Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 374: Big Woods, Big Scrapes, Big Bucks with Troy Pottenger

Transcript

Ep. 374: Big Woods, Big Scrapes, Big Bucks with Troy Pottenger · 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
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode three and
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: today the show I am joined by Whitetail addicts Troy
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Pottinger to discuss his unique methods for targeting mature bucks
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: in the big woods, big mountain country. He calls home,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: all right, welcome to the Wired Hunt Podcast, brought to
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: you by on X. Today, I've got Troy Pottinger joining
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: me for what is going to be a great episode.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Troy's a particularly interesting deer hunter talk to you, because
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: he's achieving a level of deer hunting success that we're
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: used to seeing from from the TV show Hunters that
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: we all know about in Iowa, in Illinois and Kansas.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: But he's not doing this on some big managed arm
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the heartland. He's doing it all d i Y, on
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: public land in the huge forests and hills and mountains
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: of Idaho. And he's also proven that he can take
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the tactics he's perfect in that location and he can
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: apply to other parts of the country to and have
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: just as much success. So whether you're hunting the big
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: woods of the Northeast, or the hill country of the Appalachians,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: or the driftless region of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, you
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: know there's there's gonna be something here for you. And hell,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I've even picked up ideas from this one that I
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: think I can apply right here in the flat egg
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: country of southern Michigan. So that's all to say. I
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: guess that I was particularly excited with how this one
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: turned out. Troy's got a lot to share. If you're
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: not familiar to Troy, He's filmed for the White Tail
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Addictions TV show, for the Lone Wolf customer gear guys.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: He does a lot of stuff with them. He's been
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: active um on social media in various places. When it
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: comes to mountain hunting, mountain buck hunting, you're gonna find
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: variety of other folks talking to him about those things.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But we cover we cover a lot of different stuff
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: today and we take it to a level of detail
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: that I don't think he's talked about in the past.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: We cover a lot on how terrain influence his dearer
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: movement and hunting. We talk a lot about thinking about
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: wind and how to set up and identify stand locations
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: that are essentially bulletproof or windproof. And maybe my favorite
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: part of this conversation was talking about scrapes, both natural
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and mock scrapes, and how Troy really keys in on
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: them for both trail camera scouting and hunting, and he
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: takes us to a different level than and maybe anybody
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: else I've talked to, and it's it's very interesting. I
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: think you're gonna be intrigued with it. I certainly have
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: taken some things that I'm I'm going to try out
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: when it comes to scrape specifically. So that's the plan. Um,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: we're gonna get right into it here in just a minute,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: but before that, a couple of quick housekeeping items. Number One,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a new season of The Meat Eater TV show has
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: just dropped over on Netflix. It's part one of season nine.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: It's five episodes. I think it's great stuff, a lot
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: of fun, So check it out over on Netflix as
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: soon as you can. Number two, if you're heading out
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: on a hunting trip soon and you're like me and
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: you need to have a good book to read, maybe
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: at midday between hunts or forbid at night. I've got
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: a shamelessly plug my book that I wrote called That
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Wild Country. If you weren't tuned in earlier this year
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and we were talking a lot about this book, here's
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: the very very quick gist. That Wild Country examines the
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: history of how we came to have six hundred and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: forty million acres of public land across the country and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: all the controversy and characters that were involved in us
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: getting this incredible swath of country that we can hunt
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: on and fish and hike and explore. I mean, it's
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it's it's insane when you think about what we have here.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: You don't need to be a millionaire to have millions
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of acres to go play on and explore. That's what
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: we have here in America now. In addition to history,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I also wrote about the current events that are affecting
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: these places right now, in the future of these places.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And then throughout all of this I shared a series
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: of my own adventures out on these landscapes, hunting and
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: backpacking and rafting and fishing and exploring them to kind
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: of illustrate why this stuff's important and what we can
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: do out there. So all three d seventy four of
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: these Wired Hunt podcasts have been free for your listening pleasure.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: But if you've ever wanted to find some way to
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: show support for that and and thanks for all that,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: maybe here's your chance. I can't thank you all enough.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: For those of you who have already purchased a copy
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: or two of That Wild Country, It's meant the world.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: The feedback I've gotten has been great, That's meant the world,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and I just really really appreciate it. So thanks for
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: hearing my plug. Thank you for supporting Wired Hunt and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: myself by purchasing a copy of this book. And if
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: you haven't gotten one yet, you can head on over
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: to a local bookstore or Amazon or the Meat Eater
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: website and get your copy now. So thank you, thank you,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: thank you. And that's it. No more updates, no more plugs,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: no more of me rambling. And now there might be
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: an ad layer in the podcast. There are a few
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: of those. Thank you for dealing with those. Uh no
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: about other than that. What I'm trying to stay here is,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: let's get into this conversation. Is a really really interesting chat.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Troy Pottinger is a great guest, a great deer hunter,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and I can't wait for you to hear this so
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: let's get into it all right with me. Now on
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: the line is Troy Pottinger. Troy, thank you for being
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: on the show. Hey, I really appreciate it. Mark. Listen
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to a lot of your podcasts and and keep you know,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: all of us guys in this in this game, kind
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of keep an eye on people, and I love what
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you do and I've really enjoyed your podcast. Thanks for
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: having me. Well, hey, thank you for listening. I uh,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I have only one regret about this conversation. I'm very
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: glad we're having it now, but I wish I wish
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: we'd had the conversation several weeks ago before I was
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: in Idaho, because maybe I would have gotten some new
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: ideas or been inspired to go to a different part
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of the state and ended my hunt differently. Because I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: just got back from your home state a week ago
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and I came home empty handed. So you know, it's hunting.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: That's how it goes sometimes. But I'm sure probably could
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: have learned a thing or two you at the time
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: of health. Well, it's funny Mark, you bring that up,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: because that's one you know, I was kind of watching
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: what you're doing because I saw somewhere on social media
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: that you're in Idaho, And I was like, I wonder
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: whe Marks that I wonder if he's up north by
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: me or down south? And if it's my understandings, right,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you were more down south and more of a river
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: bottom type scenario. Weren't you hunting some river bottom stuff? Mostly?
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I hunted a little bit. I hunted a little bit
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in some national forest lower mountain stuff, but I'd say
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: was river bottom Okay? Yeah, and the and the stuff
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I run around in. And I've grown up and for
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: all my entire life is you know you You've probably
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: done a little bit of homework to know I'm more
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: up by the Canadian border. Yeah, I'm up pretty high
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: in the panting Yeah. Yes, So tell me about that area.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I've fished up there, I've done a little hiking up there,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: but I've never hunted. Um, what are these kinds of
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: tracts of land? Like it's pretty different than the average
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: white tail hunter out in egg country? Right, Yeah? I
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: think you know it's Uh, I think it's vastly and
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: drastically different a lot of ways. And in one thing
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I can say, unlike you, Mark, I've I've hunted a
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: lot of places put my feet on the ground in
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of states and on purpose because I love
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: white tails and I love I literally just have a
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: passion for hunting white tails all over. But of course
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: grew up being a mountain bow hunter and uh a
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: mountain white tail hunter. So to answer your question, this
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: country is it's it's you know, bottom line, it's freaking huge,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: it's vast, it's unforgiving, it's it's literally mountain white tail hunting.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: And you know, I hunts some of these bucks up
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to almost six thousand feet. Uh, not normally quite that high,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: but I've had some bucks range that high in the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: early season and then all the way down to like
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: you know, the river bottoms in this country up north
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: will drop from We've got mountain country that runs up
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: to seven eight thousand feet and then it drops all
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the way down to fire. So so the elevation is
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: is incredible. The elevation change the topography is is extreme. Uh,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: hundreds of miles of timber. This is logging country. Some
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: of the best timber producers in the United States come
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: out of the Northwest up here, and and uh so
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: we've got that industry that's that's basically you know, we
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: built a lot of America out of the Northwest. You know,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of timber that's come out of this
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: country and the and we got the rain, and we
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: got the right kind of climate to grow timber fast
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and have lush, really lush vegetation. I've had guys telling
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: me that hardcore oil counters tell me that the hardest
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: state to hunt public land elk On is North Idaho
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  Speaker 1: because of how thick it is. And you you being uh,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I know you've You've done a lot of things and
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: seen a lot of places and hunt a lot of animals,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and I know you love white tails. Anytime you give
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a white tail extreme dance, thick cover for hundreds of miles,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: food for hundreds of miles in every direction, in the
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  Speaker 1: form of all kinds of green vegetation, and you know,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: just a plethora of just natural foods and brows, it's
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting. It's really cool. And then you throw in
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the rugged terrain and the steepness, uh, and all the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: wind currents and the thermals and everything. It's it's a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: wicked place to hunt white tails. And then you add
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: in the wolves, the mountain lions, the grizzly bears, and
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the black bears and the Yode's and the Lynx and
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the bobcats, and it's just it's awesome. It It's got
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: my heart and soul. And I've I've been all over
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: the country and I've been in places that are more
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: of a white tail mecca. But I'll never leave the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: mountains of north Idaho, eastern Washington, and western Montana for
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: white tails. I'll travel, but I'll never leave this area. Man.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: From from everything I've seen and heard, I get it.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: I can see why that would be so appealing. It
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: just seems like that stack of circumstances has got a
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: breed true survivors. Those bucks are going through the ringer
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: between hunting pressure, between all those predators, between the tough weather,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: tough terrain. I gotta believe you're seeing some some bucks
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: have seen it there too. Yeah there. You know. I
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: respect a mountain white tail more than any animal I've
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: ever hunted hunted. And I say a mountain white tail
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: because I've watched my bucks year to year on camera
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: get torn to pieces by mountain lions, like literally have
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I've got one buck that survived the mountain lion attack
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: one year that literally had hand fifteen inch gashes on
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: his face, his neck, his shoulders, his back, and somehow
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: he got out of it. And watched him all through
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the summer in his thin skin and and short hair.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: He'll survive it and then just freaking live, you know,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: two or three more years. It was better than me.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I couldn't get him killed. Uh, yeah, it's wicked. And
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: then one thing I didn't bring up that you brought up, Mark,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: is we get six to ten snow in the same
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: exact places that I hunt these deer in in January
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: February March. We'll get up to ten ft of snow
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: in some of these spots that these deer have to
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: migrate out of to go survive ten miles away in
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: the in the late winter, and then they come back
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: to the mountains when the snow is gone in April.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: What what what's the prizes? Me? I think, And probably
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, if if they haven't kept tabs
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: on what you've been doing over the years, or a
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: few other people that are a little bit in the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: community that folk know of is the fact that you're
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: hunting deer in this kind of situation, which sounds really
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: tough for a deer but somehow the deer you're finding
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: out there are I mean, they're they're world class deer.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, these are big bucks that you're getting on
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: for anywhere you throw that buck in Iowa or Ohio
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: and hunter is going to be drooling. Um. I mean,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you're you're getting on legit deer out there, and I
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: am I right, you can, you can, you can admit
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to that, right, yeah? You know. That's one reason and
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna you know, straight shooters you're gonna get. That's
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: one reason I love it here is I have the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: opportunity to hunt giants. Now, I don't have the numbers
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: that I don't have the percentage of giants that some
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: states have, and that's because of the war of attrition
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: out here on the box. Uh. But we have really
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: great genetics. The mountains per provide endless, endless and ample
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: food for them, uh all through all through the spring,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: summer and into the fall, all the way into December
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: until they have to migrate down, which is natural for
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: mountain animals. They migrate down to the rivers and streams
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and lakes, that's just what they do, and get into
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the south and still eat well enough to survive but yeah,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: we you know, I'm you know, Mark, I'm hunting some
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: deer that cross into Canada. So I'm getting I'm getting
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that if you've you've probably at least done enough paid
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: attention to maybe some of my stuff enough to see
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: that I get really good mass on my older bucks,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: big heavy, and I feel like a lot of the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: deer that I hunt kind of resemble some of those
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: big Canadian bucks. And our bodies are our bodies are
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: really big up here, Mark, if they get to the
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: right age because that cold, cold winters and harsh winters
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: have literally bread out all of the week genetics, you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: we our bodies are big. A lot of my bucks
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: dress over two hundred pounds after I you know, after
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: they're dressed and on the hoof, they're walking around at
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: two fifty. So yeah, I I love it because I
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: get to hunt this incredible white tail that lives in
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the mountains that can get world class exactly. You know. Uh,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: it's just amazing. There's not a lot of them, but
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: when you find one, it's it's freaking awesome to find
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a deer that makes it to five six, seven years
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: old and just packing around aches on his head. Yeah,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: that sounds that sounds like fun. Um, Now I wanna
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I want to dig into the nitty gritty of of
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: everything you're doing to get to that point. But I
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: have a an assumption. I'm assuming that you've hunted, as
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: you said, you've hunted into a bunch of different places,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You've traveled around the country, you've hunted the white tail meccas.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: But you come from this background of hunting these these
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: tough bucks and a tough situation, and you've figured it
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: out in that in that set of circumstances. Am I
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: right that the things that you're figuring out in the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: mountains and big woods of Idaho, you're able to, I'm thinking,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: able to apply certain things from that situation, and they
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: can also apply to these other states in certain ways
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: and maybe even more effective when you get into about
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: where there's more dear or where there's more bucks. Um,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: is there some crossover? Do you go to uh Iowa
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: or Illinois, or in Ohio or in Oklahoma or whatever,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and then just say, wow, this is this is kind
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of easy compared to back home. When I take this
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: trick and apply it here, Is that true at all?
