Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 422: Uncovering a Whitetail Wonderland with Janis Putelis

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Ep. 422: Uncovering a Whitetail Wonderland with Janis Putelis · 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,
0:11
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 number four
0:20
Speaker 1: and today in the show, I'm joined by Janice Patelis
0:23
Speaker 1: to discuss the scouting stand prep inhabitat improvement projects that
0:27
Speaker 1: two of us took on while visiting his Wisconsin family
0:31
Speaker 1: hunting property. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
0:45
Speaker 1: brought to you by First Light. And today I'm sitting
0:51
Speaker 1: here with Janice patel Us and I'm in Wisconsin in
0:56
Speaker 1: the I don't know this is This is the hall
1:00
Speaker 1: of history for you, isn't it? It is? It is.
1:03
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time in this building here
1:07
Speaker 1: over thirty years. Yeah, And I know how special having
1:12
Speaker 1: that kind of place can be. I've got my own
1:14
Speaker 1: little cabin with with decades of memories, and it's so
1:20
Speaker 1: special every time you go there, and I get a
1:23
Speaker 1: little misty eyed about it and over nostalgic maybe, but
1:26
Speaker 1: you can't help it sometimes, right, Do you still feel
1:28
Speaker 1: that way? Well? I think I feel like that now
1:30
Speaker 1: more than ever. You know, when you realize the history
1:34
Speaker 1: that you have and um that you know, you hang
1:40
Speaker 1: out here with like with who are like my elders,
1:43
Speaker 1: my mentors who are now you know, at seventy getting
1:47
Speaker 1: into their seventies, and you sort of realize that you know, ah,
1:52
Speaker 1: life does not go on forever, you know, and that
1:56
Speaker 1: there time here is limited, you know, and you should
2:00
Speaker 1: get back for as many opening rifle seasons as you can. Um, yeah, stop,
2:08
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Uh So, So we're gonna talk about scouting,
2:13
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about stand preparation, We're gonna talk about
2:16
Speaker 1: best bang for your buck, d I Y habitat improvements.
2:20
Speaker 1: But before that, can we just dive a little bit
2:22
Speaker 1: more into that, Like can you give us a little
2:24
Speaker 1: more of the history. When you were on in the Fall,
2:27
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about your hunt here last November
2:30
Speaker 1: and how that went and some of the things you learned,
2:32
Speaker 1: But I don't think we really talked about like the
2:35
Speaker 1: people and how it all works and what that's looked
2:37
Speaker 1: like for you. What's that story a little bit because
2:40
Speaker 1: I've been constantly has been out here, like, so how
2:42
Speaker 1: does this work? Who has what and who does what?
2:44
Speaker 1: And who all comes and who hunts one? What's the
2:48
Speaker 1: whole story there? First, I M, I have a sip
2:50
Speaker 1: my new glares moon man. Pall, do we need to
2:55
Speaker 1: talk about this? Palele before you answer the question, this
2:58
Speaker 1: has been on your mind. Only available in Wisconsin, Oh,
3:01
Speaker 1: for sure, it's I was just telling Mark that it's
3:04
Speaker 1: like ongoing and we need help deciphering and and figuring
3:08
Speaker 1: out our little problem. We enjoyed neclar beer, but when
3:13
Speaker 1: I posted a picture last Ball of me taking a
3:15
Speaker 1: whole bunch of beer across state lines, which is technically illegal,
3:20
Speaker 1: back to Montana, quite a few of the comments were like, dude,
3:25
Speaker 1: she's like anti gun. Yeah, Debora carry the owner I
3:29
Speaker 1: believe that's her name, um, the owner of Nuclaris and
3:36
Speaker 1: her husband and um. So without doing any fact checking,
3:40
Speaker 1: I kind of brought that up to Doug during and
3:42
Speaker 1: Dougs like, I love her, She's great. Let's see if
3:45
Speaker 1: that's really true. You know, did some googling and turns
3:49
Speaker 1: out she's not really anti guns. She's actually my kind
3:52
Speaker 1: of politician because I would what I would call her
3:55
Speaker 1: a centrist, and I like that and like like all uh,
4:01
Speaker 1: you know, big businesses and uh, just players in general,
4:07
Speaker 1: she contributes to both parties and guess what that gets
4:10
Speaker 1: remark hate from both sides. Well, but yes, yes, hay
4:14
Speaker 1: from both sides. But you also get to have a
4:16
Speaker 1: seat at the table when either side is in power,
4:20
Speaker 1: and you get to help along you know, your community,
4:23
Speaker 1: your business ventures, you know. And she does all this right.
4:27
Speaker 1: So from what I read online, she's got like like
4:31
Speaker 1: she sounds like very cool, like my kind of person.
4:34
Speaker 1: And didn't you say that she shoots herself? Oh yeah,
4:37
Speaker 1: And there was some quote of her saying, Hey, if
4:39
Speaker 1: you think I'm anti gun, come over to my house
4:41
Speaker 1: and I have like a I forget if she said
4:43
Speaker 1: a quarter mile, half mile, you know, shooting range basically
4:46
Speaker 1: running up my up to drive up the valley or whatever. Um.
4:51
Speaker 1: Then we checked that with the person that we with,
4:55
Speaker 1: one of the people that we've got some misinformation from,
4:57
Speaker 1: and he said, no, that's not true. It's actually known
4:59
Speaker 1: that she's like an H, S, U, S or p
5:01
Speaker 1: D supporter. Now I'm like, might be worse. So if
5:08
Speaker 1: anybody out there can really give us a straight dope
5:10
Speaker 1: or deb if you want to, just email Mark or
5:12
Speaker 1: call Mark up and clear straight. We clear your name.
5:17
Speaker 1: We love drinking Nuclaire's uh brewing. I like the moon Man.
5:21
Speaker 1: I'm not really a spotted cow guy, just because I'm
5:23
Speaker 1: not a wheat weird guy that much. Like it's a
5:26
Speaker 1: fine beer and I can have like one, but I'm
5:29
Speaker 1: much more of like a light pale ale which moon
5:31
Speaker 1: man really. Yeah, it's that Bill Nicely. This is my first,
5:36
Speaker 1: my first New Glares, and I've drank a bunch that
5:38
Speaker 1: I've been here and this has been right up my alley,
5:41
Speaker 1: the No Coast pale Ale, the moon Man. Yeah, it's good. Yeah,
5:45
Speaker 1: I hope there's I hope her name is clean, and
5:49
Speaker 1: so we can continue, we can keep struggling it back
5:51
Speaker 1: to Montana, which I'm never gonna do again. So don't
5:54
Speaker 1: try to catch me. So what were you what were
5:57
Speaker 1: you gonna say about your camp? I was wondering about
5:59
Speaker 1: the story here of your hunting camp. So I actually
6:03
Speaker 1: came here first. This building is is owned by like
6:11
Speaker 1: a group of Atvians that owns some land kind of
6:14
Speaker 1: communally in the area, and um people come up here
6:18
Speaker 1: to celebrate like a lot of Latvian like traditional um ah,
6:25
Speaker 1: how do you say in English? Uh? Like? Basically like
6:28
Speaker 1: the like the cornerstones of the year, like the summer solstice,
6:32
Speaker 1: the winter solstice, and the two equinoxes, right amongst other holidays.
6:37
Speaker 1: So summer solstice, as I think, you know, it's called
6:41
Speaker 1: Yanni Day, and for that one, we would actually leave
6:45
Speaker 1: and go to another farm that was like thirty or
6:47
Speaker 1: forty five minutes away, and then the great big valley
6:49
Speaker 1: that led up to this hill. On the top of
6:51
Speaker 1: the hill you'd have like a uh post with a
6:53
Speaker 1: burning barrel on top of it and giant bonfire. There
6:57
Speaker 1: was as there always is with you know, traditional Latin
7:00
Speaker 1: and get together lots of singing, some beer drinking, dance
7:04
Speaker 1: and you do you do a lot of um um.
7:13
Speaker 1: I don't want to call him like rituals, but yeah,
7:17
Speaker 1: I guess sort of like exercises that are just um
7:21
Speaker 1: metaphor is the wrong word, but sort of like like
7:24
Speaker 1: you swing on the swing at Easter time for the
7:29
Speaker 1: spring equinox. You swing on the swing and there's a
7:31
Speaker 1: special song that you sing to have like a great
7:34
Speaker 1: summer ahead, right, and then you you know, at the
7:39
Speaker 1: summer solstice, you gotta grab a partner and jump over
7:41
Speaker 1: the fire together because that equals you know, good luck.
7:45
Speaker 1: And a good harvest or whatever. You know, there's a
7:47
Speaker 1: lot of like stuff like that that's like old timey traditions,
7:51
Speaker 1: and whether or not you actually believe that it does something,
7:54
Speaker 1: it's a fun way to celebrate the passing of the year,
7:58
Speaker 1: you know, in the seasons. So that's why I first
8:01
Speaker 1: started coming up here. And then, um, probably around that
8:05
Speaker 1: same time that my dad got in with this group
8:07
Speaker 1: of Atvians, he also got invited by the same group
8:12
Speaker 1: of Atvians to come and join the hunting camp because
8:14
Speaker 1: he was actually getting into hunting when I was about six. UM,
8:19
Speaker 1: So he started coming up here, came up here for
8:21
Speaker 1: whatever it was four or five years without me, and
8:24
Speaker 1: then I started coming up before I was old enough
8:26
Speaker 1: to hunt, which I can't remember now if it was
8:28
Speaker 1: twelve or fourteen in Wisconsin when I was a kid,
8:33
Speaker 1: what the age was, because I believe no. I shot
8:37
Speaker 1: my first year in Michigan, but not many A couple
8:41
Speaker 1: of years later, I shot my first year here. I
8:43
Speaker 1: do remember like a big difference was that, like Michigan
8:47
Speaker 1: was shotgun but here we hunted with rifles. So it
8:50
Speaker 1: just seemed like that alone made it seem special, right,
8:54
Speaker 1: loading an actual cartridge, you know, and instead of just
8:57
Speaker 1: stuffing some shells into the old pump. Different deal, different deal,
9:01
Speaker 1: Like you just know you're gonna shoot farther, although you're
9:04
Speaker 1: probably not. But um, yeah, so that was I don't know,
9:08
Speaker 1: that was probably you know, I first probably came here
9:11
Speaker 1: to hunting camp. I'm guessing around nineteen, my first year here,
9:20
Speaker 1: and um, you know, yeah, I would say in my
9:23
Speaker 1: you know, in the ground blind with my dad, and
9:26
Speaker 1: then eventually, um, you know, we actually came on a
9:32
Speaker 1: on a bow hunt one time, and uh, I've ever
9:36
Speaker 1: told this story. We hunted I'm that little bottom over
9:39
Speaker 1: here that's kind of between the knob and the main
9:42
Speaker 1: hill and that was just recently cut and you're like, oh,
9:44
Speaker 1: that would be a good spot for a food plot
9:46
Speaker 1: and the cage. Yeah, so I was. I had a
9:51
Speaker 1: stand set up somewhere in there in the bottom, and
9:54
Speaker 1: I think my dad was set up just a little
9:55
Speaker 1: bit farther down more on the field edge, and we
10:00
Speaker 1: set up stands. Like the day before. I didn't hunt
10:03
Speaker 1: that evening, or maybe hunted somewhere else. But for whatever reason,
10:06
Speaker 1: the first time I went to the stand to hunt,
10:08
Speaker 1: it was in the morning and We're going down a
10:12
Speaker 1: trail and I knew and basically where I had to
10:15
Speaker 1: bang off, and it wasn't far, like somewhere between thirty
10:19
Speaker 1: and fifty yards to my stand. My dad cut me loose.
10:23
Speaker 1: I had maybe like a couple of reflective markers or
10:25
Speaker 1: something to mark my way in there, and he kept
10:27
Speaker 1: going and he wasn't that far from me, you know,
10:29
Speaker 1: he was like, well, i'll tell you later in shouting distance.
10:33
Speaker 1: But like I got a flashlight, you know, and I
10:36
Speaker 1: peel off. And this might have been my very first
10:40
Speaker 1: like alone in the woods going to a stand experience,
10:43
Speaker 1: like twelve or fourteen something like that, right, yeah, probably
10:46
Speaker 1: four yeah, probably fourteen ish, because I just can't imagine
10:54
Speaker 1: that I was like actually gonna climb up an entry
10:56
Speaker 1: with a bow at twelve, but maybe yeah, somewhere in there. Um.
11:03
Speaker 1: And anyways, I started looking for the stand and cannot find,
11:08
Speaker 1: like where these markers are, and so I'm just like
11:11
Speaker 1: looking and looking and walking and walking and getting more
11:16
Speaker 1: and more turned around, probably just spinning circles in the
11:19
Speaker 1: same I want to say a hundred yards was probably
11:21
Speaker 1: fift yard circle, you know, but crunching a lot of leaves,
11:25
Speaker 1: making a lot of noise, and eventually from the distance,
11:29
Speaker 1: it's like, what the are you doing? You know, and
11:37
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I'm shocked, you know, because you know,
11:40
Speaker 1: I'm already sort of freaking myself out because you just
11:42
Speaker 1: walking on the dark kind of laws. Now you know
11:44
Speaker 1: you're not but you are. I can't find where you're
11:47
Speaker 1: supposed to be. And then all a sudden there's some
11:49
Speaker 1: like voice yelling from a distance, and for a moment
11:52
Speaker 1: I was like, one, It's like, was that my dad? Dad?
11:56
Speaker 1: Was that somebody else in the woods? That's like because
11:59
Speaker 1: for him this to yell at me in English like
12:01
Speaker 1: that and not say something in Latvian was a little
12:04
Speaker 1: bit different. You know. Obviously he had just heard enough
12:08
Speaker 1: of the crunching and walking around. Yeah, and uh, I
12:13
Speaker 1: think he just tells me just sit down, let it
12:16
Speaker 1: get light and then you'll find your stand, which is
12:20
Speaker 1: what I did. I remember like it got light and
12:22
Speaker 1: I literally I didn't have to walk. I looked over,
12:24
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, there's a ladder, and I got to
12:28
Speaker 1: my stand and by the time he got back to me,
12:31
Speaker 1: he had, uh, you know, later in the day he
12:33
Speaker 1: had chilled out. But he always just told me that
12:36
Speaker 1: he thought that I had pretty much ruined the morning hunt. Um.
12:41
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that was a bow hunt and then
12:43
Speaker 1: but mostly we came up here for you know, to
12:48
Speaker 1: two and a half days of rifle hunting for the
12:53
Speaker 1: Wisconsin Rifle Opener, which would always be around you know,
12:57
Speaker 1: November eight. Um. Yeah, so I probably came for closest
13:03
Speaker 1: ten years in a row. And then once I moved
13:05
Speaker 1: out West, I definitely couldn't just just couldn't afford every
13:08
Speaker 1: year would come, you know whenever I could, and uh, yeah,
13:14
Speaker 1: it's um been a good deal. What's been cool about
13:18
Speaker 1: it is that you know, the hunting whatever. I've definitely
13:20
Speaker 1: learned some things here. But like those uh you know,
13:24
Speaker 1: my dad's friends. Those guys have been like consistent you know,
13:28
Speaker 1: mentors throughout my life. And even though like sure I
13:32
Speaker 1: knew him through in other parts of Latvian society, like
13:34
Speaker 1: at the Latvian summer camp that I'm always talking about
13:37
Speaker 1: in Michigan. Um, you know, I knew him from there
13:40
Speaker 1: and we'd meet up and chat or whatever, but like
13:42
Speaker 1: you know, it isn't hunting camp. It's sort of you
13:44
Speaker 1: can have some deeper conversations, you have some time to
13:46
Speaker 1: sit aside and talk one on one with somebody, chill out,
13:50
Speaker 1: you know whatever. And you know, now, I've known those
13:52
Speaker 1: guys well as long as I've been hunting here, so
13:54
Speaker 1: for thirty years, and it's definitely like even this week
13:57
Speaker 1: and hanging out with him, Like, I'm sure I can't
14:01
Speaker 1: tell you right now, but I took something away from
14:03
Speaker 1: like what they're talking about in their seventy years of
14:06
Speaker 1: life experience, you know, that's valuable to me. Yeah, And
14:09
Speaker 1: like you said, at least in my world, I'm guessing yours.
14:15
Speaker 1: We don't often have time or or the space or
14:18
Speaker 1: whatever to sit down and have those kinds of conversations
14:20
Speaker 1: with these with the people that we care about. But
14:24
Speaker 1: hunting camp is unique situation where you actually have that
14:27
Speaker 1: space to do that time and space. So what's what?
14:33
Speaker 1: So why are we here now? Like it seems like
14:37
Speaker 1: you've taken a and this from the outside looking at
14:41
Speaker 1: but like a renewed interest wanting to go to the
14:43
Speaker 1: next step. Like I know you've hunted here over the years,
14:46
Speaker 1: but now it's like you're trying to relearn it, rethink
14:48
Speaker 1: it now, do some work on it. I know, I
14:51
Speaker 1: feel like I'm having to um, what's the word when
14:54
Speaker 1: you like, say a statement, then you want to take
14:57
Speaker 1: it back, oh politicians your statement? Because I remember we
15:07
Speaker 1: did a podcast and Matt Cooks with Steve and I
15:10
Speaker 1: and both of us were kind of on the like,
15:13
Speaker 1: why would you ever spend a bunch of time white
15:16
Speaker 1: tailed deer hunting in the Midwest when you can live
15:20
Speaker 1: out west? And do you know this long list of
15:22
Speaker 1: things that were to tell you about, right? I forgot
15:24
Speaker 1: about that one, right, that's a while back. It was
15:27
Speaker 1: a while back, but um, yeah, man, I like, I
15:32
Speaker 1: don't know. For me, it's like a lot of it
15:34
Speaker 1: is getting more into things that I realized that I
15:39
Speaker 1: just don't know that much about, you know. And even
15:42
Speaker 1: though I have hunted white tales, like as a kid
15:45
Speaker 1: growing up and even as an adult, you know, when
15:48
Speaker 1: I lived in Colorado, we go out to Nebraska and
15:50
Speaker 1: hunt white tales, definitely different than hunting them here, but
15:53
Speaker 1: you know still and uh yeah, you kind of just
15:57
Speaker 1: realized like what we have here. And I think a
15:59
Speaker 1: lot of it has come to with like I'm now
16:02
Speaker 1: because doing my own show, I have the freedom to
16:06
Speaker 1: sort of pick my hunts where Steve could see literally
16:11
Speaker 1: could care less about sitting in a tree for a
16:13
Speaker 1: white tail again, you know, but for me, especially having
16:17
Speaker 1: this property that I can hunt and sort of not
16:19
Speaker 1: just hunt, but like spend time figuring it out, learning
16:23
Speaker 1: it better, all coupled with like the memories and the nostalgia.
16:27
Speaker 1: Like it's just like, you know, we know the hunting
16:30
Speaker 1: is good here, I just have to like figure it
16:32
Speaker 1: out right, And I like having that like challenge ahead
16:36
Speaker 1: of me and and not like going back down to
16:40
Speaker 1: Colorado to my old stomping grounds where I could like
16:43
Speaker 1: walk into the woods after three days and probably find
16:46
Speaker 1: a bowl out to shoot at, you know what I mean.
