 1: But then I went to UM. When I went to
4:22
Speaker 1: back to the newspaper office that next day, I remember
4:25
Speaker 1: seeing something. I'd used the newspaper as a door jam
4:28
Speaker 1: to keep the door from from bossing behind them, and
4:31
Speaker 1: it was just discincidentally. They punched, you know, a little
4:36
Speaker 1: door um nob part sticks and a little clasp sticks
4:40
Speaker 1: into the door right at that point where my face
4:42
Speaker 1: was it was punched right through and I always kept
4:45
Speaker 1: that in mind that will have many uses for newspapers.
4:49
Speaker 1: And you're you're quickly forgotten, then you're often overlooked, you know,
4:52
Speaker 1: so I'm not I'm not heard at all when people
4:55
Speaker 1: say I never heard of you until this, so that
4:58
Speaker 1: you know, and even today, I read a lot stuff
5:00
Speaker 1: and they'll um they I've had people quite often tell
5:04
Speaker 1: me I was reading this article or a Danis Stirt
5:08
Speaker 1: describing the article, and I'll say, yeah, I wrote that.
5:13
Speaker 1: And it's happened so often my career where you just
5:16
Speaker 1: cannot have um. It keeps you humble, it keeps you know.
5:21
Speaker 1: I realized there's many people out there who have much
5:23
Speaker 1: higher profiles than I do, and I just don't worry
5:27
Speaker 1: about too much but to finish my little bio real quickly.
5:30
Speaker 1: I worked in the Oscarsh newspaper for eight years, and
5:34
Speaker 1: I was mainly UM. I did all sorts of jobs.
5:37
Speaker 1: I covered school boards that covered high school sports and
5:40
Speaker 1: and my whole um thing though, was that I always
5:43
Speaker 1: wanted to get into the outdoors beat. So the reason
5:45
Speaker 1: I was in sports for the for the first couple
5:47
Speaker 1: of years is because sports editors in those days always
5:51
Speaker 1: controlled the outdoors page and most newspapers, you know, thirty
5:54
Speaker 1: years ago, forty years ago, I had at least the
5:56
Speaker 1: outdoor page once a week, and I always realized that
6:01
Speaker 1: I'm well off when I get on that page and
6:03
Speaker 1: right right for that paper, I need to learn learn
6:07
Speaker 1: the sports up of his name, or work with him.
6:09
Speaker 1: So that's kind of how I got going on, and
6:11
Speaker 1: then eventually I did. There are things in the newspaper.
6:14
Speaker 1: I was always doing the outdoors, but I also did
6:16
Speaker 1: things like on the school board. I also covered city
6:20
Speaker 1: hall a little bit and the police and um fire
6:23
Speaker 1: type of things. You go out and have to cover
6:25
Speaker 1: a spot news, so it's really a good background for reporting.
6:28
Speaker 1: And then um along the way when my um little breakthroughs,
6:33
Speaker 1: I guess was I learned that one of the best
6:36
Speaker 1: sources for conservation information in our region was a guy
6:39
Speaker 1: named A Whole Factor And l um was the editor
6:43
Speaker 1: of Deer and Deer Hunting magazine that the original one
6:46
Speaker 1: of the original fhowners of it. He and Jack Brower
6:49
Speaker 1: founded the magazine back in the late seventies and it
6:51
Speaker 1: was just up the road in Appleton, Wisconsin. And by
6:54
Speaker 1: the time I came around in the newspaper. These guys
6:57
Speaker 1: had Deer and Deeringing Magazine rolling as a nash some magazine,
7:01
Speaker 1: and so I would interview Al on various conservation issues
7:05
Speaker 1: going out in the area because he was always a
7:07
Speaker 1: real good citizen, always involved in things. And eventually they
7:11
Speaker 1: must have been reading my stuff and how I covered
7:13
Speaker 1: um the issues that the Al was involved in, because
7:17
Speaker 1: they brought me up one time for an interview and
7:19
Speaker 1: about the like in late and then I started working
7:23
Speaker 1: for them two or three weeks later, and that got
7:27
Speaker 1: me into the end of the hunting industry basically. And
7:30
Speaker 1: so I worked at Deer and Deeringing Magazine for eleven years.
7:32
Speaker 1: I was this editor for most of that time, and
7:37
Speaker 1: along the way, one great you know, one thing I
7:40
Speaker 1: didn't know what the time mark, which I always looked
7:42
Speaker 1: back on was. The last fascination was that I didn't
7:45
Speaker 1: realize that. But each time I was taking these jobs,
7:48
Speaker 1: first newspapers, then a magazines, I was kind of writing
7:52
Speaker 1: the tail end of a big deal. Newspapers were still
7:56
Speaker 1: really strong going into the eighties, and by the end
7:59
Speaker 1: of the eighties there was and the towel off and
8:01
Speaker 1: the magazines we're kind of in the same thing during
8:04
Speaker 1: the nineties, you know, we're our magazine circulation peaked in
8:07
Speaker 1: about and by the time I left in two thousand one,
8:12
Speaker 1: it was it was it went out a city downcolle
8:14
Speaker 1: klient tomorrow. How hard I worked, how much effort I
8:17
Speaker 1: put into it, things were sliding. And by the time
8:21
Speaker 1: I left in two thousand and one, the Internet was
8:23
Speaker 1: starting to come along and people were spending more time
8:26
Speaker 1: doing online stuff and even things that as basic as
8:29
Speaker 1: email news others were getting We're getting a little popularity.
8:32
Speaker 1: So all on the way I UM, I was kind
8:35
Speaker 1: of without realizing and jumping one one step ahead of
8:39
Speaker 1: the um the downward curve. So that time I got
8:42
Speaker 1: in the freelancing, you know, like about twenty years ago,
8:46
Speaker 1: I was UM. I was pretty well situated to do
8:49
Speaker 1: freelance work. I had a lot of contacts and new
8:52
Speaker 1: people in the academic world that we're doing a lot
8:55
Speaker 1: of deer research, and so that that realized served me
8:58
Speaker 1: while when I started freelancing. That's what I've been doing
9:00
Speaker 1: now for since since two thousand one, late two thousand one,
9:05
Speaker 1: and I saw I do a lot of work for
9:06
Speaker 1: the archery trade Association. Still I'm kind of their chief
9:09
Speaker 1: chief copy ofitor, and I still write my weekly newspaper column.
9:13
Speaker 1: And I have been writing for me either not the
9:14
Speaker 1: last year and a half, and I write regular articles
9:18
Speaker 1: for American Hunter magazine, and so I stayed really busy.
9:23
Speaker 1: So you've been writing about or reporting on deer and
9:27
Speaker 1: hunting related topics for what would you say, thirty years
9:30
Speaker 1: more than that? Yeah, yeah, you know, I've been. I've been.
9:34
Speaker 1: I think one of my first articles in the outdoors
9:37
Speaker 1: is a fishing article on some local tournament guy, and
9:40
Speaker 1: then after that. UM. One thing, one thing I always
9:44
Speaker 1: I always looked back down with a lot of pride,
9:46
Speaker 1: is that even though I was an outdoor reporter and
9:49
Speaker 1: doing things from everything from fishing reports to you weekly
9:53
Speaker 1: fishing reports to um or just covering conservation meetings, the
9:57
Speaker 1: thing that I always took time for I'd take the
10:00
Speaker 1: Asian four every year was deer hunting up from the
10:02
Speaker 1: Upper Peninsula, Michigan, which is three and a half hour
10:06
Speaker 1: drive from from where I've lived, you know, in central
10:08
Speaker 1: Wisconsin now for how many years, And so that was
10:11
Speaker 1: a big part of my um AH. When I took
10:15
Speaker 1: vacation during my UM um newspaper days. Almost I spent
10:19
Speaker 1: at least a week up in up in the up
10:21
Speaker 1: Um guns during the gun season, which way was opened
10:23
Speaker 1: November November, and so that was really a cool thing
10:28
Speaker 1: to do, just and it kind of got me um
10:30
Speaker 1: interested in something that one thing I should say, mark,
10:33
Speaker 1: because one thing I always fascinated me about about deer
10:36
Speaker 1: hunting was always the people's side of it. I always
10:38
Speaker 1: loved things like the deer camp stories, the things that
10:43
Speaker 1: kind of brought people together and got them hunting. And
10:46
Speaker 1: I always I was enjoyed reading about a long time
10:49
Speaker 1: ago deer hunters and um the most influential book for
10:54
Speaker 1: me growing up. As you know, when I first started hunting,
10:56
Speaker 1: I was about fourteen. UM, I always remember reading Larry
11:00
Speaker 1: Colder's book Shots at White Tails, and it's been a
11:02
Speaker 1: book I've kept in my library ever since then. UM.
11:06
Speaker 1: You know, it's just to me, it's fun to kind
11:08
Speaker 1: of go back and read because every now and then,
11:10
Speaker 1: because it wasn't um, they weren't doing things like hunting scrapes,
11:14
Speaker 1: they weren't worrying about rub blinds, all these things that
11:17
Speaker 1: um we've kind of um taken into taken into a
11:20
Speaker 1: big part of our strategy sessions. They did drives and
11:23
Speaker 1: they did I'm still hunting and stand hunting. That was
11:26
Speaker 1: a budget, you know, and so that that's kind of
11:29
Speaker 1: my history. I just um, I love all that. All that.
11:32
Speaker 1: Um it gets that the researchers called human dimensions. Yeah,
11:37
Speaker 1: that is fascinating stuff. On the on the on the
11:40
Speaker 1: topic of books, are there any other of those classic
11:45
Speaker 1: books that you still point to? Is something you recommend
11:48
Speaker 1: to folks so that you like to grab off your
11:49
Speaker 1: shelf ever once in a while and look at um
11:52
Speaker 1: I remember finding I was up at my family deer
11:55
Speaker 1: camp this I guess it would have been earlier this spring.
11:58
Speaker 1: At the bottom of a stack on beneath the table
12:01
Speaker 1: was one of the one of the original books from
12:05
Speaker 1: the I never know if it's Benoit's or Benewit Brothers,
12:08
Speaker 1: but I think it's How to Bagage and it was
12:12
Speaker 1: it was really old and falling apart. I was like, wow,
12:15
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty cool. It's like thirty years
12:17
Speaker 1: old and this is what my grandpa was reading when
12:19
Speaker 1: I was a baby. Um Yeah, that was kind of
12:22
Speaker 1: neat to see. Are there any books like that that
12:25
Speaker 1: you still look at? And that one yeah, that one.
12:29
Speaker 1: There is really a classic in the literally Benoit's book
12:32
Speaker 1: Um I I still have my copy from I think
12:35
Speaker 1: it was part of the At book club back in
12:38
Speaker 1: the seventies, that probably mid seventies, late stefenties. And one
12:43
Speaker 1: of the one of the cool things about working at
12:45
Speaker 1: Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine during the nineties was um
12:48
Speaker 1: they had a book division at the at the publishing hall.
12:51
Speaker 1: UM then owned Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine, So I
12:53
Speaker 1: was able to bring back and kind of update a
12:56
Speaker 1: little bit UM like Shots at White Tells You did
12:59
Speaker 1: their own edition of Shots at White Tails, and and
13:03
Speaker 1: we also we tried to get permission from the from
13:07
Speaker 1: Larry Benoit to redo his his original book, Um you
13:11
Speaker 1: know that how to Get the Biggest Buck of Your
13:13
Speaker 1: Life whatever was called, Yeah, how to Bag the Biggest
13:17
Speaker 1: Buck of your Life, I think with the title, and
13:19
Speaker 1: it's just a real straightforward um book about his his
13:22
Speaker 1: still hunting and how his family would go out and
13:25
Speaker 1: get on a track and basically stalk, you know, deer
13:28
Speaker 1: based on what I saw the foot the footprint, and
13:32
Speaker 1: it was one of those unfortunate things where um, you know,
13:35
Speaker 1: we're we wanted to reprint the book, but then there's
13:38
Speaker 1: just too much, too many, too many obligations and too
13:41
Speaker 1: many um past differences between Larry and the co author
13:45
Speaker 1: of the time, and we just couldn't make it work.