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: You know? It is? Mark? And I'm gonna share real
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: true life stories with you just instead of saying yes
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: it is or I don't even I don't even want
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to say easier. Here, here's what I found when I
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: go out of state and get a hunt. Incredible white
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: tail areas like Iowa, like Alberta, and these are these
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: are places I've been. Oklahoma, hell of a state. I
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: love that place, um North Dakota, Montana River bottoms. What
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I run into is a lot less obstacles to kill
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the same caliber buck that I try to kill out
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: here and that I've killed out here. And the reason
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I bring that up is I think we already kind
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: of stated all the different, uh different just items that
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: white tails have to make it through to survive out here.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: You know, I didn't even throw in the two months
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: long gun season that I deal with. You know as
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a bow hunter. You know that's a long gun season.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Two months during the all the way through the run
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and I and we get Idaho is called any weapons
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: state during that gun season. So I did bow hunt it.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: But anyway back to answer your question, yes, I uh
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: two stories I'll share with you real quick that that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: will just kind of detail it. I think the way
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I understand wind and how white tail bucks use wind
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: to survive daily in this country has been unbelli avable
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: for me. When I get to other states, I'm a
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I get on I hunt every big deer I've ever
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: killed on his wind, and I and I dissected to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: where I can kill him and set up on him
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and he never knows I'm there, but he still has
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: everything he wants. So that happened to me in Oklahoma.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And I got to pick where I wanted to hang
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: my tree stand instead of happened to sit where somebody,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you know, where most guys were gonna sit. I And
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: it's because I'll get to a spot and say that
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: ain't gonna work on this big deer. And and I'll
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: just tell people that I gotta be able to sit
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: where I want to sit, and that's cool, and you know,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And I got to do that in Oklahoma and I
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: killed a d eighty six inch deer in two hours. Um.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I went to Iowa, UH several years back, and I
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: got a chance to hunt five hundred acres and Iowa
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: with a really good friend and love the guy, A
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: great guy out there, let me come out and hunt
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: his farm. And I was sitting field edges and doing
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: their thing, and I told my buddy, I said, hey,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: let me just hunt my way for two days, the
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: last two days, and let me go dive in like
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I would in the mountains of Idaho on a big buck.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Because when I look at a five acre piece, to me,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: that's minute scule. It's so easy for me to break
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: down five acres because I usually break down five to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: ten thousand acre pieces at a time, and we can
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: get into that detail later on. How that's how I've
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: done that over the years and for decades. But anyway
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I'm in Iowa, I get to dive in. I get
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: to do my own thing for two days. Uh, instead
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: of just waiting on that those stands that usually tend
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: to produce later in Iowa when it's cold and they're
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: hungry for corn, if you follow me there. So I
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: dove in the first day, picked it all out on
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the map of my buddy's place. Knew what I wanted
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: to do. Uh. He had been hunting a hundred and
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: nine two deer. Uh, and I know it's one. I'll
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: finish the story in a second. And I literally in
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: three hours had that deer underneath me. At eight yards
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: and I snort, wesdy right to me. And the only
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: reason I didn't shoot that deer is I believe my
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: you know, my buddy. It was the best dare on
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: his farm, and I know how badly he wanted to
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: kill that deer, and he I literally had the conversation
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: with him. I said, hey, I said, Jay, uh, if
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I see double wide and get in on him, what
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: do you want me to do? And he said killing.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: But the way he said it, I just felt like
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: he's being so good to me and he's letting me
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: have his at a shot at his best bucket. He goes,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: but I haven't seen him in daylight in a month,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: only nighttime trail cameras. So back to the story. I
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: have this deer, I go in deep, I find these
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: big scrapes. I set up on a hill above it.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: I have the thermal. I mean, I'm dialed, and I
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: see this big deer in a couple of hours and
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I snort wes him up to me while I also snort,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: we's a really nice five point that walked up there
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: with him to me right below me too, And I
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: purposely shot the other deer so that Jay could hunt
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the big deer, and Jay later killed the big deer
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and he's one nine two and I had that deer
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: at eight yards for not only did I have that
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: deer at eight yards after I shot my deer and
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: my deer went over and died next to me or
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: laid down by me, that big deer stood in bow
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: range of me for almost fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. I'll
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: tell you what you are both two very good friends.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Him for having said that you could shoot it and
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: you for not shooting it. That's a I literally, I've
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: literally told that story for years because I felt like
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: it was the right thing to do. I've been called
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: every name in the world for doing it, like a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: dumbass and everything else, but that's not who I am.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: You know. I was so happy for my buddy when
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: he killed himn late muzzle loader and he was guided.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And this is a good friend of mine, that's a
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: lot younger in me, just had got his farm bought
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and taken care of. You know, I had a little
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: different mindset than him, and I think he was shocked
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: that I got in that dear and because I wasn't
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: videoing back then, I still today don't know if he
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: believes I had that dare d eight yards, but I did,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and he was broadside and he did there. But anyway,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: God knows, the Good Lord knows that I did. So
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the whole point of that, to answer your question, is yes,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: it has been easier for me to get on the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: big ones. I'll spend years sometimes out here to get
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: one opportunity on a mountain buck of that caliber and
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of that age. Sometimes it sometimes Mark, they just they
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: just kick my ass and I never see him again
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: after a couple of years of getting on him. And
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I do only hunt bucks out here that are five
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: and older. And I understand you only hunt specific target
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: bucks to right. You find one and you get after
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: him right right. And I always have. I have a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: number one, and every year is different based on what
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I got, and I really put a ton of time
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: into having a number one to three and maybe a four.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: So that's a lot of effort to in the top
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: four that are all above one sixty, and they're all
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: over four, and they're all over five, they're all at
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: least five years old. So that's that's just where I'm
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: at now and what I love to do. I've sent
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you a picture of the Bucking hunt right now, that
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: dear mark that deer and you can vouch for me online.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: That deer's was a hundred gross one seventy last years
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and four and a half year old and I left
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: him alone. Wow, And this and this year he put
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: it on and he's a public land mountain deer. And
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: once they turned five, then I'm on him. And that
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: that's just what I enjoy doing. Uh. My son, who's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a hell of a white tail hunter for his age
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: and has grown up doing this with me since he
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: was so freaking literally he didn't know any better. I
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: was packing him around in a backpack shed hunt. Um,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: he'll kill those big four and a half year old
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: still to this day. And that's where he's at. And
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: he and I are total cool with it because you know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: he's seventeen and he likes the four and a half
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: year old and older and his old man, I like
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the five year olds because in the mountains, that's where
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I really see them make those good jumps five, six
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and seven. Uh and yeah, so that's what I'm targeting marketing.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: That's and and I always try to have a plan
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: b buck two. But yes, I I haven't killed a
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: deer that was a surprise since two thousand and two. Okay,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: well they're even just the last five minutes in what
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: you described, I added like fifteen maybe not fifteen, but
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: ten new questions to my list of notes of different
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: things I want to dive further into. But before I
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: get into all that, I gotta get a little bit
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: more detail on that Iowa hunt, because because I do
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: think a lot of people listening hunt in places like
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Iowa or Ohio or West Virginia or New York, and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: they're wondering, Hey, how can Idaho apply to my place?
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Can you just describe a little bit more detailed specifically,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: how you like, what did you see on the map
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: that led you to this specific place which led you
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: to look for a scrape. Just give me the nitty
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: gritty on that very specific setup that put you on
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the very best deer in a day. Okay, So Mark,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I'll give you just an overview. It's about a five
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: acre piece um zone for I'll leave it at that,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: And the the piece has a lot of timber on it.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: If I had to guess, it's over timber um. I
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: instantly wanted off of the field edges and I wanted
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: into the heavy security cover. And I looked at all
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the ridges, and it had some nice It had some
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: nice elevation in there for for you know, for for
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Midwest or Iowa country. It had some really nice ravines,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: some ridges, some beautiful hardwood covered ridges. And I just
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: basically looked at the map, looked at where all the
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: food was around the biggest block of timber, looked at
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: all the neighbors, saw where the pressure was coming. And
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I literally picked a ridge, a small finger ridge that
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: dove down into kind of a ravine and had a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: sweet little bench on it, and it would overlook everything
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: down in the really thick cover under this these hardwoods
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: had a lot of brush. And because I'm not from Io,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I can't I don't know what exact kind of brush
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: was in there, but it was real brushy and under
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: the hardwood trees and you I'm sure I was setting
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: in oaks and stuff like that. And anyway, I got down,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I went inside the timber edge, probably dropped down in
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: there hundred hundred fifty yards, got on this sweet little
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: bench and could oversee this whole bottom of timber. I
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: could see through the timber. The leaves were off pretty good.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: It was. It was November, and I but the brush
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: was all over. It was just brush everywhere, and I
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: loved it. It was brushy. I really like that. And
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: then I went up the other side, which I think
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: was facing I think I came in from kind of
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a northwest angle and got on that ridge and was
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: looking southeast and cold, and the sun was hitting that
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: southeast bridge over there, and that's where those bucks were.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Bed was over in that thick southeast kind of uh face.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: And that made sense to me because in the mountains
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: up here, the bucks when it gets cold, like the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: bed somewhere towards the south or in the south when
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: it gets cold. And it was cold. It was fairly
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: cold out there when I was out hunting. It was
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: below freezing for sure, but you know, not below zero,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: but it was cold. So I got in there hunting
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: set real quick. And back then I was running a oh,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I have an old lone wolf, one of my oldest
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: lone wolves. I had. One of my buddy had one,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: just like me. So I was I picked that out
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: of this pile of tree stands, and it was one
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: of the old lone wolves, one of the first ones
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: that you can't adjust the seat on or anything. But anyway,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I dove down in there with like four or five sticks,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: picked the ridge kind of from the map, walked in
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: and loved what I saw. Started seeing rubs. Look down
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: below me on the little bench I got on and
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: saw a huge scrape, probably thirty five yards from me,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'm sitting right here, and the scrape
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: was just trashed. I mean it was. It was freaking
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: as big as a car hood. And there was two
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: or three of them, but on the literally kind of
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: around the same area that were smaller, but I just
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: noticed that giant when I saw those looking branches, and
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: UH climbed up in the tree, got in there real
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: quiet and set This was like a mid day snuck
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: in and UH said, tell about two or three o'clock
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon, it was pretty early, and UH saw
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: saw a buck get up over on the southeast side
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and started working towards that scrape. And then I saw
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the big buck get up behind him out of his bed.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So I was probably hundred and some yards away maybe
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: at the most, from those deer and they were bedded
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: in there. So I got in there pretty quiet, got
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: set up and was just chilling, and they started working
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: towards that scrape and they came down to the scrape
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: below me at about thirty five yards, but they weren't.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: They wouldn't. They hadn't walked into the scrape yet, and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I was I was like, oh my god, that's freaking
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: double wide. That's him. I'm gonna I thought, she's right
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: below me, and it was like thirty five forty yards
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: and I'll be honest, I like really close shots. And
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: those deer didn't know I was there, So I was like,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I want him at ten twenty yards. And I started
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: looking the other buck over and thought, that's a pretty
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: nice five point with him. That's that's a nice buck.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And then my whole little voice on my shoulder said
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: you're gonna shoot Jay's buck or not, and I thought,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna shoot that other deer.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: So they were messing around. They walked into the scrape,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: not a real good shot angle. It was thirty five yards,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and they were kind of The big double white buck
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: was kind of posturing the other nice buck, who ended
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: up being right at about one fifty gross um, just
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: a heavy, tight, beautiful buck in Iowa. That was just
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: a good looking dear to me, and and uh, he
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: kind of pushed the buck. I ended up shooting a
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: little more towards me. And then it was funny because
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: he snort weased a little bit at that other buck.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: And as soon as he starts weeds. I'm so used
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: to doing this up in the mountains up here, I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I just thought, what the heck, I'm gonna see what
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: happens here, because I'm gonna kill one of these deer.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: And I'd made the decision I'll shoot that out of
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: one if I get the opportunity. I don't get the opportunity,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and the only one I get to shoot at is
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: the big one. I was gonna have to make that decision.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I snort weeds and I just and instantly
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: both of those Iowa bucks just boom locked onto me
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: up in that ridge. And there was brush all over
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: on that ridge, so I do they couldn't see the
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: deer that they thought they heard, and it wasn't five
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: seconds from men, and the big buck, the giant that
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Jay ended up killing, just starts hammering a tree with
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: his antlers, and the younger one and the smaller one
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: which was probably four year old, starts walking towards me,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and he starts walking towards me in the bigger buck
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: saw him walking towards me and starts walking with him
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: and tries to pass him and get by him to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: get to me. So they end up both all the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: way up under me at eight and ten yards and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: I'm at full draw and they're literally they're literally marked
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: three or four ft apart from me. Jotrip. They're looking
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: around for you know, they pinpointed my spot and they
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: get up there, they don't see me, and the wind
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: I had it perfect. The wind was kind of angling
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: down towards them, but my wind was literally missing them
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: by ten yards. So I thought, man, I gotta shoot one,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: because as soon as they get into my wind, this
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: might turn bad. So I smoked that other buck, and
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: he literally ran twenty yards and laid down, and that
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: big buck stood by me, and he jumped and moved
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: a little bit and wondered what the hell just happened,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: And then he literally stood by me for a little bit,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: and then he went over to the buck that I shot,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and he literally started hitting that buck in the side
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: with his antlers, hammered like hitting him in like digging
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: on him to get up, and that dare's laying there dying,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and then the big buck lets out another snort. Weeze
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: walks back towards me and literally just like strutting around,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: just strutting around out there broadside of me. Easy shots
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: hung out for a I swear to god, it seemed
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: like days that he hung out as my buck's dying.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And I just sit there and I and I just
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: took it all in. And I'm sitting next to what
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I knew was at least a hundred and eighty five
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: buck who ended up grossing one. Uh. I just sit
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: and watched him, and I just chilled, and he never
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: once knew I was there. He never once spooked for
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: me shooting that day, other than a jump kind of
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: jumped when I shot him. And then he ended up
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: walking back down into that ravine and into that brush
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: and down towards that scrape and disappearing before I ever
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: got out of the tree. So there was a ton
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: of daylight left in that day, a ton of daylight left,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: and yeah, it was just you know, So there's two
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: hunts to the biggest deer I've ever seen in my
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: life a couple of hours each and out west that
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: might happen once a decade for me for a two
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: hour hunt. Well, there you go. If that helps explain it,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: that's the best way I could share with you what
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: my life experience has been of hunting these big deer
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: out west. First is going to the mid No that
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: that is helpful, And and again I think it's I
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: think it's really interesting because now I do want to
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: pivot to exactly what you do in Idaho, and and
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing as you go through this, I'm going to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: be thinking, Oh, that could work in northern Michigan in
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the big woods, or this might work in this hill
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: country and Ile, or that might work him. I'm wanting
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to see where all these things are going to translate.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And so I guess, rather than expect or talking about
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: what I think you're gonna say, let's just hear what
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: you have to say. Um, first thing I want to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: kind of dive into. You alluded to this a second ago.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: But when you're hunting big tracts of public land like
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: you are, where there's this massive stretches of public land
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: all timber, it can be intimidating. It's hard to pick
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: something out of all this what seems to the average person,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: maybe at first glance, to just be all the same
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. How do you break down these huge
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: tracts into smaller areas that you're gonna focus or maybe
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: that's not what you do, but how do you pick
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the places you're gonna focus on within this massive millions
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: of acres of ground that you could hypothetically hunt right.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of it has to do with thirty plus
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: years of doing it. Um. I am a detailed map
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: steady guy. I toppo maps since I was young. Elevation
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: and learning what elevation old mature bucks love to live
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: at in the mountains because of how the wind works,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: how it works for them to stay alive is huge.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: So we can get into all these key things. So
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: habitat rolls in right behind that. UM and then I'm
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: always picking elevations that work kind of at the top
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of a Doe family groups elevation to you know, kind
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of where they liked it about as high as Doe
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: family groups like to live in conjunction with where these
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: big old hermit type mountain bucks and they become hermits.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: They don't hang out with many other deer, they hardly
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: ever socialize other than at a scrape or maybe real
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: early summer a little bit. But those elevations that are
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: just like bulletproof for those big deer. Elevation combin mind
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: with habitat combined with contour of the ridges, so that
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: they literally can use the thermal and a prevailing wind
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: all day, all night to stay alive. And it's because
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: they markets they lived there, because they're getting hunted by lions, DRIs,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: bear wolves every week. You know, it's humans that think
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: we're putting all the pressure and making them smart, not
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: even close out here. It's those alpha predators that we
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: have that literally I lose a lot of bucks. Bucks
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: bucks come and go out here, and I learned not
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to get extremely attached because I've just seen too many
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: cougar kills walked up on him and found too many
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: deadhead sugar kills and wolf kills, and you know, and
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: our bears love to eat all our fawns, and it's
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: just kind of the nature of the beast out here.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: So I really zone in on topography elevation, and it's
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: all based on how the wind allows that buck to
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: survive every day of his life and how the terrain
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: protecting if that makes sense. It does, But I want
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: to get one step back from what you're talking about there,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: because that seems to be how you're picking, like the
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the smaller focus there is, like where just specifically to hunt?