16:49
Speaker 1: It's like you kind of just like I know the
16:51
Speaker 1: I know the steps, I know what's coming, and here
16:54
Speaker 1: I don't have that at all. I'm still very much
16:56
Speaker 1: just like well, like we were talking this morning, we
16:58
Speaker 1: when don't want to do it. It's like a place
17:00
Speaker 1: for a a Eastern property. Whatever it is about it,
17:05
Speaker 1: it seems huge. It's almost so big that you're like,
17:09
Speaker 1: I wish there was less that I could and it
17:12
Speaker 1: would just be easier to focus on. And it's not
17:16
Speaker 1: that big, but I've roughly access to around four hunderd
17:20
Speaker 1: acres feels bigger than that it does. And maybe it's
17:23
Speaker 1: just a topography. There's a lot of up and down
17:25
Speaker 1: around here, very little flat. So yeah, so anyways, I'm
17:31
Speaker 1: fired up man to uh to do it, you know,
17:34
Speaker 1: the kind of a little bit to the I mean,
17:37
Speaker 1: I gotta say. And maybe it's just like I'm not
17:40
Speaker 1: trying to plug anything, but like the saddle thing kind
17:44
Speaker 1: of gave me a little bit like Okay, I don't
17:46
Speaker 1: have to go there with ten stands or twenty stands.
17:51
Speaker 1: I can just roll in with this one system and
17:54
Speaker 1: kind of hunt it all. And as we talked about
17:56
Speaker 1: last fall, it's not quite that easy when you realize,
17:59
Speaker 1: you know, still work, it's still work. Um, but yeah,
18:05
Speaker 1: you know, and and and again I have like I
18:07
Speaker 1: just have the time where I can say, like, Okay,
18:10
Speaker 1: these are the haunts I want to do every year
18:12
Speaker 1: on a bow hunt Elk in September, and I want
18:16
Speaker 1: to bow hunt white tails in November and do each
18:19
Speaker 1: for a week and I'll probably be a pretty happy
18:21
Speaker 1: guy and then mix in like right, mule deer hunt
18:25
Speaker 1: in November. I know, I'm kind of listening like everybody's dreaming.
18:28
Speaker 1: All I want is these two simple things and this
18:32
Speaker 1: and this and you know every so often dry sheep tag.
18:37
Speaker 1: Which have you told the world about that? And I
18:41
Speaker 1: we'll say that for another day. Uh, but yeah, it's yeah.
18:49
Speaker 1: When I when I look at my fall and I'm like, like,
18:53
Speaker 1: what are the top haunts? Like you want to go
18:55
Speaker 1: and do? Like the rut? What do you guys call it? Rut? Casitions? Occasion? Yeah,
19:01
Speaker 1: like it's up there. Plus it's a way for me
19:04
Speaker 1: to spend a lot more time with my dad, get
19:07
Speaker 1: them both. So what what was your hopes and dreams
19:10
Speaker 1: for this week? This weekend? You've been here turkey hunting
19:13
Speaker 1: and then also invited me down. Yeah, so I was
19:16
Speaker 1: here turkey hunting. Invited my buddy Jim Miller, who is
19:19
Speaker 1: a longtime friend and mentor of mine too from Colorado,
19:23
Speaker 1: one of the guys that got me into turkey hunting. Um,
19:28
Speaker 1: he's hunted eastern turkey in Missouri and Florida, but it
19:32
Speaker 1: never really hunted upper Midwest. And after five days of
19:37
Speaker 1: hunting here, I felt like he had one of his best,
19:41
Speaker 1: better if not best, eastern turkey hunt nice and we
19:45
Speaker 1: hunted here with tough hunting conditions for two and a
19:49
Speaker 1: half days, and then headed down the dogs for two
19:51
Speaker 1: and a half days. Might had a little bit of
19:54
Speaker 1: better hunting conditions, but certainly had more birds to work
19:59
Speaker 1: and uh killed some killed some gowlers, which which was sweet. Um.
20:04
Speaker 1: I do have to mention like I've never hunted turkeys,
20:08
Speaker 1: and at a time here where it's so leafed out,
20:13
Speaker 1: where there's times where literally get up on a high
20:15
Speaker 1: point where normally you can just broadcast an owl who
20:18
Speaker 1: or you know, work the box on a lot, some
20:21
Speaker 1: loud yelps and just hear him echo through the woods.
20:23
Speaker 1: And when you do it right now, it just feels
20:26
Speaker 1: like the woods around you just just suck it up
20:29
Speaker 1: and it just does not go anywhere. You know. We
20:32
Speaker 1: had a gobbler today, goblin like hundred yards maybe a
20:38
Speaker 1: d t like not much could have been And this
20:43
Speaker 1: dude was in the field and we're on the field
20:45
Speaker 1: edge and when he's goblin, for whatever reason, somehow those
20:48
Speaker 1: trees on the field edge are sucking the sound out
20:51
Speaker 1: of that gobble. Yeah, it was not loud at all.
20:55
Speaker 1: Had he been another hundred yards, I don't know if
20:57
Speaker 1: you would have heard him. I don't think a little
20:58
Speaker 1: bit of wind might have played into that, but like
21:02
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's been frustrating. It definitely like makes you
21:07
Speaker 1: like kind of like, you know, rethink how you're how
21:11
Speaker 1: you're doing everything, how you're approaching the turkey hunt and
21:15
Speaker 1: um yeah it's uh you know again, That's why I
21:19
Speaker 1: love to do some of these hunts because they're they're
21:21
Speaker 1: constantly challenging and humbling. And yeah, even though we had
21:25
Speaker 1: killed birds this week, man, like we worked our tails off,
21:29
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Um so yeah, So I came here
21:32
Speaker 1: to shoot an episode which you'll be able to see
21:35
Speaker 1: probably next spring, uh, me and my buddy Jimmy turkey hunting,
21:39
Speaker 1: and you should watch it not for the turkey hunting
21:41
Speaker 1: because but because you're gonna get to meet Jim Miller,
21:45
Speaker 1: who's like really like one of the coolest, interesting, nicest
21:50
Speaker 1: like people on the planet. But since I was here,
21:54
Speaker 1: I was thinking, man, all shows should do some spring
21:58
Speaker 1: prep for this upcoming fall as far as White Cells
22:03
Speaker 1: are concerned. That's what I called you, And I'm like, hey, man,
22:06
Speaker 1: let's what you want to come out and kind of
22:07
Speaker 1: help us. Like, so I gotta give a little bit
22:10
Speaker 1: more backstory. My dad just bought forty acres here this
22:15
Speaker 1: sort of part of you know this this chanco land
22:20
Speaker 1: um it adjoins um some of the properties in this area,
22:25
Speaker 1: so kind of as a group, it just kind of
22:27
Speaker 1: gives everybody a little bit more land to hunt. But
22:31
Speaker 1: you know, they've only had it, they've had it less
22:32
Speaker 1: than a year, and we figured like let's get you
22:35
Speaker 1: out here. You can like take a look around and
22:38
Speaker 1: kind of give us some My goal is to how
22:41
Speaker 1: do you give us some like some like short term
22:44
Speaker 1: like what can we do right now it's going to
22:46
Speaker 1: make a difference for like this upcoming fall. And then
22:49
Speaker 1: also what can we do thinking about long term that
22:53
Speaker 1: you know it's like more of a five ten year
22:55
Speaker 1: plan which we really haven't gotten into, and we can
22:58
Speaker 1: do that now. Um. And then if you had like
23:01
Speaker 1: a good one that was short term, like actually try
23:03
Speaker 1: to execute it right now. Um. And then other than that,
23:08
Speaker 1: like walk some of the other areas properties and look
23:16
Speaker 1: at where I hunted last year and just sind a
23:19
Speaker 1: kind of dissect where I hunted last year, how I
23:22
Speaker 1: set up if I was making the right decisions. Um,
23:26
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, maybe help me pick out some
23:28
Speaker 1: new spots maybe you know preps some and a lot
23:31
Speaker 1: of it was, you know, coming back to the hunting
23:33
Speaker 1: out of the saddle, is that hunting last fall I
23:36
Speaker 1: realized like when you want to switch trees, you're looking
23:40
Speaker 1: at like a major investment. And unless you're like, oh,
23:42
Speaker 1: I'm only gonna go up ten or fift Okay, maybe
23:44
Speaker 1: you're only gonna chop down a couple of limbs, what
23:47
Speaker 1: you better do in a spot where there's not a
23:49
Speaker 1: lot of other trees around you, because if you want
23:51
Speaker 1: a bunch of shooting lanes, you to spend time doing that,
23:54
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So I'd say on average,
23:58
Speaker 1: when I was like leaving a tree, by the time
24:01
Speaker 1: I got perfectly ready set up in the next tree,
24:04
Speaker 1: and it didn't matter if I was moving a hundred
24:07
Speaker 1: yards or whatever half a mile, it was probably taking
24:12
Speaker 1: me three hours. Yeah, you know, And again it's like
24:18
Speaker 1: something that you learn and maybe on the next time
24:20
Speaker 1: you when you set up, you like you really start
24:23
Speaker 1: analyzing the ridge more and you're like, Okay, you're gonna
24:27
Speaker 1: be moving here and here, let's choose here because I
24:30
Speaker 1: can get in that tree and I only had to
24:32
Speaker 1: cut two trees or limbs for to be happy with
24:35
Speaker 1: my shooting lanes versus fifty yards farther. You know, I
24:39
Speaker 1: might as well bringing the the crew and and multiple chainsaws. Yeah,
24:46
Speaker 1: that takes experience to kind of figure that level of
24:48
Speaker 1: nuance out. So those are those are my goals here.
24:52
Speaker 1: Uh so we probably could have achieved all of that
24:56
Speaker 1: if I didn't cut my visit in half right because
25:00
Speaker 1: of the airport tobaccle of fromel Yeah, you you. I
25:06
Speaker 1: don't want to say you said a record, but I
25:09
Speaker 1: don't think you're going to run into many people in
25:11
Speaker 1: your life there are going to tell you about a
25:14
Speaker 1: longer trip that they unexpected airline trip that they had
25:18
Speaker 1: than you just did. Yeah, I certainly hope I never
25:21
Speaker 1: have a longer one. So I left. I mean, if
25:24
Speaker 1: you're going to like Mongolia like you're expecting it, but
25:27
Speaker 1: when you're going Idaho to Wisconsin shouldn't be like not
25:31
Speaker 1: so much. So I had a seven am flight Saturday
25:36
Speaker 1: morning that was supposed to get me to Wisconsin left
25:39
Speaker 1: or one. So it's from Jackson, Wyoming to Denver to Wisconsin. Now,
25:47
Speaker 1: because of our living situation right now, my family and
25:50
Speaker 1: I are out of our cabin. We only have one vehicle,
25:53
Speaker 1: so we had to figure out a way to get
25:55
Speaker 1: me to Jackson, which is an hour and a half
25:57
Speaker 1: away from where we live. UM as family, so that
26:01
Speaker 1: the best way to do it would be that we
26:02
Speaker 1: would go as a family to Jackson that evening and
26:05
Speaker 1: then they would drop me off at a hotel at
26:07
Speaker 1: stay the night at the hotel, and then catch a
26:10
Speaker 1: taxi first thing the next morning to the airport. YadA, YadA, YadA.
26:14
Speaker 1: So my trip began Friday afternoon, went to Jackson, did
26:17
Speaker 1: all that that night. It like, I don't know, ten
26:21
Speaker 1: or eleven o'clock at night, I got a notification saying
26:23
Speaker 1: that my flight was delayed the next morning and my
26:26
Speaker 1: seven am flight got pushed to one thirty in the afternoon,
26:32
Speaker 1: and they said it was because the flight crew got
26:35
Speaker 1: in late and because of federal regulations, they have to
26:39
Speaker 1: have a certain amount of time before they take the
26:41
Speaker 1: next flight. So okay, So my I was gonna get
26:45
Speaker 1: into Wisconsin at one thirty. Now I'm not leaving till
26:47
Speaker 1: one thirty, and I'm now going to get to Wisconsin
26:49
Speaker 1: at ten thirty. And then from there I had to
26:51
Speaker 1: pick up a rental car and drive hour and a
26:54
Speaker 1: half or two hours from there. So I was thinking
26:56
Speaker 1: not jeez. Now I'm not gonna get in till Saturday
26:58
Speaker 1: night at like midnight or one o'clock or something. Would
27:00
Speaker 1: have pained the butt. But that's what happens. I I
27:03
Speaker 1: getch a flight at one thirty, and then we're in
27:05
Speaker 1: the air heading to Denver. And then the flight, uh,
27:10
Speaker 1: the pilot comes on and says, hey, we've got some
27:13
Speaker 1: serious storms over Denver. We're not gonna be a land.
27:16
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to circle up here and wait to
27:17
Speaker 1: see if things clear up. So we do that, and
27:20
Speaker 1: fifty minutes later he gives us an update. So it's
27:22
Speaker 1: still still pretty bad. We're gonna keep circling. And I
27:25
Speaker 1: remember seeing the same little town along some river uh
27:30
Speaker 1: that would have been north of Denver, along the front Range.
27:32
Speaker 1: And we circled over probably twenty times. I don't know
27:34
Speaker 1: how many times. But I never kept looking. I'm like,
27:36
Speaker 1: I wonder where the river that is? Kept looking and
27:38
Speaker 1: like thinking about it and trying to look at the visually.
27:40
Speaker 1: I kept visualizing the Masters probably is either um, I
27:43
Speaker 1: would say that I think it's the big Thompson that
27:47
Speaker 1: would go into Boulder or uh, the Pewter, Yeah, does
27:55
Speaker 1: that go up towards the Ray wild Wilderness or something
27:58
Speaker 1: like that up that way. Is that the river that
27:59
Speaker 1: runs up that direction? Man, I don't know that right. Well, well,
28:04
Speaker 1: well I don't have to look at the map and
28:05
Speaker 1: figure this out because I'm I can just see it
28:08
Speaker 1: in my head still. So we kept going over and
28:10
Speaker 1: over and over and over and I don't know how
28:11
Speaker 1: long we a nasty circle like bumpy h No, it
28:15
Speaker 1: wasn't horrible. We were outside like we were. We were
28:18
Speaker 1: in a patch of clear air and north of the storm,
28:21
Speaker 1: so we could see fine. Like. It wasn't weird or
28:24
Speaker 1: sketchy where we were. Um, circle, circle, circle, circles circle.
28:27
Speaker 1: Finally says, hey, guys, this storm over Denver is not
28:31
Speaker 1: letting up. Um, and we're running out of gas, so
28:34
Speaker 1: we have to go and land somewhere else. So we've
28:36
Speaker 1: been diverted to such and such a little airport in Nebraska.
28:41
Speaker 1: So we get going right into Nebraska. And I should
28:44
Speaker 1: say that at the beginning of this whole flight, I
28:46
Speaker 1: had several people that sat down behind me. We were ripped,
28:49
Speaker 1: roaring drunk um. They had been partying or whatever in Jackson,
28:53
Speaker 1: and I'd say, these folks are like in their fifties. Um,
28:57
Speaker 1: and I as I got to hear, like one of
28:59
Speaker 1: them is from couples and from Texas, and the couples
29:01
Speaker 1: from Las Vegas. So you know, take every stereotype you
29:05
Speaker 1: want about Texas and Las Vegas with people with money,
29:09
Speaker 1: and then put a bunch of liquor in them. And
29:11
Speaker 1: those are the two personalities we had. And so this
29:14
Speaker 1: group behind me was ripped or and drunk, and then
29:17
Speaker 1: this happens, and then they start complaining and bitching about
29:20
Speaker 1: it and getting upset. And then we land in Nebraska
29:23
Speaker 1: and this is like a little private airstrip. This isn't
29:25
Speaker 1: a big airport, so there's no getting off the plane.
29:28
Speaker 1: There was no anything. It was like, hey, we're just
29:29
Speaker 1: you're gonna sit here and we have to wait till
29:31
Speaker 1: they refuel. Well, this little airport is not accustomed to
29:36
Speaker 1: having great big jet liners and stuff there. And it's
29:38
Speaker 1: not just us, there's like seven other major jets that
29:41
Speaker 1: had to come in because everybody was getting diverted. I
29:43
Speaker 1: didn't find the thirty seven major jets had to be
29:46
Speaker 1: diverted around and outside Denver because of this. So we
29:51
Speaker 1: sit there and wait and wait and wait, and then
29:52
Speaker 1: he keeps giving us updates and says, hey, they don't
29:54
Speaker 1: have enough gas for the plans. They have to go
29:56
Speaker 1: out and get find gas. And so they got gas
29:58
Speaker 1: and they come back and now like all the other
30:00
Speaker 1: people ahead of us are getting gas and long story
30:02
Speaker 1: short on this. To try to take what ended up
30:05
Speaker 1: being a very long story, we end up having to
30:07
Speaker 1: sit on the tarmac in Nebraska. I think it was
30:10
Speaker 1: six hours six or seven hours. We sat there and
30:14
Speaker 1: eventually like we got gas in there, and then they
30:16
Speaker 1: did it wrong. They didn't balance our tanks, so one
30:19
Speaker 1: side had too much gas on the other side, so
30:21
Speaker 1: they had to remove it and blah blah, how are
30:25
Speaker 1: your drunk friends doing at this point? Well, so they
30:27
Speaker 1: went from drunk and like happy partying too drunk and
30:30
Speaker 1: angry to hung over and quiet. And then one gale
30:35
Speaker 1: got really, really, really mad and she was blaming everyone
30:38
Speaker 1: for it was happening, and it was everybody's fault, right, um,
30:41
Speaker 1: so as the pilot's fault, it was the airline's fault.
30:44
Speaker 1: Even though this was like a weather, it was like
30:45
Speaker 1: an act of God or whatever, you know, that they
30:47
Speaker 1: was actually punishing and the rest of you were taking
30:51
Speaker 1: a Bronte having to go through hell with her. So
30:55
Speaker 1: she was lambasting everyone. And then she was on the
30:58
Speaker 1: phone with customers Sir, trying to get things rescheduled, and
31:02
Speaker 1: it went so far as to the point where she
31:04
Speaker 1: was threatening to sue the customer service agent and was
31:07
Speaker 1: talking about her fancy schmancy lawyer and how they have
31:10
Speaker 1: a dog at home and that they're not gonna get
31:12
Speaker 1: home in time to take care of the dog because
31:14
Speaker 1: of this, and this is how this is their fault,
31:16
Speaker 1: and and like screaming, so like everyone in the back,
31:19
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in the very back of the plane. Um,
31:21
Speaker 1: everyone in the back of the third of the plane
31:23
Speaker 1: can hear this and seeing it in they're cussing, and
31:25
Speaker 1: you know you big time wire to hunt. Don't ride
31:27
Speaker 1: first class? No, no no, no, I'm like three rows from
31:29
Speaker 1: the very back bathroom. Though she was very irritated that
31:34
Speaker 1: she wasn't in the first class, she kept bringing that up,
31:35
Speaker 1: we should have been a first class. Maybe maybe I'm
31:39
Speaker 1: trying to remember if she said something like maybe they
31:41
Speaker 1: had bought first class at some part of this trip
31:43
Speaker 1: and pushed out of it or something, because I remember
31:46
Speaker 1: something along those lines being said. But I mean she
31:49
Speaker 1: was throwing a fit, just foul. And then politics were
31:52
Speaker 1: brought up, and then like their hooting and hollering about
31:55
Speaker 1: you know, such and such political person they don't like,
31:57
Speaker 1: and how this is so and so's fault, and how
31:59
Speaker 1: this is you know, everything you could imagine. Um, we
32:03
Speaker 1: finally get on, get in the air, we get sent
32:05
Speaker 1: in we Land, and because of this long delay, I
32:09
Speaker 1: missed my two connections. So then to get a new
32:13
Speaker 1: flight scheduled, I just sit in line, waiting in a
32:16
Speaker 1: physical line while also on a phone line trying to
32:18
Speaker 1: get to a person to see which one I would
32:19
Speaker 1: get first. And I had to wait for almost two hours.
32:21
Speaker 1: So this is now, I don't know, like eleven o'clock
32:23
Speaker 1: at night or something, at the airport trying to figure
32:26
Speaker 1: out some way to get here, and ended up getting
32:29
Speaker 1: rescheduled to fly to Chicago, and then I would change
32:32
Speaker 1: my car until rent a car in Chicago and then
32:34
Speaker 1: drive here. So I had to spend the night in Denver.