13:48
Speaker 1: But then we came up with an alternative. We're a
13:50
Speaker 1: writer named Bryce Tolesy spent some time with them, Larry
13:53
Speaker 1: and his family, and did I think I think they
13:56
Speaker 1: did one or two more books. I think with the
13:59
Speaker 1: Benoit's during the nine nineties, really two thousands, So in fact,
14:03
Speaker 1: I um during that process, I sent my copy of
14:07
Speaker 1: the original book to Larry and asked him to sign
14:11
Speaker 1: it for me, and and it was it's kind of
14:14
Speaker 1: a curious thing he wrote back to me, sent the
14:17
Speaker 1: book back and nice little wrote a nice little tribute
14:21
Speaker 1: to me. And then uh, they said something like, I'm
14:24
Speaker 1: sorry you couldn't take time to um stop by and
14:27
Speaker 1: visit when you're in Vermont last week or that last summer.
14:31
Speaker 1: And I don't know who he confused me with, but
14:34
Speaker 1: I've never been to very much in my life. So
14:38
Speaker 1: it's one of those fun things you you you you
14:40
Speaker 1: know that happened to you once a while, were someone
14:43
Speaker 1: uh for a reason confusedly with someone else, and so
14:46
Speaker 1: I have that inscription on my Larry A White book.
14:52
Speaker 1: Uh So, speaking of then these these classic books, these
14:56
Speaker 1: classic resources of Sony people looked on, UM, I do
15:00
Speaker 1: feel like you have now gotten your own fingerprints on
15:03
Speaker 1: many of the resources and things that people are now
15:06
Speaker 1: looking back on UM that aren't that old at all
15:09
Speaker 1: or even new now to get this new foundation with
15:11
Speaker 1: people today, I think new hunters that are trying to
15:13
Speaker 1: learn about deer and deer hunting, if they're turning the
15:16
Speaker 1: Mediator right now, for example, or many other places that
15:18
Speaker 1: your written works are at, UM, you know they're seeing
15:21
Speaker 1: some really good foundational, dear related content that I've really
15:25
Speaker 1: loved from you. You've done a handful of pieces now, Yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: of course you've done a handful pieces now kind of
15:31
Speaker 1: examining white tail one oh one, kind of biology, some
15:37
Speaker 1: about the senses of deer, and I want to kind
15:39
Speaker 1: of start there, because we very rarely ever talked about
15:43
Speaker 1: that anymore. It's always like, how to find the best
15:45
Speaker 1: pinch port, how can you track you know, trail camera
15:47
Speaker 1: data and find patterns and so on and so forth.
15:50
Speaker 1: We never rewind back to the beginning and start talking
15:53
Speaker 1: about what can these dear smell? What can they see?
15:56
Speaker 1: What should we be thinking about? Um, So that's kind
15:59
Speaker 1: of where I want to start. Pat, Let's talk about
16:02
Speaker 1: the deer's senses. You asked me this question a couple
16:05
Speaker 1: of months ago, and I want to get right back
16:07
Speaker 1: to you, which is, how would you rank a deer's
16:10
Speaker 1: senses from most important or most beneficial to them down
16:14
Speaker 1: to the bottom. Well, I should say, um, and I
16:19
Speaker 1: mean that's real, sincerely, Mark, is the one thing I've
16:22
Speaker 1: liked about um my career. The things that I find
16:25
Speaker 1: interesting is that I've one thing I've learned along the way,
16:29
Speaker 1: and I really learned it really quickly, was that I
16:32
Speaker 1: might I love deer hunting and I love fishing, but
16:35
Speaker 1: but I've realized quickly that, um, there's some guys out
16:38
Speaker 1: there who always refer to them as the Brett Fires
16:41
Speaker 1: and Michael Jordan's of deer hunting, and the guys who
16:44
Speaker 1: really are good at it. I mean they might not
16:47
Speaker 1: be able to tell you what tree, what kind of
16:50
Speaker 1: tree species? There? Their stand is located them, but damn
16:54
Speaker 1: they know how to hunt. They just there. I would
16:57
Speaker 1: say they're predators, They're they're guys that really lock onto
17:00
Speaker 1: stuff and they sense stuff and they can't even put
17:03
Speaker 1: it in the words sometimes. I mean, I've seen many
17:05
Speaker 1: examples of that. You asked them questions about, um, you know,
17:08
Speaker 1: what are you seeing or what are you looking at here?
17:10
Speaker 1: What made you sit in that tree? And they struggle
17:14
Speaker 1: to explain it. It's it's really interesting. So I guess,
17:17
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is I've always I've never
17:20
Speaker 1: considered myself the expert. I was considered myself the guy
17:24
Speaker 1: who can talk to experts and kind interpret stuff and
17:28
Speaker 1: read research. I mean, I've always liked, and this is
17:32
Speaker 1: I think an odd thing. I've always liked standing in
17:35
Speaker 1: conferences where these UM graduate students and deer researchers present
17:41
Speaker 1: their findings, and then interviewing them afterward and asked them
17:44
Speaker 1: questions about things I didn't understand, because I just find
17:47
Speaker 1: it interesting the things they can they can learn about
17:51
Speaker 1: white tales, you know, scientifically. But then I also realize
17:55
Speaker 1: there's some things about deer that will never fully understand.
17:57
Speaker 1: Because the thing I talked about, and I think a
18:00
Speaker 1: couple of different articles I wrote for Meat Eater, is
18:03
Speaker 1: that like when it comes to this UM the sense
18:06
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I call you's got because I
18:08
Speaker 1: I really, I really, over time realized that Mark Kenyon
18:13
Speaker 1: is a real nice, real nice hard hard and hardcore
18:17
Speaker 1: practical way of deer hunting. Word. He doesn't read too
18:19
Speaker 1: much into things that he can't really nailed down. But boy,
18:23
Speaker 1: he's he's um. He knows, he knows his strength to
18:26
Speaker 1: weaknesses and how to apply them. And I always find
18:28
Speaker 1: that's really important to get the best deer. And there's
18:31
Speaker 1: typically know how to um put stuff, you know, in
18:35
Speaker 1: the use out there in the woods. So but to
18:37
Speaker 1: answer your question, I've been um stumbling around here with that.
18:40
Speaker 1: But to answer your question, I am one of the
18:43
Speaker 1: reasons I called you on that recent one one about
18:45
Speaker 1: um interpreting you know, what what deer, what deer can smell,
18:50
Speaker 1: and how how well they hear, how well they see.
18:54
Speaker 1: I ask you these kind of questions. I like to
18:56
Speaker 1: hear what you think and the and we talked us
19:00
Speaker 1: recently about how well did your here and where do
19:05
Speaker 1: you rank that? And when you said that you rank
19:08
Speaker 1: you know they're able. Their ability to smell is number one,
19:11
Speaker 1: I thought, I I can buy that. I I've seen
19:14
Speaker 1: it too many times where deer can just pick off
19:16
Speaker 1: a little bit of scent when you when you think,
19:20
Speaker 1: how the heck could they have smelled that? And even
19:23
Speaker 1: her here hunters talking about well do they have a
19:25
Speaker 1: six stent? Because there's no way they could have smelled me.
19:28
Speaker 1: And the thing that I find fascinating about there's no way.
19:31
Speaker 1: When people say there's no way they could have done
19:33
Speaker 1: this or that, I think you're really not not really
19:37
Speaker 1: taking an account to many things that can go awry
19:40
Speaker 1: in the deer woods. You know, the way that a
19:42
Speaker 1: scent can swirl around and move in a direction that
19:45
Speaker 1: you don't expect you just because the winds blowing in
19:48
Speaker 1: your face at the at the in the tree stand
19:51
Speaker 1: you're in, doesn't mean that thirty yards down the hill,
19:53
Speaker 1: it's it's catching a little eddy and swirling back up
19:56
Speaker 1: in a way that they can pick up this a
19:58
Speaker 1: little bit of a scent off off you. And and
20:01
Speaker 1: and actually, um, I mean i'd be able to pinpoint you,
20:04
Speaker 1: but get pretty close to knowing whatever it was, this
20:08
Speaker 1: isn't good. And they start getting they started getting spooky.
20:12
Speaker 1: So anyway, I I agree to when you when you
20:14
Speaker 1: I don't and and try, I think you'd probably figured
20:18
Speaker 1: out from my interviews. I don't try to steer you
20:20
Speaker 1: into what I think. I want to hear what you think.
20:22
Speaker 1: And so when you said that, I thought, that's kind
20:24
Speaker 1: of way I think too, that number one is the
20:27
Speaker 1: cent And and then there I look at you made
20:32
Speaker 1: a stird point that I just loved was set and
20:35
Speaker 1: from there, if they see something and they hear something,
20:38
Speaker 1: the first thing they're gonna try to do is verify
20:40
Speaker 1: with their nose. If they can do it, they're gonna
20:42
Speaker 1: verify with their nose. And I thought, yeah, I've seen
20:45
Speaker 1: that too many times to not agree with that. So
20:48
Speaker 1: that's where I guess, and I agree on that pretty
20:52
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly that it's number one. And then that probably i'd say, Um,
21:00
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you for certain if was sight or hearing,
21:03
Speaker 1: because I've been bustets many times by bolt and but
21:07
Speaker 1: the one that one that that, UM, I am just
21:12
Speaker 1: fascinated by. How U with the hearing the way that
21:16
Speaker 1: I've always loved watching deer's ears, the way they turn,
21:20
Speaker 1: and I remember that was probably the first thing I
21:22
Speaker 1: saw a deer at close range when I was like
21:25
Speaker 1: fifteen sixteen years old, hunting from a tree for the
21:28
Speaker 1: first time and looking down a deer and watching an approach.
21:31
Speaker 1: That's one thing I noticed was those ears were just
21:33
Speaker 1: constantly moving, constantly checking things out. So I guess I
21:37
Speaker 1: kind of leaned towards the ears as being number two.
21:40
Speaker 1: But I then again, they're so good at detecting movement
21:45
Speaker 1: that I don't I don't discountact either. Yeah. Yeah, they
21:49
Speaker 1: certainly have got a heck of a package of tools
21:53
Speaker 1: to survive. Between those three centses, there's no doubt about that.
21:57
Speaker 1: Let's let's focus on smelling first, on their sense of
22:01
Speaker 1: scent um. I know you've done a lot of research
22:05
Speaker 1: and not necessary research, but read about a lot of
22:08
Speaker 1: research and also been out there in the field and
22:10
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of things that I'm sure I have
22:13
Speaker 1: indicated to you that they have an incredible sense of smell.
22:16
Speaker 1: But does anything stand out as you've talked to different
22:18
Speaker 1: experts about their sense of smell or different researchers, anything
22:22
Speaker 1: that stands out to you that helps kind of communicate
22:25
Speaker 1: just how unique their sense of smell is or how
22:28
Speaker 1: they smell. I mean, it's one thing to say they
22:30
Speaker 1: can smell really good. It's another thing to quantify that
22:33
Speaker 1: in some way or to help us try to understand
22:35
Speaker 1: that what stood out to you, um when you've examined them. Yeah.