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: But what about when you're like if you were brand
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: new to Idaho or or maybe we're in New Hampshire.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Let's say where there's a bunch of hills and it's
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: kind of similar, but you don't know, you know, you
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: don't know that this twenty mile square area is good?
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: How do you? How do you? What am I trying
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: to stay here? Like let's say like there's a whole
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: bunch of places that would have that same elevation you're
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: talking about, and there's probably a whole bunch of places
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: within five million acres that would have the right contours
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: and the right types of topography. So is there do
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: you look for a starting point something like hey, here's
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: a bunch of clear cuts and then I'm gonna try
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: to find everything around it. Is there any kind of
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: central thing that starts as the pin on the map
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: and then you try to look for those specific things? Um,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm just warning the one step before what
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: you describe got you and I and I did, I
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: did say one word about and it's huge is so
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: we just talked topography there and a topo map basically,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: then you've got to overlay it with the right habitat.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: It's all about food and water of their life, food
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: water cover. So those three food water security is what
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: it is for these dre So the right elevation, the
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: wind that that literally gives them that perfect livable survivalbal
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: everyday wind that keeps them alive from predators. And then
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: all the habitat is there. It's it's got to have
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: the food, which is the native habitat where there's zero agriculture,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: there's zero acorns, there's zero apple trees. I mean, it's
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: what you get is you get into the mountain habitat
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: and you jump from things like that to huckleberries and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: wild all kinds of wild berries that grow the mountains,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: um all kinds of different plants that they forage on
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: red stamp c and osis. Uh. They literally eat that
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: old man's beard off all the trees. And then our
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: country is just amazing. We have green grass that grows
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: in the mountains and anywhere there's a logging clear cut
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: or someplace where the logging industry has comed in and
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: opened up the canopy. It turns into a food plot
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: for the wild animals after they burn it and all
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: the fresh green vegetation grows up in it, and there's
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: literally too many of the list, but it's incredible. It's
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: just like a food plot on the side of a mountain.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: So yes, to answer your question, all of those things combined,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: and then you gotta have the groceries, and you gotta
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: have the hideout and the safety, and we do in
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: this country in these mountains have a lot of water.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Water is pretty darn easy to find for a wild
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: animal in this country, so water is really never a
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: huge issue. Food literally is spread out across hundreds of
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: miles in the timber, and if you got logging, you
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: got even better food or old logging clear cuts, and
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: then they turned into unbelievable betting areas when the cuts
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: get to like forty fifty years old and they still
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: have food in them. So yeah, I'm playing that whole
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: game and putting all those pieces of the puzzles together
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: before I even go step foot on it. Nowadays, in
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: the old days, everything was boots on the ground first,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: because all I had was the topple map. I didn't
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: have Google Earth. I didn't I didn't have all the
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: amenities that we have nowadays that are awesome that we
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: can just literally get on our computer and look at
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: it from the sky. So it's a lot easier for
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: me nowadays. And just pinpoint if that helps answer that
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: habitat is huge mark. That food has to be there,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: that hideout has to be there, that water has to
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: be there, everything has to be there for them to
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: want to stay there and live there. So you mentioned
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the elevation. What's this magic elevation that you seem to
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: key in on. Is it a specific actual like this
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: many feet in between this many feet and this many
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: feet or is it simply like the top third or
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the middle whatever. How do you look at that. That's
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: a great question because you're there's some mountains I hunt
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: that are only four thousand feet tall, and if there's
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: any type of logging road across the top of it,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I hunt the sandwich part of it. I hunt where
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the deer notice stay away from that top road. If
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I get out on big ridges that have no roads
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: on the top. Uh, and these ridges can run from
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: four to five to six seven thousand feet high. I'm
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: hunting that top. I'm hunting that lower end of the
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: top third for those big deer. And it's because those
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: big deer stage on that lower end of the top third.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: If there's no road edge at all across the tops
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: those big, long, awesome, huge ridges that we have about
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: here that run for miles, I'm dropping down or getting
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: up into that lower end of the top third, and
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that's where I do really well on finding the big bucks,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the biggest box hideouts. And what happens is is they've
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: got that great wind advantage up in that top third.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: They live by those thermals all day when they're when
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: they want to lay down during the day, so they've
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: got the majority of the days an uphill thermal, and
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: when they're ascending to get to their beds early in
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: the morning or even before daylight, they've got that downhill
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: thermal to get all the way up there with. And
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: then what they're doing at night and in the evening
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: in the afternoons is they're rolling down into the Doe
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: family groups that are in kind of that middle third
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and kind of living an easier life because deer pretty
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: much live vertical until the rut in the mountains. During
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: the rut, the big box, if you look at topography,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: run parallel. They run parallel lines at certain elevations to
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: intersect with all of the vertical traveling doughs, doe family
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: groups and the dogs like to kind of go up
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and down the mountains each day to feed and bad
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: feed and bad because of the wind and the thermals.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: So if that all makes sense, those bucks like to
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: camp out a little bit above them, and I get
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: in and I really hit those areas where do family
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: group core living areas. Their circles kind of overlap with
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: those big bucks that are camped out, usually higher an
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: elevation above them. And it's not always the case, but
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: it's often the case. Okay, so let me let me
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: throw an assumption at you and tell me if this
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: is right or not. But if I'm looking at okay,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the top third the lower end of
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: that top third, and if I'm looking across a ridge line,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: and I'm trying to then pick, okay, where do I
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: think the best places along this elevation line would be?
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: That these bucks might pick outs their hangouts, I might
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: guess that it's going to be either where there's some
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: particularly gnarly cover at that elevation line, or where there's
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: little spurs or knobs coming off of that ridge. Um,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: is that right? Or or how do you how do
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: you narrow it down to that next stretch? Or is
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: it simply just you go out there and you walk
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: these ridges at that in that certain elevation until you
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: just see it. Yeah, you've kind of nailed all of it.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I kind of do a little bit of all of it.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: But the first part of your of your assumption to
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: me was pretty pretty right on. I I look for
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: those I get out and walk the heck out of it.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: But I look on a map too, for those those
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: little finger ridges that are hard to see or you
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: can't even hardly see on a map. I look for
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: those benches that are out there at that lower end
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: of that top third. Um, a place where it gives
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: a buck a little bit of ease, kind of a
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: kind of a little bit of relief. Because the country
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: is steep, and a lot of places like really steep,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: and it also, like you alluded to, and your assumption,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: lots of cover, a lot of blowdowns. You literally can't
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: hardly walk in on these big deer in their beds.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: The almost in marked and it all relates to months
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: too of the year. So right now it's hotter and
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: hell in the west. All these big deer, almost all
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: of my big deer that I'm monitoring right now on
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the one that I'm hunting, they're all betting up in
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: north north faces right now, or at least bending into
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the north where they get really good shade, they have
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: water and food extremely close. That buck I'm hunting right now,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: that's what he's doing. He's bedding in the north. He's
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: sliding out into a northeast bench, and he's got miles
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: literally a couple of miles of food to pick from,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: all native, all natural, so he doesn't have to go
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: far to get water, he doesn't have to go far
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: to eat, and he can stay cool in his air
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: conditioned north face compared to it's literally twenty degrees hotter
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: out in the south right now that it is in
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: the north, and he's in that heavy timber blowdowns. A
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: predator cannot walk in on him without him hearing him.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And then he's got the uphill thermal blowing up all
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: day long up wind to him for most of the
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: day the day and he just lays up in there
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and then when he gets that down wind thermal, he
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: uses it to move and the same way he comes
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: up in the morning. So yeah, that's that's you kind
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: of assumed. It pretty close to right as far as
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: what I'm looking for. And then yeah, I go pound
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the ground with boots too to see it. Then I
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: want to see the sign. I want to find those
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: big tracks. I want to find those rugs. Yeah, go ahead,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: I was just gonna kind of ask you exactly what
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: you started doing there. I'm just curious kind of walk
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: me through what those scouting sessions look like for you,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: because I heard you say somewhere that you look at
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: spring and summer as the most crucial part of the
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: entire year, maybe more important than even hunting season. Um,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: walk me through what those days look like. And when
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I say that, it's because from about middle of January
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: all the way to almost April, there might be between
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: three and ten ft of snow where my DearS spend
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: their whole hunting season. So as soon as the snow
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: comes off, it's almost like the ground has been mummified,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: meaning everything that they did right before the big snow's hit,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: and where they were hiding out, it's still there. That
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: sign almost gets like frozen and covered up and not
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: messed with. So when all the big snows come off
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: in the mountains, I can literally walk into a place
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: in March late April or early April, late March, and
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: if the snows off, I can see. I mean, the
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: stuff I see is pretty awesome because it's kind of
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: been preserved because it's had so much snow just sitting
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: on top of it. And I'll look for those trails.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I will look for those big beds, rubs that literally
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: big rubs that where a buck goes in and kind
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: of rubs his way in towards maybe a bedding area.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: And the biggest thing I look for in the mountains
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: are the the scrapes that all the deer use kind
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: of a community type hub scrape where they all come
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: back to after they migrate. They use it all through
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: the whole entire spring, summer, fall, and then when they exit,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: they always come back to those big community scrapes as
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: a social hub, and I look for those. So I'm
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: looking for all that, and I'm a shed hunter man.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I've literally really found thousands of sheds in my lifetime,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and I've killed several bucks because a lot of my
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: big deer will shed before the snows push them out.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: They'll tell me right whether they're hiding out. A lot
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: of my old deer dropped their antlers before they get
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: pushed out by the heavy snow, so that's a great
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: indicator too. And it's not all the deer, but it's
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the older bucks that drop early, and they'll be war
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: out and they'll drop their antlers. Like I've had big
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: bucks drop December. I've had a lot of my old
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: bucks dropped by January, one to the tent. So those
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: are great indicators too. Just so many different things I'm
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: looking for in the spring to make it put all
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: the pieces of the puzzle together. And then I'm literally
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: cameras on my community scrapes when the snow's gone year round,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and I even leave them in the winter when the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: snows are because I like to see what predators are
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: in the area, Like you know, just leave them out
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: all year, watch the snow get all the way up
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: to the camera and then drop all the way down,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: and then the deer right back at those scrapes. So
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: it's pretty, it's pretty. It's pretty impressive how powerful those
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: community hubs are for mountain deer. Can you can you
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: describe to me how you can determine when you found
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: one of these community scrapes versus just your ho hum
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: used once in a while kind of scrape, because it
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: seems like this is a really important part of what
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: you're doing in this big woods, big hill country stuff. Yes,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: a community scrape will have all the evidence on it
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: of decades of use, so real simple. The branches have
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: been beat to hell, tattered, twisted, chewed on, there's zero
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: leaves anywhere on them, and they look like almost a
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: witch's hand hanging down and it's just trashed. And below
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: it you'll always see even in the spring, even if
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: there's pine needles or stuff that fell in it, uh,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: below it, it'll you will literally just see three, four
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: or five feet sometimes of evidence from the past season,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: even you know, four or five months before, three or
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: four months before that it was just getting hammered, and
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: you just you know, I see all of those pieces,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: those multiple like six nine licking branches hanging off of
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: off of whatever species of tree it is or whatever
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: species of like brush it is that they use. And
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: I've got several that I hunt different for different areas,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: but that it's just you can look at the licking branches,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: and the licking branches are just beat to heck, tattered, twisted, torn,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: and the scrape below it will be usually three ft
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: are bigger, and it's because it's had decades of use.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: When I walk up on any other type of scrape,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: if the licking branch doesn't show me what I need
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to see, I literally don't even worry about it. If
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the licking branches looks like a tree branch hanging there
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: with no wear on it, in zero addressing to it,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: and I see a little scrape on the ground from
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: a buck that might have had a testosterone high that day,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: that happens a lot, and I see a lot of
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: those when I'm out shed hunting. And just to be
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: fair to your on earlier audience, mark, my shed hunting
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: is you know a lot of times, daylight till dark,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: ten to fifteen miles a day, gritty mountains at twenty
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: yards for miles at a time. I'll go mile dropped
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: down twenty yards, come back a mile dropped down twenty yards.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: So I'm really getting to see everything, you don't. I
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: have my shed dog with me and my son with me,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: so we're just like not missing hardly anything. But we
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: also run across a lot of cool buck sign in
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: the spring doing that kind of shed hunting, and it's
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: just that effort, that hard work, really getting enough boots
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: on the ground where your ass out all day long too,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: you can't hardly walk, and we'll pick up eight to
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: ten twelve sheds sometimes and then when we find a great,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: big one, you can almost bet he probably dropped him,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: especially if he's high elevation, he probably just gave away