32:37
Speaker 1: Next morning, this next flight the next play they could
32:40
Speaker 1: get me on. I couldn't even get anything here to
32:42
Speaker 1: Wisconsin list I want to wait till monday. So I
32:45
Speaker 1: got the Chicago flight didn't get me until I don't know,
32:48
Speaker 1: ten thirty or something Sunday night. I landed in Chicago
32:53
Speaker 1: at ten thirty and Sunday night, I go to pick
32:54
Speaker 1: up my luggage. I wait for forty five minutes for
32:56
Speaker 1: the luggage to get there and nothing, and so all
33:00
Speaker 1: my luggage got sent to the Wisconsin airport. So I
33:04
Speaker 1: had to spend another night in a hotel in Chicago
33:07
Speaker 1: because the Madison Hotel airport isn't open till the next morning.
33:11
Speaker 1: I spent another hotel night, get up the next morning,
33:14
Speaker 1: go to the Wisconsin airport, get my stuff. Finally get
33:17
Speaker 1: here like two and a half days later than I
33:19
Speaker 1: was supposed to say. Started Friday afternoon evening and you
33:25
Speaker 1: got here probably about eight thirty or nine am Monday,
33:29
Speaker 1: Monday morning. You could have probably driven here and back
33:33
Speaker 1: Tataho in that time. It's not ridiculous. There's a whole
33:37
Speaker 1: lot of extra money paid for change tickets and rental
33:40
Speaker 1: cars and hotels and all that for yeah, just chaos
33:44
Speaker 1: the long period of time. It's frustrating. Instead of having
33:49
Speaker 1: all those days, we ended up having like most of
33:54
Speaker 1: Monday all a Tuesday, which is today. And now when
33:59
Speaker 1: we have about half a day a little bit tomorrow,
34:02
Speaker 1: and in that time still we got some ship done.
34:07
Speaker 1: How do you feel about what we got done? Given
34:09
Speaker 1: like all those hopes and dreams you had that you
34:11
Speaker 1: just listed, Dude, I mean we pretty much you know,
34:16
Speaker 1: check the boxes, consider the time. Yeah, I mean there's
34:20
Speaker 1: you know, we'll get into there's a couple of things
34:22
Speaker 1: that are you know, not quite polished. But like, um,
34:27
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you want to just
34:28
Speaker 1: jump into it right now into my dad's kind of
34:31
Speaker 1: forty and and discuss it. But so we did the tour.
34:38
Speaker 1: It's really cool. We went up and uh, and there's
34:43
Speaker 1: basically one ridge. It comes to a point and then
34:49
Speaker 1: on on three sides of the ridge drops down onto
34:52
Speaker 1: the property and then it's pretty much flat and the
34:56
Speaker 1: ridge and the surrounding areas are what I just call
34:59
Speaker 1: it midwestern hardwood oak forest. And then that transitions into
35:06
Speaker 1: a planted white pine forest for probably twenty acres or so.
35:11
Speaker 1: And uh, we went up on the ridge and uh,
35:16
Speaker 1: you're like, man, there's all points on this ridge probably
35:18
Speaker 1: were some box bed and sure enough it was really
35:21
Speaker 1: cool to see. Is like we went up on one
35:23
Speaker 1: little outcropping you know finger that you know, drops down
35:28
Speaker 1: off the main ridge should be a buck bed. There
35:32
Speaker 1: were some beds there, but it didn't look like was
35:35
Speaker 1: there a bed there. I don't remember if there was
35:37
Speaker 1: a bed there or not, but I was like, there
35:38
Speaker 1: should be one here, but but wide open, no, like, uh,
35:44
Speaker 1: what do you call horizontal horizonal structure? Cover it off?
35:47
Speaker 1: Just I'm a wide open little knob. There's a there's
35:51
Speaker 1: an old little bench up there where people used to
35:55
Speaker 1: have sat and hunted. We go the next knob over,
36:00
Speaker 1: which has literally like Mother Nature's hinge cutting job right
36:04
Speaker 1: at the end of it. I mean it's not like
36:07
Speaker 1: five or six ft up, it's more like ten feet up,
36:10
Speaker 1: but a giant tree is snapped ten feet up and
36:12
Speaker 1: laid over on its side. There's a couple other trees
36:15
Speaker 1: and guess what like four major buck beds kind of
36:18
Speaker 1: covering the compass rose you know, around around this point,
36:22
Speaker 1: you know, and like just underneath them there's almost like
36:26
Speaker 1: this like sandstony little bluff micro cliff kind of a feature.
36:32
Speaker 1: And uh, it was great just to for like you
36:34
Speaker 1: like you're saying to like you can that's something that
36:37
Speaker 1: you can look at on on X put the pin
36:40
Speaker 1: there and be like, you should go look there, see
36:43
Speaker 1: if there's things betting there. And then you go out
36:46
Speaker 1: there and you're like, yep, sure enough, that probably where
36:50
Speaker 1: your buck that lives on this property, or you know
36:53
Speaker 1: a couple of bucks bed right in here. Yeah. It's
36:56
Speaker 1: amazing how much once you learn a few general patterns
37:00
Speaker 1: of how these deer like to typically use certain train features.
37:05
Speaker 1: It's not always gonna be right, but it is a
37:08
Speaker 1: great starting point, you know. I mean that helped the
37:11
Speaker 1: toime and the one thing we haven't done, and maybe
37:14
Speaker 1: we should just do it in the morning. But I'd
37:16
Speaker 1: love to go and hinge cut that other knob and
37:19
Speaker 1: then revisit in a year and see if there's three
37:22
Speaker 1: buck beds on that other knob. It absolutely should be
37:27
Speaker 1: being used like that. It's it's so well positioned. I mean,
37:30
Speaker 1: we talked about this a lot. These bucks when they
37:32
Speaker 1: have these knobs, when they have elevation, they love to
37:36
Speaker 1: bed on the ends of points or ends of the
37:38
Speaker 1: knobs that comes off ridges where they can see an
37:41
Speaker 1: area they can protect themselves visually from the front and
37:45
Speaker 1: by scent behind. If they can ever have that, it's
37:47
Speaker 1: really hard to beat that from a security standpoint for
37:50
Speaker 1: a deer, and and yeah, I mean that's exactly what
37:52
Speaker 1: we found it was. It was it was like textbook
37:56
Speaker 1: except zero cover, zero cover, and though that is more
38:01
Speaker 1: west facing where the other one is more like more southeast.
38:06
Speaker 1: So when they're on it, they're getting that wind over
38:08
Speaker 1: their back, but on the other knob there with the
38:11
Speaker 1: wind is gonna proominally be in their face. Yeah, but
38:14
Speaker 1: I do think like if you were to improve that
38:17
Speaker 1: with the cover there, it's still it still could get
38:20
Speaker 1: on that sure east side and use it, because otherwise
38:24
Speaker 1: it was set up so nice. Um. So yeah, that's
38:28
Speaker 1: a that's a way where you've got the starting point. Okay,
38:30
Speaker 1: here's a feature. And so much of what we talked
38:32
Speaker 1: about and what we will talk about on your property,
38:35
Speaker 1: both the forty and the larger camp is when it
38:38
Speaker 1: comes to habitat oftentimes, look at what the deer want
38:41
Speaker 1: to do naturally and then define it better, improve it better,
38:46
Speaker 1: sweet in the pot, Like, it's much easier to help
38:50
Speaker 1: deer do something they already want to do, versus try
38:54
Speaker 1: to make them go way out of their way to
38:56
Speaker 1: do something they don't naturally want to. So if you
38:57
Speaker 1: can find ways to maybe encourage them to do it
39:01
Speaker 1: just a little bit more this way, or to do
39:03
Speaker 1: a versus be just a little bit more, but making
39:05
Speaker 1: sure the a's within the set of things they do. Like,
39:08
Speaker 1: you know, you don't need to make this thing more
39:10
Speaker 1: hard than it has to be. So finding the spots
39:12
Speaker 1: they naturally want to bed and then sweeten it, finding
39:15
Speaker 1: the natural line they want to travel from betting defeating,
39:19
Speaker 1: and then finding a way to slow them down in
39:21
Speaker 1: a specific spot between the two where you can and
39:23
Speaker 1: get a shot. That's a great way to do it. Um,
39:26
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about the food flop. Now those buck
39:28
Speaker 1: beds mhm. We talked about how to hunt them, obviously
39:32
Speaker 1: not hunting them, but how to hunt bucks coming out
39:35
Speaker 1: of them. But like during the rut when I'm usually
39:40
Speaker 1: bow hunting here or will be again this year, they're
39:43
Speaker 1: not necessarily using those beds, right, because they could be
39:46
Speaker 1: bedding with the dough. They could just be like, well,
39:49
Speaker 1: I've been cruising for ten twelve hours, I'm just gonna
39:52
Speaker 1: bet on this point, which could be a mile from
39:56
Speaker 1: like his normal spot. So like, how important are those
39:59
Speaker 1: buck beds still to me? Being like a guy that
40:02
Speaker 1: comes here and hunts the rut. So I would not
40:07
Speaker 1: plan your hunting strategy around them during the rut because
40:10
Speaker 1: of the things you just said. You're right, they may
40:13
Speaker 1: use those beds sometimes during the ruts. Still, they may not,
40:17
Speaker 1: like you just said, they might be elsewhere. They might
40:19
Speaker 1: be just hanging out with the dough. They might be
40:21
Speaker 1: cruising for the day. Um. So I would not let
40:25
Speaker 1: that be like something that drives where you hunt during
40:28
Speaker 1: the rut. During the rut, you should be focused on
40:30
Speaker 1: where the does and where are concentrations of travel where
40:34
Speaker 1: those cruising bucks might be pinched through like our hub
40:37
Speaker 1: type situation. Um. But having good buck betting areas is
40:41
Speaker 1: good for you throughout the whole year, the whole the
40:43
Speaker 1: rest of the year. It's good for any other bow
40:46
Speaker 1: hunting or hunting outside of that window of the rut. Um,
40:50
Speaker 1: it's still gonna give that buck like, hey, I've got
40:53
Speaker 1: good betting area here. Maybe I can call this part
40:56
Speaker 1: of my home range exactly. Yeah, if you if you've
40:59
Speaker 1: got the best taj mahal set up around that bucks there,
41:06
Speaker 1: if there's multiple taj mahals around, more bucks are gonna
41:08
Speaker 1: want to, like you said, have this to be a
41:10
Speaker 1: part of their home range. And the more bucks that
41:12
Speaker 1: want this to be part of their circuit and their
41:14
Speaker 1: home range, the more likely they're gonna be the ones
41:16
Speaker 1: that you see during the rut checking your dos if
41:19
Speaker 1: they're in the zone, if they're in the area because
41:20
Speaker 1: of some of the improvements you make. While they may
41:23
Speaker 1: not use them exactly how you envisioned, they will be
41:28
Speaker 1: at the party, And if they're at the party during
41:29
Speaker 1: the rut, you've got a chance. So I you know,
41:34
Speaker 1: I would certainly think it's worth doing, but it wasn't
41:38
Speaker 1: the first thing I recommended we do in this situation,
41:41
Speaker 1: like what we actually went with, because there's something different
41:43
Speaker 1: that would give you a better bang for your buck
41:45
Speaker 1: that would apply during the rut and at all times.
41:48
Speaker 1: Um while improving that betting. It'll be good, but it's
41:53
Speaker 1: not gonna make a noticeable rut difference for you. What
41:57
Speaker 1: we do decide to do is improve upon in Hey,
42:03
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it like a fallow food plot.
42:06
Speaker 1: The prior owner or actually a hunter had access um
42:11
Speaker 1: to the owner's property that hunted it um with a bow.
42:16
Speaker 1: He probably put in a fluid plot. I don't know.
42:18
Speaker 1: I'm guessing ten twelve years ago, kept it up for
42:21
Speaker 1: five or so years, and now it's been It's basically
42:24
Speaker 1: when we rolled in and saw it, it was a
42:28
Speaker 1: what do you think it was like a half acre
42:31
Speaker 1: was a third of an acre and ways to chest
42:36
Speaker 1: high raspberry bushes and really walking through there, it's like,
42:41
Speaker 1: because we're looking for stumps to mark for the um
42:45
Speaker 1: the neighbor its tractor. We'll get to that in a second.
42:49
Speaker 1: But not a lot of deer sign on the edges
42:52
Speaker 1: of that meadow, in those brambles raspberries, Like not a
42:58
Speaker 1: lot of sign right, yeah, none time. There's some dropping
43:03
Speaker 1: us here and there, but nothing remarkable. So you figured,
43:07
Speaker 1: like short term goal like improve this property, Like you know,
43:13
Speaker 1: let's make a spot we have basically like in the
43:16
Speaker 1: middle of the woods. Um, we've probably got three or
43:20
Speaker 1: four yards away, we've got some agg and Um we figured, hey,
43:26
Speaker 1: great this food plots like tucked away, be a great
43:29
Speaker 1: spot for them to come to on their way to
43:32
Speaker 1: the agg fields or maybe on the way back from
43:34
Speaker 1: the agg fields. In the morning. It's already here, Like,
43:37
Speaker 1: let's see if we can't get it plot planted in
43:40
Speaker 1: the time. We have a day and a half and
43:43
Speaker 1: you know, A big thing, like a big part of
43:45
Speaker 1: that decision when I was thinking this through, and we've
43:48
Speaker 1: talked about this over the last couple of days, is
43:52
Speaker 1: when you're looking at making some kind of improvement on
43:54
Speaker 1: the property, I always want to start by considering what's
43:58
Speaker 1: the missing link, like what's that missing ingredient on my
44:02
Speaker 1: property or in the neighborhood. Even you can sometimes zoom
44:06
Speaker 1: out farther, and so if you look and say, okay,
44:08
Speaker 1: what a deer need? They need food, they need cover,
44:11
Speaker 1: they need security, all right, they need to be felt
44:13
Speaker 1: like they're not being messed around with humans all the time.
44:16
Speaker 1: So when you zoom out and look at the zone,
44:18
Speaker 1: it is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds maybe thousands of
44:22
Speaker 1: acres of salad, mostly solid timber. And then there's a
44:26
Speaker 1: couple crop fields on the outside of this massive zone
44:29
Speaker 1: of timber, but not a lot. You have one of
44:30
Speaker 1: them on your neighbor It's not what you quite would
44:33
Speaker 1: call like up north woods, because I think up north
44:35
Speaker 1: woods definitely are a little bit more heavier um conifers,
44:40
Speaker 1: right uh, but I mean just here from here, compared
44:45
Speaker 1: to the Durn farm, it's like way more big woodsy
44:49
Speaker 1: feeling where you can walk through oak forests, over oak ridges,
44:53
Speaker 1: through oak bowls for hours and not see a field.
44:59
Speaker 1: And so that's that's what I looked at. It's like, hey,
45:01
Speaker 1: if we're gonna make a change, let's make a change
45:04
Speaker 1: that fills that missing Lincoln provides something unique here. Deer
45:08
Speaker 1: in this area do not need more cover, but there's
45:11
Speaker 1: lots of lots of good cover. Um what they don't
45:15
Speaker 1: have a lot of is like a super desirable small
45:18
Speaker 1: food source. An interrupt just a second tomorrow when we're
45:21
Speaker 1: out walking, I want you to, like, as often as
45:24
Speaker 1: you see, I want you to point and be like
45:26
Speaker 1: Doe betting good idea. Yeah, we can do that. Um
45:32
Speaker 1: so so yes, it seemed to me that all the
45:35
Speaker 1: things you said are true. There was already an opening,
45:37
Speaker 1: was a small opening that had been kind of reclaimed
45:38
Speaker 1: by nature, but we could we could open it up
45:41
Speaker 1: again and create this little opening, which would be unique
45:43
Speaker 1: in the area. And then we could plant a highly
45:45
Speaker 1: desirable food source, which would be very unique in the area.
45:49
Speaker 1: Other than a corn field out there ways, there's nothing
45:52
Speaker 1: else like this. So a little tiny food plot could
45:55
Speaker 1: make a big difference for a certain number of deer
45:58
Speaker 1: in a spot like this compared to maybe by dogs
46:02
Speaker 1: or somewhere in aisle where there's tons and tons of
46:04
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. It's it's just if you did
46:06
Speaker 1: this food plot and one of the dogs was I
46:08
Speaker 1: don't know, I can't think of a reason other than
46:11
Speaker 1: it's maybe more secure. Think going down to the big,
46:15
Speaker 1: big cornfield. And even when those plots that can help
46:17
Speaker 1: some it gets you that secure zone. It can be
46:21
Speaker 1: a transition point. But here it's so different and unique,
46:24
Speaker 1: it's going to have a larger a larger impact. So
46:28
Speaker 1: so yeah, I thought, shoot, within you know, we've got
46:30
Speaker 1: twenty four to thirty or six hours to do something.
46:33
Speaker 1: We might actually be able to reclaim this thing and
46:35
Speaker 1: make it a food plot and set just up up,
46:39
Speaker 1: set up a perfect little set up for you or
46:41
Speaker 1: your dad. Um. And it's kind of neat to do
46:45
Speaker 1: something in like entirety. So rather than they could do
46:47
Speaker 1: a little project here, a little project there, a little
46:49
Speaker 1: project there, it was, Hey, let's make let's fully set
46:52
Speaker 1: this thing up from top to bottom and have this
46:55
Speaker 1: dialed for hunting season. And that's that's kind of what
46:59
Speaker 1: we try to do. Yeah, your first thought was that
47:02
Speaker 1: we would just um set it and then knocked down
47:08
Speaker 1: the raspberries and use those as mulst basically and see
47:13
Speaker 1: what would happen, and come in and spray to kill
47:15
Speaker 1: the raspberries and see if we get the clover to
47:17
Speaker 1: come up. We're lucky where we have a great neighbor.
47:23
Speaker 1: Ah the dust some farming has some farm equipment. I
47:27
Speaker 1: talked to him ahead of time and said, hey, you know,
47:29
Speaker 1: if we need you, we maybe hire you and your tractor.
47:33
Speaker 1: He's like sure. So the biggest question was he was
47:35
Speaker 1: he gonna be able to get down a little like
47:38
Speaker 1: you know, two track that we have for access to
47:40
Speaker 1: get his tractor in there. He was able to, and
47:43
Speaker 1: so instead of doing what I just described, we're able
47:47
Speaker 1: to go full on tiller and basically till the whole
47:52
Speaker 1: thing up now. Unfortunately, so he rolled in. Um, we
47:59
Speaker 1: got a couple other things on this morning that we'll
48:00
Speaker 1: talk about a second. But he rolled in I don't know,
48:03
Speaker 1: just afternoon with his tractor and just like dropped his
48:08
Speaker 1: tiller and then like the next five minutes you've got
48:10
Speaker 1: you know, six by whatever, fifty sixty yards just like
48:16
Speaker 1: the prettiest dirt you've ever seen you're like, okay, like
48:19
Speaker 1: we're in business. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of stumps left
48:22
Speaker 1: in that food plaque. I think the guy that did
48:24
Speaker 1: it before us did not have heavy equipment, didn't take
48:28
Speaker 1: the stumps out, and so we were trying to just
48:32
Speaker 1: sort of till through them, and it was chopping up
48:34
Speaker 1: some of the smaller stuff. But we pushed it and
48:38
Speaker 1: shared a couple of pins, bent a um on the
48:42
Speaker 1: times on the tiller, and uh so we went from
48:47
Speaker 1: about a third of an acre to a sixth, which
48:52
Speaker 1: when you go in there and you look at it,
48:54
Speaker 1: you're like, dude, really nice food plot. You know, like
48:58
Speaker 1: probably fifty to sixty yards long and twenty yds wide,
49:02
Speaker 1: why i'd say wire and twenty so still sizeable chunk.