22:41
Speaker 1: The guy I almost always interview at some point on
22:44
Speaker 1: these two kind of topics topics is on Grant Woods, Assouri. Yeah.
22:49
Speaker 1: I know you've had Grant on your on your podcast.
22:52
Speaker 1: And one thing I've I really value greatly is my
22:57
Speaker 1: own credibility. I mean, I I don't go off and
23:01
Speaker 1: I really make an effort to quote people um accurately.
23:05
Speaker 1: And I've taken up, I screw up, I admit it,
23:08
Speaker 1: and I find a way to um correct that. But
23:11
Speaker 1: one of the guys I've always respected because he's just
23:14
Speaker 1: a role again, down to earth guy who understands this
23:18
Speaker 1: stuff and reads it more about and you know, Grant
23:20
Speaker 1: not only comprehensive, better, he remembers the details. I tend
23:24
Speaker 1: to forget all the otle finor finer details, but Grant doesn't.
23:28
Speaker 1: But Grant made a great comment to me for this
23:30
Speaker 1: recent Mediator article where he he said, um, something the
23:34
Speaker 1: effect the deer can specify the age, the amount, and
23:38
Speaker 1: the origins of each each meat, vegetable seasoning. If you
23:42
Speaker 1: get a cast role dish. He made this great point
23:45
Speaker 1: where he said, you have a cast role just cooking
23:47
Speaker 1: up there in your kitchen, and you can you'll you'll
23:50
Speaker 1: take a whiff and go my mom's making cast role
23:53
Speaker 1: or my wife's making cast role, Whereas a deer can
23:56
Speaker 1: get that same whiff and basically specify how much meats
24:01
Speaker 1: in there, where it came from, what animal grew, maybe
24:04
Speaker 1: even the age of that meat, Um it came out
24:07
Speaker 1: that out that animal, the seasonings in the dish, and
24:10
Speaker 1: they can gauge things like the probably even that the
24:13
Speaker 1: temperature of that stuff, as as us cooking in there
24:17
Speaker 1: and how it's distributed, and we're boxed exactly in the
24:20
Speaker 1: house it's coming from without ever having stuff put in there.
24:24
Speaker 1: And so I think they have that, and I don't
24:26
Speaker 1: think grants exaggerating. I think they really have when you
24:29
Speaker 1: look at how many um scent receptors they likely have
24:33
Speaker 1: in their nose and all these factors that go into it.
24:37
Speaker 1: That one thing I loved about UM this piece on
24:42
Speaker 1: for Meat Eater when I got writing about this was
24:46
Speaker 1: it's it's cool to me to think that we have
24:47
Speaker 1: really nailed down things like um the dogs, you know,
24:52
Speaker 1: and dogs, dogs have so much practical application for humans
24:55
Speaker 1: where We use dogs in so many different ways that
24:58
Speaker 1: there's been lots of research in the what dear what what?
25:01
Speaker 1: Dogs can smell how many cent receptors they have in
25:04
Speaker 1: their nose and then um. But then we don't really
25:07
Speaker 1: have that for deer because well, deer, as much as
25:09
Speaker 1: we enjoy hunting them, they don't have the practical application
25:13
Speaker 1: in the field. You know, it's police work tracking down
25:17
Speaker 1: suspects wherever it might be that dogs do so. Like
25:20
Speaker 1: so you look at a human nose and they figure
25:24
Speaker 1: that the human nose has anywhere from ten to fifty
25:28
Speaker 1: million cent receptors in there. That in the east cent
25:30
Speaker 1: receptor is kind of specialized little unit that can detect
25:34
Speaker 1: different sense, just just one specific sense, and but we
25:37
Speaker 1: have so many of them. It gets this whole array
25:40
Speaker 1: of sense that we can kind of distinguish. And most
25:44
Speaker 1: of us can point to someone in our life that
25:46
Speaker 1: can smell better than we kind of in my case,
25:48
Speaker 1: I would look at my wife, and my wife can
25:50
Speaker 1: can pick out orders and scents and and tell you
25:54
Speaker 1: what what vegetable. There's those kind of things, and I
25:56
Speaker 1: always struggle with that. But you know, so we have
26:00
Speaker 1: figure if the human has fifty million cent receptors. And
26:03
Speaker 1: you look at a bloodhound and a bloodhound they have
26:06
Speaker 1: like um, some estimates up to four billion cent receptors
26:10
Speaker 1: in their nose. So when they need a bloodhound on
26:13
Speaker 1: a human track, they figured they figure out real quickly
26:16
Speaker 1: on the direction that travel. Um. Basically, um, you know
26:21
Speaker 1: which comes into play when someone tries to double back
26:23
Speaker 1: and a bloodhound, the bloodhound instantly figures out wood stunt um,
26:27
Speaker 1: which part of that foot track is, which footprint was
26:30
Speaker 1: made most recently. They can tell that just by smelling it.
26:33
Speaker 1: Which is the most what's the hottest scent? So that's um,
26:37
Speaker 1: I guess where I I just love that kind of stuff.
26:40
Speaker 1: I love reading about and interviewing people who have done
26:43
Speaker 1: these tests and figure out how these how these dogs
26:46
Speaker 1: are will smell so well. Then Grant going back to
26:50
Speaker 1: Grant Woods again. So I asked Grant, well, what do
26:52
Speaker 1: you think can smell better? We don't have that kind
26:54
Speaker 1: of pinpointed information on on a deer stunt receptors. You
26:58
Speaker 1: haven't mapped out the dere is. No wants to know
27:00
Speaker 1: what part of that nose a smelling nests for part
27:02
Speaker 1: of a smelling that And Grant me this great point,
27:05
Speaker 1: he said, You know, I dear can't smell better, can't
27:09
Speaker 1: detect sense better than a dog. How would they survived
27:13
Speaker 1: all these eons in a rover They're being hunted by coyotes,
27:17
Speaker 1: um and wolves. You know they must be able to
27:19
Speaker 1: smell there in those creatures if they're able to evade
27:22
Speaker 1: them this long and actually, um, you know, survived despite
27:26
Speaker 1: heavy predation in some cases. Interesting point. That makes a
27:30
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Yeah, given that, given that way, and
27:36
Speaker 1: we know this, um, what's the right way to st
27:42
Speaker 1: We know this intellectually as humans, We know they have
27:45
Speaker 1: this tremendous level of of scenting ability. But then oftentimes
27:49
Speaker 1: we still try to fight it. We still try to
27:51
Speaker 1: find ways to defeat a white tail's nose. And you
27:55
Speaker 1: kind of two schools of thought these days. There's one
28:00
Speaker 1: school thought that says, do everything you possibly can and
28:02
Speaker 1: and this is kind of what I typically air towards.
28:05
Speaker 1: You know, spray your stuff down, do the sent free shower,
28:07
Speaker 1: store it outside, tryo zone, try this thing that I
28:10
Speaker 1: try it all. At least you can maybe help yourself
28:13
Speaker 1: a little bit. And the other school thought is you're
28:16
Speaker 1: never going to deer's nose. Why even bother just focus
28:21
Speaker 1: on playing the wind right and then it doesn't matter. Um,
28:25
Speaker 1: what do you think, where do you fall on that
28:26
Speaker 1: pad or where does your research point you towards? When
28:29
Speaker 1: you talk to all these different people. Can you defeat
28:31
Speaker 1: it in any way? Is it even worth trying? The point,
28:36
Speaker 1: the point I make, and I do believe this um,
28:40
Speaker 1: is that you can. You can knock down your sent
28:43
Speaker 1: enough to where you confuse them, where you make them
28:46
Speaker 1: think you're farther away than you actually are. And I
28:49
Speaker 1: remember being able to pick up on that with my
28:52
Speaker 1: own two eyes sort of speak back and probably like
28:55
Speaker 1: the mid mid the late nineties, and um, this is
29:00
Speaker 1: back when Yeah, I remember, Mark, this shows you. I'm
29:03
Speaker 1: really aging myself here. But one of my first trade
29:05
Speaker 1: shows I attended was proud of about nineteen ninety one
29:13
Speaker 1: when sent blocks first came out and Greg Sussimon was
29:17
Speaker 1: Greg Sussman, the guy who phoned in the Centlock company
29:20
Speaker 1: had like a little ten by ten booth at um
29:23
Speaker 1: what was then the Bull Hunting trade show, and he
29:26
Speaker 1: was doing the scent that this um test to cash
29:28
Speaker 1: show people the technology he was using where he put
29:31
Speaker 1: different scents in a jar and then covered the jar
29:34
Speaker 1: jar jars with um His scent fabric, which in those
29:38
Speaker 1: days it's kind of it's fun to look back into stuff.
29:40
Speaker 1: And I wish I would have kept Mark, I mean
29:42
Speaker 1: um His Greg's original stuff, because if it looked like
29:47
Speaker 1: but basically dark pajamas almost something like they um well,
29:52
Speaker 1: like you know, just something like the Ninjas of the
29:54
Speaker 1: Ward made me. You know, so this the stuff you'd
29:58
Speaker 1: you put these these these these the sunlock fabric pajamas
30:04
Speaker 1: on and then put your hunting clothes over top of them.
30:07
Speaker 1: And one thing that I remember a couple of different times,
30:10
Speaker 1: I'd be sitting on an edge of a field up
30:12
Speaker 1: in a tree, and you watch a deer way off
30:15
Speaker 1: in the distance austin pick us nose. They're down windy,
30:19
Speaker 1: you they pick up the nose and they just certain
30:22
Speaker 1: waiting that nose back and forth in the air like
30:25
Speaker 1: they're like you could tell they're confused, like they can
30:28
Speaker 1: they can detect something, but they're not alarmed. And I
30:32
Speaker 1: saw a couple of different times where dolls and young
30:34
Speaker 1: bucks were worked their way across that field the nose
30:37
Speaker 1: in the air, sniffing and sniffing and sniffing and sniffing.
30:40
Speaker 1: Trying to figure out where that samella is coming from.
30:43
Speaker 1: The new that they knew it was was danger, but
30:45
Speaker 1: they weren't scared. They were more like curious knowing they're
30:49
Speaker 1: getting like there. They thought, you're off in the distance
30:52
Speaker 1: that you know, farther than you they were. And eventually
30:54
Speaker 1: they get within um tuner yards center fifty yards before
30:58
Speaker 1: they started getting a little a little more and see
31:00
Speaker 1: where it's going. To think this might not be good.
31:03
Speaker 1: But I thought, you know, God, in the past though,
31:05
Speaker 1: you'd see that kind of behavior and they just get
31:07
Speaker 1: that smell, smell, get that sentence be gone. So I thought,
31:11
Speaker 1: you can't tell me it has no impact. Now, can
31:14
Speaker 1: you make it where you're invisible? No, that's again where
31:17
Speaker 1: I am now in the modern era. Quote guys like
31:20
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, because I think one of your great quotes
31:22
Speaker 1: in that article is that you know, you just want
31:25
Speaker 1: to kind of make it to where you can't can't
31:28
Speaker 1: decide for sure what it is that's that's UM providing
31:32
Speaker 1: that the extra little little um, the um sent suppressing
31:38
Speaker 1: UM effort. But there's but you can't pinpoint it. But
31:41
Speaker 1: not you know, you enough these things the shotgun approaches
31:44
Speaker 1: you described it I think I buy that I've seen
31:48
Speaker 1: enough of it where I don't I really get kind
31:51
Speaker 1: of testing. When guys say all that stuff bologna that
31:53
Speaker 1: doesn't work, I think, no, there's there's enough good science
31:56
Speaker 1: in there that's been tested by the university, like Ruckers
32:00
Speaker 1: and elsewhere where the scent lock stuff. It does trap sense,
32:04
Speaker 1: it does hold scent, and you can reactivate the stuff
32:08
Speaker 1: to point where it'sorbs more ascent, and so you can
32:11
Speaker 1: you can make a difference there, So I won't discount
32:13
Speaker 1: that where I think most hunters fail, and I put
32:17
Speaker 1: myself in this category. It takes real, considered, consistent effort
32:22
Speaker 1: to knock down that scent all the time, and white
32:26
Speaker 1: tail hunters can do it because you know we can.