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: his favorite core area hideout where he's hiding now because
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: it's usually a high elevation too. So are you are
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: you finding the majority of those good sheds at that
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: same elevation zone as where most of that buck betting
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: is happening or is it lower because by December or
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: January one they have to go lower. That's different every
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: year based on when we get what I consider, you know,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: a two and a half three ft of snow, So
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: on the years that the snow comes late, meeting the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: big snows that really pushed deer and I run cameras
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: year around so I watched when they leave. I literally
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: watched when all my big bucks exit and get out
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: of there, and they moved down. If it's an early
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: snow year and we get dumped on, like say around
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Christmas or first week of January, I can almost bet
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: any of the sheds that I find down lower or
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: from a buck that probably migrated to three four or
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: five miles maybe if it's a late snow and there's
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: are these are my favorite. And these are the big
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: deer that I've killed because I find their sheds, and
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: I've killed a couple of giants because I had really
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: late snow levels. I didn't even get eighteen inches of
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: snow till like February, and then it just piled on
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: in February and March. And I'll go in there in
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the spring and find those great big sheds of a
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: buck and it literally tells me right where, right where
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: he's hiding, because he's he he dropped those sheds probably
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: in early January, and our season goes up until Christmas,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: so he's hiding out in his favorite place to hide out.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: So every year is different, and it depends on when
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I get that high accumulation of snow interesting back to
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: the scouting. You talked about delevation on these ridges on
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: these mountains, But are there any other terrain features that
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: you key in on that when you see them on
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: the map, you circle it and say it, I gotta
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: walk that too, because this looks like a pretty good
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: damn thing, you know, like the like saddles or whatever
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, benches, anything like that. Yeah, same stuff I do,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: even in the Midwest where I'm in Iowa. On the
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: smaller it's honestly just a much smaller scale as long
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: as I got some elevations, some ravines, some benches, some ridges.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: To me, it's just a grander, much grander scale out here.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: So yes, um, I have killed a lot of big
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: white tails in and on saddles that allow a big
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: buck to get from one drainage too of the other
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: fast and easy and saving saving say three to five
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: feet of climb. Anywhere else, I circle those big time.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Anywhere in that five thousand to thirty to five thousand
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: foot range, I'm looking for those. I absolutely love the
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: big long ridges that have fingers off of them. A
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: lot of times I find the finger ridges that aren't
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: even on the maps, and I'll find those faint finger
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: edges and get out on those fingers and they'll have
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: a little bench out on them, and I run into
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of what I'm looking for on those in
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: the in that thirty five d to five thousand foot elevation,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: and I do hunt a little higher in that on
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: some bucks, but you're asking me kind of for the
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: you know, the majority, right, So I really like that
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: kind of ground. Uh. And then I've also set up
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: on hillsides mountain sides that are pretty steep because the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: deer have created a community scrape on it because it's
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: the only place they get away from pressure. And I'll
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: hunt those steep hillsides if I have to on a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: big scrape. And my son killed the biggest bucket his
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: life a public land almost won when he was thirteen
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: years old, with a bow and arrow on one of those.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: So it's a combination of those features where I feel
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: like deer like to spend a little more time or
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: like to travel through more often. In the giant woods,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: it always has heavy security cover, it is always close,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: and I'm always in conjunction with some type of social
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: community of okay, so I don't have it there when
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: I find it mark, I build it. If I don't describe.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: If I don't, yeah, I'll build the scrape and put it.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Put the deer where I want them. Let's talk about
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: that a little bit more, um now. So you'll find
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: them naturally in certain places, and you ken on that.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: But when you decide you want to build one, what
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: has what are the criteria to decide that a specific
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: zone or area is worth building one? Because you can
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: build one of these anywhere, and I've heard you say
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: that you can kind of get these bucks to hunt
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: you a little bit when you create a community scrape
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: like that. But it must be like there's got to
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: be the right the right place to do that, because
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: if you put that in the wrong place, I'm sure
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: it's not as effective. How do you pick the right
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: places for that? Right? So for for decades, I've backtracked
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: deer as soon as I get snow, and we get
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: snow early, um, and I'll snoop around into a lot
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: of in seasoned scout And if something isn't working like
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: I wanted to, or if a big buck gets cold
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: on me or figures me out and quits coming where
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: I need him, I'll move. So I start getting snow
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: in October and into November, and as soon as I
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: get snow, and if I need to go scout um
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: these big woods, it's kind of nice having snow because
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: the deer is so spread out and it's so big
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: that I'll go find literally by looking on a map
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and also knowing what my deer doing in the area
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: and how they're ascending and descending day and night. In
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: the morning and the evening where they're trying to hide out,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: I'll literally walk into what looks really good on a map,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: and usually I'll run into a scrape in there. But
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: the snow lays everything out for me as far as
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: tracks go, and I can really play off of all
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the other hunters based on how they're staying away from
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the other guys that are pressuring them, maybe lower an
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: elevation of me, or maybe down the road from me
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a mile or two miles or something. Then I'll dive
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: into that in October November, and I'll spend the day
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: sometimes just walking. If I've got snow, I'm probably walking
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: if I don't have a buck that's killable. And when
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I find heavy concentration of travel that really looks like
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: to me would be daylight timing on the travel because
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: it's using pretty high in elevation or higher. And I've
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: got all the dough tracks and fawn tracks I want
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: to see, and a couple of big sets of buck tracks. Boom,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: I'll lay a community scrape right in their highest travel
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: corridor and hang a stand. And I don't post a
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff on my little YouTube page, but I
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: have one that I put in two years ago on
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: the October and it had actually snowed and I got
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: my scouting in and then it melted. It was just
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: a skiff and that's all I needed to scout for
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: a day. And I doubled back in there. I scouted
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: like a week before when I had a little bit
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: of snow, and I doubled back in there and built
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: the scrape where I wanted to. And uh, I no joke,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: And I have videos all over my little YouTube page
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: to prove it. I had to one sixties and a
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: one eight on that community scrape and four or five
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: does and probably four or five younger bucks within fifteen days. Wow.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: And then I again, I killed Then I killed the
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: one sixty two on that scrape a month or not
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: a month? Yeah, A month later, December third, I killed
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: him digging in that scrape when I was hunting the
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: big deer. Yep. I want to I want to get
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: into the details of how you make those scrapes at
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: what you're specifically doing in any particular unique things you're doing.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: But I gotta I gotta ask just a little bit
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: about how you find these best of the best bucks.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: Is it? Is it simply that you are everything you've
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: just told me, finding the right elevation, finding where the
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: habitat comes, and finding where you've got great cover and
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: and all these things. Is it simply that if you
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: find that combination of factors that you will find these
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: top tier bucks if you check enough of them. Or
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: is there some other secret sauce that you're finding, Like
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: I'm one of these top tier, these big, big, big ones.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: I understand that you can zero in on a bunch
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: of on like a decent number of deer. So I
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: guess and wondering, is that the spot Or is that
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: you have so many spots like this, and you run
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: cameras on so many spots like this that eventually on
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: three of those thirty really great looking spots on a
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: given year, the jumbo ones will show up in in
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: one of those. Okay, it's not even close to lots
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: of spots and a war of attrition and just trying
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: to do numbers, not even close. No, And a lot
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: of people I think think that about me. Oh this
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: guy just runs a hundred cameras and finds a big deer.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Hell No, I freaking study the hell out of genetics.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: And I've spent so much time in these mountains and
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: I pay close attention to where the best genetics tend
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: to be for decades, and I study where every big
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: deer has ever been killed. And if I don't know
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the truth about where he's been killed, I don't believe it.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: And I'll literally for me, it's about of read me
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: really tuning in on the genetics that I like. So
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: if I get into an area mark that has piss
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: poor genetics and I know it and I can see
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: it based on my camera evidence, I'm out. I go
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: hunt where the big I mean, you know, if you
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: want football players, then you go find football players. If
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: you want basketball players, then you go look for that genetic.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: If you want soccer players, you go find that genetic.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: I treat my bucks the same it's all about the
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: d n A that they're spreading in their drainages. So
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: I've got some drainages that are just fricking producers because
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: of the DNA, and that's where I target is d
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: n A. And then the ability for that d NA
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: to survive and reach ages of five or six or
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: seven in the bucks interesting. So then I guess if
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I wanted to reproduce your strategy, let's say in my
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: part of Idaho, where I don't know that stuff yet,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: if I wanted to try to do something similar, I'd
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: have to cover the country though to find where these
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: little pockets are eventually right. So I would have to
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: do the war of numbers until I found these zones
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: that had those right. Well, here's what I do, market
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: fise you. If I hunt where you were, I go
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: down into every sporting goods store, every local little cafe
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: in those in that area, every everything you can walk
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: into publicly, and just look for big dear genetics on
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: the wall. I've killed a couple of great, big Bucks
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: because I went into a restaurant and I saw the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: genetics that were badass, and I thought, I'm gonna get
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: up into this country and I'm just saying this is
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, I pay attention to everything everywhere you go visits,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: you know you're out of state. So yeah, when I go,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: when I go out of state, everywhere I go, my
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: eyes are on the genetics of anything I see. Hanging
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: on somebody's barn, uh, somebody's cafe, and somebody's sporting goods
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: store and somebody's gas station. That's what I do. And
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: and I found a lot of big deer. Just paying
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: close attention to the area's genetics. And I get into
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: every book, every resource that I can find, big game records,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: county records, study the hell out of it. And then
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: I look at where the deer probably have the least
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: amount of rifle pressure, because I deal with a lot
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: of rifle pressure in a lot of areas out here. Yeah,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: I gotta get away from that. Okay, that all makes
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: that all makes sense. Um, let's get back to the scrapes.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: So you're finding these zones of heavy deer activity that
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: are away from human activity, and you're creating this hub. Uh.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: You know, most everybody listening knows how to make a
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: basic mock scrape, but are you doing something different than
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: the average mock scrape that Joe Schmo is making in Michigan. Um,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: what does it look like for you? You know, I
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: want to say one thing about that last question. I'm
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: gonna answer this. You are correct though two when I
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: said when you said, is some of it just boots
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: on the ground and finding big sheds and good genetics, Yes,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: that's part of it too, Okay to your mock scrape question.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I have a lot of guys now that
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: have that have heard my stuff, watched seeing kind of
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: the success I've had, and they're doing this. And I've
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: taught a lot of people how to build mock scrapes,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: like in person, went out in the woods with them,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: showed them how to build one. I'll turn around and
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: send me a picture when they built a week later.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: And it's honestly, it's not gonna work. It's not authentic enough,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: it's not detailed enough. It doesn't have the authenticity of
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: something that catches a five year old bucks eye and
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: knows and says, you've got to get that big deer,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: and my big deer walk in and look at him
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: for the first time. On video. I run all video
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: on every scrape that I built, I run all video
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: on every buckeye hunt for thirty seconds to a minute,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: because I want to learn everything about his reaction. So
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: what happens is is when I replicate these, it's detailed.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: It's the exact favorite species of licking branches that that
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: drainage shows me based on my scouting. It's the right species,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: it's the right look. When I find a community scrape,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: I mimic I copy that. I sculpt that out with
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the licking branches. I build the scrape and the same fashion,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: size everything to a detail, and then I always put
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: mock rubs around it, because the best community scrapes I
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: ever find always have rubs around him. So I build this.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: I built this scenario, this scene for these big dare
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: to walk into. And the scent, and I use buck
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Fever synthetics. I've used it for twenty plus years. The scent,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: they never shy from it. I've never had an issue.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: The look of the licking branch, which is multiple torn, tattered,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: beat to hell, totally looks like it's been there for decades.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: I'll literally harvest the right species of uh limb just
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: to hang it a hundred yards away on a tree,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: and I'll prop you know, I'll tie it onto a
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: tree and use some parrocord and get it all perfect
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: and at the right literally at the right height, and
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: I build it so that when these deer walk into
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: that for the first time, they smell it, and visually
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: they just lock onto it, and you can see it
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: in their eyes. They just lock onto it and and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: they literally have that look like, how in the hell
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: did I miss this? And they always walk over to it,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: and Mark, I've got video after video of them locking
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: on my big deer. They walk over to it and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: they just start sucking airing through their nose and breathing
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: it out their mouth, checking it and they start bobbing
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: their head and then they get their head up around
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: that licking branch. And I've got that forehead gland sent
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: on it, and I've got urine in the dirt, and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: I'll put four or five different deer profiles, the synthetic
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: urine in it, because I wanted to be I wanted
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: to come across to them like there's several different urins