49:10
Speaker 1: He's gonna come and finish the rest while we're not here.
49:12
Speaker 1: My dad's gonna come back and see the rest. But
49:15
Speaker 1: we figured we would just keep moving on. So you
49:19
Speaker 1: recommended clover, which I think you should speak to that,
49:23
Speaker 1: like why the clover? Yeah, Well, I was looking for
49:27
Speaker 1: something that we could plant, you know, something would take
49:30
Speaker 1: well in the spring, something that's relatively easy to get going,
49:35
Speaker 1: and then also that doesn't require constant work. So a
49:39
Speaker 1: lot of other food plots that folks used and that
49:41
Speaker 1: I've used, and I still use. Our annuals where you
49:44
Speaker 1: plant in the fall or like late summer, and then
49:47
Speaker 1: it bursts out the ground and you get great growth
49:49
Speaker 1: in the fall, but then it's dead in the spring.
49:51
Speaker 1: To plant again the next year, to do it every
49:52
Speaker 1: single year? Question? Yeah, is that why? Because we kind
49:57
Speaker 1: of had to run around to a bunch of stores
49:59
Speaker 1: in town looking for seed. Nobody had just straight up clover,
50:03
Speaker 1: but we did pass over some and I hope this
50:06
Speaker 1: isn't like the actual name of a brand, but it
50:08
Speaker 1: was like buck crack and crack, but buck crack and
50:16
Speaker 1: you know, I forget whatever else there was, but it
50:18
Speaker 1: was like other blends of seeds. How come you didn't
50:22
Speaker 1: want to go with those because those are annuals, those
50:24
Speaker 1: are fall falling it. Yeah, and we you don't even
50:29
Speaker 1: want to plant that stuff now because that stuff would
50:31
Speaker 1: if you plan that stuff now, it would mature before
50:34
Speaker 1: hunting season and be less desirable once you get to
50:37
Speaker 1: the fall. So clover you could plant now and you
50:42
Speaker 1: can establish it in the spring when it's wet still
50:45
Speaker 1: and it's relatively drought hard to see. Even if we
50:47
Speaker 1: had a tough stretch, it will do better than some things.
50:50
Speaker 1: And the thing is that it will stay attractive right
50:52
Speaker 1: on through, So that clover is going to be attractive
50:54
Speaker 1: to deer, you know, within a couple of weeks, and really, yeah,
50:59
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks will be in there eating and
51:01
Speaker 1: it's gonna stay attractive right on through with fall, right
51:05
Speaker 1: into the winter. They might still be pawned at it
51:07
Speaker 1: in December January in some cases. I mean, it's it's
51:09
Speaker 1: the closest thing to a year round food plot you
51:11
Speaker 1: can find just about any part of the country. Clover
51:14
Speaker 1: is just it's magical in that way. There's certainly going
51:17
Speaker 1: to be some things will be more desirable at other
51:19
Speaker 1: points of the year. So you know, one window, if
51:23
Speaker 1: somebody had a bunch of brassicas, that might become more
51:25
Speaker 1: attractive in December than what you'll have. And when the
51:28
Speaker 1: corn gets harvested in November, that's going to become more desirable.
51:31
Speaker 1: But clover is going to maintain this steady like it's
51:34
Speaker 1: a pretty damn good thing right on through. It's really
51:37
Speaker 1: hard to find that with anything else. And you have
51:39
Speaker 1: no vested interest in clover to be selling clover. No,
51:43
Speaker 1: this isn't like wied to huntover no wire dun clover.
51:45
Speaker 1: All that's a good idea. Maybe that's the next business
51:47
Speaker 1: venture we should explore. Right, If you just want clover, yep,
51:52
Speaker 1: I got it, Come dr Mark. Uh. But you actually
51:57
Speaker 1: bought two different kinds of clover, Yeah, just two different varieties, um,
52:01
Speaker 1: both perennial clovers. Um. Just I think it's always a
52:05
Speaker 1: good idea to have a little diversity and what you've got.
52:08
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes one will be a little bit more
52:10
Speaker 1: impacted by drought or something, one will be a little hardier,
52:12
Speaker 1: One might be a little more attractive early, and one
52:15
Speaker 1: will be a little bit more attractive late. So I oftentimes,
52:18
Speaker 1: if you can any kind of diversity and kind of mixture,
52:21
Speaker 1: we'll just get you a little bit. It's just like
52:23
Speaker 1: you diversify an investment portfolil. Exact same idea with the
52:26
Speaker 1: food plot. Um. So like what we did in the
52:30
Speaker 1: back forty we super diversified that and those were fall
52:34
Speaker 1: annuals that you planted, but we had some perennials mixed in,
52:38
Speaker 1: so that had a lot of different things which provide
52:42
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different benefits. In this case, we
52:45
Speaker 1: went the minimum diversity. Diversity but a little basically a
52:49
Speaker 1: couple of perennials. We'll get some clover out there, get
52:51
Speaker 1: us started, get this thing rolling, and then you know
52:55
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to do a lot of different
52:56
Speaker 1: things with in the future if you ever wanted to.
52:58
Speaker 1: But it's gonna be relatively maintenance. You don't need to
53:01
Speaker 1: plant again next spring. You don't need to plan again
53:03
Speaker 1: next fall. All you need to do is if you
53:06
Speaker 1: see a bunch of weeds coming up, maybe spray it,
53:09
Speaker 1: maybe mow it, probably at least one mowing a year,
53:12
Speaker 1: and then maybe a spring, and that'sover. Get on its own.
53:16
Speaker 1: Oh I've never tested exactly how high it would get,
53:19
Speaker 1: but you usually want to mow it. If it gets
53:22
Speaker 1: you know, upwards of I don't know, eighteen inches or
53:25
Speaker 1: something like that. It gets it gets stocky and not
53:29
Speaker 1: as um not as lush and attractive when it gets
53:33
Speaker 1: too mature. Most everything reaches some point where matures and
53:37
Speaker 1: does not become as desirable. So that's part of the
53:39
Speaker 1: reason why the mowing is a good thing. Mowing will
53:41
Speaker 1: knock back competing weeds, and then we'll also kind of
53:44
Speaker 1: knock that clove over back to that younger early stage
53:47
Speaker 1: growth a little bit and becomes super attractive. Then when
53:50
Speaker 1: it starts in this you know whatever upper Midwest climate
53:54
Speaker 1: and you know seasons, is there like a time if
54:00
Speaker 1: you had to guess, you'd be like, man'd be pretty
54:01
Speaker 1: optimum if you mode it in August, because then in
54:05
Speaker 1: October you'd be you know, still rocking and or you know, yes,
54:09
Speaker 1: I can't speak to other parts of the country that
54:10
Speaker 1: I don't have experience with, but in Michigan, yeah, late August.
54:14
Speaker 1: I like to cut late August because you're gonna get
54:17
Speaker 1: a bunch of rain. You're gonna get the fall rains
54:19
Speaker 1: coming soon. And at the same time that's gonna line
54:22
Speaker 1: up well, if I cut that stuff in late August,
54:24
Speaker 1: you're gonna get all that lush, nice new growth leading
54:26
Speaker 1: right into opening day. Growth. It's not like new growth
54:29
Speaker 1: out of the existing shoots, like you've already got fresh
54:32
Speaker 1: seed in the ground and it's full on fresh growth.
54:34
Speaker 1: It's it's fresh growth from the existing plants. So like
54:38
Speaker 1: new growth from that you know that plant. Now it's
54:41
Speaker 1: got a Greek grow and that's tender and uh and
54:45
Speaker 1: just jam packed with a super concentrated DOSO nutrients, I think, um, so, yeah,
54:51
Speaker 1: you're gonna have the beginnings of a perennial food plot.
54:54
Speaker 1: There might be a little maintenance like I mentioned, but
54:56
Speaker 1: it's gonna be you know, not too bad compared to
55:01
Speaker 1: what it could be. And this is gonna be something
55:03
Speaker 1: that's sustainable to you know, this could stick around for
55:06
Speaker 1: five six years. I've got a perennial clover plot that
55:10
Speaker 1: i've you know, with a little bit of fixer upper time.
55:13
Speaker 1: It's been around for eight years now something like that,
55:15
Speaker 1: and I've not had to disc u till I do anything.
55:17
Speaker 1: I haven't had to restart it. It just keeps going
55:19
Speaker 1: and I kind of tweak it every one smile, and
55:21
Speaker 1: I'll broadcast a little extra filling any patches, and I'll
55:24
Speaker 1: moll it once a year, and I might spray it
55:26
Speaker 1: once a year, every a couple of years. But that's
55:29
Speaker 1: not the beginnings of what you have. And it's tucked
55:32
Speaker 1: way back in the cover. It's kind of in between
55:35
Speaker 1: two different bedding zones. Between those two different bedding zones,
55:38
Speaker 1: and then we're that big food sources. So and it's
55:41
Speaker 1: the transition between the Yeah, the two habitat types there,
55:46
Speaker 1: So you've got this little like I keep I remember referencing.
55:49
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a little ice cream truck is
55:51
Speaker 1: what you have there where it's the special thing that
55:54
Speaker 1: they're not finding anywhere else, and like this concentrated little dose.
55:58
Speaker 1: Plus it's an ice cream truck that like shows up
56:00
Speaker 1: to your bedroom or shows up in your living room,
56:03
Speaker 1: like right in your safe space. These deer don't need
56:05
Speaker 1: to go out to the street to get their ice cream.
56:08
Speaker 1: The ice cream is coming right into where they feel
56:10
Speaker 1: very comfortable, way back in that cover. So I think
56:13
Speaker 1: we did the old line distance on on X, which
56:17
Speaker 1: if you're not using that tooling, get off from underneath
56:20
Speaker 1: that rock and go hit the little tools but so
56:23
Speaker 1: far left it says line distance. Hit that. Then you
56:28
Speaker 1: basically tap your screen wherever you're trying to You're you're
56:32
Speaker 1: doing this just a measure a distance. So usually it's
56:34
Speaker 1: usually from where I'm standing. So I'll tap like right
56:36
Speaker 1: next to the little blue circle, and then I go
56:39
Speaker 1: over to I had already marked where those buckbeds were.
56:43
Speaker 1: Tap that, and all of a sudden there's a line,
56:45
Speaker 1: and it tells you how long the line is, and
56:49
Speaker 1: sweet sweet function. It's probably aside from just looking at
56:52
Speaker 1: the map and like following a direction on the map,
56:56
Speaker 1: that's probably the next most used feature that I use
57:00
Speaker 1: all the time. Um. Anyways, those buck beds or I
57:05
Speaker 1: think were they like two or fifty yards I don't
57:08
Speaker 1: remember that one something like that from that food plot,
57:12
Speaker 1: which and he said it was like four yards to
57:13
Speaker 1: the eagg fields or something like that. Yeah, wasn't it
57:16
Speaker 1: along those lines? Yeah? I mean it's it's it's close
57:21
Speaker 1: enough to those bedrooms up there that this will definitely
57:24
Speaker 1: be within their circuit. And this is a much nicer
57:27
Speaker 1: wave for a buck to start his evening feeding routine.
57:30
Speaker 1: If this is like in October, mid October or late September,
57:33
Speaker 1: since you guys have a September opener, I could very
57:36
Speaker 1: easily see bucks dropping off those points, slowly transitioning hitting
57:40
Speaker 1: this little secluded food plot, you know, over the course
57:43
Speaker 1: of that last hour of daylight, and then from there
57:45
Speaker 1: slowly moving to the southeast towards the big field and
57:48
Speaker 1: then never need to show their faces in those big
57:50
Speaker 1: fields till after dark, and all the neighbors or whoever
57:54
Speaker 1: that would be hunting that kind of stuff wherever never
57:57
Speaker 1: know these bucks lived effort. You guys would see them
58:01
Speaker 1: because your four hundred yards further back into where they
58:03
Speaker 1: feel safe, and you've now all of a sudden, like
58:07
Speaker 1: these deer were making a similar travel route, like they
58:09
Speaker 1: were going from that general zone to that general zone,
58:12
Speaker 1: but they had no particular reason to go to a
58:16
Speaker 1: little third acre portion of that on any kind of
58:18
Speaker 1: consistent basis. So to try to hunt those deer and
58:21
Speaker 1: to know like, oh, yeah, they're gonna come through here,
58:23
Speaker 1: and to say oh this buck does this or that,
58:26
Speaker 1: it's a total crapshoot. Now we have this little wonderful
58:31
Speaker 1: feature that's going to be like a magnet that will
58:35
Speaker 1: pull things that want to generally go from A to
58:37
Speaker 1: b like that general path, but maybe spread over five
58:42
Speaker 1: yard with all of a sudden, Now they're all going
58:45
Speaker 1: to kind of still go from A to B, but
58:47
Speaker 1: this one's gonna swing a little more to the west,
58:48
Speaker 1: and that deer swing a little war of the east,
58:50
Speaker 1: and they're all gonna want to pass by the ice
58:52
Speaker 1: cream stand on the way to get there because this
58:54
Speaker 1: is a great, a great treat and safe treat right
58:57
Speaker 1: on their way. You say, all like it's some important
59:00
Speaker 1: to mention that there's a bunch of country here and
59:04
Speaker 1: it's low dear density like twenty years ago. I think
59:07
Speaker 1: there used to be more deer. But um, when Mark
59:11
Speaker 1: says all, I think that like if you sat there
59:14
Speaker 1: on the evening hunt and had you know, anything more
59:18
Speaker 1: than two deer, you'd be like, whoa, it's all a
59:21
Speaker 1: bunch bunch deer tonight, you know, you know, roll through here,
59:24
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully maybe one of them would be a
59:26
Speaker 1: would be a buck. Um. So yeah, it's kind of
59:31
Speaker 1: like I don't want to say I was ever really
59:34
Speaker 1: against like I am against still against like farm and deer,
59:39
Speaker 1: like if you especially if you throw in the fence
59:41
Speaker 1: aspect of it. And then like there comes a certain
59:44
Speaker 1: point where I don't know, person, I've never been there,
59:47
Speaker 1: so I really shouldn't just speak to it. But it's
59:49
Speaker 1: just looking from the outside in, there could get to
59:53
Speaker 1: a point where the woods just would cease to feel
59:58
Speaker 1: like woods because so fabricated and like right now, like
1:00:04
Speaker 1: with what we've done, there's a lot of fabrication that
1:00:07
Speaker 1: we did in the last you know, twenty four hours.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: But I think that once you know, it turns into
1:00:12
Speaker 1: a clover meadow. And sort of like the other words
1:00:16
Speaker 1: that we did just kind of blends in. It's it's
1:00:18
Speaker 1: not gonna be this like great departure of what naturally
1:00:22
Speaker 1: is there, you know. Yeah, it's it's a nice way
1:00:25
Speaker 1: to you know, enjoy the benefits of some of that
1:00:28
Speaker 1: stuff without going overboard with it. And I think it's
1:00:31
Speaker 1: going to be the just a great kind of thing
1:00:35
Speaker 1: for your dad enjoying a bow hunt out there and
1:00:39
Speaker 1: having a Yeah, you know, those country's got a lot
1:00:41
Speaker 1: of big ridges that are you know, roughly from roughly
1:00:46
Speaker 1: the tops of the ridges they are three feet higher
1:00:48
Speaker 1: than than sort of the bottom lands around here. And uh,
1:00:53
Speaker 1: he's seventy this year and you know, hoping the ridges.
1:00:58
Speaker 1: He still does it, but like, would you do it
1:01:01
Speaker 1: six or seven days in a row. No. This place though,
1:01:05
Speaker 1: is like a flat three hundred yard walk from where
1:01:10
Speaker 1: we've decided the access point is going to be, which
1:01:12
Speaker 1: we should probably touch on, uh to get into this
1:01:16
Speaker 1: stand that's on the food plot, which um, we should
1:01:19
Speaker 1: talked about that stand man. I mean, it just like
1:01:21
Speaker 1: turned out it's almost perfect. We hit like it's like
1:01:25
Speaker 1: nine out of ten that that negative one point is
1:01:30
Speaker 1: a big one for you there right now, isn't it. Well, Yeah,
1:01:32
Speaker 1: but I'm the only one that climbed in there after
1:01:34
Speaker 1: I got to sit there for a day. Um, with
1:01:36
Speaker 1: the negative that we're talking about, it's like it's in
1:01:38
Speaker 1: the right location for wind. Um we're looking at west
1:01:43
Speaker 1: northwest winds prevailing. So we went southeast corner, east side.
1:01:49
Speaker 1: We're on the east side towards the southeast corner, and Um, unfortunately,
1:01:54
Speaker 1: it's like I said, it's on that transition between the
1:01:57
Speaker 1: white pines and the oak forest. And guess what we're
1:02:00
Speaker 1: in like a giant like you know, even where the
1:02:03
Speaker 1: stand sets is probably still an eighteen inch diameter white pie.
1:02:07
Speaker 1: And after cutting a bunch of limbs and putting that
1:02:09
Speaker 1: stand up, man, that stand is I don't want to
1:02:12
Speaker 1: stay covered. But like I climbed into it today and
1:02:15
Speaker 1: definitely came down a sticky dude. It's all over the
1:02:20
Speaker 1: climbing sticks, it's all over the safety line, it was
1:02:22
Speaker 1: all over the bow rope. Yeah, chair, like the seats,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: the seat had a little bit on it. So we're
1:02:29
Speaker 1: gonna figure it out. My dad's gonna have to deal
1:02:31
Speaker 1: with that. But we'll hold on only option call to
1:02:34
Speaker 1: action for people listening is my mission. I really want
1:02:38
Speaker 1: to figure out some kind of creative solutions for dealing
1:02:43
Speaker 1: with pine trees that are leaking sap all over your stuff.
1:02:47
Speaker 1: So if you have an idea something that will slow
1:02:50
Speaker 1: the SAPs dripping out all over your stuff, or something
1:02:53
Speaker 1: you can coat a cut limb with or anything like that,
1:02:57
Speaker 1: if you have any ideas if you're a guy that
1:02:59
Speaker 1: haunts or a gallon haunt's all uh, you know pine forests,
1:03:04
Speaker 1: like let us know how you deal with it. Be
1:03:06
Speaker 1: something you just can't like. It's one thing to have
1:03:10
Speaker 1: it on your like gloves and a little bit on
1:03:12
Speaker 1: your clothes, but once it was sort of would become
1:03:15
Speaker 1: part of your bow, I could see issues right if
1:03:19
Speaker 1: it's like in your cams and on your string and
1:03:22
Speaker 1: I don't know, on your knock and then and then
1:03:24
Speaker 1: it's like with aeril flight as the air as the
1:03:27
Speaker 1: knock leaves a string, who knows. It could be a
1:03:29
Speaker 1: problem that you don't want to be in that you
1:03:32
Speaker 1: want to take a break and just close that window
1:03:34
Speaker 1: because I think you're getting a little weak. But yeah, otherwise,
1:03:40
Speaker 1: there was a lot of good things going for that spot.
1:03:44
Speaker 1: We wanted something, as you mentioned, good for the wind perspective.
1:03:47
Speaker 1: We checked that off the list. We wanted something that
1:03:49
Speaker 1: would be within shooting range of as much of that
1:03:52
Speaker 1: plot area as possible where we thought they'd come from.
1:03:55
Speaker 1: And and we had a little bit of a debate
1:03:57
Speaker 1: around this, which was balancing the three factors for a
1:04:00
Speaker 1: tree that I think about at least that being the wind,
1:04:03
Speaker 1: that being within range of where you think the shots
1:04:05
Speaker 1: will be, and then finally, will I be able to
1:04:07
Speaker 1: stay concealed in this tree? Does I have the cover factor?