32:28
Speaker 1: We can kind of they can choose where we're gonna hunt.
32:31
Speaker 1: We can kind of plan each stand time Age tell
32:35
Speaker 1: me sit in the stand. We can kind of plan
32:37
Speaker 1: for it and work around where it gets tougher to do.
32:39
Speaker 1: I think in Western environments where you're you're moving constantly,
32:43
Speaker 1: you're you're you're spotting a stalk, and you're glassing all
32:46
Speaker 1: these kinds of things, you're building building the sweat, it's
32:49
Speaker 1: much harder to control they're se in that setting than
32:51
Speaker 1: than it is in a typical bow hunters in white
32:55
Speaker 1: tail country. So to me that all those kind of
32:58
Speaker 1: things factor into this. So I never I don't UM.
33:03
Speaker 1: I still try to spray down, you know, to use
33:05
Speaker 1: the scent scent killing sprays and that kind of thing,
33:08
Speaker 1: because I figure, what's the harm at least, you know,
33:11
Speaker 1: it doesn't hurt anything to try it. And and I
33:15
Speaker 1: and I have seen these nice little tests that we
33:17
Speaker 1: do with the human knows where you people do have
33:21
Speaker 1: a harder time detecting things that have been sprayed down.
33:25
Speaker 1: And I figured, well, you know you're playing you're basically
33:29
Speaker 1: playing percentages. You know, if you're gonna if you could
33:32
Speaker 1: have a choice between um A two percent effectiveness and
33:36
Speaker 1: zero effectiveness, well of course you can try the two
33:39
Speaker 1: percent or three percent, and it's a little edge at
33:42
Speaker 1: the right time in the right place, and time might
33:45
Speaker 1: just be enough to make it work. So why would
33:47
Speaker 1: you discount that? Exactly? Definitely agree with that. Now, what
33:52
Speaker 1: about the latest trend in the scent control world, which
33:56
Speaker 1: is Ozone. Right, there was the Ozonics and then they're
33:58
Speaker 1: Scent Crusher, and then is all these other companies coming
34:01
Speaker 1: out different ozone devices and stuff. Have you been able
34:04
Speaker 1: to talk to any researchers or see any science that
34:08
Speaker 1: backs that up, anything in your research that points to
34:11
Speaker 1: how effective that is to any degree, I'm not really
34:15
Speaker 1: you know there where you get as you can figure
34:19
Speaker 1: out anyone can figure out real quickly, is that it's
34:21
Speaker 1: hard to prove the effectiveness of this kind of stuff
34:24
Speaker 1: out in the field. And so like to me, I
34:27
Speaker 1: I look at the ozone idea and that this um
34:30
Speaker 1: these different different devices that you know, UM based like ozonics,
34:37
Speaker 1: I think it makes sense to me. I mean, I
34:39
Speaker 1: guess the thing that convinces me, Mark is when you
34:41
Speaker 1: can do a good practical example of how that stuff,
34:44
Speaker 1: how that stuff came to be. And I think the
34:47
Speaker 1: story they use that it makes sense to me that
34:49
Speaker 1: it was developed apparently by a guy who was was
34:52
Speaker 1: he like a veterinarian or working or doing ne necrop
34:56
Speaker 1: necrop SE's on dead animals and use this zone to
35:00
Speaker 1: make it um. So it was quite so stinky over
35:04
Speaker 1: the operating table, over the examining table, and by blowing
35:08
Speaker 1: this ozone across the table and killing that scent or
35:11
Speaker 1: whatever it does, destroying that scent you know, you think, well,
35:14
Speaker 1: you know, I can see where if you could put
35:17
Speaker 1: put the device like that position over your over your
35:20
Speaker 1: head so as it blows off from the tree stand,
35:23
Speaker 1: it's disrupting your your your scent distribution. And I guess
35:28
Speaker 1: the way I look at it is UM. During my
35:30
Speaker 1: Navy days, I remember taking all his Fasse firefighting classes,
35:34
Speaker 1: and they always talked about this foam they use in
35:36
Speaker 1: firefighting doesn't really put the phone put the fire out,
35:39
Speaker 1: but it keeps the oxygen from reaching the flames, so
35:42
Speaker 1: then effectively, as smothers that it cuts it off. I think,
35:46
Speaker 1: while you can do that in a in a sun
35:47
Speaker 1: stream with ozone, it makes sense. And but as far
35:52
Speaker 1: as you know, when you're trying to improve this stuff,
35:54
Speaker 1: that's where it is tricky, because you know, there's so
35:56
Speaker 1: many different factors that come into this UM. You know,
36:00
Speaker 1: if you don't point the thing down when correctly, or
36:03
Speaker 1: or if your scent goes off with a different direction
36:05
Speaker 1: than that a zone blowing out and then then they
36:08
Speaker 1: so there's always a little things that are very hard
36:10
Speaker 1: to prove UM scientifically and consistently, and there's many little
36:14
Speaker 1: factors that come into that testing process that disrupt things
36:18
Speaker 1: enough to where he can't get always the firm conclusions
36:22
Speaker 1: that we'd all like to have. Yeah, so true, But
36:25
Speaker 1: like you said, it does seem like it's another one
36:28
Speaker 1: of those things that that intuitively, at least when you're
36:32
Speaker 1: out there experientially, it does seem to help to some degree,
36:36
Speaker 1: at least at least I've seen it. Um, yeah, it
36:39
Speaker 1: seems to help. But like you said, there's a whole
36:41
Speaker 1: lot of what ifs and butts, and you know, there
36:44
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways to go wrong too. But yeah,
36:48
Speaker 1: I think that's where I get as a reporter, coming
36:53
Speaker 1: up from the reporter's point of view. That's why I
36:55
Speaker 1: seem it's important for me to talk to people like you.
36:59
Speaker 1: I ask like Greg Miller when he's what he's come across.
37:02
Speaker 1: Greg's always been a pretty good street shooter. I've known
37:05
Speaker 1: him for about thirty years. Grant Woods that I've talked
37:07
Speaker 1: to different people and they don't always want to be
37:09
Speaker 1: quoted on on various stuff because of various um, you know,
37:14
Speaker 1: requirements they have with sponsors, whatever might be. But you know, eventually,
37:18
Speaker 1: you if you talk to enough people and they trust
37:21
Speaker 1: you enough to tell you what they really think, and
37:24
Speaker 1: then um, you can, you can kind of. Over time,
37:28
Speaker 1: I think I'm always always to believe. I always believe
37:31
Speaker 1: in the idea that you know, facts aren't really disputable.
37:34
Speaker 1: You know, you can't have um, you can't have I
37:38
Speaker 1: don't believe in the alternative facts. That believe in facts.
37:42
Speaker 1: And when I when you get to a point where
37:44
Speaker 1: you're interviewed enough people, you've read enough of the literature,
37:48
Speaker 1: and you make some conclusions that well, here's the facts
37:51
Speaker 1: and here's the BS, and so when I tend to
37:55
Speaker 1: I find myself over time, the people I really trust
37:59
Speaker 1: that I feel like I can I can share their
38:01
Speaker 1: their insights and feel confident that I can fall back
38:07
Speaker 1: on the information they provide to back up arguments if
38:11
Speaker 1: someone disputes them. What was the people I keep going
38:14
Speaker 1: back to because I figured out they've they've done enough
38:16
Speaker 1: on this, they have enough experience to were plus they
38:19
Speaker 1: they just day and day out tell the truth. I
38:23
Speaker 1: go with those folks and I stand by them. Yeah,
38:28
Speaker 1: what do you think then when you when you think
38:30
Speaker 1: back on people like that or research that you've been
38:34
Speaker 1: reading up on. Let's shift from smell now to site H.
38:40
Speaker 1: There's also a recent movement in the site world where
38:42
Speaker 1: people are like cameos for the birds. They don't need
38:45
Speaker 1: a cameo. You can hunt in whatever. Um. I'm curious
38:49
Speaker 1: what you've seen when it comes to the science of
38:51
Speaker 1: dear sight, um, and what that should inform us as hunters,
38:54
Speaker 1: or how that should inform us as hunters. What what
38:57
Speaker 1: what stands out to you about deer's vision and why
39:00
Speaker 1: and how might it be important to us as hunters
39:02
Speaker 1: to know that Yeah, yeah, that's that's a you're not
39:07
Speaker 1: proud of reading the same stuff and hearing from the
39:09
Speaker 1: same people, and you're at least hearing the same arguments
39:11
Speaker 1: from different folks. And the thing in the bottom line
39:14
Speaker 1: where I always start with when it comes to the
39:16
Speaker 1: dear vision is their ability to see motion. They can
39:20
Speaker 1: see motions so well humans see motion really well as
39:25
Speaker 1: already called from what they can figure out what I
39:29
Speaker 1: think it's called, like, um, the flicker effect or something
39:32
Speaker 1: that they abially to see movement and then quick respond
39:35
Speaker 1: to it. And as you're as you're moving yourself dear
39:39
Speaker 1: um that they are have been able to test us
39:42
Speaker 1: that deer can can see as they're movements to the woods.
39:45
Speaker 1: They can see things and respond to it or have
39:49
Speaker 1: interpret or whatever you want to call analyze it like
39:51
Speaker 1: two and a half times faster than humans can. So
39:54
Speaker 1: that which proudly explains why they can run through the
39:57
Speaker 1: woods and not poked their eye out all the time.
39:59
Speaker 1: If we ran through the at the speed um, at
40:02
Speaker 1: even our fastest speed, which is nowhere near what deers is,
40:05
Speaker 1: we we probably jams. We'll probably lose our eyes in
40:08
Speaker 1: no time. And you think how how tough that is
40:11
Speaker 1: to negotiate stuff. We're not constantly duck in your head
40:14
Speaker 1: and and and seeing stuff coming. Well, dear, um, you
40:18
Speaker 1: know I I've killed a lot, dear in my life,
40:20
Speaker 1: and I've yet to find a deer the poked out eye.
40:22
Speaker 1: Think it's amazing, you know, I find them. I find
40:25
Speaker 1: scars on him at times. But then you don't know
40:28
Speaker 1: if forgot from jabbing into a branch or jabbing from
40:31
Speaker 1: a buck, whatever might be. Um, there're a thing that um,
40:35
Speaker 1: I remember to mark again this is this speaks to
40:38
Speaker 1: my age. But I remember reading all the time as
40:42
Speaker 1: the kid growing up that dear sea black and white.