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: in there, not just one, because that's what a community scrape,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: even residual sense smells like in one. Those deer can
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: smell different urines in that dirt. So I'll put every
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: urine profile I have, even in the summer, even in
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: May and June when i'm building one, because i want
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: different profiles of urine sense in there. It's all urine,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: but they all have a little different, you know, twist
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: to them. So I'll do that forehead gland on that
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: sculpted out, beautiful licking branch, and it just locks them
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: in and then they start coming back to seeing who's there,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: and they instantly always start overmarking it. For me, the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: does the box, the fawns, all of them, and they'll
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: overmark and then they start competing if there's good bucks.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: You know, if there's a couple of studs there, I
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: get more frequency than I do if I just have
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: one big stud, like the one I'm hunting right now.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: He's the king of the freaking mountain where I'm hunting.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: He doesn't have anything near him that even poses a threat.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: He's harder to kill than the ones that have two
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: or three studs in there. Can you I know when
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: you described how you make these these scrapes that you mentioned,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: you try to mimic what's done in that specific drainage
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: in that specific area. But are there any generalities you
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: can describe? So I'm wondering, like, for example, the scraped
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: out area underneath you know, you might find your average
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: ho home scrape might be you know, two ft by
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: three ft oval, but then these mega scrapes I'm imagining
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: are like a car hood. Is that Do you have
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: any kind of general guidance you can offer there? Yeah? Um,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: in my country in the mountains, and even when I've
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: hunted all the other states, and what I see on
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: the big ones that usually you know, three three feet
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: actually pretty big. Um. I like to make them about
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: four ft on the bottom, and I v them out
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: on the top underneath the liaking branch, just like the
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: bucks do. I take a big I'll just break off
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: a big limb and I'll dig that dirt out to
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: where there's I really dig the dirt down about two
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: inches inch and a half two inches and then I
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: and then I blade it back in with that stick
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: and make a bed. So I have awesome soft absorbing
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: dirt in that scrape. And it's kind of a V pattern,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: and it widens out at the bottom to about four
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: ft and up top it's you know, it's speci to
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: the V and widens out pretty quick, so it kind
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: of looks like a tear drop almost, um. And then
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: I placed that so that the top of the V
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: is literally right under the leaking branch, so it looks
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: like it shows years of deer working that working that
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: uh dirt, you know, down down into the wider portion
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: of the scrape, and I make a really nice churned
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: up dirt bed. I make sure there's zero vegetation in it.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: I wear my latex gloves or my rubber gloves, and
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I literally dig every piece of vegetation out of it
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: that could be there. There's some rits in the ground sometimes,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: you know, just I just make sure it's like pristine looking,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: and it looks like a natural community scrape looks like
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: uh when they're really working them hard, even the dirt part.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: And I'll do that even in the summer, even in
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: the spring. So the dirt. If that answers your question
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: for the dirt, it's it's pretty damn good side. I'm
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: trying sometimes five ft. Yeah, sometimes I really blow one up. Um.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: And for me, it's it's kind of like artwork. It's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I get a fill for the drainage, and what I've
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: seen in there. And I also kind of have an
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: idea based on all the years of hunting these different areas,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: and I'll try to mock and mimic the best of
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: the best scrapes I've ever found in that area because
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: there's a lot there's a lot of visual that people
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: don't take into account. With light tails, they're extremely locked
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: in two scrapes. Visually, Go ahead, Mark, I was just
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: gonna go back to a few more of those factors
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: that help you zero in on the right spots for
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: the scrapes. I know we talked about there's the upper
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: third line where you're gonna have these bucks betting, and
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: that's also the line where lots of times during the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: rut their cruising right, um, and then you've got them
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: no no, no, no, no, no, there there they upper
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: third is where they like to bed the line that
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: they cruised, they drop into that they dropped down and
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: cruise horizontally in that middle third where the yes, yes, okay, sorry.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: So so then my question was, then, tell me elevation
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: for these community scrapes. Are those typically on the dough
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: elevation line then, because that's where they intersect or what
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: about that? I like to play some kind of the
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: higher top top end of the dough normal hangout. You know,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: they're they're into their core area where where my doses
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: like to hang out and live day to day. I'll
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: usually set up at the top end of their elevation
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: or in the top third of their elevation, where my
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: big bucks will kind of work down into that elevation
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: and run horizontal through it. And that seems to work
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: really good. Were those cored buck areas and cord dough
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: family group areas intersect? If you could drop you know,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: that's the easiest way for me to explain it. Where
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: they where the circles intersect with each other at their elevations.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I follow you now you mentioned mocrubs. How how are
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: you making these mock rubs? How many per area? Um?
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Give me some details there, okay. And over the years,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: the bucks have really showed me just I used to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: just make the mock scrape, and I'd make a mock
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: scrape in the right spot, and I'd instantly have three,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: four or five rubs pop up. Instantly, A big bucket
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: come in and just literally overmarked the whole freaking place,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: and he'd rubbed the ship out of trees or two
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: or three would do it. So what I started doing
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: is doing that ahead of time. I'll go in at
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: least two, sometimes three, and I placed them visually on
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: purpose for every pretty consistent wind that they're gonna walk
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: in on. So that way, if they're like fifty or
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: thirty yards away, it's easier in my opinion for a
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: big buck and heavy cover to see a mock rub
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: over a scrape. You know, licking branches can really blend
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: in until you get up close. They're kind of they're
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: kind of a twenty yard visual, five yard visual, but uh,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: and you probably feel the same way. I would guess
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: when you're out shed hunting stuff, you can see a
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: rub fifty yards away pretty damny. So I use those
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: mock rubs as visuals to get the bucks to come
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: and inspect it. And then there's a big scrape there.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: So I'm placing them visually, especially one that faces the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: downhill thermal, one that faces the uphill thermal, and then
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: one that always faces prevailing winds for the most part,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: where they're gonna walk in and use that wind in
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: their nose. I usually, you know, it's it's usually two
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: or three or four always depending on the layout of
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: the spot. I want to kill a deer at that
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: makes sense. So then you're just taking a knife and
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: slashing up the side of a tree or what I take.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: I take my tree saw and I just scrape it down.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I scraped the camp I scraped down to the cambium
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: on the smaller trees that you know that whatever the
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: deer show me they like rubbing on, I picked the
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: same species. If it's there, I mimic the big rubs
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: I see in the area. I always put a good
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: one in though. It's visual, so it's it looks like
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: a horse, like a big boy laid it out there,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I I just copy exactly what the deer
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: showed me in my woods, and I copy what I'm
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: seeing and over, you know, I literally on video, bucks
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: walk up, I spray them without forehead gland, and I
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: have bucks walk up and sniff them and rub on.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: It's pretty wicked and nothing else. It's a great signed
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: to get them to walk over and find the scrape.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: It really does my opinion. I've seen it on video.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: I think they've noticed that from quite a ways off. Yeah,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, it makes all the sense in the world.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: It's it's not something I've ever thought to do. I
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: do a good amount of mock scrapes, but it's sure,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: it's it seems like a great idea to have that
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: visual cue bringing them in. And like you said it,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: those rubs stand out like someone's spray painting the side
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: of a tree. You can see it from a long
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: ways away, and I'm sure it's the same for deer. Um. Yeah,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: we're attacking their senses, you know. I go right after
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: their biology and every aspect I can. I like how
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: everything you've described everything you do, and this applies to
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: all the best dear un as I've talked to in
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: their own unique way. But you're very detail focused, like
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: there's all these little details that you're trying to mimic
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: nature or that you're focused on and and obviously that's
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: one of the things that has led to the success
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: you had. And I guess along those same lines, I
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: want to hear about the details of how you're setting
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: your cameras up because you're you're using these communities scrapes um.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: I think one part is to hunt them, but the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: second part is, obviously they're a huge part of your
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: scouting strategy. You get these videos that tell you a lot, um,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: how are you setting up your cameras so that you're
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: getting this great footage in this great intel, but you're
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: not spooking these deer. Um, Can you tell me, like
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: how high, how far away? On what trees do you do?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: You come from a certain angle so when they come
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: to the licking branch, they're not looking at your camera.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it could be, but tell me
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: everything that you're thinking about when you put the camera up.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: So when I put a camera up, if it's a
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: brand new area, I usually always hang one pretty high
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: because I've had bucks in the past that do not
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: like eye level cameras. Um. I use what's called a
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: spy Eye system, which has got a up to fifteen
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: telescopic poll. It's got a male and female apparatus that
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: I hooked my camera to and I literally can put
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: it up to twelve ft fifteen ft high and take
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: it down without every him in a tree. It's badass.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: So I used the Spy High Spy High, and those guys, Yeah,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: those boys aren't giving me anything or pumping me at all.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I get nothing from him, but I like their system.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: It's wicked and on public land, the majority of dudes
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: that walk by my scraper elk hunters that go through
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: and don't even know I'm hunting there, and they don't
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: see any of the whitetail stuff. They never see that
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: camera high. So I really like a high camera, at
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: least one, and I usually start with something up fairly
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: high just to start in on a spot. But the
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: truth of the matter is when it comes down to
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: the bucks, it's all individual to every big buck. I'm
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: trying to kill. That buck I'm hunting right now, could
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: give a shit about where a camera's at. He does
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: not care. He doesn't care if it's low high, doesn't
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: even look at him, he doesn't freak out, He walks
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: by him, doesn't stare at him. As soon as I
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: had a big buck a few years ago that if
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: he saw camera ship, I wouldn't see him for a week,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: for two weeks. So so Mark, to answer your question,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: it's always going to be individual to the buck. But
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: to play it safe and on public land, I like
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: that high. I like to have a high camera in
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: almost every setting and every potentially not potential, every spot
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: I have that has a a stud on it or
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: a in a year two superstar that's coming up. I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: run three cameras at least, and I run per yes,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: per spot. Even if I'm not going to hunt the
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: deer killing, I get years of detail on him, sometimes
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: two years before I move into killing. So I'm studying
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: my three and four year olds constantly with three cameras
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: that have big upside. You know, I've got a four
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: year old right now that I call Captain America that
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: if I send you a picture of him, you'd say,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: why aren't you killing that dear? But but I know
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: what he can turn into. And the buck I'm hunting
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: right now that I sent your pictures of I left
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: that deer alone and he was probably gross on seventy
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: last year. You know, he was right there high six
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: seventy last year. So my whole point is individual to
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: every book went in doubt, hang them high. You won't
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: spook them, uh either. Another easy way to do it,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: and I did it for years, is just take one
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: of my steps from my tree stand and go hang
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: my trail cameras, and when I have to go in
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: and check, i'd have to do a step. So on
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: the high ones. A lot of times I'll let the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: high one run, especially during hunting season, I'll just let
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: it run. And then I'll hide one or two cameras,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: and I mean I hide them, I camouflage them, I
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: cover them up, and I'll get him at eye level,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: and I'll put them quite a ways back, and as
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: long as my target bucks and up and comers aren't
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: spooking from them at all. And I used all the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the the the infrared and all the blackout cameras,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: and I do everything I can not to have a
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: big bright flash. Not that every buck's afraid of that,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: because they're not, but some of them are. Um. Yeah,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: I run cameras quite a ways away, like the technology
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: so good nowadays. A lot of my stuff ten fifteen
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: yards of my scrapes or twenty even, you know, fifteen
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: fifteen yards back. And what I do is placed those
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: cameras pretty close to my tree stand where I'm trying
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: to kill something. Out of that way, I can slide
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: into my tree, pull my lower level camera cards without
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: ever crossing or putting any ground scent or scent over
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: near where I think I'm going to have him walked by,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: which is usually in conjunction with that scrape somehow. That's
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask was how you're able to
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: check these without messing up the area, Because when you're
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: running on video all the time, I gotta believe battery
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: life and SD cards, you know, are much more quickly depleted.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: So how often are you checking these usually during the season? Okay,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: so some of my cameras um that I know I'm
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: not going to go target a buck there, but I
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: want to keep track of him. I'll make the intervals
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: much longer in between on video so that I don't
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: get too many videos around the biggest SD card allowed
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: in the camera to the thirty two or six before,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: but lithium batteries in them, and I stretch out the
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: trigger time on the big deer that I want to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: kill and get a bunch of info on. Yeah, I'm
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: in there enough hunting name during the season that I
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: can easily swap the batteries out once a month, you know.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: That's peace cake. And every camera is set up near
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: my kill tree, the tree that I'm gonna kill out of,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: so that I don't have to infringe hardly at all
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: on where I'm shooting deer at, which is only yards
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: away A lot the time I feel well, I want
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: to I want to take the next step from scouting
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: and pinpointing now with trail cameras and you're on the boots.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: Everything I want to shift to now how you're actually
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: hunting these deer. But to make sure we've really got
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: your whole preparation part nailed down. Do you think you
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: could use the example of that buck you're hunting this year? Two?