1:04:10
Speaker 1: And so every time you choose where to sit, you
1:04:12
Speaker 1: got to continue to think about those three things and
1:04:15
Speaker 1: then figure out, in my given situation, how do you
1:04:18
Speaker 1: wait three because sometimes one of the other is more important.
1:04:22
Speaker 1: And so in this case we got the wind covered good.
1:04:25
Speaker 1: What we had to figure out was how do we
1:04:27
Speaker 1: choose between cover and shots. There was a tree. It
1:04:31
Speaker 1: was tucked back into the woods, about seven yards off
1:04:34
Speaker 1: the edge of the plot. That would get you tucked
1:04:37
Speaker 1: in there very nicely and you'd be very unlikely to
1:04:39
Speaker 1: be spotted at all. But it was in the far
1:04:41
Speaker 1: southern part of the plot. Um it was, like I said,
1:04:44
Speaker 1: like seven or so yards back in there and surrounded
1:04:47
Speaker 1: by lots of trees on all sides. You basically have
1:04:49
Speaker 1: one shot right in front of you, and you know
1:04:54
Speaker 1: sixty percent of that small food plot would be out
1:04:57
Speaker 1: of range something like that, and so that's tough from
1:05:01
Speaker 1: a perspective. You know, I'm actually gonna get a shot.
1:05:03
Speaker 1: There was another tree, as you described, that was on
1:05:06
Speaker 1: kind of centrally located up and down north and south
1:05:09
Speaker 1: on the east side, and from that you could shoot
1:05:12
Speaker 1: basically anywhere in the plot downside. It wasn't it was
1:05:16
Speaker 1: right on the edge and maybe even like a little
1:05:20
Speaker 1: from yeah, just a little bit. So that was the
1:05:23
Speaker 1: thing was how do we want to which one is
1:05:26
Speaker 1: more important getting the shots are being more concealed, and
1:05:31
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately your dad was gonna hunt the most,
1:05:34
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, I would prefer more shots, and
1:05:36
Speaker 1: I would probably say that you've got a better ability
1:05:41
Speaker 1: to manipulate the other factor in your favor in that one.
1:05:46
Speaker 1: So by that, I mean if I sat the cover one,
1:05:49
Speaker 1: the one deep in the woods, now I need to
1:05:52
Speaker 1: say it, is there some way I can improve my
1:05:54
Speaker 1: shot opportunities. And there's a couple of things you could do,
1:05:57
Speaker 1: but not as much while with what we chose we it. Okay,
1:06:00
Speaker 1: we're gonna get all the shot opportunities to want. Now,
1:06:02
Speaker 1: can we improve the concealment. And it's much easier to
1:06:05
Speaker 1: improve your concealment if you have a pretty good tree,
1:06:07
Speaker 1: which we had a pretty good tree option. Oh, I
1:06:09
Speaker 1: see the tree is great. One is wide, which like
1:06:12
Speaker 1: just you know, it just sucks up the human profile
1:06:16
Speaker 1: and then uh a fair amount of branches coming off
1:06:21
Speaker 1: of it at the right height, and we obviously had
1:06:23
Speaker 1: to do you know, a fair bit of pruning. But
1:06:26
Speaker 1: like right now, when someone's up in there and you're
1:06:29
Speaker 1: standing in the plot, you're not seeing much humano. And
1:06:33
Speaker 1: I recommend three other things too. Number one, I recommend
1:06:38
Speaker 1: we put the tree stand facing off the back of
1:06:40
Speaker 1: the tree, so that we're not wide open on the
1:06:43
Speaker 1: front of it facing the big opening. Instead, you're facing
1:06:45
Speaker 1: the opposite way, so the trunk is now cover. So
1:06:49
Speaker 1: anything approaching from the food plot it's likely not going
1:06:52
Speaker 1: to see you if you're coming head on because you're
1:06:54
Speaker 1: facing the other way. Now, to get a shot, you
1:06:56
Speaker 1: just stand up and kind of lean over to your
1:06:58
Speaker 1: left and you can get a shot behind you. So
1:07:00
Speaker 1: that was number one. Number two, your dad was thinking Hey,
1:07:03
Speaker 1: let's grab the ladder standing put up here. And I
1:07:05
Speaker 1: was like, on this edge like this, I'd rarely do
1:07:08
Speaker 1: we do everything we can to keep this low profile.
1:07:10
Speaker 1: So let's not use the big bulky ladder stand that
1:07:12
Speaker 1: will stick way out. Let's do the climbing sticks that
1:07:16
Speaker 1: attach right to the side of the tree and hang
1:07:18
Speaker 1: on again, a little more stealthy, a little more um
1:07:22
Speaker 1: low profile. And then finally, which we weren't able to
1:07:24
Speaker 1: be done yet, but I hope we can do at
1:07:27
Speaker 1: some point add some pine bobs and a few spots
1:07:31
Speaker 1: just to give you a little more cover, just to
1:07:33
Speaker 1: be on the safe side there. And if we do that,
1:07:35
Speaker 1: we do those three things, we've essentially nullified all the
1:07:39
Speaker 1: concerns about concealment while getting all the upsides of the
1:07:42
Speaker 1: other two things. So that was my thought process on
1:07:46
Speaker 1: picking the right spot and making it the perfect spot
1:07:49
Speaker 1: for what we had to work with. Yeah, and the
1:07:52
Speaker 1: last thing that we did planted a tree. Oh yeah,
1:07:57
Speaker 1: sort of sort of, So yeah, you're right. We we
1:08:01
Speaker 1: wanted to um to sweeten the pot. Like I always
1:08:04
Speaker 1: try to find, like when I'm looking about what I'm
1:08:08
Speaker 1: thinking about word hunt, I oftentimes first try to find
1:08:11
Speaker 1: the right zone, like what's the right general spot, and
1:08:14
Speaker 1: then it's what's the right spot within the spot. So
1:08:16
Speaker 1: then you micro analyze and you think, okay, So the
1:08:18
Speaker 1: first was all this food plot is going to be
1:08:20
Speaker 1: a great spot, and then it was figuring out what's
1:08:22
Speaker 1: the spot within the spot, which was what we described
1:08:24
Speaker 1: find the right tree. And then the the next thing is
1:08:26
Speaker 1: is there anything I can do to sweeten the deal?
1:08:29
Speaker 1: And so there were a few things we did to
1:08:31
Speaker 1: this area to sweeten the deal, and one of them
1:08:33
Speaker 1: is this tree you describe um. Longtime listeners will know
1:08:37
Speaker 1: that I'm a big fan of planting. These fake scrape
1:08:39
Speaker 1: trees were basically you put a tree, you cut down
1:08:44
Speaker 1: a tree and stick it in the middle of a
1:08:46
Speaker 1: food plot or a field edge where it will stand
1:08:49
Speaker 1: out really conspicuously and you'll create a mock scrape huntreath
1:08:52
Speaker 1: it and these bucks will flock to these trees, just
1:08:56
Speaker 1: like a large mouth bass will flock to a sunk
1:08:58
Speaker 1: tree in the middle of the lake. All right, it's
1:09:00
Speaker 1: the structure, and almost all animals are attracted to structure
1:09:04
Speaker 1: in the middle of a model culture. So whether it's
1:09:05
Speaker 1: a model culture of water or a wide open field. Uh,
1:09:09
Speaker 1: they want to go to that, and in this case,
1:09:12
Speaker 1: they really want to go to a scrape tree. Because
1:09:15
Speaker 1: this is a communication of if you can get them
1:09:17
Speaker 1: to start using these, which they almost immediately do, they
1:09:20
Speaker 1: start making it better and better because every deer they
1:09:22
Speaker 1: visits it leaves a calling card. They leave their name
1:09:25
Speaker 1: and the number. Who I am, what I've been doing. Basically,
1:09:28
Speaker 1: when do you think we'll start seeing dear hit it tonight? Really?
1:09:33
Speaker 1: Now tonight, It's gonna be like, what the hell is
1:09:34
Speaker 1: this thing? What's going on? And so they'll be dealing,
1:09:37
Speaker 1: sniffing around, concerned. You might see them get spooky. Um,
1:09:40
Speaker 1: we've got two cameras in the area, so you're gonna
1:09:42
Speaker 1: get to see this um ones on video mode, which
1:09:44
Speaker 1: would be really interesting. But you know, assuming there's deer
1:09:47
Speaker 1: in the area, which I'm assuming there are, Um, they
1:09:50
Speaker 1: will hit it tonight and they're like, what the hell
1:09:52
Speaker 1: is this thing? What's going on? That? There's a lot
1:09:54
Speaker 1: of human stink here. We're gonna go in there tomorrow.
1:09:56
Speaker 1: There's gonna be deer tracks in that in that dirt
1:09:59
Speaker 1: might be shocked. There wasn't the only reason why there
1:10:02
Speaker 1: wouldn't be, as if it's just such a low deer density.
1:10:05
Speaker 1: But if I did this like in Michigan, where I
1:10:06
Speaker 1: know it's high deer density, oh absolutely, a bunch of
1:10:09
Speaker 1: them checking out. They're curious critters. They might not do
1:10:12
Speaker 1: it in daylight right away because there's there's so much commotion,
1:10:14
Speaker 1: like they're gonna be uneasy about it, But at nighttime
1:10:18
Speaker 1: that's when their curiosity comes out and they're thinking, man,
1:10:20
Speaker 1: what's going on here, what's happening, And what's eventually gonna
1:10:25
Speaker 1: happen is they're gonna start you know, they'll get comfortable
1:10:27
Speaker 1: after a week or two or something, and then dear,
1:10:30
Speaker 1: we'll start using that scrape. Not right now, they're not
1:10:32
Speaker 1: going to actually start pawing it up. That won't happen
1:10:34
Speaker 1: until the fall, but bucks and does will start leaving
1:10:38
Speaker 1: chemical signals on that liking branch. So basically, we took
1:10:42
Speaker 1: a tree, cut down, you know, a six ft section
1:10:46
Speaker 1: of it, buried two ft of it into the ground,
1:10:49
Speaker 1: and now there's a big pine pole in new Ella's
1:10:51
Speaker 1: field with several branches hanging out at about four ft tall.
1:10:56
Speaker 1: That will be the licking branches, and then there's gonna
1:10:58
Speaker 1: be a scrape like a scuffed out oval of dirt
1:11:00
Speaker 1: underneath it, and in the summer of these deer will
1:11:03
Speaker 1: sniff and lick and rub their eyeballs and their foreheads
1:11:06
Speaker 1: and their noses on those branches, leaving all that information.
1:11:09
Speaker 1: Once we get to August or September, WHOA, I recommend,
1:11:13
Speaker 1: like you your dad kickstart that ground scrape and then
1:11:16
Speaker 1: from there they're just gonna keep it going and going
1:11:18
Speaker 1: and going all year round. They might not scuff up
1:11:21
Speaker 1: the dirt all year und but they will be smelling
1:11:23
Speaker 1: it all year round. And um, what that does you know,
1:11:26
Speaker 1: what's gonna do for your dad is that hopefully come
1:11:29
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know if he's hunting in here,
1:11:31
Speaker 1: lay October, early November, whatever. If a buck comes to
1:11:33
Speaker 1: check out this food plot. If it's early season, maybe
1:11:36
Speaker 1: he's coming to feed. If it's November one, he's coming
1:11:38
Speaker 1: in to check if there's does, because there will be
1:11:41
Speaker 1: does consistently busy this Um, he's gonna come in there
1:11:44
Speaker 1: and he's gonna check it out, and he's gonna see
1:11:47
Speaker 1: the community bar or whatever, the online dating app in
1:11:51
Speaker 1: the middle as you were saying the other day, Um,
1:11:53
Speaker 1: and he's gonna go hit it and he's gonna go
1:11:55
Speaker 1: to that scrape and he's gonna stop, and he's gonna
1:11:58
Speaker 1: be sniffing. He might kick it up, and all the
1:12:00
Speaker 1: while we position this scrape right where we wanted it,
1:12:03
Speaker 1: so that scrape is positioned even angled to get the
1:12:06
Speaker 1: buck to angle in the general way we want him to.
1:12:08
Speaker 1: So he'll walk in there. He's gonna be twenty yards
1:12:10
Speaker 1: away from your dad, and he's gonna angle perfectly broadside
1:12:14
Speaker 1: while looking at this tree and this scrape, and your
1:12:16
Speaker 1: dad's gonna be off to the side, out of sight
1:12:19
Speaker 1: where this buck will never know it and help you'll
1:12:21
Speaker 1: drawback real nice and get a shot like that's the
1:12:23
Speaker 1: script you write and you hope will happen. Doesn't always
1:12:26
Speaker 1: happen like that, no, not at all, but it it
1:12:29
Speaker 1: gives you a good chance of something like similar to
1:12:31
Speaker 1: that could happen. And even if he like comes ten
1:12:34
Speaker 1: yards down wind of that scrape should be in bow range,
1:12:40
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, that's the other thing that we mentioned
1:12:43
Speaker 1: to sort of like not make some shots that are
1:12:46
Speaker 1: too close and not put deer that are gonna end
1:12:49
Speaker 1: up getting directly down wind of you know, your ladder
1:12:52
Speaker 1: and where you've been because we sort of like right
1:12:56
Speaker 1: on the edge of the food plot behind the staying in. Uh.
1:13:01
Speaker 1: We there was already a brush pile from when the
1:13:04
Speaker 1: when the plot was cleared, and we just sort of
1:13:05
Speaker 1: extended that with the trees that we took out from
1:13:08
Speaker 1: when we were doing the edge feathering and made basically
1:13:13
Speaker 1: like a natural fence that's probably forty yards long ish. Yeah,
1:13:20
Speaker 1: And the goal there is is that if they're actually
1:13:23
Speaker 1: like coming towards the stand and they're gonna end up
1:13:26
Speaker 1: being like right underneath you, that that sort of visual
1:13:29
Speaker 1: will make them go a little bit wider and instead
1:13:32
Speaker 1: of being like a three yard steep angle shot and
1:13:35
Speaker 1: nobody wants to take, you know, push them out to
1:13:38
Speaker 1: ten fifteen where you've you know, you got a shot out.
1:13:43
Speaker 1: And it also kind of protects your down wind side
1:13:46
Speaker 1: because we we placed that wall on our down wind
1:13:49
Speaker 1: you know, on the down wind side of us. So
1:13:51
Speaker 1: you're hoping to push them, you know, to the north
1:13:54
Speaker 1: or south ere a little bit. So if we have
1:13:56
Speaker 1: that due you know, northwest wind basis basically is what
1:13:59
Speaker 1: we're protected from. Now, you know, it's going to push
1:14:02
Speaker 1: these deer too. You know, they certainly could go through
1:14:05
Speaker 1: like when you say fence. Don't anyone think that we
1:14:07
Speaker 1: literally got a barrier. It's just a couple of down
1:14:10
Speaker 1: tree limbs and stuff, But it's enough. They could just
1:14:15
Speaker 1: make it a little bit of a like a nisan,
1:14:17
Speaker 1: make it inconvenient. And almost always a deer is gonna
1:14:21
Speaker 1: take the path at least resistance she or he does
1:14:24
Speaker 1: not want to go push him through extra stuff. They
1:14:27
Speaker 1: don't have to. If there's a really easy open path
1:14:30
Speaker 1: ten yards more that way, that's the way they're gonna angle.
1:14:33
Speaker 1: And so now he's got the that sweet scrape tree
1:14:36
Speaker 1: in the middle. That's going to get one thing going.
1:14:38
Speaker 1: And then if they go past that and he hasn't
1:14:39
Speaker 1: shot anything, he's got now another thing that's going to
1:14:42
Speaker 1: divert their traffic just a little bit out behind him
1:14:44
Speaker 1: to avoid getting winded, to maybe give him a better
1:14:46
Speaker 1: shot at angle if he ends up wanting to do that. Um,
1:14:51
Speaker 1: I mean, you're just stacking a bunch of little things,
1:14:53
Speaker 1: like any one of these things might only help you
1:14:55
Speaker 1: two percent. But as I always like to preach, like
1:14:58
Speaker 1: you got to take a shotgun approach some times to
1:15:00
Speaker 1: deer hunting because there's so many things we can't control
1:15:04
Speaker 1: that every little one percent I can stack could add
1:15:07
Speaker 1: up to maybe seven of a better chance. And the
1:15:10
Speaker 1: seven percent better chance can make a huge difference when
1:15:13
Speaker 1: you're trying to get that one deer you're gonna get
1:15:15
Speaker 1: cracked at all year. So so that's why I like
1:15:18
Speaker 1: all these little sweeteners, all these little tweaks. You know,
1:15:21
Speaker 1: that's sometimes the difference between seeing something and putting something
1:15:26
Speaker 1: the freezer. So we did that, you made you did
1:15:28
Speaker 1: a little bit of edge feathering, which you know, some
1:15:32
Speaker 1: hinge cutting, some edge of feathering, basically just making some cuts,
1:15:36
Speaker 1: kind of making the plot edge more regular, more diverse.
1:15:40
Speaker 1: There's gonna be sunlight getting into the edges now, so
1:15:42
Speaker 1: it's not gonna like a hard food plot to pine timber.
1:15:46
Speaker 1: It's gonna be food plot two kind of brushy brambles
1:15:49
Speaker 1: down trees and then into the timber, whether it's the
1:15:52
Speaker 1: maple oak stuff or the pines in the south. Um,
1:15:55
Speaker 1: so all these little things are going to add up
1:15:57
Speaker 1: to this, you know, being the I keep saying, but
1:15:59
Speaker 1: this is gonna be like the the neatest little damn
1:16:02
Speaker 1: ice cream stand anywhere around and uh positioned really well
1:16:06
Speaker 1: for someone to get a shot at something. You told me,
1:16:08
Speaker 1: you feel like again, unless there's just like such low
1:16:11
Speaker 1: deer density that like there aren't deer moving around through
1:16:13
Speaker 1: there every day, but that just about every sit if
1:16:17
Speaker 1: you do the right thing with access, play the wind right,
1:16:22
Speaker 1: don't sit on a bad wind, that you could kill
1:16:24
Speaker 1: a deer like a dough or a buck. Every time
1:16:28
Speaker 1: you said it, I'd be shocked if you couldn't. Assuming
1:16:32
Speaker 1: you don't, I assuming all those things you just said,
1:16:34
Speaker 1: and that you don't over pressure. So if you hunted
1:16:37
Speaker 1: it every day, they're gonna catch on you, right. But
1:16:40
Speaker 1: if if you were to go in here October one
1:16:43
Speaker 1: and then you went in again like October, and then
1:16:45
Speaker 1: you hunted it five days from November one, the November
1:16:49
Speaker 1: five or whatever like that kind of thing, I'd be shocked.