40:44
Speaker 1: That's all I can see is black and white. And
40:47
Speaker 1: that was really the common belief back and probably well
40:50
Speaker 1: into the into the seventies, and probably the even the
40:54
Speaker 1: early eighties was probably still people thinking that deer basically
40:58
Speaker 1: see black and white. And Carl Miller at the University
41:01
Speaker 1: of Georgia and some of his students started looking into
41:04
Speaker 1: it and realized, no, they can see some colors. But
41:08
Speaker 1: but the thing that Charl Millery will still talk about
41:11
Speaker 1: to this day is that we're we getting the trouble
41:14
Speaker 1: all the time. We can analyze, um, what how many
41:19
Speaker 1: cones may roger and the deer's I what what we
41:22
Speaker 1: think they can see? But one thing we can't do
41:25
Speaker 1: a deer, we can't actually ask them. Um, we can't
41:29
Speaker 1: put like those a little grid you if you were
41:31
Speaker 1: taking a color vision test. Um, anyone enter the military
41:35
Speaker 1: takes us color vision tests. Now, remember my color vision
41:39
Speaker 1: was was fine. I every little shirt they flipped over,
41:42
Speaker 1: I could identify the little number hidden number in these
41:45
Speaker 1: in these um in these pictures. Whereas guys with certain
41:49
Speaker 1: color vision problems can't see those numbers and they so
41:53
Speaker 1: they get blackballed. You know, they couldn't go in and
41:56
Speaker 1: well you have that problem, huh, I've got I've got
42:00
Speaker 1: a little bit of red green color deficiency. Blindness. Yeah. Yeah,
42:04
Speaker 1: So so like guys like you are are the ones
42:07
Speaker 1: they'll kind of refer to as they'll they'll say, well,
42:10
Speaker 1: there's one color blindness that m might line up with
42:15
Speaker 1: a deer color blindness is it's that? Is that one
42:18
Speaker 1: that you have? But the thing they get tricky about
42:21
Speaker 1: where they get a little more careful about. They'll say, yeah,
42:24
Speaker 1: but what we don't know is what the dear brain
42:28
Speaker 1: is interpreting from what it's seeing. And that's where humans
42:31
Speaker 1: we can we know damn well what humans are interpreting
42:34
Speaker 1: because we ask them, you know, can you see this?
42:37
Speaker 1: And you say yes or no? Well how do you
42:39
Speaker 1: How do you prove that with a deer? You can't
42:41
Speaker 1: just put a bunch of flip charts in front of
42:42
Speaker 1: it and starts saying, tell us, tell us, which one
42:45
Speaker 1: do you see the number three in this picture? You
42:48
Speaker 1: know you can't do that with deer. So it's really
42:50
Speaker 1: always open to interpretation until we can find a way
42:53
Speaker 1: to test dear to pick out those little things that
42:55
Speaker 1: it does get tricky. But at George they have developed
42:58
Speaker 1: some tests and they have shown that you know, dear
43:02
Speaker 1: for example, they think, um see like the blue shades
43:08
Speaker 1: like ten ten, eighteen times better than than than humans
43:12
Speaker 1: can maybe more than that. Think I hanmeralize all the
43:14
Speaker 1: details in that, but it's they can see blues really good.
43:18
Speaker 1: They can see um into the UV spectrum, but they
43:21
Speaker 1: can't see in the infrared spectrum and where you know,
43:24
Speaker 1: so they have a lot of different um um things
43:28
Speaker 1: they think they know based on the structure of the eye.
43:32
Speaker 1: Because one of the cool things about um when they
43:34
Speaker 1: break down the um the things and the deer as
43:37
Speaker 1: I the thing that you know, I just kind of
43:39
Speaker 1: rely on is that nature wouldn't provide that particular um
43:44
Speaker 1: filter or that particular number of rods and cones unless
43:47
Speaker 1: the deer is able to use them, you know, just
43:49
Speaker 1: you know, nature is so efficient that way, so chances
43:52
Speaker 1: are it doesn't have like we have this yellow filter
43:56
Speaker 1: in our eye that helps us um break down detail
43:59
Speaker 1: or getting you can see detail really clear. You know,
44:02
Speaker 1: when you talk about twenty vision, that means, you know,
44:04
Speaker 1: good solid vision that almost everyone who sees that basically
44:10
Speaker 1: indicates this is what you should see a yard thing
44:14
Speaker 1: it is whereas deer they figure their acuity either their
44:17
Speaker 1: ability to see that buying detail. It's only about third
44:21
Speaker 1: of what ours is. So they but they figured, well,
44:24
Speaker 1: you know, they really don't need that um to tend
44:26
Speaker 1: to see to find detail that humans requires, so they
44:29
Speaker 1: don't they don't need that, so they don't have that
44:31
Speaker 1: deal filter. And plus that y'all filter apparently filters out
44:35
Speaker 1: like the ultra violet lights, which for our lifespan we
44:39
Speaker 1: live a long time that's important to have. We didn't have,
44:42
Speaker 1: we'd probably go blind at some point. Where a deer
44:45
Speaker 1: they don't live that long, so they don't have that
44:46
Speaker 1: yellow filter. So there's always cool things that they are
44:50
Speaker 1: able to look at. But still the thing they can't do,
44:52
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, is they can't they can't flash
44:55
Speaker 1: pictures in front of a deer's eyes and then tell
44:58
Speaker 1: what and then have them tell us what they see.
45:01
Speaker 1: So so the big takeaways on vision or the things
45:05
Speaker 1: that we think we kind of know are they've got
45:08
Speaker 1: a better than average ability to see blues, So don't
45:12
Speaker 1: go out there wearing a blue ball cap or blue
45:14
Speaker 1: jeans or something like that. Um, they don't necessarily have
45:17
Speaker 1: the level of attention to ability to see detail, but
45:21
Speaker 1: movement is so key for them. So again, like my
45:25
Speaker 1: grandpa told me when I was a little kids. Stop moving, Mark,
45:27
Speaker 1: stop moving, that's the case. Still keep it slow, right,
45:32
Speaker 1: you know. And another another fascinating thing about UM, why,
45:37
Speaker 1: like why we can get away with so much more
45:39
Speaker 1: up up in a tree standing you can in the
45:41
Speaker 1: ground is you know, the way their eyes designed. We
45:44
Speaker 1: have a ground pupil, so we can see above and below.
45:47
Speaker 1: That's pretty good, you know, without really moving our eyes
45:49
Speaker 1: around a whole lot, we can be that good up
45:52
Speaker 1: and down vertical vision. Where a deer lives lives full
45:55
Speaker 1: time on the ground, it's been preyed on by poor
45:58
Speaker 1: legged predators all through all through its eon, so it
46:01
Speaker 1: doesn't really need that um ability to see upward as
46:04
Speaker 1: much as as UM like some animals might. But the
46:07
Speaker 1: deer does not see above quite as well as we can,
46:11
Speaker 1: and so you can you can get away with stuff.
46:13
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, they get better above. Once they know
46:15
Speaker 1: they're being hunted from above, they'll they'll cock their head
46:18
Speaker 1: up there and look look that way more often than
46:21
Speaker 1: a deer that's not tune into that. And that's why
46:23
Speaker 1: you see areas where they have a hunted a lot
46:26
Speaker 1: when they when they've been hunted hunted a lot by
46:28
Speaker 1: UM from tree stands. Yeah, they definitely do look up more,
46:32
Speaker 1: but as far as it walking through the woods, unless
46:35
Speaker 1: they actually make a conscious effort to look up, you know,
46:37
Speaker 1: they don't see that that stuff up above them as
46:39
Speaker 1: well as we can. So those kind of things are
46:42
Speaker 1: able to let you know, pinpoint based on just that
46:45
Speaker 1: the structure of the deer's eye and um, you know,
46:49
Speaker 1: you know, try to gauge, well, what what's it good at,
46:52
Speaker 1: what's it not good at, and what colors does it
46:54
Speaker 1: see better? And another one that that comes into play
46:57
Speaker 1: is the fact that I'm you know, their eye is
47:01
Speaker 1: really well built for the time time of days they're
47:04
Speaker 1: most active. You know, that's right at the edge of
47:06
Speaker 1: the day, you know, dawn and dusk. You know, if
47:08
Speaker 1: their eye picks up on these um, I think it's
47:11
Speaker 1: in the blue spectrum again, those blue spectrum lights that
47:14
Speaker 1: gets reflected like underneath the tail for example, it gives
47:18
Speaker 1: off a light that's in the blue spectrum. So when
47:22
Speaker 1: they're run into the woods and they the mother's got
47:25
Speaker 1: his tail up and they're bunch following it, they can
47:28
Speaker 1: pick that on white tail up really well and light
47:31
Speaker 1: that is being reflected off of it. So those kind
47:33
Speaker 1: of things are. I love reading that stuff and then
47:36
Speaker 1: I and I end up always you know, thinking well,
47:40
Speaker 1: you know, luck can we do to beat that? And
47:41
Speaker 1: I think, well, you always come back down to the
47:45
Speaker 1: thing you just mentioned, sits still mark. It's still going
47:47
Speaker 1: to be the number one thing. Yeah, I think I
47:51
Speaker 1: think I need one of those like wrist bracelets or something,
47:54
Speaker 1: or put a little piece of paper on my bowl
47:56
Speaker 1: riser that or the top of my visor my hat
47:58
Speaker 1: that just has sits still mark. That would be a
48:00
Speaker 1: good just reminder all day every day when I'm out hunting,
48:05
Speaker 1: because it is it's to the basic thing you're taught
48:08
Speaker 1: in the time you first hunt. But damn it's hard
48:10
Speaker 1: to do. It's hard to sit there and have that
48:12
Speaker 1: discipline and not and well know it kills me all
48:16
Speaker 1: the time. Is um They always tell you don't snap
48:18
Speaker 1: your head around when you hear hear a thud noise. Yeah,
48:21
Speaker 1: I think what, Yeah, I've never been able to stop
48:25
Speaker 1: stop myself and snapping ahead around. That's why I'm not. Yeah,
48:29
Speaker 1: it's just an kind of an instinct. So speaking of that, then, right,
48:33
Speaker 1: you hear this snap, we since this over the right shoulder,
48:38
Speaker 1: we spin our head. They see it. Um, we had
48:41
Speaker 1: some directional acuity with our hearing, we can kind of
48:44
Speaker 1: tell where sounds come from, moving now tow dear here.
48:48
Speaker 1: They have that even more to an even higher degree
48:51
Speaker 1: than we do. And you brought this up a little
48:53
Speaker 1: bit earlier, Um, But that seems to be like the
48:55
Speaker 1: superpower when it comes to dear hearing. Maybe necessarily they
48:59
Speaker 1: can hear ten million times farther than us, but they
49:02
Speaker 1: certainly can detect the source of sound better than us, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
49:07
Speaker 1: they have that ability to when they can turn those
49:10
Speaker 1: ears towards the sun of a source or if their
49:13
Speaker 1: here's the point in that that direction, when they hear it,
49:17
Speaker 1: they can lock on real quickly. And almost every deer
49:20
Speaker 1: hunter I know I can tell a story about doing
49:23
Speaker 1: something like rattling. When they're rattling, rattling antlers, or doing
49:27
Speaker 1: something that that scares it where a deer gets curious,
49:31
Speaker 1: those deer will show up right on the spot almost
49:36
Speaker 1: of we're where you rattle from, or also show up
49:39
Speaker 1: I think I think that you brought this point up.
49:41
Speaker 1: If they don't show up there, they'll show up down
49:43
Speaker 1: wind of that spot almost precisely like its precisely downwind
49:47
Speaker 1: of it where they know that's that sound came from.
49:50
Speaker 1: Let me figure out how you know what it was
49:52
Speaker 1: before I commit myself here. And so that ability to
49:56
Speaker 1: it's basically trying, you know, the idea of triangulating and
49:59
Speaker 1: when you have a big ears and you have you
50:02
Speaker 1: know apart, what are the six five inches aparted up
50:05
Speaker 1: on top of their head, that gives it just enough
50:07
Speaker 1: that three dimensional ability to triangulate that Really, it's it's
50:11
Speaker 1: it's powerful. We're um, you know, you think, well, how
50:14
Speaker 1: we do We do pretty well ourselves with with fixed years.