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Walk me, walk me through everything we've just been talking about, Like,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: tell me the details of this deer. So, how did
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: you find the general area, how did you scout it,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: what elevation did you focus on, Where did you run
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: your community scrapes, how did you get the cameras to
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: find him? I think this would be a really interesting
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: way to illustrate all these concepts. And then we'll move
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: on to the killing deer. Yeah. Yeah, so so this deer.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: I don't mind sharing it all these public land deer um.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we're not going to talk GPS, and
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: that's fine. It all started. It all started with gene
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: pool um remote pretty remote, not extremely remote, but remote
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: enough to where I feel like the human nature is
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people want to just do everything
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: the easiest way possible and get by and make it happen,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: or and be okay with that. I like to try,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: or I purposely don't like. I purposely go where I
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: think it's kind of hard for people to put the
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: effort in. And that might mean a long drive, that
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: might mean hard walking, that usually might mean some steep
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: ground or something that just kind of tears the average
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: human being from even wanting to try it. And that's
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: where I tend to find some bucks in the right elevation.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: So this deer that I'm hunting right now, um, he's
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting. He's actually in a in a really heavily
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: blowdown area, lots of blowdowns, lots of wind damage, ton
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: of feed. It's probably a logged area from forty or
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: fifty years ago. So the timber that's in there now
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: is not real big, but it's you know, it'd be
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: big to most people, but not in the grand scheme
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: of things out west. And what I liked about this
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: spot that I chose early on on a map, and
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: I had driven through the country before, eyeball, and but
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: I got on the map and I saw this ridge
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: that just extended a long ways out and it was
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: the elevation that I like, and it had literally on
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: the north side of it, on the top all one
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: of the steepest ravines, and it probably the ravine on
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: the north side drops down probably at least feet. I mean,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: it goes way down into a hole, and then that
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: ravine runs to the north on the north face runs
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: probably three or four miles and there's not a road
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: in there. Now there's a roadway out across the top.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people, in my opinion, don't want
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: to go way down in and hunt on a big
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: mountain side and pack a big white tail buck up
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: hill and get him out of there. That's just my
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: thought process, you know. I I like to bone him out,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: pack him out on my back, and I'll tell you what,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: I like to eat white tail as much as I
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: like to kill him. So um, my family lives on
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: Elkott Deer, That's what we But anyway, back to the
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: whole process of finding this guy. I went out um
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: and built some mock scrapes. Initially walked it, saw some
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: little scrapes, found one I really liked, but it was
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: too close to where I parked. I didn't like the proximity,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: and I found a great scrape that I ended up
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: putting a camera on it two years ago, and all
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: the deer in the area hit it, but at night.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: So I kind of treat like a mountain logging road,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: just like somebody would treat a farm field too open,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: too much activity, too many cars driving up and down it,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: you know, and too many for a mountain buck might
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: be one or two a day in a drainage, and
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: they're on high alert if they're if they're close to
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: a road. So anyway, I got out there quite a
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: ways mark and uh literally picked a spot where I
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: thought it'd be cool, a nice spot, got far enough away,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: great feet. It was in the summer, early summer, probably
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: late spring, and I built a community scrape and it
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: has just had all the right details, the habitat, the
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: train features on a big bench. The north face was
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: literally fifty yards away that dropped off into that ravine
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: for literally thousand feet or more. So it was wicked.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: And I could hear the creeks and the tributaries running
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: down below me down in there, and nobody's hunting down
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: in those super steep faces. Nobody can't hard it. I mean,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. So Anyway, the first deer that hit my
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: camera was that big deer, first dear within a day,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: first gear. And what I did is I placed that
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: scrape so that the down wind evening thermals would run
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: down into what I think the betting area was in
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: that north So I knew all those thermals would suck
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: that scent down into that north, huge north face, and
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: I figured any big buck that was down in that
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: north below me there would come up and check this
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: scrape and then would also send it the prevailing winds
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: and everything would blow that scent all over. And this
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: was way back in I think it was I think
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: it was May, and this is I'm talking about a
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: couple of years ago. And he was really a great
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: deer even when he was younger, and I could see
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: all the genetics, and I thought, man, he you know,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: he needs another year, and kind of just left him
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: alone because he was young. And then last year did
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: the same thing, same spot. He was in and out
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: of there through the season, nobody killed him. Boom shows
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: right back up and got big, and then it was like, damn,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: we better take a look at hunt this year. But
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: he was only four, and I thought he was four
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: and a half. Sometimes you know you're not always right,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: but I thought he was four and a half last year.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: So anyway, once we got him in hard Horn, my
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: son and I determined right at the first season he
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: was only four and a half once we really got
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: to look at him on hard Horn pictures. So we
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: only like set there twice and we got out. We
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: left him alone, totally left him alone, let the cameras run,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: checked the cameras through the whole four months, and kind
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: of watched what he did. And I noticed that I
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: was still probably too close to road access. Oh. In
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: May of this year, I knew what I was gonna do.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: I looked at my maps, the feeds all there. The
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: ridges are beautiful, everything. It just has everything he wants.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: I could see where he was coming up out of
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: that north a lot living in that North and coming
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: up out of it even in the winter until he
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: got too much snow. He was still coming out of
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: the North and hiding out in it because nobody goes
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: into it. So then and this year I moved quite
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: a ways on him to where I felt like he
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: would feel safer to move in the daylight, and I
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: found a giant community scrape within fifty yards of where
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: I put my uh dropped my pen on my base map,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: and I literally walked right in there, found those rubs,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: found that scrape and thought, I'm in it. This is his.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: He's the stud in this area. There's a couple other
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: there was a couple other good bucks, but I had
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of wolves on camera and there too. And
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: this year it ended up being he survived. I haven't
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: seen the other big five point that was in there
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: last year when I say five or five by five, um,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: but he survived, and it was you know, I had him,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: got him in June and he's been there ever since.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: And that big community scrape that I found, I just
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: refreshened it, opened it up a little more and I
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: pretty much got every deer in that area hitting it
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: right now. And he really hit it well and fed
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: all over in there. This area is full of huckleberries
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: and he loves huckleberries. I got foodles the video of
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: this guy eating huckleberries. But anyway, um, I've got good food.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: He's got his north face that he can hide out in.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: It's hotter in hell right now. That's where he's living,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: and that's where he pretty much hung out the last
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: two years in that general area. I just moved closer
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: to his bed. I think I'm within three yards of
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: him right now. One more question on the the community
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: scrape scouting plan. Once you once you locate a buck,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: you know he hits, he hits your camera, you know
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: that this good one is there? Is it only ever
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: just one community scrape and general area or will you say,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: all right, I got a big one here now I
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: want to you know, spread a wider net and see
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: where he's roaming and other spots that might get might
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: be able to get a shot. Do you do you
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: do you put more cameras out and more community scrapes
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: out within a along that same ridge or I don't know,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: when you're hunting eighty acres in Michigan, I've got you know,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: six cameras all over the place. But when you've got
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: a million acres, do you just put one per large area?
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: Or what's the numbers we're talking about here when you
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: try to figure these dear out? So it all is
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: based on what he's doing for me. If he's showing
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: me good daylight and that he likes that spot and
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: that he'll daylight it and I know I'm close based
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: on his movement patterns, that he's in the daylight a lot.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not moving, and the last thing I want to
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: do is move him around and me be at one
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: scrape one day and he's at my other one, you
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. So so for what I do
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: in this big woods, giant country is man, if you're
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: daylight work, I got bucks daylight and working it, doze
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: daylight and working it, and I leave it alone. Uh
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: if I got all nighttime and all I ever have
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: is nighttime of a big buck. I moved right at him,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: and I really study on video where he's coming from,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: and I picked you know, I can pick the hell
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: out of the map and pick everything out where he's
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: probably at. And I just moved towards him a couple
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: of hundred yards at a time. And usually when I
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: do that, I pick him up. Um. A good example
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: is a buck I hunted a couple of years ago.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: I had to move half a mile, and when I
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: moved half a mile and picked the right bench up higher,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: I got him all the time in the daylight, and
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: then something ended up killing him. Something ended up killing
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: about off as a hunter or a wolf but I
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: was getting the daylight of him a ton and then
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: he just disappeared. So all that to say, no, I
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: usually don't tend to just scatter scrapes all over and
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: cameras all over. One one problem with that in my
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: opinion on these mountain bucks, because if you're out there
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: traps and around a three of four different scrapes in
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: a general kind of area, you're leaving your freaking scent everywhere.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: I love to flid in get as close to a
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: Buck's bedroom as I can, and his bedroom out in
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: this country isn't one spot. He'll have an area that
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: he likes to bed in, and boy, if I can
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: get him to stay there and use that area and
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: I call it a hideout through September, October, November December,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: that's incredible in the mountains. When you find that kind
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: of spot, it's the area he loves. He really trusts it.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: So when I find a buck that shows me that
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: I might move at him a little more if he
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: quits daylighting on me. But he's still around it a lot.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: But this time of year September right now, when it's
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: the testosteronees just starting to pick up, I'm just watching
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: him every day, change a little bit in his behavior.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Like I hunted yesterday and gotta pull my card. And
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: it's the first time I've seen him at my scrap
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: run a little buck out of it. First time he
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: showed some aggression. So I'm liking what I'm seeing. And Monday,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: my big gy that I'm hunting was daylight. I could
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: have killed him in legal light in the evening, first
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: time he's daylighted in there since August twenty. But he
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: likes that area. I know I wasn't spooking e because
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: he didn't leave. And I know that the reason he
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: stopped August twentieth, and the season doesn't even open until
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: the first September, is because it was ninety plus freaking
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: degrees out. It was hotter in Hell. I know what
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: that old boy was doing. He's laying in that north.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: You know he doesn't want to be up in the
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: nineties some degree weather when he can go out in
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: this country. You know this mark about the mountain country.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: You've been in it. It cools way down in the
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: big swing. Our dear absolutely love those big old bucks.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: Love but when it cools off, just like a grown
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: man likes the cool basement at his house versus up
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: in the upstairs where it's hot. You know, it's the
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: same concept. And I see that with the older I've
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: got several beautiful four and a half year old that
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: are walking daylight right now that I could go hunt
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: and kill. I just don't want to shoot him at
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: that age. Let's let's talk about this next phase then,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: which is hunting season. So you've you've found these core
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: areas that you like. You've put cameras out over these
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: scrapes across different places, and you zeroed in on your
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: your top bucks or two or three or four bucks.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Talk to me about your Yeah, talk to me about
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: now the hunting strategy once the season kicks off, is
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: it really Is it primarily focused on these these scrape
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: cheryl cam combos um or or what? Is it? Not?