1:16:52
Speaker 1: If you're not shooting. If if there's not a doll
1:16:55
Speaker 1: family group hitting this every day, I'd be very very surprised,
1:17:00
Speaker 1: and I'd be very yeah, something's wrong with if that's
1:17:02
Speaker 1: not happening, because it's just it's so ideal. Um. And
1:17:06
Speaker 1: if that's happening, if there's a dope family group visiting
1:17:08
Speaker 1: this every day, if not multiple, which they're variable, might
1:17:11
Speaker 1: be multiple, there's going to be bucks checking it every
1:17:14
Speaker 1: day during the rut will be the one you want
1:17:16
Speaker 1: to shoot. I can't guarantee that, but there will be
1:17:19
Speaker 1: days where four bucks will come by. Yeah, I think
1:17:23
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be a good thing, and it's
1:17:25
Speaker 1: something that could help and produce whether you know you
1:17:29
Speaker 1: or your dad were out here hunting on opening days Stember,
1:17:32
Speaker 1: or if you're here doing the rut. This kind of thing,
1:17:34
Speaker 1: you know, because does on the rut a betting defeating
1:17:39
Speaker 1: type of thing like this helps right just as much
1:17:43
Speaker 1: as it helps in the early season. So let's talk
1:17:46
Speaker 1: about the access a little bit to it. Right, Basically,
1:17:49
Speaker 1: like off the main road, there's like a logging road
1:17:52
Speaker 1: that comes in pretty much goes straight to it. Because
1:17:56
Speaker 1: when I say logging road, like a two track through
1:17:58
Speaker 1: the woods. There's also another one sort of does like
1:18:02
Speaker 1: a huge shape to it, and it's it's a loop
1:18:05
Speaker 1: you know, that basically has its food plot at the
1:18:07
Speaker 1: far end of it. Um And really we decided that well,
1:18:15
Speaker 1: I don't know you talked through the access. The big
1:18:19
Speaker 1: thing is that you just want to think about where
1:18:22
Speaker 1: are these deer when I'm moving through in which one
1:18:25
Speaker 1: of my routes will allow me to make sure I'm
1:18:27
Speaker 1: not educating them to my presence. So for a evening
1:18:33
Speaker 1: sit I'm thinking, Okay, if I'm going to walk in
1:18:35
Speaker 1: there at two o'clock or three o'clock in the afternoon,
1:18:37
Speaker 1: where are those deer right now, whether they're up on
1:18:40
Speaker 1: those bedding ridges and knobs, and so I want to
1:18:43
Speaker 1: make sure that I damn well don't go anywhere close
1:18:45
Speaker 1: to those as I try to walk in there. So
1:18:47
Speaker 1: right now, that northern two track gets pretty tight to
1:18:51
Speaker 1: that point. So if the leaves are down and it's
1:18:55
Speaker 1: a little bit still, and you try to walk that
1:18:58
Speaker 1: like most obvious trailing, which I'm sure this past hunter
1:19:01
Speaker 1: probably did. All right, That's probably what a lot of
1:19:03
Speaker 1: guys would do. They'd walk that two track. If there's
1:19:06
Speaker 1: a buck or doze betting on that ridge or that knob,
1:19:09
Speaker 1: they know absolutely everything you're doing. I bet you when
1:19:11
Speaker 1: you're at the closest point from the closest buck bed
1:19:15
Speaker 1: on that knob as the crow flies is probably yeah.
1:19:19
Speaker 1: So I just can't do that. So in the afternoons,
1:19:24
Speaker 1: my recommendation would take would be either to go to
1:19:27
Speaker 1: the far southern border of your property or at least
1:19:30
Speaker 1: the far southern two track and walk that and stay
1:19:33
Speaker 1: as far away from that betting ridge and knob as
1:19:35
Speaker 1: you can, circling basically on the down wind side of
1:19:39
Speaker 1: that tree standing will come with the back. So that's
1:19:41
Speaker 1: what I would do for an afternoon, said, I think
1:19:44
Speaker 1: about it the opposite way for the evening, because now
1:19:47
Speaker 1: when it's you know, four thirty in the morning or
1:19:50
Speaker 1: five in the morning or whatever, and I want to
1:19:51
Speaker 1: head into hunt that spot. What are the bucks now?
1:19:54
Speaker 1: We're any deer now? Well, they're at least a good
1:19:56
Speaker 1: portion of them are probably out in those big agg
1:19:58
Speaker 1: fields to the south. And how do you get to
1:20:02
Speaker 1: that southern two track we mentioned to that southern border.
1:20:05
Speaker 1: Will you have to at one point walk along the
1:20:08
Speaker 1: edge of that cornfield or get very very close to it.
1:20:11
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't want to do that. I'd want to
1:20:13
Speaker 1: do one or two things. Either drive to that edge
1:20:17
Speaker 1: and get dropped off, or find some kind of stealthy
1:20:20
Speaker 1: way to park a vehicle there and hop out and
1:20:22
Speaker 1: walk the edge in a way that you know, deer
1:20:25
Speaker 1: often are less disturbed by vehicle, or as I got
1:20:28
Speaker 1: to think and shoot, maybe just take the north to
1:20:31
Speaker 1: trek in where you don't need to go anywhere near
1:20:32
Speaker 1: that cornfield, And yeah, you are walking a two track
1:20:37
Speaker 1: that hypothetically some of these deer might cross when they
1:20:40
Speaker 1: come back about it, and they could cross your path
1:20:42
Speaker 1: and could possibly win that. But as I started thinking
1:20:46
Speaker 1: more about it on our walk back this evening, I
1:20:48
Speaker 1: started thinking, jeez, that might be one deer two deer versus. Again,
1:20:53
Speaker 1: I don't know deer numbers here, but it could be
1:20:55
Speaker 1: twelve deer out in that corn field. You would spook
1:20:58
Speaker 1: that will never come back your way that day if
1:21:00
Speaker 1: you blow them out way to the other direction, right,
1:21:04
Speaker 1: So so again I'm thinking where are they right now
1:21:06
Speaker 1: as I need to walk through, and what route keeps
1:21:08
Speaker 1: me as far as possible from that? And I think
1:21:11
Speaker 1: that's a big thing like on this property in general,
1:21:13
Speaker 1: thinking about whether it be that staying as far away
1:21:16
Speaker 1: as possible or you know, in one of the scenaris
1:21:20
Speaker 1: we talked about, and I'm sure we'll talk about here soon,
1:21:23
Speaker 1: you know, you have certain terrange features that act as
1:21:25
Speaker 1: highways on this property. And if you walk on the
1:21:28
Speaker 1: highway the whole way with him, it's one thing for
1:21:31
Speaker 1: dear to cross your trail and he's on your scent
1:21:33
Speaker 1: trail for three seconds and then he's on his own
1:21:36
Speaker 1: way and gone. It's another thing to ask that buck
1:21:38
Speaker 1: to walk your trail for a quarter mile and not
1:21:41
Speaker 1: to be boogered. Um. So you have to weigh those
1:21:45
Speaker 1: things and make decisions to um. But yeah, as far
1:21:49
Speaker 1: as the Papa Yanni stand, the Papua Yanni, heidy hole
1:21:55
Speaker 1: sweet spot, I think we did a lot of things
1:21:58
Speaker 1: that will make it awfully nice. Oh yeah, I think
1:22:01
Speaker 1: he's stoked, man. I mean, I hope. So we went
1:22:05
Speaker 1: from zero to hero today seeing all that we worked
1:22:08
Speaker 1: on it yesterday too, But yeah, I mean there was
1:22:12
Speaker 1: like there was literally nothing there, no reason to hunt there. Really,
1:22:17
Speaker 1: Now there's like a great couple of great reasons to
1:22:19
Speaker 1: hunt there along with stand. That puts you right in
1:22:23
Speaker 1: the money. It's so I'm very excited, Like standing up
1:22:28
Speaker 1: there yesterday and looking around, and then today as we
1:22:30
Speaker 1: transformed it more, I just kept thinking, I'd love to
1:22:33
Speaker 1: be sitting here that first day and to see those
1:22:36
Speaker 1: first dear kind of trickle out through the cover and
1:22:39
Speaker 1: get in here. I mean, that's that is one of
1:22:40
Speaker 1: the coolest things when you work on some kind of
1:22:43
Speaker 1: habitat and fervent project is the first time you see
1:22:45
Speaker 1: wildlife using it and enjoying it and doing the stuff
1:22:48
Speaker 1: you were kind of hoping that they would. That is
1:22:50
Speaker 1: a really cool feeling, like, oh wow, it it actually worked.
1:22:53
Speaker 1: This actually did the cool thing I was hoping it
1:22:55
Speaker 1: would do. It's very rewarding. I'm hoping to kill a
1:22:59
Speaker 1: turn in that food plot. It will be a nice
1:23:03
Speaker 1: right exactly, Yeah, really nice little stut zone. Yeah there's
1:23:07
Speaker 1: roost trees not too far away. Yeah. Um, but yeah,
1:23:11
Speaker 1: access brings us to like where I like to hunt,
1:23:14
Speaker 1: which is more up on the ridges, and it's basically
1:23:17
Speaker 1: like bowls and ridges country. That's kind of what I
1:23:20
Speaker 1: you know, describe it. Describe it as again, a couple
1:23:23
Speaker 1: of hundred feet maybe three under feet elevation gain and
1:23:27
Speaker 1: big bowls that have you know, fingers that come out
1:23:30
Speaker 1: into them. Um, some longer than others, but you know
1:23:36
Speaker 1: long ridges that connect to other bowls. And the way
1:23:40
Speaker 1: everybody has been walking this country, and it's the easiest
1:23:43
Speaker 1: way to walk this country is to get on a ridge,
1:23:47
Speaker 1: walk a finger up to a ridge, get on the ridge,
1:23:49
Speaker 1: and then just run the ridge until you get to
1:23:52
Speaker 1: the bowl. Or you know, the flat or whatever you're
1:23:55
Speaker 1: gonna be hunting and then jump off the ridge because
1:23:58
Speaker 1: the ridges all have a what's running you know. Well
1:24:02
Speaker 1: that was a big eye opener for me today when
1:24:04
Speaker 1: you explain what you already explained earlier. Is like, dude,
1:24:07
Speaker 1: you're asking that buck a lot. If you've been walking
1:24:09
Speaker 1: on that ridge for ten twenty minutes more and you think,
1:24:15
Speaker 1: now Buck's gonna jump on that ridge behind you and
1:24:18
Speaker 1: end up coming towards you down that he's just not. Yeah,
1:24:22
Speaker 1: I mean at least nine ten times it's not. You
1:24:25
Speaker 1: have the there's always exceptions to the rule, but but yeah,
1:24:29
Speaker 1: you know, there's deer running the side hills, those ridges.
1:24:33
Speaker 1: There's deer running from the top of the times, different
1:24:36
Speaker 1: times of the day. I mean, they're the easiest route
1:24:39
Speaker 1: for you, and they're the easiest route for those critters.
1:24:42
Speaker 1: So my idea was, let's look at different ways you
1:24:45
Speaker 1: can do an end around those and pop up the drainage.
1:24:48
Speaker 1: So find us about where the deer aren't is likely
1:24:51
Speaker 1: to be congregating and traveling, and then you know it's
1:24:54
Speaker 1: it's it's just like um, you know, back home by
1:24:58
Speaker 1: me an idea that I like to use. Walk a
1:25:00
Speaker 1: creek and then have a tree stand right in the
1:25:02
Speaker 1: edge of the creek, so you don't need to walk
1:25:04
Speaker 1: across anything the deer is going to travel on. You
1:25:05
Speaker 1: walk the creek and you just pop up the bank
1:25:08
Speaker 1: up into a tree. It's the same kind of thing
1:25:09
Speaker 1: here where you're at the bottom of the drainage. You
1:25:12
Speaker 1: don't think that box is gonna do that take that
1:25:14
Speaker 1: same path. I know they take it because the buck
1:25:17
Speaker 1: that almost got shot on would take that path, took
1:25:20
Speaker 1: that path to get to me. A creek. No, not
1:25:22
Speaker 1: the creek, but what how you're telling me to get
1:25:24
Speaker 1: into this spot that we looked at today. Certainly could happen.
1:25:28
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying that if I'm if I'm playing
1:25:31
Speaker 1: the game of averages and I'm trying to say, like,
1:25:33
Speaker 1: how often are these bucks gonna cruise or travel through here,
1:25:37
Speaker 1: I think it's more likely that deer will be cruising
1:25:40
Speaker 1: up and down those long ridges on the side hill
1:25:42
Speaker 1: either way, and does probably sometimes on the tops. Like
1:25:45
Speaker 1: that's a major line of movement that thinks me relatively consistent.
1:25:49
Speaker 1: While random ups and downs and random places in the drainage,
1:25:53
Speaker 1: I think that's more random and so I would rather
1:25:56
Speaker 1: bet on an act of randomness versus the high probability
1:26:01
Speaker 1: odds that they're gonna take the typical upper third ridge
1:26:04
Speaker 1: somewhere along their ridgetop and be somewhere along there. Um,
1:26:08
Speaker 1: so why don't just pop up this little drainage and
1:26:11
Speaker 1: then do just have to walk thirty yards across the
1:26:14
Speaker 1: high travel profile versus yards along that stretch. Um. Well,
1:26:20
Speaker 1: it's gonna be interesting because I'm gonna have to try
1:26:22
Speaker 1: to like introduce that idea for traveling in this country
1:26:25
Speaker 1: to basically everybody has been hunting here for the last
1:26:28
Speaker 1: forty or fifty years, because, like I said, man, that
1:26:31
Speaker 1: is just how everybody gets to their stand Um. But yeah,
1:26:38
Speaker 1: another cool thing about well, the way to introduce where
1:26:42
Speaker 1: we were today and check out was that it's a
1:26:46
Speaker 1: spot that I wanted to hunt. I really actually wanted
1:26:49
Speaker 1: to hunt it ever since I was like a kid,
1:26:51
Speaker 1: because we call it the Oak Flat, and to me,
1:26:54
Speaker 1: the Oak Flat just whatever forever reason, it just has
1:26:57
Speaker 1: like a there's just some like twinkly stars around Oak Flat,
1:27:02
Speaker 1: you know, and it's just like seems like a place
1:27:04
Speaker 1: where like it's one of the first thing you learned
1:27:06
Speaker 1: about deer in the woods is that they eat acorns
1:27:09
Speaker 1: that fall out of oaks, and that they would come
1:27:12
Speaker 1: up out of a bowl and feed up on this flat.
1:27:15
Speaker 1: So there's other spots around here that have the names,
1:27:18
Speaker 1: like the first Valley, the second Ridge, you know, the
1:27:22
Speaker 1: old uh Um Foundation. You know, it was like an
1:27:26
Speaker 1: old foundation from like a home setter up one of
1:27:29
Speaker 1: the valleys. Right. None of those spots are like kill
1:27:32
Speaker 1: big buck here. But when someone's like, oh, the oak flag,
1:27:34
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I'd like to go see the oak flap.
1:27:37
Speaker 1: So last year I was like, straight up nostalgic reasons
1:27:41
Speaker 1: because I've been thinking about it for thirty years. I
1:27:42
Speaker 1: wanted to hunt there. But then looking at it on
1:27:44
Speaker 1: the map, I was like, man, three ridges come together.
1:27:48
Speaker 1: There's like, I don't know, depending on how you want
1:27:51
Speaker 1: to break it up, three or more bulls that kind
1:27:53
Speaker 1: of dropping off on all sides. One of our neighbors
1:27:57
Speaker 1: is close by there, and he couple three years ago
1:28:02
Speaker 1: did a cut a pretty I'd almost call it a
1:28:05
Speaker 1: clear cut. I mean there's parts of it that are
1:28:07
Speaker 1: wide open and a lot of leftover stuff, a lot
1:28:11
Speaker 1: of you know, thick bedding cover now growing coming in Um,
1:28:17
Speaker 1: it just seemed like a good spot, so I hunted
1:28:19
Speaker 1: it last year has some good encounters you were as
1:28:22
Speaker 1: one of the spots that you want to check out.
1:28:25
Speaker 1: You showed me an on Xllent. We're like you should
1:28:27
Speaker 1: You're like we should go there. I'm like, oh, that's
1:28:28
Speaker 1: the Oak Flat. I and have a long history with it,
1:28:33
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, tell me why you liked it so much. Well,
1:28:37
Speaker 1: what I try to do in a situation like this
1:28:41
Speaker 1: is try to try to simplify the game a little bit,
1:28:47
Speaker 1: because when you're looking at the amount of space we
1:28:48
Speaker 1: had here, like you said that, there's a lot to
1:28:50
Speaker 1: work with, there's a lot to over analyze if you
1:28:54
Speaker 1: tried to. And so I wanted just to look at
1:28:57
Speaker 1: the big picture and see, Okay, what's how's word deer?
1:29:01
Speaker 1: How do I expect dear to travel across this big terrain? Like?
1:29:04
Speaker 1: What are the major major features? And then what do
1:29:06
Speaker 1: I know about how dear generally travel? And can I
1:29:09
Speaker 1: can I find a couple of focal points? Is there
1:29:11
Speaker 1: anything that's going to really move deer in a predictable
1:29:15
Speaker 1: way more than anything else? And so I'm looking and
1:29:17
Speaker 1: as you have talked about the big ridge, systems, and
1:29:21
Speaker 1: this particular ridge system has like a main river, and
1:29:26
Speaker 1: then if you envision this being like a river is
1:29:28
Speaker 1: the way I was kind of looking AT's like a
1:29:29
Speaker 1: big river like the Colorado River, and then there's several
1:29:33
Speaker 1: big tributary rivers, like how the Green River comes into
1:29:36
Speaker 1: the Colorado River or something like that. And then there's
1:29:38
Speaker 1: all these little creeks that come off of it, little
1:29:40
Speaker 1: knobs and points and things like that. And so I
1:29:43
Speaker 1: started looking, and there's if you take a passing glance
1:29:47
Speaker 1: at the map, it just seems kind of hodgepodge, all
1:29:50
Speaker 1: sorts of points and ridges and all this kind of stuff.
1:29:52
Speaker 1: But if you focus, you'll start to see. Actually, there's
1:29:55
Speaker 1: two points in the property you can hunt where major
1:29:59
Speaker 1: river is converge, where there's two points where three major
1:30:02
Speaker 1: ridges all hubb up. And so you're pulling in from
1:30:07
Speaker 1: three different river systems almost, and the Oak Flat was
1:30:10
Speaker 1: the best one of those where three different big ridge
1:30:14
Speaker 1: point systems that also had their own tributarias and different
1:30:17
Speaker 1: things coming into them all came together. This is the
1:30:19
Speaker 1: only place that had that is prominently So right away
1:30:23
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, Okay, during the rut, I know there will
1:30:26
Speaker 1: be there will be bucks cruising these and this pulls
1:30:30
Speaker 1: in the most water from tribut areas to creeks all
1:30:33
Speaker 1: into one place. And oh, by the way, you have
1:30:37
Speaker 1: this hub of movement that also is up high where
1:30:40
Speaker 1: you can have essentially bulletproof wind by hunting an edge
1:30:43
Speaker 1: of that and blowing your wind over one of these
1:30:45
Speaker 1: big bowls. So there's two great things going for you.
1:30:48
Speaker 1: You've got the wind thing figured out. You've got a
1:30:51
Speaker 1: concentration of buck movement during the rut that's more predictable
1:30:54
Speaker 1: than almost anything else. And so right there that gave
1:30:57
Speaker 1: me like, oh, I need to check this out. And
1:30:59
Speaker 1: then got there I found out what you just said,
1:31:02
Speaker 1: which is that your neighbor cut his north ridge, so
1:31:05
Speaker 1: one of these spokes of the wheel has got this
1:31:08
Speaker 1: mega cut and now it's just brushy, nasty. I mean,
1:31:11
Speaker 1: there's got to be does betting in there. So now
1:31:13
Speaker 1: I know not only is this a hub a funnel
1:31:16
Speaker 1: of sorts. Not only do you have a great wind
1:31:18
Speaker 1: situation going for me, but it's also adjacent to what's
1:31:21
Speaker 1: got to be a really good dough betting area. And
1:31:24
Speaker 1: we didn't even mention the fact, and you alluded to
1:31:26
Speaker 1: it but there's a bunch of oaks on here, so
1:31:28
Speaker 1: and there's food. You can't write up anything better for
1:31:32
Speaker 1: a October thirty one to November hunt. And so that's
1:31:37
Speaker 1: the kind of spot when we got there and I
1:31:38
Speaker 1: saw it, and I saw that everything kind of matched
1:31:41
Speaker 1: stuff the way I was hoping it would, plus a
1:31:43
Speaker 1: little bonus. That's the kind of place that you could
1:31:45
Speaker 1: hunt day after day. And explaining this to me because
1:31:50
Speaker 1: I feel like the one thing that doesn't just sort
1:31:51
Speaker 1: of like fall perfectly into a slot with like that
1:31:54
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about is that the box want
1:31:58
Speaker 1: to be running that third of the way down right
1:32:01
Speaker 1: off the off the ridge. Yeah, this spot like you're
1:32:05
Speaker 1: gonna sit be sitting on the ridge pretty much. Yeah
1:32:08
Speaker 1: the ridge one ridge kind of rises away from you.