50:17
Speaker 1: So I think what the deer can do with with
50:19
Speaker 1: these these you know, like almost like readar dishes the
50:23
Speaker 1: top of their head. Yeah. The thing for me when
50:26
Speaker 1: it comes to that that I always try to remind
50:28
Speaker 1: myself and I would remind other people too, is like
50:32
Speaker 1: when you are actively choosing to make noise. So if
50:35
Speaker 1: you are grunting, a rattling trying to attract dear to
50:37
Speaker 1: your two within shooting range, you better sure as hell
50:41
Speaker 1: believe that it could work. Because if you rattle and
50:44
Speaker 1: then after ten seconds you don't see anything, you lose
50:47
Speaker 1: your focus point. You're gonna get surprised. A couple of
50:49
Speaker 1: times with the deer showing up ten yards away looking
50:52
Speaker 1: at you moving around your tree stands. So you better
50:55
Speaker 1: assume that, hey, they can they're locked after you make
50:57
Speaker 1: that noise, you better just make the assumption, Okay, there's
51:00
Speaker 1: a buck, he's locked on. He's going to be within
51:02
Speaker 1: ten yards of me. I better be prepared for that
51:04
Speaker 1: in case that happens, because if you get lax at
51:07
Speaker 1: that moment, I've seen it too many times, you're gonna
51:09
Speaker 1: pay definitely, you know. That's I think we're always accumulative
51:14
Speaker 1: things of hunting a fishing come into play, and that
51:17
Speaker 1: that confidence that it won't happen all the time. It
51:21
Speaker 1: might only happen a couple of times a fall, but
51:24
Speaker 1: you're better be ready when it happens. And I think
51:26
Speaker 1: anyone who's ever gone fishing, and whether it's seeing watching
51:29
Speaker 1: corks or trolling whatever, if you don't have confidence that
51:33
Speaker 1: at some point that rod holder is gonna they're gonna
51:36
Speaker 1: be a rod bucking in the back end of the
51:37
Speaker 1: boat with a fish on the other end, you know,
51:39
Speaker 1: you lose your focus, your mind wanders, and then in
51:42
Speaker 1: those cases um that that we're trolling, you can you
51:46
Speaker 1: can get away with that. But when you're like digging
51:49
Speaker 1: for walleyes and you get lax, you get complacent, and
51:52
Speaker 1: you lose your confidence, you're probably gonna miss the fish.
51:55
Speaker 1: And so I think all these kind of things start
51:57
Speaker 1: adding up for people who hunting fish a lot, they
51:59
Speaker 1: start realizing that this is a matter of you know,
52:02
Speaker 1: like we're talking earlier that when when we talk in
52:05
Speaker 1: terms of one percent two percent success rates, um, those
52:09
Speaker 1: aren't those aren't unrealistic um expectations really. But but if
52:14
Speaker 1: you're not ready in that two percent happens, you're gonna
52:17
Speaker 1: miss your chance. And it happens all the time. So
52:20
Speaker 1: you know, one of my one of my favorite things
52:23
Speaker 1: I worked on years ago. It was an article for
52:26
Speaker 1: Deer and Deer Rning magazine where a woman named Karen
52:30
Speaker 1: Dasher I think was her maiden name. She did some
52:33
Speaker 1: great research on on scrape visitation by bucks and she
52:37
Speaker 1: found that only about two percent or three percent of
52:42
Speaker 1: visitations to an active scrape we're happening during um during
52:46
Speaker 1: daylight mayment five percent, but wasn't. It was a pretty
52:49
Speaker 1: low percentage of scrape visitations was occurring and shooting light.
52:55
Speaker 1: And so you know, some people would read that and goal, well,
52:58
Speaker 1: what's the point of sitting there? Point two percent that
53:01
Speaker 1: you're time sitting on that stand, there's a chance about
53:03
Speaker 1: buck come and buy, And I think, well, if that's
53:06
Speaker 1: you know, the God you've dealt with it, then it
53:08
Speaker 1: kind of speaks to the idea that you better be
53:09
Speaker 1: out there every chance you get sitting on that spot,
53:12
Speaker 1: because you might if you're not there as often as
53:15
Speaker 1: you can can be out there, you'll never You'll certainly
53:17
Speaker 1: that then really go up to worse than Yeah, there's
53:23
Speaker 1: there's certainly a lot too trying to just that confidencing,
53:28
Speaker 1: just being out there and knowing that if you're if
53:31
Speaker 1: you're doing something that you have faith in, you're gonna
53:33
Speaker 1: do it a lot better. This comes to a self
53:35
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy, and that applies to so many things. When
53:39
Speaker 1: it comes to dear. On the hearing thing, I remember
53:44
Speaker 1: reading something about you had mentioned that deer have the
53:48
Speaker 1: ability to there's some kind of neural filtering ability with
53:52
Speaker 1: your hearing. Do you recall that and what can you
53:54
Speaker 1: describe that? Yeah? Yeah, neural filtering is basically the ability
53:59
Speaker 1: to to um the deer, you know, because they live
54:03
Speaker 1: in their environment seven three sixty five a year throughout there,
54:07
Speaker 1: they they hear songs all day long that they can
54:11
Speaker 1: eventually they figure out which one's to filter out, which
54:16
Speaker 1: one was not to filter out. And the best way
54:18
Speaker 1: I could I come up with to describe that ability,
54:22
Speaker 1: um in human terms, is the idea that most of
54:24
Speaker 1: us have been in a loud environment, like at a
54:26
Speaker 1: cocktail party, and were and we were able to focus
54:31
Speaker 1: on the person in front of us and what they're
54:33
Speaker 1: talking to us about, and listening only to their voice
54:36
Speaker 1: and tuning out all the rest of the background noise.
54:40
Speaker 1: And but then somehow in that process, though we're listening,
54:45
Speaker 1: but if we hear our name mentioned, like a couple
54:47
Speaker 1: of couple of people away, or or or a certain
54:50
Speaker 1: phrase or certain words that are always of high interest
54:53
Speaker 1: to us, um, we we somehow are you able to
54:57
Speaker 1: pick out those noises, those sounds and of the meaning
55:00
Speaker 1: and look that way? And dear you think when they
55:03
Speaker 1: do the same thing out in the woods, you know
55:04
Speaker 1: they hear a scroll bots into the woods, or or
55:08
Speaker 1: a possum wading through the woods or downstalls, you get
55:12
Speaker 1: those um armadillo's and eventually you know, you think, humans,
55:17
Speaker 1: how many times, honey, times we've been hunting, we get
55:20
Speaker 1: pretty good at picking out all those solids and differentiating them.
55:23
Speaker 1: But we still get tricked all the time, or we
55:26
Speaker 1: or we don't want to be tricks. We look anyway
55:29
Speaker 1: and son, deer, they just if they didn't have that
55:33
Speaker 1: a building that they would they would not last one
55:36
Speaker 1: if they would be basically nervous wrecks. Because one of
55:39
Speaker 1: the one of the trues of deer that I always
55:42
Speaker 1: keep in mind. I make this comment all the time, um,
55:46
Speaker 1: is that deer either scared or they're dead if they're
55:49
Speaker 1: not in that potential. They're not always in that frame
55:53
Speaker 1: of mind were Um, they have to they have to
55:56
Speaker 1: pay attention. They're not always paying attention. They can't afford
55:59
Speaker 1: to let their don't like we do, and they get complacent.
56:02
Speaker 1: But yet there's many times you see them just totally
56:05
Speaker 1: disregard certain noises at as because they're complacent. I think
56:08
Speaker 1: it's just because they know this is not they they're
56:11
Speaker 1: so good at that they identify that sound is non
56:14
Speaker 1: threatening and they just keep going about their business. And
56:18
Speaker 1: that's where, um, I think in this article we talked
56:20
Speaker 1: about you know, you know, I got talking about well,
56:23
Speaker 1: what's the best way to approach to stand when when
56:25
Speaker 1: it's when a dry woods And that's when you mentioned
56:30
Speaker 1: that the idea, Well, sometimes that you're thinking that might
56:33
Speaker 1: be probably smart just to run to your stand or
56:35
Speaker 1: try to your stand. A Cadence said that they just
56:38
Speaker 1: don't usually just don't sha with people. If you're sneaking in,
56:42
Speaker 1: you know, they probably a sound that they have learned.
56:45
Speaker 1: There's nothing there's nothing safe about a sneaky human, and
56:49
Speaker 1: so they will pick that up that picked that sound
56:52
Speaker 1: out every time. Yeah, I've definitely tried to change up
56:55
Speaker 1: my cad And says sometimes when when you know they're
56:57
Speaker 1: gonna hear something, it's better not to sound like this
57:00
Speaker 1: the sneaky human. That's That's definitely something that I think.
57:03
Speaker 1: No another thing I feel like when when we're talking
57:07
Speaker 1: about this ability to neural filter, dear able to pick
57:09
Speaker 1: the sounds that matter. Um, of course there's gonna be
57:13
Speaker 1: human like sounds are so unnatural, like metal on metal,
57:16
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I'm sure something they pick up
57:17
Speaker 1: on right away. But what about this one. Um, this
57:20
Speaker 1: is something that I've wondered about and seen, and that
57:24
Speaker 1: is other animals making warning noises. So let's say you
57:28
Speaker 1: are sitting in your tree and you happen to move,
57:31
Speaker 1: and a squirrel sees you and just starts going off,
57:34
Speaker 1: starts chattering, chattering, chattering. It's like that warning or a
57:37
Speaker 1: bird you're walking through and a crow starts crowing at you,
57:39
Speaker 1: crowing at you. To there's any truth or validity to
57:43
Speaker 1: the fact or the idea, the theory that certain animals
57:46
Speaker 1: will make warnings that deer can pick up on and
57:49
Speaker 1: they interpret it as danger in some kind of way.
57:53
Speaker 1: That's right, right. UM. I get nervous about making any
57:58
Speaker 1: hard and fast comment on something like that because I
58:01
Speaker 1: have no way annoying for certain um. But I guess personally,
58:07
Speaker 1: I know it irritates the crap out of me and
58:09
Speaker 1: worries me when an animal starts doing that girls chattering
58:14
Speaker 1: at chipmunsters, cheaping those kind of sounds. Um, that worries me.
58:18
Speaker 1: I thank god. You know, how can another animal that
58:21
Speaker 1: would not take notice of that? And then the figure
58:25
Speaker 1: if if it's if it's on a route that might
58:27
Speaker 1: take it somewhere close to me. Now it's probably having
58:30
Speaker 1: second thoughts because it might not know that. They might
58:33
Speaker 1: not have their own little language. But the thing. I
58:36
Speaker 1: say that just because logically I can't prove it. But
58:39
Speaker 1: but but then again, I always remember one of my
58:41
Speaker 1: little memories from childhood was my grandmother listening to a
58:46
Speaker 1: blue jay call one morning, and it's a certain certain
58:50
Speaker 1: call that blue jay's make and she goes, uh, I
58:53
Speaker 1: guess to be reigning leader today, And I said, like,
58:57
Speaker 1: what she's She says that that's on there and his
59:01
Speaker 1: blood was made it against she's that's that call right
59:04
Speaker 1: there indicates that later today is in the rain. And
59:08
Speaker 1: to this day, when I hear that particularly blue jay call, God,
59:12
Speaker 1: she's it's usually been right. And but but for me,
59:16
Speaker 1: the thing is, Mark, I couldn't begin to tell you
59:19
Speaker 1: what too right now. I imitate that sound to the
59:23
Speaker 1: to a point where you could understand it and where
59:26
Speaker 1: I could actually pass that knowledge along. So I think
59:28
Speaker 1: there's this knowledge that we can pass along through direct
59:31
Speaker 1: contact like that that will always stick with us. But
59:34
Speaker 1: how do you communicate that to a fellow hunter in
59:38
Speaker 1: an article? And and then so that's where I don't
59:41
Speaker 1: discount the idea that that deer that lives in that
59:43
Speaker 1: environment seven might be able to hear a little nuanced
59:47
Speaker 1: call that we don't get the nuance, but the deer does.