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: Just I'm markets it's bad. Proximity to his bad. I
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: gotta get close. I just got real fortunate with this
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: book that he's camped out really close to this scrape too. Um,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: it's speed. He has to have feed right there that
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: he liked, and I've got him on video a ton
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: just eating the native vegetation all around me, like literally
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: just chomping and he's a he's literally a huckleberry monster.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: And I still got huckleberries there. So huckleberries to these
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: bucks are just like bucks that eat apples. I'm in
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: one of the thickest huckleberry patches you've ever seen. I
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: could literally walk into my stand and pick a handful
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: of huckleberries and in stop for ten seconds, thirty seconds
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: and have a handful of huckleberries and throw them in
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: the mouth on the way in. And where the scrape was.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: It was dynamite because it's just a huckleberry patch with
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: a big community scrape that they built, the deer of
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: built over the years. Kind of makes sense to me
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: because it's a great beating area too. There's all kinds
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: of green grasses and green vegetation in there right now too.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: So what I'm seeing on my cameras is, yeah, I'm
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: to answer your question, betting is crucial, huge and feed
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: and water right now. Now, his water is below me
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: down in the north that I'm that I've seen him
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: coming out of. I'm not going to bail down into
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: that north on a straight mountain face with downhill thermals
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: and ever killed that there. It's not gonna happen, I'll
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: blow him out of there, because it's a downhill thermal
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: in a north face. North face thermals run downhill way
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: longer than south face thermals. There's a ton of downhill
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: thermal in there. Sometimes it's switches all day long on
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: a north face. So north faces are tough to hunt
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: when they're super steep, they're really hard to try to
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: kill an he's so close to me. Anyway, I'm sitting
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: back just a little ways, probably a couple three hundred
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: yards from him, maybe four hundred at the most, and
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: letting him do his thing, letting him be comfortable. I'm
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: actually seeing him start to act different because we've got
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: cold weather coming. Um, the climates, you know, everything's changing.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: We're getting rid of this hot weather. And I noticed
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: his testosteronees up a little bit the other day. You know,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing him kind of get freaking aggressive with these
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: other little bucks. So it's bad. It's water, it's feed,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: and it's social. The social part is the scrape part.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: I try to attack all four of those. So let's
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about stand placement. Because while
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: it seems like you're able to peg deer to a
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: general betting area. It sounds like that's a much wider
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: area than what I might be focused on in Michigan,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: where there's a little swampy patch and a couple of
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: ice light islands in it. And I can tell you, man,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: it's a damn good chance he's betted on this island,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: that island or that island, um, And then I know
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: they're going to the soybean field or whatever. That's pretty
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: easy to connect point A to point B and then say, okay,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: I gotta get between it. But out there where you're talking,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: there's there's huckleberries and native stuff everywhere, so foods everywhere
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: you're betting could be this whole north face. How do
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: you honestly mark betting? Betting can be a hundred thousand acres.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not shipped yet. Yikes. Markets it's hard to explain
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: to people that have ever tried hunting the mountains for deer.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: It literally is endless. They do what they want. They
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: don't have to bed in that small little swamp, they
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: don't have to stay in that block of two September.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: When I when I go out to Oklahoma, Iowa, North Dakota,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: those places, it's so freaking easy to pinpoint dere and
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: get it in my opinion as far as pinpointing, not
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: saying it's easy to kill a five or six year
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: old buck because he's still a survivor in his area,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: but this is a this is a giant scenario count
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: as far as country goes. So yes, it's you know,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: to to really look at it and to get on
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: these deer. I feel like a guy has to be
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: extremely meticulous and careful with stand placement because I have
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: to allow my buck, and I've watched him do it
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: now a ton on video when he comes in, and
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: I always hang old man's beard in all of my
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: videos as a windicator, so I always know exactly what
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: he's doing in conjunction with the wind that he has
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: at that time every time he walks in. So when
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: he walks in right now, he's always coming with at
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: least the wind in his face or quartering to his
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: nose every time. And Mark, I'm getting fifty six yards
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: out on purpose where I put my cameras, and even
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: at night, the windicator is in my view and I
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: can watch him jay hook and using the wind always,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: so stand placement. My stand is set up to where
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: I can come down the ridge, walk down it, climb
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: up into it, never cross where I have this deer
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: all over on video, and not cross his wind my
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: the winds that I'm using and hunting off of in
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: the evening right now or morning, I have to have
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: the right prevailing mixing with the right thermal to even
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: go hunt it. And when I do, it also has
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: to give him that dear the wind that he'll come
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: in on, because he only comes in on certain wins.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: And I've got that. I've got that documented. It's simple
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: to see with my windicator. Uh, when there are certain
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: winds in there, they're blown the other way and it's
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: not blown towards his betting area. Guess what, he doesn't
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: come in he's doing something else. But the nice thing
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: is got this buck on an evening thermal, and there's
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: always usually the same evening thermal unless unless there's a
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: heavy prevailing to override it. And right now he's literally
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: like the days at least coming through the area at
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: least at night and just starting the daylight right now.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: So those evening thermals, once the sun starts setting right
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: just starts dropping down that ridge. And it's it's how
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: do you keep him from smelling you any time you
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: were up there. You are you so confident in how
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: far down or how far it's got to be ahead
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: of you, right if you're because you're what you're I'm
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: trying to think of this scenario. Your wind would be
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: dropping down the ridge too, so he must be ahead
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: of where your winds and drop. That's what he's doing.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: He's coming in. He's coming up this north face and
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: he's kind of hooking up into this spot. And I'm
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: off too. I'm off to the northeast of him, and
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: I sit and throw my milkweed out all the time.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: Even when I hung that stand in the evening. I
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: sit in there until dark this summer and just threw
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: it and watched it. And it's doing pretty much the
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: same thing for me every night. When that wind starts
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: to drop, I'm up on some higher ground above even
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: elevation wise, and where that scrape is, he's kind of
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: coming up through a vacuum draw, not a draw, just
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: a depression in the ridge, and he's coming up through
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: there all the time. And my wind, it's it's wicked.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: Where I'm sitting. I'll throw out my milkweed even until dark,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: and my wind comes literally right across my face and
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: bends right back behind my tree and drops the milkweed
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: back behind me almost perfectly. Every evening i've hunted, I've
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: had almost every deer in there on camera in the
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: daylight so far, and they haven't even looked at me
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: or acted like they knew I was there. People can
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: say whatever they want, but I hunt twenty seven to
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: thirty ft high. I've got some high ground on him.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: I've got the thermal bending back behind me. When I
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: throw the milkweed out, it's just incredible to see it
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: bend back behind me, which I need because he's not
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: when I stay behind me, Mark that's higher an elevation.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: He's not coming from that higher elevation. He's coming from
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: down the ridge up an elevation to me. So I
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: think our wind, uh, I think my wind cone is
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: missing him on his travel route through my scrapes and
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: up by me. It's missing him by about of the
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: yards and it's still a downhill. But mine's bending back
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: behind me and sifted into the ground behind me. If
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: that makes any sense, yeah, yeah. And if I get
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: in there and that wind is blowing right at him
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: and his interests. I will leave. I'll leave even I
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: won't ruin this, dear, because man, he's in there all
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: the time right now, I'll blow his ass out of there.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: If I'm stupid about it and set there with a
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: wind blowing at him all day where I know he's
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: coming from, I just won't do it. But I've got
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: my tree placement and entrance and exit. I feel like
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: I have a dial perfectly for how the wind and
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: thermals work down there in the evenings and in the mornings.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: And boy, when I get any type of south wind
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: pushing across me with an uphill thermal, he has no chance.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: If he comes through the only the only wind, I
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: the only wind I can't hunt with is a straight
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: west wind. I won't go in there if he's he's
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: south or he's northeast of me. I won't hunt with
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: a straight wet because my wing could blow down into it. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: what or what am I trying to say? How do
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: you see this plan evolving as you push closer to
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: the ruck, Because right now you're you're hunting essentially a
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: betting you know, a movement pattern out of a general
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: betting year zone. It seems like, Um, but are you
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: going to start to shift to some kind of different
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: setups for the rut to try to catch these bucks
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: cruising or something like that, or do you still kind
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: of just hunt the edge of the bedding near these
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: scrapes because it's it's some kind of connective tissue to
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: key in on. How's that, how's the standplace and evolved? Yeah,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: first of all, not hunting bucks at all. I don't
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: even hunt deer. I hunt a buck. Everything I do
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: will be based on what that deer shows me. Um,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: if he keeps living right there and if he us
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: I think he's going to do in these next two
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: weeks and show up daylight other than me being a
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: three hundred mile round trip to hunting every time I hunting,
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: if I'm there that day, he's dead. And I believe
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: he's going to show up daylight. I'm gonna say it
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: right now, the rest of September two to three times
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: minimum he's because he's already starting to show like he's
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: really comfortable on video at this spot, and he showed
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: up daylight for the first time Monday, and he's comfortable
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: as hell and my wind would have been perfect for him.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: So now The reality of it is, it's a three
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: mile round trip to hunting for me. I can't go
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: up there every day. But any chance I get to hunting,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: even if I got to go three miles to hunt
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: two hours, I'm gonna do it. And I believe I've
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: got all the winds dialed. I looked at all the
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: winds for the next fifteen days, and I looked at
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: all the temperatures. I'm literally dropping twenty degrees in temperatures
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: started Saturday, um mark my nighttime temperatures drop and from
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: the sixties down to the forties up there at that
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: elevation that will be high thirties. I'm telling you, and
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: I mean this wholeheartedly. With this deer, with where my
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: stand sitting and the way the winds working in there,
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: it's it's not me spooking him, or he wouldn't even
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: come in. He wouldn't come by here if he knew
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: I was right on him in there close. He walked
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: in behind me the other night on camera after I
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: left twenty one minutes later, without a without a care
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: in the world, on the video, not even looking nervous,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: just walked right in up into that scrape and walk
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: through So what I'm getting at is I think I'm
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: really in the game with this mountain buck. It's it's
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: it's a lot different than other hunts and other areas
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: that you hunt. This dude is probably gonna slip up
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: one time in the month of September and I gotta
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: be there or maybe twice. Okay, as we get closer
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: to October, my setup and game plan is even better.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get more bucks finding that scrape that are
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: that are traveling are there. If that's his scrape and
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: he wants to own it, like he's acting right now,
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: he will put he will monitor that scrape. And I've
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: already got three does there total. I have a fondo
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: and two adult those and that doesn't sound like much,
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: but in the mountains that's pretty good. I've got I
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: think seven or eight deer their total since May, which
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: probably sounds crazy to people in the Midwest, but this
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: is mountain country. This is mountain country, and there's not
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of deer. So all that to say, I'm
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: not leaving until he shows me a reason that I
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: got to move on him, because I think I'll kill
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: him there that this is. This leads me to one
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: of the big overarching things I'm curious about because I
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: hunt some big wood stuff and obviously it's not as
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: big a woods as what you're doing, and it's not
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: mountainous in the same way as although a new place
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: I'm hunted Idaho might be. But um, what I'm curious
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: about is the frequency of how many times you hunt
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: these places. And you kind of just answer my question.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: But you know out here in Michigan or Illinois, Iowa,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: you talk to guys and it's always the power of
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: the first set. You get that one time in there,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: and then they're gonna get onto you. And every time
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: after you go in there, these deer figure you out
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: and your chances go down exponentially. So it's the rage
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: right now is being mobile, hunt all these different places
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: and keep these deer on their toes and never sit
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: the same place too many times. But when I think
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: about these big wood situations where there's this lower deer density, uh,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes in some of my own situations, I've wondered, man,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: if I just hunt this deer, if I havent this
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: spot just once, you know that deer maybe only comes
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: through here once every seven days, and you know there
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: won't be any deer coming through here except for every
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: few days, and if you do that, you're just you're
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: never going to hit him on the day he's there.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: So my question, I guess, once I've finished rambling here,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: is how often or how long can you hunt a
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: spot without it getting blown up? Um? Or do you
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: just need to kind of camp out in a place
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: like this as long as you do it smart, because
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: as it sounds like it is the case of this buck,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of deer, but eventually he'll come
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: through if you're smart. So that was a horrible question. No,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: I get it. I totally know what you're asking because
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: there's I've got a mobile set up, and I'll tell
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: you what I use that sucker when I need to
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: when something goes sour and a buck. Here's what a
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: lot of guys don't want to admit when I screw
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: it up. So if I screw it up and blow
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: this buck out, I gotta go find it. And that's
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: what I'll do. And I've had to do that in
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: the past sum but I don't do it very often anymore.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: I watch every deer that's there, they walk under me
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: in the daylight. This guy already showed me who he
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: is August twentieth without anybody being up there in the
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: wood near him at all. And he is a smart
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: old bastard. And as soon as it got to August
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: twentie and got hot, he said, I'm done moving in
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: the daylight. And it's not because the wolves chasing him.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: It's not because I'm in there hunting, because nobody's up there,
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: and the cameras show it. He is already biologically showing
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: me that he's coming in earlier and earlier and earlier
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: in the evenings. As the conditions, the temperatures, the upcoming
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: scraping uh phase in October is gonna get closer. He's
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: already showed me this week that he wanted to run
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: a little buck out of there. It's just a matter
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: of being extremely intelligent and patient with him because my
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: setups pretty darn rock solid and bulletproof, because I have
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: not even had a dear look up at me yet,
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: and I and I have animals in there every day
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: but one so far on I believe four or five hunts.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: It's it is a patients game. When everything's working right
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: and he's there on camera at least at night all
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: the time and not acting He's not acting nervous. You're
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: not walking in and funky and really looking around. He's
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: freaking walking right in um and showing earlier and earlier
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: and earlier approaches. I honestly believe he'll probably start showing up.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: I'll probably show up in a morning here pretty soon.
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: Probably rolled through there in the morning. You know, he
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: just needs some cold weather and he needs to fill
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: he needs to feel like it's kind of go time
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: here pretty soon. And I get that every year at
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: the end of September. Every year at the end of
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: September on these big hot these these big bucks that
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: living in the hot, hot weather. As soon as it
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: starts to cool down, it gets better. So I'm not
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: ruining that stand at all. All of my DearS showing
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: me that they're walking by me, that I got an
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: old dough in there that's probably smarter than him. She
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: just likes to get to that area and feed around
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: in there and hang out in there with her fonds
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: before any other deer shows up. She just does it.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: And she is his KG. I watched her, man. She's
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: a crackhead. She is careful as hell. She always used
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: the wind she got two ponds and she's like looking
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: for predators all the hime. I can I just watch her.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: She's she's real savvy anyway, So I'm not that guy.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: I kill almost all of my big deer four or five, six,
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: seven sits in sometimes ten, sometimes a year later, same spot. Um,
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: if I moved over on that deer right now it's
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: September and bump him. I've had deer move on me.
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: Mark that I've screwed it up on and pushed it
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: too hard. Big bucks. Move a drainage and stay the
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: whole year. Move a whole drainage over, which is five
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: miles through the air, and I'll find another drainage and
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: they'll live over there the whole season. So I'm dealing
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: with a different animal than a animal that doesn't get
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: that heavy predation or get the ship scared out of
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: them pressure. He's real comfortable right now in his body language.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: And that's why I run video because I can see
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: it and how he's behaved. He's he's not even walking
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: nervous at all. He is rolling right been there and
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: being the big hoss. You know, he's really he's feeling
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: pretty comfortable. So as long as I don't, you know,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: as long as I don't screw it up someway, and
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: I don't plan on making any mistakes on him, it's
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: just a matter of it's a matter of me being
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: there on the day or two that he shows that
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: he will show. He already showed up once a daylight,
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: and it's for the matter of me getting to be
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: there on that day that he shows up. If he
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: was right out in my back door, be in trouble
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: because I'd sit on him. And I'm not one bit
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: worried about that set up other than with the west wind.