1:32:10
Speaker 1: But like you're hunting the top. So how how are
1:32:13
Speaker 1: you um just find that when you're thinking the run,
1:32:18
Speaker 1: the bucks should be, you know, fifty yards below you.
1:32:21
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think in this case they will
1:32:24
Speaker 1: be fifty yards below you. Two reasons. It's tight enough
1:32:29
Speaker 1: that even on your I mean, I'm trying to think
1:32:32
Speaker 1: of how to describe this verbally without and not making
1:32:36
Speaker 1: sense to people without seeing it um right next to you.
1:32:41
Speaker 1: It's super steep. I don't think they're traveling super downlow
1:32:44
Speaker 1: because of how steep it is. Is that true overall?
1:32:48
Speaker 1: Like if you're in one of these bowls and you
1:32:49
Speaker 1: just see just like something that you're like, wow, that
1:32:52
Speaker 1: would be like a good ski run, or it's almost
1:32:54
Speaker 1: like like it could have a cliff or something down there.
1:32:57
Speaker 1: Little ways you can kind of exit that off as
1:32:59
Speaker 1: a val route and think that you are gonna go
1:33:02
Speaker 1: around that. You could, like all these things should be
1:33:05
Speaker 1: like starting points, like an assumption. I would make that
1:33:07
Speaker 1: assumption to start. I'd want to verify it. I want to,
1:33:10
Speaker 1: like i'd sit and watch and see. Like you know,
1:33:12
Speaker 1: sometimes these deer can be like mountain ghosts and surprise you,
1:33:15
Speaker 1: but more often than not, they'll take a easier path.
1:33:18
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's gonna act as like a pinch and
1:33:20
Speaker 1: push them farther up into the slightly easier stuff. So
1:33:23
Speaker 1: I think that if any buck comes around that corner
1:33:25
Speaker 1: where we decided to set your stand, they'll come through
1:33:28
Speaker 1: in range of you there. I think that if any
1:33:30
Speaker 1: buck comes down from the ridge on the straight across
1:33:33
Speaker 1: from you, you're probably gonna see him cruising up and
1:33:36
Speaker 1: around there. You also have I mean you have the oaks,
1:33:38
Speaker 1: you have that betting, so they'll be cruising on the
1:33:42
Speaker 1: down winds or I mean on the thirds. Will there
1:33:45
Speaker 1: be criss crossing. They'll be bucks that want to get
1:33:47
Speaker 1: from one side to the other. So there's going to
1:33:50
Speaker 1: be crossed the top movement on this hub. I think.
1:33:53
Speaker 1: So if you imagine, like if someone's thinking of this
1:33:56
Speaker 1: at home, Um, what's a good way to scribe this?
1:33:58
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like your arm of your hand is
1:34:01
Speaker 1: this hub, and then you've got like one of these
1:34:04
Speaker 1: ridges is your arm, and then one of these ridges
1:34:06
Speaker 1: is your thumb, and one of these ridges of all
1:34:09
Speaker 1: the rest of your fingers if they were squeezed together.
1:34:11
Speaker 1: And there'll be some bucks that will side hill any
1:34:13
Speaker 1: one of those features. But then there will also be
1:34:16
Speaker 1: bucks that want to get across to the other bedding
1:34:18
Speaker 1: and to the other stuff. So you're gonna have criss cross,
1:34:19
Speaker 1: you're gonna have side and you're not gonna cover all
1:34:22
Speaker 1: of it, but you're gonna cover a whole lot more
1:34:24
Speaker 1: than you would anywhere else. You'll be in the game
1:34:26
Speaker 1: on a whole lot more. Um. And so that's That's
1:34:30
Speaker 1: why I would play it this way to start. Maybe
1:34:32
Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt it, and you're gonna see everything crossed.
1:34:37
Speaker 1: And then they dropped right down the hill and I
1:34:38
Speaker 1: never saw my saw for two seconds and the cross
1:34:40
Speaker 1: and then they were downhill, so they're sidehilling more. Maybe
1:34:43
Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt you know that south tree that we
1:34:45
Speaker 1: talked about, So if you had a northern would northerly wind,
1:34:47
Speaker 1: you would hunt down there, and you can see down
1:34:49
Speaker 1: that hill a little bit more. Maybe you'll hunt that
1:34:51
Speaker 1: and see that. Yeah, they really do hug farther down there.
1:34:54
Speaker 1: And and I might be wrong, but I would like
1:34:56
Speaker 1: to start on closer to that hub and and observe
1:35:00
Speaker 1: and see what happens. That would be the starting point
1:35:02
Speaker 1: at least. Well, and again I have some personal experience,
1:35:06
Speaker 1: you know. I said it for I don't know, four
1:35:08
Speaker 1: or five CITs last year, And interestingly, wow, see the
1:35:13
Speaker 1: last year was a little bit different. So we kind
1:35:14
Speaker 1: of kind of had like a south wind, which is hot,
1:35:17
Speaker 1: but all a year that I saw up there came
1:35:21
Speaker 1: from kind of the north and then onto the flat
1:35:29
Speaker 1: and then kind of hooked and got you know, started
1:35:31
Speaker 1: working across or up the wind again. And and that's
1:35:36
Speaker 1: the nice thing about hunting mobile like we do, is
1:35:39
Speaker 1: that you can adjust. See, Like I always go into
1:35:43
Speaker 1: this with like a thought through assumption, but then I
1:35:45
Speaker 1: always have to confirm that assumption with a sighting, with
1:35:48
Speaker 1: observations or sign on the ground that tells you something different. Um.
1:35:53
Speaker 1: And then you get to be able to jump on
1:35:54
Speaker 1: that once you see that you were wrong and tweak
1:35:56
Speaker 1: it fifty yards or a hundred yards or ten yards,
1:35:58
Speaker 1: whatever it is, um. But it's it's a really really
1:36:02
Speaker 1: good zone. And the spot that we picked, you know,
1:36:05
Speaker 1: I thought with a prevailing wind north in that case
1:36:10
Speaker 1: it would be more of like a westerly wind. And
1:36:12
Speaker 1: the other three he picked me for north or northwest,
1:36:15
Speaker 1: you're gonna be scott free with a wind on almost
1:36:18
Speaker 1: any win like that. You're really gonna a hard time
1:36:20
Speaker 1: getting winded out there. And you can so you can
1:36:22
Speaker 1: sit this a couple of days in a row, and
1:36:25
Speaker 1: you know, assuming all other things go okay, it's the
1:36:28
Speaker 1: kind of spot that if you put in the time,
1:36:29
Speaker 1: I would just be shocked if you don't have bucks
1:36:32
Speaker 1: cruising through there. UM, I would almost be willing to
1:36:37
Speaker 1: put I'm a high roller I'll put ten dollars on
1:36:40
Speaker 1: the table and say that if you sa at that
1:36:42
Speaker 1: for three days in at some point in the first
1:36:45
Speaker 1: ten days in November, if you sat that all day
1:36:47
Speaker 1: for three days and you access to it right, and
1:36:49
Speaker 1: you hunted the wind right, I would bet you ten
1:36:53
Speaker 1: whole American dollars that there's no way you would not
1:36:56
Speaker 1: see mature about come through there. I'll do it, all right,
1:37:00
Speaker 1: and I'll pay up ten ten bucks three whole days, though,
1:37:04
Speaker 1: three whole days I'm gonna have to fight my foamo
1:37:06
Speaker 1: bad man. I realized that from last last ball man.
1:37:09
Speaker 1: Like it's especially especially when there's you know, you're looking
1:37:13
Speaker 1: at an acre or two, there's three some other odd acres. Gosh,
1:37:19
Speaker 1: it just gets in your head to be like, down
1:37:23
Speaker 1: the ridge has gotta be better off the ridge. I
1:37:26
Speaker 1: should go check it out, see if there's more scrapes
1:37:28
Speaker 1: or more buck rubs down there. I really believe in it.
1:37:31
Speaker 1: It's gonna suck in. It's just and I don't know
1:37:35
Speaker 1: what the right analogy is, but that sucks in a
1:37:37
Speaker 1: lot of you know, it's it's it's like all the
1:37:42
Speaker 1: rivers right now in certain places are blown out because
1:37:44
Speaker 1: they're sucking in muney water from all over the place.
1:37:46
Speaker 1: All the money water is gonna get sucked into the
1:37:48
Speaker 1: helb this place to be. I like it. I'm gonna
1:37:52
Speaker 1: haunt it. I like it. I like it too. What else?
1:37:55
Speaker 1: Now I know how to get in there? You know
1:37:57
Speaker 1: what else? Did you have questions about? Or we walked
1:37:59
Speaker 1: some other place? Is like, what is there anything else
1:38:02
Speaker 1: I didn't answer? Or I didn't we didn't get to
1:38:04
Speaker 1: explore yet? Or well there's two two questions. Um, let's
1:38:10
Speaker 1: cover this one first. Ah, I've got cameras on pretty
1:38:15
Speaker 1: much the major saddles its property. Now, part of that
1:38:19
Speaker 1: has to do with that. There we have other cameras
1:38:21
Speaker 1: to just traditional shaw cameras, but my cell cameras set
1:38:25
Speaker 1: up on the ridges and saddles because that's where they
1:38:27
Speaker 1: get reception and I can reliably get the pictures. And
1:38:32
Speaker 1: you know, last year we kind of were like, we'll
1:38:34
Speaker 1: put one here because it's like a known travel corridor,
1:38:37
Speaker 1: and we'll put one here because there's a you know,
1:38:40
Speaker 1: scrape that's been here for twenty years, and you know,
1:38:43
Speaker 1: they kind of produced off and on and like obviously
1:38:46
Speaker 1: once Dear Heart started hitting scrapes. Yeah, all the ones
1:38:48
Speaker 1: that were pointing at scrapes, we're getting getting bucks um.
1:38:54
Speaker 1: But now we just kind of transitioned them all to saddles,
1:38:59
Speaker 1: and it's just like it's nearly constant. Maybe not every
1:39:03
Speaker 1: saddle has a deer come through every day, but darn closed, right.
1:39:07
Speaker 1: So my question is it's like, Okay, you know they're
1:39:11
Speaker 1: using it, great, but what other like what other ways
1:39:16
Speaker 1: are there to like what other data can I extrapolate
1:39:20
Speaker 1: from what I'm seeing there in the pictures? Like do
1:39:23
Speaker 1: I need to be like counting how many deer passed
1:39:25
Speaker 1: through a saddle at what time? Would direction they're most
1:39:29
Speaker 1: commonly going? Because it's to me it seems like impossible
1:39:33
Speaker 1: that you would keep thousands of pictures and then scroll
1:39:36
Speaker 1: through one camera and be like, oh yeah, most of
1:39:38
Speaker 1: them are going left or right, which means east to
1:39:40
Speaker 1: west or vice versa. Like is it is it worthwhile
1:39:45
Speaker 1: to take the time every every couple of days to
1:39:47
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, the spot we call the jungle has um.
1:39:52
Speaker 1: You know, in the last week, you know, fifteen dolls
1:39:55
Speaker 1: went left, five doors went right. So for the thing
1:40:00
Speaker 1: I would say is that you don't need to pay
1:40:02
Speaker 1: attention to anything like that that's happening from now until September.
1:40:09
Speaker 1: You know, after the first week of September, a lot changes,
1:40:13
Speaker 1: especially with bucks um velvet peels, bucks shift home ranges.
1:40:18
Speaker 1: Maybe five out of ten bucks are gonna live somewhere
1:40:21
Speaker 1: different in the falling word. During the summer, you know,
1:40:25
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot more competition between bucks they have
1:40:27
Speaker 1: to disperse. And then also around the same time, once
1:40:30
Speaker 1: you get in September October, food sources change, cover changes
1:40:33
Speaker 1: as leaves fall down, all that kind of stuff. So
1:40:35
Speaker 1: there's this huge shift in behavior as you go from
1:40:38
Speaker 1: November seven to October one. So I wouldn't worry yourself
1:40:43
Speaker 1: one bit about any details of what they're doing right now.
1:40:46
Speaker 1: I think it's it's nice confirmation to see, like, oh yeah,
1:40:48
Speaker 1: a lot of deer hump over these saddles right now.
1:40:51
Speaker 1: That would tell me, Okay, that's something to pay attention
1:40:53
Speaker 1: to come October. But I'm not going to give one
1:40:57
Speaker 1: rip of more of my time to it until then.
1:41:01
Speaker 1: What would be interesting is once you get into that
1:41:03
Speaker 1: time period and you start seeing box use them, then
1:41:06
Speaker 1: that's when I might look at, Okay, which direction of
1:41:09
Speaker 1: these bucks coming from the morning, How are they because
1:41:11
Speaker 1: basically what you want to figure out is where are
1:41:13
Speaker 1: they betting and feeding? Like what's their up and down
1:41:16
Speaker 1: movement or whatever. And you might start to see that
1:41:18
Speaker 1: when you're looking at times of day these bucks are
1:41:20
Speaker 1: moving or you're gonna see like, oh, this buck comes
1:41:23
Speaker 1: through here more often than any other and he always
1:41:26
Speaker 1: comes from the right. So that tells me, well, he's
1:41:29
Speaker 1: so where and that's happening, you know, in the evenings.
1:41:32
Speaker 1: So it looks like it's probably heading down to the
1:41:33
Speaker 1: food to the south. It's coming from the right, so
1:41:36
Speaker 1: what does that mean, Well, it's betting most likely somewhere
1:41:39
Speaker 1: over there to the right. And then you can start
1:41:40
Speaker 1: figuring those kinds of things out. That's if you're gonna
1:41:43
Speaker 1: hunt on like a betting defeating type situation for you,
1:41:47
Speaker 1: you're not, you're hunting, you know, one week in November,
1:41:50
Speaker 1: and in that case, the like the SADDLINEFO does help
1:41:55
Speaker 1: you and just like knowing like, hey, this is the
1:41:57
Speaker 1: path of least resistance a lot of dear travel. But
1:42:00
Speaker 1: once you move into that rut time frame, that's when
1:42:02
Speaker 1: I'm really zooming in on that data. So again that's
1:42:08
Speaker 1: you know, one of these places might really be lit up.
1:42:12
Speaker 1: You're gonna see that. Oh wow, this all of a sudden,
1:42:14
Speaker 1: this saddle or this hub, this convergence of trails is
1:42:19
Speaker 1: where all these bucks are moving now over the last
1:42:22
Speaker 1: two days, last three days, man midday cruiser, midday cruiser,
1:42:26
Speaker 1: late morning cruiser, Zoop. Here's your rut travel quarter. Like
1:42:29
Speaker 1: there's something going on. They want to be here. They're
1:42:32
Speaker 1: passing back and forth. Check Adoe betting area. All of
1:42:34
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're gonna understand what are these rut funnels
1:42:37
Speaker 1: pinch points. So are you saying that makes me think
1:42:41
Speaker 1: that my saddle picks for the fact that I've picked
1:42:44
Speaker 1: to set up in saddles with my trail cams, it's
1:42:46
Speaker 1: a good thing. Yeah, I'm not saying it's I'm definitely
1:42:50
Speaker 1: not saying it's not. Is there a from what you've
1:42:52
Speaker 1: seen just walking around the last day? Are there other
1:42:56
Speaker 1: places where you're like, man, like you're gonna gain some
1:43:00
Speaker 1: good information if you put a camera here, Like what
1:43:03
Speaker 1: else can I be looking for in this in this
1:43:05
Speaker 1: hill country? For like where to place the camera other
1:43:07
Speaker 1: than known? Because again, there's like there's trails, there's kind
1:43:11
Speaker 1: of trails everywhere, and there's ridge top trails, you know,
1:43:17
Speaker 1: but the saddles seem to be like everybody likes to
1:43:20
Speaker 1: hit the saddle, So not knowing, right, having no other
1:43:24
Speaker 1: personal experience other than having walked it for a day
1:43:27
Speaker 1: and looked at maps, I would be looking for the
1:43:30
Speaker 1: same thing. When I'm thinking about where I want to
1:43:32
Speaker 1: focus my time hunting, it's where do multiple lines of
1:43:35
Speaker 1: movement converge. So it would be like the hub we
1:43:38
Speaker 1: just described that whole thing like that would be I
1:43:41
Speaker 1: want to have some cameras in that zone because I know,
1:43:43
Speaker 1: I know this is a place that's sucking in a
1:43:45
Speaker 1: lot of movement across criss cross and all the place.
1:43:48
Speaker 1: I want something there. I want another thing like for example,
1:43:51
Speaker 1: in the Amphitheater, but we haven't talked about yet, but
1:43:53
Speaker 1: that's an area where like five different points all dropped
1:43:57
Speaker 1: down from different ridges and they all converge in one zone.
1:44:00
Speaker 1: Now it's a kind of a bigger zone. But it's
1:44:02
Speaker 1: like the reverse turkey foot if you took like a
1:44:04
Speaker 1: turkey foot. In this case, it's more than turkey foot.
1:44:07
Speaker 1: It's like a a bear paw or I don't know.
1:44:09
Speaker 1: Take your fingers and flip them upside down and then
1:44:11
Speaker 1: they all curl in and drop into the same little bottom.
1:44:14
Speaker 1: You've got all these points, and where does it drop
1:44:16
Speaker 1: out to. It comes from these big betting ridges and
1:44:19
Speaker 1: it drops down into the one big agg field around.
1:44:22
Speaker 1: So there's no doubt there's a lot of traffic sucking
1:44:24
Speaker 1: down that into the evenings and sucking back up in
1:44:27
Speaker 1: the mornings. So that would be a place like I
1:44:29
Speaker 1: know the zone, I don't know the spot within the spot.
1:44:32
Speaker 1: So that's somewhere I want to put a handful of
1:44:34
Speaker 1: cameras to help you determine where's the spot within this zone.
1:44:37
Speaker 1: That's absolutely something I would try to do. Um there's
1:44:41
Speaker 1: another area that's like the Oak Flat that has this
1:44:45
Speaker 1: converging river hub type effect you call the jungle. That's
1:44:50
Speaker 1: another spot I think would be worth trying to. Like
1:44:52
Speaker 1: you've got just so folks know at home, we called
1:44:54
Speaker 1: the jungle because not quite where the three ridges converge,
1:44:59
Speaker 1: but very near there, down one of the ridges, there's
1:45:01
Speaker 1: a spot where it just got overgrown with those giants.
1:45:05
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that vine is, Like, what
1:45:08
Speaker 1: is the actual plant name of those big thick brown
1:45:11
Speaker 1: vines that's the big grape vines. Yeah, they're just grape vines,
1:45:15
Speaker 1: because it's what I'm thinking you're talking about, you know,
1:45:19
Speaker 1: inch and a half diameter, but just like you know,
1:45:23
Speaker 1: a couple of downfalls, a couple of snags, and just
1:45:27
Speaker 1: a pile of vines, and you're walking down a ridge
1:45:30
Speaker 1: on a trail that's just like you can you know,
1:45:32
Speaker 1: whistling Dixie, and all of a sudden you come to
1:45:34
Speaker 1: the jungle and you've got to like divert pick your poison,
1:45:37
Speaker 1: like go right and drop off the ridge through like
1:45:40
Speaker 1: a raspberry, you know forest, or go left and hop
1:45:44
Speaker 1: a bunch of logs and go through some grape vines.