59:52
Speaker 1: And so that's where I can't discount it because I can't.
59:55
Speaker 1: I can't say ever seen it myself. I don't there's
59:57
Speaker 1: any scientist. I can never say they've they've the pinpoint
1:00:01
Speaker 1: of it. But I've I've talked to us some guys
1:00:03
Speaker 1: that claim, without a doubt that a certain crow calls
1:00:07
Speaker 1: and certain scurorell calls alert dear and put them on
1:00:10
Speaker 1: on edge. And I think I I courted this um
1:00:14
Speaker 1: guy in my recent Mediator article on hearing, where he
1:00:17
Speaker 1: claimed the only time he was watching a buck one
1:00:19
Speaker 1: time in the bed, and the only time that buck
1:00:22
Speaker 1: picked up his head and focused on anything was when
1:00:24
Speaker 1: he heard a cruel calling in the distance, And I
1:00:27
Speaker 1: locked onto that sound and looked at direction for the
1:00:30
Speaker 1: whole time the crow was was was on squawking. So
1:00:34
Speaker 1: that assuming he's interpreting it right, well, the chance that
1:00:38
Speaker 1: it was something out there that concerned that dear, concerned
1:00:43
Speaker 1: that crow, that concerned that dear. So I don't know,
1:00:47
Speaker 1: it's it's it's fun to talk about, and I guess
1:00:49
Speaker 1: I don't discount it. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what.
1:00:51
Speaker 1: I certainly use those sounds to alert myself to possibility
1:00:56
Speaker 1: of deer. So when I was sitting in a tree stand,
1:00:59
Speaker 1: you hear that squirrel of a sudden go off fort
1:01:01
Speaker 1: yards away and then brush right away at keet on
1:01:03
Speaker 1: that spot. Because so many times I've heard this a
1:01:07
Speaker 1: squirrel sound off the warning and if you watch it
1:01:09
Speaker 1: long enough, hope there's the deer. Um. Yeah, yeah, And
1:01:13
Speaker 1: then that got you know, I should I should have
1:01:16
Speaker 1: mentioned that. I remember the first the first time I
1:01:19
Speaker 1: ever got a shot my bow and arrow. Um, I
1:01:22
Speaker 1: was sixteen years old, you know, and back in this
1:01:25
Speaker 1: like nineteen seventy one or seventy two, I could do.
1:01:29
Speaker 1: I think there's some thing seventy one I was up
1:01:32
Speaker 1: in this. Back in those days, we didn't have portable
1:01:34
Speaker 1: tree stand you know, so typically we just find a
1:01:37
Speaker 1: big old tree with that with a good horizontal branch
1:01:40
Speaker 1: and stand on it. And I remember watching this nice
1:01:43
Speaker 1: state point buck walked on this trail. To me, my
1:01:46
Speaker 1: first indication that that deer was anywhere around was a
1:01:50
Speaker 1: chipmunk started started cheaping off in that direction, and I
1:01:53
Speaker 1: looked up that way and I saw a little weird
1:01:55
Speaker 1: movement that it wasn't a squirrel or a chipmunk, and
1:01:58
Speaker 1: I watched a couple more times, and I realized what
1:02:00
Speaker 1: the deer's nose um it was. It was eating, it
1:02:03
Speaker 1: was browsing on some branches or from bruscias that came
1:02:06
Speaker 1: through and then but I always remember that that that
1:02:09
Speaker 1: was my first warning, my first indication that I had
1:02:13
Speaker 1: company was that that chipmunk. I think it's probably something
1:02:17
Speaker 1: that people ignore, but if you think a lot of people,
1:02:20
Speaker 1: if you spend any of my time in the woods
1:02:22
Speaker 1: at all, you'll eventually kind of get to know what
1:02:24
Speaker 1: an angry chipmunk or angry angry squirrel or what that
1:02:27
Speaker 1: sound is. And if you hear that sound, gosh, it
1:02:30
Speaker 1: pays to take a few minutes and scour that area
1:02:33
Speaker 1: with your eyes, because so many times they like they're
1:02:36
Speaker 1: not doing that for no reason. There's some kind of
1:02:38
Speaker 1: reason why they're making that racket, and often it can
1:02:41
Speaker 1: be an approaching animal. Yeah, and that that's you're right,
1:02:44
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that's that crawls out there, the squawking
1:02:47
Speaker 1: first one entertainment. Yeah, something something triggered you know, well,
1:02:52
Speaker 1: you know it's it goes back to and this informs
1:02:55
Speaker 1: so much of my dear hunting worldview and strategy. Now
1:02:58
Speaker 1: it comes back to something that Craig Doherty once told me,
1:03:01
Speaker 1: Um sitting in a box blind with him up on
1:03:04
Speaker 1: his New York farm, and we didn't see any deer.
1:03:08
Speaker 1: That it was an evening sit, it was over food
1:03:10
Speaker 1: put there should have been dozens of deer and we
1:03:12
Speaker 1: didn't see anything at all. And I made a comment like, well,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: you know, it's dear, you just never know what they're
1:03:17
Speaker 1: gonna do, Um, And I kind of passed it off
1:03:19
Speaker 1: as you'll never know, and Craig said, no, that's the
1:03:23
Speaker 1: wrong approach. He said, you always need to ask why.
1:03:27
Speaker 1: There's always a reason why. And the key to getting
1:03:30
Speaker 1: better at this thing is whenever you observe something, or
1:03:33
Speaker 1: whenever something goes right or something goes wrong, UM, or
1:03:37
Speaker 1: something happens unexpectedly, don't just take it for oh, that
1:03:41
Speaker 1: thing happened and move on. Deserve whatever happened, and then
1:03:45
Speaker 1: ask why and trying to figure that out. And there's
1:03:49
Speaker 1: so often in the woods when you see a buck
1:03:51
Speaker 1: walk from point A to point B, I always try
1:03:53
Speaker 1: to think to myself afterwards, why did he move from
1:03:55
Speaker 1: point to point B? Why did he go in that direction,
1:03:58
Speaker 1: Why was he acting in that way? And I've just
1:04:01
Speaker 1: as much as I possibly can. I'm trying to ask
1:04:03
Speaker 1: that throughout my hunting season, throughout a hunt, and I
1:04:06
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many times that has helped me
1:04:08
Speaker 1: to learn lessons constantly. There's there's a reason why they
1:04:11
Speaker 1: do everything. If we can pick even like five, if
1:04:14
Speaker 1: we can get the answer right five percent of the time,
1:04:16
Speaker 1: that helps mhm. Yeah. No, I really respect that that
1:04:21
Speaker 1: approach because I've always figured that's one of the reasons
1:04:24
Speaker 1: I'll never consider myself, um a great deer hunter. I'll
1:04:29
Speaker 1: never I'll never try to try to tell people that
1:04:32
Speaker 1: will listen to me. You know, I know all there
1:04:34
Speaker 1: is or I'm really the expert in this area, but
1:04:37
Speaker 1: that no, I've met to me, these people I meant
1:04:39
Speaker 1: to me guys who really are that good. And the
1:04:43
Speaker 1: thing I think they all have in common is that curiosity,
1:04:46
Speaker 1: that that that ability to to um. They might they
1:04:50
Speaker 1: might interpret it wrong, whatever it might be, but the
1:04:53
Speaker 1: fact that they're questioning it all the time and trying
1:04:56
Speaker 1: to put those pieces together all the time, that's what
1:04:58
Speaker 1: makes them so good at it. You know, the things
1:05:01
Speaker 1: that I find interesting. It might might not interest them
1:05:04
Speaker 1: in the least because it doesn't really put into their
1:05:07
Speaker 1: the puzzle and trying to put together. Whereas you like,
1:05:09
Speaker 1: I can get myself distracted on any number of things
1:05:12
Speaker 1: out in the woods, and I was thinking, that's probably
1:05:14
Speaker 1: a while and there would be a great deer on here.
1:05:16
Speaker 1: I tend to my mind tends to wander. I tend
1:05:19
Speaker 1: to look at our stuff and start being interested in
1:05:22
Speaker 1: in a certain bird where I find a feather and go, okay,
1:05:25
Speaker 1: I'll start trying to figure out what, what where that
1:05:27
Speaker 1: feather came from, instead of paying attention to sounds around me.
1:05:30
Speaker 1: You know. So, I think these are all the things
1:05:32
Speaker 1: that um to separate the woman from the girls when
1:05:35
Speaker 1: it comes to hunters. You know that that that there's
1:05:37
Speaker 1: there's two those guys out there. I just um, I've
1:05:41
Speaker 1: learned over time that you you don't get jealous of
1:05:44
Speaker 1: their success. You respect their success because chances are that
1:05:48
Speaker 1: they do it if they don't just stumble off me
1:05:50
Speaker 1: and everyone can stum on to a good buck to
1:05:53
Speaker 1: right now and then for um a good nice long
1:05:56
Speaker 1: string of successful They never come home empty hand the
1:05:59
Speaker 1: year to year. But people who are good at this,
1:06:02
Speaker 1: who it really matters to them. They're all through all
1:06:05
Speaker 1: the time, they're they're they're they got their trail cameras
1:06:07
Speaker 1: going all the time. They're they're looking at this stuff
1:06:09
Speaker 1: in the trail camera. They're interpreting what they're seeing in there.
1:06:12
Speaker 1: It's always something that's um. It's tugging at them and
1:06:15
Speaker 1: inspiring them and sparking something. Where then there's the rest
1:06:19
Speaker 1: of us who want to attribute it all the luck
1:06:22
Speaker 1: and just good timing nfortunate timing. And I think just
1:06:26
Speaker 1: over time that the good deer hunters find a way
1:06:29
Speaker 1: to separate themselves in the rest of us. Yeah, what
1:06:31
Speaker 1: I appreciate about you is the a your your humility,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: but be the fact that you approach it seems like
1:06:39
Speaker 1: not only you're writing, but also you're hunting with a
1:06:42
Speaker 1: journalist sensibility and that you're looking at things objectively. You're
1:06:47
Speaker 1: going to strong, trustworthy sources and uh and and and
1:06:51
Speaker 1: not falling for alternative facts, but being able to sort
1:06:55
Speaker 1: the facts from the b s um. And I think
1:06:57
Speaker 1: that's a strong approach to writing, in a very strong
1:06:59
Speaker 1: approach to deer hunting. Um and you certainly are doing that.
1:07:03
Speaker 1: So so answer me this, though you have been in
1:07:06
Speaker 1: the deer hunting world. Now, for thirty or more years
1:07:09
Speaker 1: you were editing for Deer and Deer Hunting magazine. You
1:07:12
Speaker 1: were now freelance writing for all these different outlets. Over
1:07:15
Speaker 1: the years, what is maybe right now? I'm sure you
1:07:19
Speaker 1: over the years you've seen a whole lot of new
1:07:21
Speaker 1: ideas coming and going, different trends rising and falling, different
1:07:25
Speaker 1: fads getting really popular than dissipating. Um, can you name
1:07:31
Speaker 1: one of these ideas that you feel like it's really legit?