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: But there's a west wind, I won't hunt it. So
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: in order to hunt it seems like if I'm trying
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: to if I'm trying to pull some generalities out of
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: this that other people could apply to their own unique situations.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: You're if you find a spot like this that has
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: all these factors combined to make it a sweet spot,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: and you have this scrape with the cameras that verifies
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: and tells you, hey, there's a buck, I want to
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: kill it in this area. The next thing is having
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: a set that you can hunt enough times without blowing
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: it out to finally catch and making that mistake. So
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: can you give me some best practices for developing a
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: bulletproof set like you have there, So just like give
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: me the playbook. Yeah, yeah, and Mark, i have five
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: or six of these spots, and I've got over thirty
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: five pulping young plus bucks from these kind of spots.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: And I've hunted some of these spots up to ten
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: times in a season. And then then the big dood
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: will finally make a daylight appearance and I'll kill him.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm passing up some beautiful dear that most people
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: would just go, holy sh it, you gotta shoot that dear,
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: and my son is killed. I mean, arguably probably the
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: biggest dear ever killed by a teenager in Washington on
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: public land with a boat doing the same thing with me.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: So bulletproof is the key, and it's that's that's an
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: extreme that's kind of an extreme word. But you can
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: do it if you know, if you've got that perfect
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: entrance and entry that the majority of all the deer
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: don't want to come from. For a reason, I come in,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: you know on this ridge that literally the deer parallel
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: across it, but they hardly ever walked down it. And
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: it's because I've picked out a gnarly trail that s
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: is down through there, and I've made my own trail
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: that and I took my buddy in there to help
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: me one day set up ear in this semi becaues.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: How the hell do you freaking get out of here?
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: How do you even know where to walk? That's just
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: years of me knowing every little tree and every little
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: spot to turn at and move at. So anyway, I
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: purposely worked my way down through horrible blowdowns. The deer
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: won't walk across, so they're not following me through, and
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: I've got a snake pattern to it that I get
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: through quietly literally this summer, on the way in and
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: out all the time, anytime I went in there, every
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: paine cone, every stick, everything has gone out of my
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: path real carefully with my feet that all the way down. Um,
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: this stand is set up for that wind up there.
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: I can hunt every wind in every thermal at that spot,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, except for a west So on a
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: west wind day, I probably won't be in there, and
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not crossing him at all. And these bulletproof setups
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: can last few decades decades, which I don't think many
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: people are doing. It's a whole different concept of, in
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: my opinion, how to hunt a white tail. But one
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: reason I'm doing it, Mark is because of the mountains
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: that I'm in, because of the deer density them in,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: because of the way that deer react to getting blown out.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: My big deer will move a drainage because I have
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: proof of it. I've watched him do it. I have
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: to play the game a little different when I was
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: hunt in Iowa. When I hunt Oklahoma, I don't care
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: at all if I bump a deer. He's coming right
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: back in there because that's where he needs to bet.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: That's his best spot, that's his safest place. I totally
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: get that, and I support that, and I hunt totally different.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: When I'm in a spot where deer have to pick,
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: you know, like your Michigan spot. You pretty have a
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: pretty damn good idea where they got a bed, right, Yeah,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: My dear have endless miles that they can move and
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: get the and bug out too. It's big country. So
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: for me, it's all about that social aspect, plus the feed,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: plus the bed, everything that allows me to hunt that
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: four or five, six, seven, eight, maybe ten times in
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: the whole season. Now, that's spread out over four months.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: That's not necessarily terrible. I'll either killed that dear or
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna blow him out one or the other within
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: if he does what he's doing right now, he's gonna
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: get killed this year, or I'm gonna blow him out
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: and have to move. If I screwed up, that's what's
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: gonna happen because of the way he's behaving and how
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: close I am, that's what it's gonna boil down to.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: Or out of pure luck, he's gonna coincidentally, in my opinion,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: not walk through there because they don't walk through anywhere
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: in the mountains every day. I don't ever get that
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: with mountains. Um, he's just gonna get lucky on the
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: days I'm not up there. And yeah, I really believe,
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: because I've killed so many of them this way, that
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: it's just a matter of time before I either kill
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: him or he figures me out and he's gone, and
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: then I gotta move on him. Then I gotta go
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: find him. And that's where I get mobile, and I'll
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: find that stucker as soon as I have snow if
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: I have to. But that community scrape there will keep
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: producing even if I even if I blow it on him,
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: it will keep producing because it's just such a good
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: spot and the does are all hitting it, and the
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: young bucks are all hitting and I got a nice
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: three year old hitting it. It just is what it is. Uh,
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: talk to me about just one more thing on these
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: bulletproof sets. If I'm trying to someone's trying to listen
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: to this and apply it to their place. Are there
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: any things that you always try to do as far
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: as do you always try to set up above the
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: main trailer above the scraper, do you try to set
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: up below it from elevation standpoint, or can you just
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: describe how you're thinking about the wind just in a
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: generic way so that someone could could just think it through.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: So for bullet proof, for me, I always enter an
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: exit and slide in, and I used the word from
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: the side, and I stay away from the thermals pushing
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: down through and up through the screen. So I'm off
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: to the side, and I'm usually off to the side
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: to where I feel based on what my intelligence from
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: camera shows me that that buck is going to enter
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: in from the other side. Does that make sense? So,
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: first of all, enter exit is huge and stand placement
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: that never crosses their nose. I'm never crossing their nose
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: with sin ever, unless they literally walk down my walk
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: my trail in and come right in behind me and
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: everything right now at that stand, Mark is coming in
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: from all directions except for the direction I walked down
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: because I chose a pretty nasty way to get down
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: in there on purpose. I literally have to s around
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: through there like a snake to pick. And it's perfect
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: because I don't have deer walking down an easy trail
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: right behind me. It's it's wicked. I'm even crawling through
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: some thick stuff up the ways where they can't hear me,
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: just to negate them from crossing my trail. I mean,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: there's some the blowdowns in there are unreal. There's some
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: spots where the deer have to walk yards around it
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: to not have to try to walk through blowdowns that
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: are chest high, chest high blowdowns. Dear usually don't like
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: walking through all that. You know they'll skirted. Well. Another
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: thing I'm doing, Mark that makes a bulletproof is I'm
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: literally my winds blowing off over into that north face
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: but behind me and above me where I'm walking down through,
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: and it's steeper than hell off of that like, it's
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: just straight down forever, probably a thousand feet or more.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: So I like those barriers, those wind barriers. I don't
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: expect a buck to climb straight up that north pick
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: up my scent and come in from behind me, if
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. He's coming in down down the ridge
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: from the up at me. So it's perfect for me.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: We're like kind of intersecting at a point. And then
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: to keep a bullet to keep a bulletproof, I hunt
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: high in this country. I watch my milk weed all
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: the time. I literally throw it out day after day
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: after day and watch what it does. And if that
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: milk weed starts acting funny on the wrong wind and
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: it gets bad, I will bail out of a tree
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: stand if I have to, not to let my scent
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: blow where his approaches. I'll leave, come back hunting a
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: different day, or I'll go if it's an all day
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: said all I've had. You know, we've killed big bucks
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: by all day sits by literally leaving the stand for
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: four or five hours midday if it the wind's bad,
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: and then crawling back in when the thermal's right. I mean,
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: I'm all about those details. And then it's just a
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: matter of him coming in. Uh again, my bulletproof steps
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: are couple. When you make sure that your killtree, you
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: never have to walk out, check your cameras, you never
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: have to cross their favorite pathways by you. That's really
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: important and a lot of guys mess that up. Well
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: let's I I feel like I've only covered the smallest
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: bit of what i want to talk to you about,
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: and already we've been talking two hours. This is crazy.
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: I gotta let you go. Uh, thanks for sticking with
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: me here for so long. Try Um, how about one
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: last question, well, one last regular question. Then we'll do
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: a quick rapid fire thing and wrap this sucker up
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: and and somehow I'll have to wrangle you into another
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: one because there's a lot to talk about here. Um. Okay,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: worst case scenario, he he figures you out, either you
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: see him somehow, you know booger you maybe the wind
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: swirls or something happens, or you just notice he's not
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: showing up on the camera anymore. Walk me through your
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: game play and to get back on him. I'm very
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: honest with myself about that stuff. As soon as he
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: starts acting awkward and starts acting skittish or quit showing
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: up and he I'll leave him alone. I will literally
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: give him a week at least a week to see
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: what happens. Because keep in mind, he might bug out
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: because a mountain lion chased him out of his bed
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: one night. For a week. He might bug out because
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: the pack of wolf that's in there comes through and
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: harasses him. Um. I have to keep that in mind too.
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: But all that to say, my game plan is on
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: those big deer. I leave him alone if they start
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: acting funky or they quit showing up, and if he
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: doesn't show up within and I've got four months to
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: hunt this year. September is the first quarter of the
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: football game. October is my second quarter, November is my
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: third quarter, December is my fourth quarter. So I look
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: at the big game plan. Um, if I got to
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: give him a couple of weeks and he doesn't show
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: and he's not doing what I need him to do
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: up there, then I really will dive in to where
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: I believe he's hiding out based on the whole layout
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: of that country, and I'll go in and I'll build
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: a scrape, put some scent to him because I know
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: he likes those, and I'll see if I can find him. Meanwhile,
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: while I'm doing while I'm waiting on him, I'm gonna
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: be on my game plan b buck or sea buck,
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: which are usually pretty damn good bucks, and after them.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: And I'm hunting two states, so I've got two or
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: three bucks in each state that I want to kill
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: or would be happy to kill. So that does help
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: me to keep peace of mind and not get so
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: wrapped up into where I'm not hunting. I'm always hunting.
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: I'm always hunting a buck, trying to find one that's killable.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: If my stud and my number one, uh you know,
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: basically kicks my ass and figures me out, then I
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: got to move on him and change. As soon as
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: I get snow and can get him on camera, I'll
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: go right at him, backtrack his ass. I won't follow
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: him and push him, but I'll backtrack him and get
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: a good pattern on him. And as soon as snow
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: usually comes, then I'm rolling into the rut. And the
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: great thing about my scrapes, Mark is my big bucks
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: always come back. Usually, unless they're just scared to hell
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: out of the area, they will at least come back
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: in November early November, and they'll check those doughs and
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: check those scrapes, and sometimes I can literally a month later,
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: jump back in the stand and kill a buck that
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: I couldn't kill in September and October, early October and
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: late October and November, and he'll come back in as
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: long as I don't pester him until he wants to
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: come back and feel comfortable in there. Those scrapes are
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: really good. From November five until December tenth, they're awesome.
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, I've got some ideas, like I
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: thought I would, I've got some ideas now that I
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: want to put to the test, especially when I head
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: back to uh, head back to Idaho to my mount spots.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: I've got I've got some ideas I'm excited about now. So, Troy,
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: this has been just as good as I expected it
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: would be, so thank you. Thank you for that. I
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: want to run you through five really quick, rapid fire
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: questions you can just kind of answer like one word answers.
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: We'll just knock these out of the pretty generic. But
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: I thought, I'm gonna start running these very generic questions
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: past everyone and we'll see what everyone says, and then
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: UH and then we'll let you go. So real quick here, Troy.
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: Does the moon matter to dear movement? Yes? Or no? Yes?
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: Would you take a fifty yards shot at a white
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: tail with a bow? Yes or no? Never? Never? If
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: you could only have one of these for the rest
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: of your hunts, would you pick rattling antlers or grunt
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: tube grunt tube expandable or fixed blade broadheads for white tails?
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: Fixed blade? Should you stop a buck with some kind
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: of sound before shooting? Yes or no? Yes you can
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: if you need to. Yes. Perfect. You know you got
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: me on that one, because if if a buck's super close,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: super close, I'll shoot that sucker walking and he won't
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: even know it. Yeah, yeah, all these Yeah, alright, Troy.
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: If if people want yeah, yeah, sorry, I was just
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: gonna say, if people want to see what you're up
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: to or see your hunts or anything that where should they?
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: Can they see that stuff anywhere? Yeah? You know. I
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: tight with Andre a Quisto in the Lone Wolf Custom
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: Gear family I filmed for them like televictions TV, My
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: Son and Eyes, A couple of mountain buck kills are
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: on there on the recent episodes. One of the ten
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: episodes this year. Uh, and my people want to reach
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: out and talk to me and visit with me. My
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: Instagram is the easiest. It's a m t N Underscore man,
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: So mountain Man and then thirty three perfect. Troy Potton
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: on Troy Pottonder on Facebook. Awesome, Troy, Well, this has
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: been a lot of fun. I appreciate it. I think
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: we covered some really good ground, so thank you for
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: sharing so much. I really appreciate you having me Mark Uh,
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure and an honor to be on
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: your podcast, and you know you'd really turn out some
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: great stuff. So thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: Good luck getting that getting that big one. I can't
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: wait to see the picture with him on the ground. Thanks.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: I'm after him hard. I'll be after him tomorrow, all right.
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: I don't want to keep up any later than go
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: get him. All right. And that's a wrap. Thank you
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: all for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this one
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: as much as I did. If you're out there deer
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: hunting right now, which many of you are hunting, seasons
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: are open across a lot of the country. That's an
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: amazing thing. I can't believe it's here, but it is.
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: So Best of luck to all of you. I hope
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: you're having a blast. I hope you are trying to
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: implement some of the new ideas you're taking from the
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: these podcasts and and finding it helpful. I know that
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: every time I go out there and every time I
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: chat with somebody on this show, I'm finding new ways
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: that I can adjust what I do in the field,
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: and and that's a fun thing for me. I gotta
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: believe is, or at least I hope it is for
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: you too. So well, that all said, best of luck,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: be safe, have fun, Thank you for tuning in and
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: for your support and attention, and until next time, stay
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: wired to Hunt.