1:07:34
Speaker 1: If there's one of these fads or new strategies or
1:07:38
Speaker 1: products or something that you say, you know what I've
1:07:40
Speaker 1: seen that backed up enough or enough sources have told me,
1:07:43
Speaker 1: or my own experience have told me this one is
1:07:45
Speaker 1: really legit. So one idea or a little gimmick that
1:07:47
Speaker 1: actually is real? And then can you name one that
1:07:51
Speaker 1: is bogus? Is there's something out there, is there's some fallacy,
1:07:54
Speaker 1: some myth that you just can't you just you're so
1:07:58
Speaker 1: sick and tired of people spouting this b yes, and
1:08:00
Speaker 1: you need to correct it right now. UM, I guess
1:08:04
Speaker 1: the one that I one that I just can't get behind,
1:08:07
Speaker 1: and I just um, as Steve Ronella would say, if
1:08:10
Speaker 1: if guy came down with a gun to your head,
1:08:13
Speaker 1: where would you stand on this one? And that that's
1:08:15
Speaker 1: the moon phase stuff. I just I can't. I can't
1:08:19
Speaker 1: get into it. I just I've tried many times over
1:08:22
Speaker 1: the years, through surveys, through um Q and as through
1:08:26
Speaker 1: interviews and reading as much research as it is on it,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: and I just always come back to the idea that
1:08:32
Speaker 1: um al whole factor again the Deer and Deer Hunting
1:08:34
Speaker 1: founder when they first looked into the stuff back for
1:08:38
Speaker 1: their readership surveys back in the eighties, and else conclusion,
1:08:41
Speaker 1: after going through all the different um um um um
1:08:46
Speaker 1: surveys that he reviewed, it's all a bunch of who wee?
1:08:50
Speaker 1: That was Elice conclusion, all a bunch of WHOI And
1:08:52
Speaker 1: then um when Grant Woods, Grant Woods, I thought was
1:08:56
Speaker 1: just super cool interview on this article different eater about
1:09:00
Speaker 1: the newar phases where he thought he had it nailed down.
1:09:04
Speaker 1: He thought he had it nailed down back in nine
1:09:08
Speaker 1: and we actually worked together on a project back then
1:09:11
Speaker 1: for Deer and Deer Hunting where he had this chart
1:09:13
Speaker 1: and then we were selling it through the magazine. And
1:09:15
Speaker 1: because I had like a seventy percent accuracy on it,
1:09:17
Speaker 1: and Grant was quite proud of it. He was doing
1:09:19
Speaker 1: all this, he's actually giving seminars on it and giving
1:09:22
Speaker 1: presentations to the scientific community on it. And he had
1:09:25
Speaker 1: he had but looked to be really solid information that
1:09:28
Speaker 1: he had figured out um, how to how to link
1:09:30
Speaker 1: dear activity to the different to the moon's um, different
1:09:36
Speaker 1: things about how far above the equator it was on
1:09:38
Speaker 1: a certain days, and when it rose, when it sat,
1:09:41
Speaker 1: all these kind of things. And then he said, but
1:09:43
Speaker 1: then it all fall apart with the GPS collars. He said,
1:09:46
Speaker 1: once they put GPS colors on deer and it knew
1:09:49
Speaker 1: where they were twenty four hours a day, and if
1:09:51
Speaker 1: they're moving, if they're sitting still. He said, my, my
1:09:54
Speaker 1: dear activity indexes fell apart. And always that took at
1:10:00
Speaker 1: the hurt that I'm well, if Grant Woods could go
1:10:03
Speaker 1: from from this, this point where he thought he was,
1:10:06
Speaker 1: you know, and he's a pretty smart, um skeptical guy,
1:10:11
Speaker 1: to you go from um where he thought he has
1:10:13
Speaker 1: something figured out, to where he's now just you know,
1:10:15
Speaker 1: doesn't he doesn't even considerate he goes hunting. I figured
1:10:20
Speaker 1: I'm probably more in that camp, you know, where it
1:10:22
Speaker 1: just seems like it is too hard to get to quantify.
1:10:24
Speaker 1: But then I get back to um where I think
1:10:28
Speaker 1: on their hand, I don't discount the idea that if
1:10:32
Speaker 1: it gives a guy confidence that this that he's got
1:10:35
Speaker 1: to figure it out, and that keeps him on stand,
1:10:37
Speaker 1: he puts him out in the woods when other guys
1:10:39
Speaker 1: might might stay home. I don't know. I have a
1:10:43
Speaker 1: hard time discounting that belief. And you know, I don't
1:10:46
Speaker 1: think the belief is making a deer move at a
1:10:49
Speaker 1: certain time, but I do believe it it's helping the
1:10:52
Speaker 1: guy stay out there. And so that that's where I
1:10:55
Speaker 1: don't totally just you know, get all judgmental about some
1:10:59
Speaker 1: guy spurred about. I'm not going to argue with them.
1:11:01
Speaker 1: I figured, well, that thing is that market I gut.
1:11:05
Speaker 1: I'd say, well, and they're a hand and look at that,
1:11:07
Speaker 1: and then look at what's on his wall and what's
1:11:10
Speaker 1: what he's accomplished as a hunter, And I think, well,
1:11:12
Speaker 1: he's doing something right. So I as figure whatever it
1:11:17
Speaker 1: might be, that might not be that, that might might
1:11:20
Speaker 1: not be it, but um, you're doing something right. As
1:11:23
Speaker 1: far as UM things, I I find UM where it's
1:11:26
Speaker 1: ballad where it has credentials. Um I am. I guess
1:11:31
Speaker 1: the two things that that I I think. I still
1:11:35
Speaker 1: think scrape hunting is always worth a shot if you've
1:11:38
Speaker 1: got some good scrapes that indicative bucks moving through a
1:11:42
Speaker 1: certain area on a regular basis. I don't know about
1:11:45
Speaker 1: how well they how often they come by and check
1:11:47
Speaker 1: the scrape, or off often they happen that walk on
1:11:50
Speaker 1: the same trail or near the same trail that they rubbed,
1:11:53
Speaker 1: you know, like um, a nice long rub line along
1:11:57
Speaker 1: some ridge. But there are certain things that I think
1:12:00
Speaker 1: you can piece together from from from deer sign obvious
1:12:03
Speaker 1: deer sign that's still it's hard to overlook and discount.
1:12:07
Speaker 1: And that's that's where UM like Greg Miller, I think
1:12:10
Speaker 1: one of his books on I think it was me
1:12:11
Speaker 1: reb Line Secrets one of those, I think he estimate
1:12:14
Speaker 1: something like only five percent or six percent of his
1:12:17
Speaker 1: um attempts at at killing killing bucks on a rub
1:12:20
Speaker 1: line have ever worked out. There's just a very few
1:12:23
Speaker 1: times it works out, he said. Again, it's worked out
1:12:26
Speaker 1: enough times though, to where he keeps trying to piece
1:12:29
Speaker 1: together and hunt over him. And so you know that
1:12:32
Speaker 1: that that's UM to me worth worth hanging on too,
1:12:34
Speaker 1: and we're we're um, but then you have to at
1:12:37
Speaker 1: some point. I remember Greg years ago kind of giving
1:12:40
Speaker 1: up on trying it up north and move in Wisconsin
1:12:42
Speaker 1: because baiting became so popular. And once you have deer
1:12:46
Speaker 1: spending outside stimulus and in this case, artificial food sources,
1:12:51
Speaker 1: while throws off all those natural patterns that um, he
1:12:54
Speaker 1: was used to capitalizing on. Interesting, I think, Um, I
1:13:02
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of what you said rings true
1:13:04
Speaker 1: with me as well. UM, when it comes to things
1:13:07
Speaker 1: like scrapes and rubs and and yeah, none of these
1:13:10
Speaker 1: things are sure fire, guaranteed type setups, but it is something.
1:13:15
Speaker 1: It is a piece of the puzzle, and it's certainly
1:13:17
Speaker 1: better to be working with a piece of the puzzle
1:13:20
Speaker 1: versus a blank slate. Um. And I think it can
1:13:23
Speaker 1: help with that confidence too, And and you make up
1:13:26
Speaker 1: you make an interesting point that the placebo effect just
1:13:29
Speaker 1: believing something might help you actually can help you because
1:13:32
Speaker 1: you're confident, and if you're confident, you're focused, and if
1:13:35
Speaker 1: you're focused, you're on point, and you take advantage of
1:13:38
Speaker 1: things when they when these opportunities arise, and um, you
1:13:42
Speaker 1: can't discount that. So that is a really, really good point, Um,
1:13:46
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to see how that might play out
1:13:48
Speaker 1: in the woods. I think that this is a good
1:13:54
Speaker 1: place for us to wrap it up, Pat, because we'll
1:13:58
Speaker 1: cover some really helpful kind of I think foundational pieces
1:14:03
Speaker 1: of knowledge for new hunters, and then even for experienced hunters.
1:14:07
Speaker 1: I think it's good to go back and look at
1:14:08
Speaker 1: the building blocks and remember what did your do? How
1:14:11
Speaker 1: do they see the world, how do they perceive the world.
1:14:13
Speaker 1: What does that mean for us as hunters? Um? That
1:14:17
Speaker 1: just can't be hammered into our heads enough, I think. So.
1:14:21
Speaker 1: I appreciate taking the time to share on the things
1:14:23
Speaker 1: you've learned over the years as you've hunted and learned
1:14:27
Speaker 1: through your own experiences, and then you know learned from
1:14:30
Speaker 1: some one of the people out there. Your your ability
1:14:32
Speaker 1: to find and interpret things from sources out there, and
1:14:36
Speaker 1: sharing that for the rest of the world I think
1:14:38
Speaker 1: is very helpful. And I will say that to the
1:14:40
Speaker 1: folks listening. Start paying attention to the byeline, and when
1:14:43
Speaker 1: you see Pat Derek on the byeline of an article,
1:14:46
Speaker 1: you can feel confident this is in a placebo effect.
1:14:48
Speaker 1: You can feel confident that you're about to read a
1:14:50
Speaker 1: quality piece of work. Um. So, Pat, thank you for
1:14:54
Speaker 1: doing this, and I hope a lot of people will
1:14:56
Speaker 1: read what you're doing. And I know that I've enjoyed
1:14:59
Speaker 1: everything on the media recently, and I'm really glad that
1:15:01
Speaker 1: you're helping us out there. Great. Thanks, Mark, I'm flattered. Well.
1:15:06
Speaker 1: I hope you have a great hunting season this year too. Yeah,
1:15:11
Speaker 1: when when your first hunt? I leave in like two
1:15:14
Speaker 1: and a half weeks for early September hunt in North Dakota.
1:15:19
Speaker 1: Very cool. Thank you. Alright, Pat, We're gonna wrap it
1:15:23
Speaker 1: up and that will be a rap for today's episode.
1:15:27
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed this one. I will give you a
1:15:30
Speaker 1: couple of quick suggestions though, before you go. Number One,
1:15:34
Speaker 1: if you want to follow along with the hunts that
1:15:36
Speaker 1: I've got coming up, I'm leaving in just a matter
1:15:38
Speaker 1: of weeks for my first hunt and then it will
1:15:41
Speaker 1: just be chaos from there on out. If you want
1:15:44
Speaker 1: to follow along with everything, I'm up, to make sure
1:15:46
Speaker 1: you are following Wired to Hunt on Instagram. And finally,
1:15:50
Speaker 1: if you've been enjoying this show. I haven't asked for
1:15:52
Speaker 1: this in a while, but I'll throw it out there.
1:15:54
Speaker 1: If you've been enjoying the podcast, it would be incredible.
1:15:56
Speaker 1: If you leave a rating or review over on ito Zone,
1:16:00
Speaker 1: me in the world and it really helps us out.
1:16:02
Speaker 1: So that the way, thank you for listening, thanks for
1:16:06
Speaker 1: being a part of this community, and until next time,
1:16:09
Speaker 1: stay wired to Home.