1:45:47
Speaker 1: It's just I just want to explain why we call
1:45:49
Speaker 1: it the jungle, and we haven't. I haven't seen it yet,
1:45:52
Speaker 1: but I love what you're describing to me because you're
1:45:54
Speaker 1: telling me that there's this like jungle bedding cover right
1:45:58
Speaker 1: next to one of these major lubs of multiple three
1:46:01
Speaker 1: plus ridges all coming together right next to it. Sounds
1:46:03
Speaker 1: like a dynamite betting are that screams to me, pay attention.
1:46:08
Speaker 1: And so that would be another zone where I would
1:46:11
Speaker 1: and maybe those saddles adjacent that might be the spot
1:46:14
Speaker 1: within that spot, you know, so that you might already
1:46:17
Speaker 1: be in some of those locations, um, but from a
1:46:21
Speaker 1: outsider's point of view, I'm looking at those points and saying,
1:46:25
Speaker 1: here's the starting point, here's the zone, and then give
1:46:28
Speaker 1: me cameras around it too. Then hyper focus and after
1:46:33
Speaker 1: we've learned something from those, that would be the next
1:46:35
Speaker 1: thing I would think about. So covering those not just
1:46:38
Speaker 1: with one saddle camera, but give me one on the
1:46:41
Speaker 1: north point, in the south point, at the east. See
1:46:43
Speaker 1: you start to get a better idea because, like we're
1:46:46
Speaker 1: saying the other day, you can put a camera here,
1:46:48
Speaker 1: and if you start making a ton of assumptions off
1:46:51
Speaker 1: one camera that's covering acres or something and said, well,
1:46:55
Speaker 1: he never passed over here, but he cast here. You know,
1:46:57
Speaker 1: you don't know much about what happens outside of thirty
1:47:00
Speaker 1: yard zone, right. They could travel ten yards behind your
1:47:03
Speaker 1: camera and you would never know it. So if there's
1:47:05
Speaker 1: a spot that seems that good, I would if you
1:47:09
Speaker 1: have the cameras to do it, which you know we're
1:47:11
Speaker 1: not always going to have that, But if you happen
1:47:13
Speaker 1: to have three cameras or four cameras that you can
1:47:15
Speaker 1: focus on the zone, I'd almost rather really get to
1:47:17
Speaker 1: know his zone and how they use it. If you
1:47:20
Speaker 1: have confidence in the zone, really figure that place out
1:47:23
Speaker 1: this year and then maybe next year, then you really
1:47:26
Speaker 1: figure out how to use the next piece. Um. That's
1:47:30
Speaker 1: one way to approach a camera strategy that I think
1:47:32
Speaker 1: has long term value. If it's a spot you're gonna
1:47:35
Speaker 1: keep punning any other any of the things. I mean,
1:47:41
Speaker 1: we talked about my horrible flight, we talked about some
1:47:45
Speaker 1: of the scouting takeaways we've had. We've talked about, you know,
1:47:48
Speaker 1: fine tuning one little heidy hole, habitat improvement for your dad.
1:47:52
Speaker 1: I think that the a good way to h to
1:47:55
Speaker 1: close her out is to talk about the like the
1:47:57
Speaker 1: long term yeah, for action and habitat goals, improvement goals.
1:48:06
Speaker 1: I want. I want to get well both. I want
1:48:11
Speaker 1: to get Aldo Leopold on this joint, you know, on
1:48:14
Speaker 1: the forty that at least you know I'm kin too. Yeah.
1:48:19
Speaker 1: Uh so what are you asking? Like smoth was what
1:48:22
Speaker 1: I would want to do. I know that they're in
1:48:24
Speaker 1: a um. They're in like I think it's called the
1:48:28
Speaker 1: Wisconsin UM the Managed Forest Law, Yeah, which is basically
1:48:36
Speaker 1: like you enter into it and they you know, the
1:48:39
Speaker 1: state basically helps you manage forests and you get a
1:48:41
Speaker 1: tax break for it. Right, I know that in the
1:48:44
Speaker 1: next five years there's some certain amount of wood that
1:48:46
Speaker 1: has to be cut out of there, So like would
1:48:51
Speaker 1: you have ideas of like where you know that cutting
1:48:58
Speaker 1: could happen, how would you cut it other places that
1:49:00
Speaker 1: you never caught um and just I don't know, Like, yeah,
1:49:05
Speaker 1: when I'm up here for my like, is there a
1:49:07
Speaker 1: project that I can start on, you know, next spring
1:49:10
Speaker 1: if I make it back this summer, I've got a
1:49:13
Speaker 1: couple of days like what's Yeah, what's the project That
1:49:16
Speaker 1: might take five years, but they can make a big difference.
1:49:19
Speaker 1: So I think there's a few things. Like the first
1:49:22
Speaker 1: things that came to mind to me would be better
1:49:27
Speaker 1: defining the best betting and the best little transition food.
1:49:30
Speaker 1: So it would be making taj mahals on those points,
1:49:35
Speaker 1: so hinge cutting and adding the cover on those knobs
1:49:37
Speaker 1: and points where they want to bed if there's some cover,
1:49:41
Speaker 1: and so that's an easy thing that is going to
1:49:44
Speaker 1: just make this a better hangout for bucks and does
1:49:49
Speaker 1: all year, and that's going to help you in ways
1:49:51
Speaker 1: during the run to So that first point we talked
1:49:54
Speaker 1: about absolutely should have some cutting on it. Thicking that up.
1:49:57
Speaker 1: You could even make the other big one better too.
1:49:59
Speaker 1: In certain place to thicking that up, you're gonna add
1:50:01
Speaker 1: some dough betting farther up the knobs off the ridge.
1:50:05
Speaker 1: So that would be one thing I would do. Um,
1:50:08
Speaker 1: And then I do think more of what we started today,
1:50:11
Speaker 1: like make another one of those, maybe make a third
1:50:13
Speaker 1: one of those. Um, the little food plots, a little
1:50:16
Speaker 1: hidy hole food plot, because then all of a sudden,
1:50:18
Speaker 1: steven have one. You could also create a line of them,
1:50:22
Speaker 1: and so you're creating lines of movement. This is a
1:50:24
Speaker 1: concept that my friend Jeff Sturgions is always talking about,
1:50:27
Speaker 1: like trying to define in some kind of way. It's
1:50:31
Speaker 1: always unpredictable, but you can encourage a slightly more predictable
1:50:35
Speaker 1: line of movement, and sometimes you can create criss crosses
1:50:39
Speaker 1: of defined movement. It's it's replicating what we already have
1:50:42
Speaker 1: up on those ridges, right, there's a certain sense of
1:50:45
Speaker 1: a defined movement. We know they're gonna go a little
1:50:47
Speaker 1: bit like this, a little bit like this, a little
1:50:49
Speaker 1: bit this. We found a place like that down on
1:50:52
Speaker 1: the forty that doesn't have that, So let's do something
1:50:55
Speaker 1: to create some of those. So we can create that
1:50:58
Speaker 1: with a line of these plots that we know bucks
1:51:00
Speaker 1: will then want to check this one to this one
1:51:02
Speaker 1: to this one and then hit the big fields. Or
1:51:05
Speaker 1: let's define where the best betting is, so we know
1:51:08
Speaker 1: they're probably betting all over these ridges or knobs. Let's
1:51:11
Speaker 1: go ahead and put two taj mahals that all of
1:51:13
Speaker 1: a sudden we know by far those are the two best. Now,
1:51:16
Speaker 1: if there's a big buck out here, he's going to
1:51:19
Speaker 1: claim that most likely not every night, not every single day,
1:51:22
Speaker 1: but you all of a sudden have a better chance
1:51:26
Speaker 1: he's gonna be there than you did historically, and that
1:51:28
Speaker 1: can make a big difference on future hunts. So those
1:51:31
Speaker 1: would be two things that it would be relatively easy
1:51:33
Speaker 1: to do UM and that I think would make a
1:51:36
Speaker 1: noticeable hunting impact. You know, the bigger stuff like where
1:51:40
Speaker 1: should you do substantial cutting? I have to think about
1:51:43
Speaker 1: that a little bit more because that's something that I
1:51:45
Speaker 1: think you want to be really strategic about UM because
1:51:48
Speaker 1: because I mean, what I see from what we've seen
1:51:52
Speaker 1: historically is like those cuts immediately turned into dough betting.
1:51:57
Speaker 1: It could be awesome, and there's probably lots of eat
1:52:00
Speaker 1: in there too, right, I mean these has got to
1:52:02
Speaker 1: be great. So clear cuts are probably the best stuff
1:52:04
Speaker 1: you've got in a lot of ways in this big
1:52:07
Speaker 1: timber country, for sure, for food and betting. What you
1:52:11
Speaker 1: want to make sure you do when you do anything,
1:52:13
Speaker 1: whether it's a plot or betting improvement or in this case,
1:52:16
Speaker 1: like a big cut, is just think about how that impacts,
1:52:19
Speaker 1: Like what's the trickle down effect? Like everything, every piece
1:52:22
Speaker 1: of a domino, it's going to hit another. So I
1:52:25
Speaker 1: always want to make sure if you're making this big
1:52:27
Speaker 1: cut somewhere, is that going to impact how you get
1:52:30
Speaker 1: in and out to hunt these other places? Is this
1:52:32
Speaker 1: all of a sudden going to create a deer hotspot
1:52:35
Speaker 1: that there's no way you can get around? Right? I
1:52:38
Speaker 1: want to avoid the attract and repel conundrum, which is
1:52:42
Speaker 1: where you make some kind of improvement that attracts dear
1:52:45
Speaker 1: but you don't have any way to get past it
1:52:47
Speaker 1: without them spooking and and a big cut like this
1:52:51
Speaker 1: could certainly do that if you if you position it right.
1:52:55
Speaker 1: I mean as I'm as we're saying this, and I'm
1:52:57
Speaker 1: just thinking about it like the far like a lot
1:52:59
Speaker 1: of your acts as has to come from the east,
1:53:01
Speaker 1: and it has to come from the south probably if
1:53:04
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to walk those big ridges
1:53:06
Speaker 1: and bumped it, which we probably wouldn't want to do
1:53:08
Speaker 1: because that's where are soom right yep. So like my
1:53:12
Speaker 1: first thought is improve, improve that ridge in the bedding
1:53:18
Speaker 1: in the northwest corner of the north and northwest, which
1:53:20
Speaker 1: is the hardest stuff for you to get to and
1:53:22
Speaker 1: you never you know, it's the hardest ever need to
1:53:24
Speaker 1: go through. Make that better bedding with some cuts. That
1:53:28
Speaker 1: probably is what makes the most sense. It's low risk
1:53:30
Speaker 1: from an access standpoint, high upside from an improved betting,
1:53:36
Speaker 1: and that probably just sweetens the whole up and down
1:53:39
Speaker 1: movement from bedding down to your little honeyhole food plots
1:53:42
Speaker 1: and and and yeah, because this this just basically it's
1:53:46
Speaker 1: sweetens where they want to be and expands where they
1:53:49
Speaker 1: want to be while maintaining the general line of movement
1:53:52
Speaker 1: which is from those ridge bid beds to your transitioning
1:53:55
Speaker 1: little food plot out to the big agg to the south.
1:53:58
Speaker 1: I think that's how a roach it. And I know
1:54:00
Speaker 1: you hate that. There's those white pines that are kind
1:54:02
Speaker 1: of a dead zone that comprise the bottom third of
1:54:06
Speaker 1: the farm almost, but they give you a nice little
1:54:08
Speaker 1: buffer of free wind space. Like deer do travel through them,
1:54:12
Speaker 1: but they don't congregate there, they don't hang out there
1:54:14
Speaker 1: for a long period time. It's a lot lower risk
1:54:16
Speaker 1: than if that was betting. You know, if you did
1:54:19
Speaker 1: a cut through that and then all of a sudden
1:54:20
Speaker 1: became in the spot where this deer hanging out all
1:54:22
Speaker 1: the time, you're s ol and a lot of those
1:54:25
Speaker 1: westerly winds northwest and all that kind of stuff. So
1:54:29
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of all stream of thought. I'm
1:54:31
Speaker 1: thinking about this as we go. But but that would
1:54:34
Speaker 1: be like a big project, and that would be a
1:54:37
Speaker 1: cool impactful thing. Looking that north half and northwest half
1:54:40
Speaker 1: of the forty for something like that, I think would
1:54:43
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense. Um Yeah, because you would
1:54:46
Speaker 1: just be kind of you'd be like connecting new betting
1:54:49
Speaker 1: to existing betting. Yep, yep. You're you're just you're looking
1:54:53
Speaker 1: at the general areas where they want to be in.
1:54:55
Speaker 1: You're expanding or or polishing what nature already has there,
1:55:00
Speaker 1: and you're you're putting the frosting on top um. And
1:55:04
Speaker 1: if that big, that big old buck that was haunting
1:55:07
Speaker 1: a dreams last year. If he's still in the area,
1:55:10
Speaker 1: it's going to be a spot all of a sudden,
1:55:11
Speaker 1: he's absolutely gonna have to be checking out. Um, take
1:55:15
Speaker 1: these places from being you know, maybe I'll swing by
1:55:19
Speaker 1: and grab a Starbucks coffee to all of a sudden,
1:55:21
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's the best coffee in New York City.
1:55:23
Speaker 1: I have to go there. That kind of thing, And um,
1:55:28
Speaker 1: that's kind of what you try to do when you're
1:55:30
Speaker 1: trying to manage and fix up and improve a small property.
1:55:32
Speaker 1: It's anytime you can do something like that, and you
1:55:35
Speaker 1: can't change the world. You don't have five thousand acres
1:55:38
Speaker 1: or acres like some people do that manage, you know,
1:55:41
Speaker 1: properties and deer. But if you can make these little
1:55:44
Speaker 1: sweet spots really sweet, you can have a disproportionate impact.
1:55:49
Speaker 1: And then just don't overpressure. If you keep them feeling
1:55:52
Speaker 1: safe and you give them these incentives to spend a
1:55:54
Speaker 1: little more time there, to go out of their way
1:55:55
Speaker 1: to to add that to their route, you can really
1:55:59
Speaker 1: do more with a small place. And people realize that's
1:56:03
Speaker 1: my take. I like it, man. I like that You're
1:56:07
Speaker 1: you're you're feeling optimistic about her, and I'm not saying ours.
1:56:11
Speaker 1: It's my dad's and his buddy's new forty. But you've got,
1:56:17
Speaker 1: I mean lots of potential. Obviously you've there's a good
1:56:20
Speaker 1: deer here. There are deer here. I think with a
1:56:22
Speaker 1: little TLC, with a little like adjusting some ways that
1:56:27
Speaker 1: we do things, make some tweaks, put the frosting here.
1:56:31
Speaker 1: It's there's no reason why you shouldn't have some great
1:56:34
Speaker 1: hunting here. So I'm I'm excited to see. I'm just
1:56:38
Speaker 1: really excited to see how things pan out this fall.
1:56:41
Speaker 1: You're gonna send me updates the first day, second day,
1:56:44
Speaker 1: third day, fourth days, like day, seventh day, every day, please,
1:56:46
Speaker 1: I will for sure, because I'll be hunting up top
1:56:50
Speaker 1: on the oak flat. We'll have service, which is it?
1:56:53
Speaker 1: Which is a real pro and con. That's true. It's nice,
1:56:56
Speaker 1: it's check the weather, it's nice. It's in market text.
1:56:59
Speaker 1: But well, you can spend too much time looking at
1:57:01
Speaker 1: the phone, not hunting. But even though I've yet to
1:57:06
Speaker 1: roost turkey in the evening on this trip, and I've
1:57:09
Speaker 1: been after it for seven or eight days here, ah,
1:57:13
Speaker 1: it's getting to be that time. I think, yeah, we
1:57:15
Speaker 1: better do it. We have a couple of hours laughing,
1:57:17
Speaker 1: try to kill one more gabbler. This uh, the spring
1:57:21
Speaker 1: of one set after you get the turkey blues at all,
1:57:26
Speaker 1: once the turkey season ends, I don't think I'm into
1:57:28
Speaker 1: as much as you are. I don't like I really
1:57:31
Speaker 1: enjoy it, but it's not something I get the turkey
1:57:34
Speaker 1: blues about. I'm right into white tails once. Once like
1:57:39
Speaker 1: the beans and corns start popping up, I get the yeah.
1:57:43
Speaker 1: And when I saw that, I was like, Oh, that's
1:57:47
Speaker 1: when I get the real like white tail. He be
1:57:49
Speaker 1: geebs or maybe not hepe gps, but something is pumping,
1:57:52
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, it's funny how that happened when you
1:57:54
Speaker 1: showed up here. Like I was kind of like thinking
1:57:57
Speaker 1: like I was hunting turkeys, but I was kind of
1:57:59
Speaker 1: thinking of like the work we're going to do when
1:58:01
Speaker 1: you got here. But I wasn't really like in the
1:58:04
Speaker 1: zone or like getting excited about it. But then as
1:58:07
Speaker 1: soon as like what are we doing? When I looked
1:58:10
Speaker 1: back at you know, I was like, man, that's all
1:58:11
Speaker 1: it takes us to walk through the woods. Oh, we're
1:58:13
Speaker 1: gonna look look at the buckbeds. We're gonna go to
1:58:15
Speaker 1: look at those points, and all of a sudden, we
1:58:17
Speaker 1: just like switched into whitetail mode and it was just
1:58:19
Speaker 1: like I was on a different trip. I was like, yeah,
1:58:21
Speaker 1: you know what if we hear a gobble, just let
1:58:23
Speaker 1: it go and get back to him later. Like we're
1:58:25
Speaker 1: gonna we're starting to like we're starting to already tune
1:58:29
Speaker 1: in for November. You know it's going to be here
1:58:31
Speaker 1: before you know it. Oh man, especially these days, Holy mackerel.
1:58:35
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. The one thing I just really
1:58:38
Speaker 1: badly want is I want to lose that ten dollar bill.
1:58:42
Speaker 1: So win that ten bucks and then we can wrap
1:58:45
Speaker 1: this thing up with a nice bow on November seventh
1:58:48
Speaker 1: or whatever day it ends up being. All right, Yeah,
1:58:52
Speaker 1: I know, I just had to pick a date range
1:58:55
Speaker 1: it's coming. Hey, while I got you, is there anything
1:59:00
Speaker 1: the folks listening to know about what Yanni the Latvian
1:59:03
Speaker 1: Eagles got coming out these days? Oh? Yeah, when's this
1:59:06
Speaker 1: gonna air in like a week or two? Oh? Perfect, Well,
1:59:10
Speaker 1: it's rough, so that'll roughly be like first week in June.
1:59:14
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it's it's either last week in May or
1:59:17
Speaker 1: first week in June. There still should be some uh
1:59:21
Speaker 1: yet to roll out. Meat Eater Haunts episodes. Um, the
1:59:28
Speaker 1: last one is gonna be my Dad and I hunting
1:59:31
Speaker 1: here last year. It's perfect, perfect you have if you
1:59:34
Speaker 1: listen to this whole thing, you have to actually go
1:59:36
Speaker 1: see the thing in person. The video here are some
1:59:39
Speaker 1: of the things again that I talked about in the
1:59:41
Speaker 1: last couple of hours. But you also, um, learn some
1:59:44
Speaker 1: new stuff about my my history here and meet some
1:59:48
Speaker 1: of the guys that it got me into hunting and
1:59:52
Speaker 1: taught me, you know, stuff about hunt in my early
1:59:54
Speaker 1: early days. Um, and uh, it's a it's a cool episode.
1:59:59
Speaker 1: I think he'll dig it. And then there's uh, there's
2:00:02
Speaker 1: gonna be like a Montana pronghorn episode. There's a Montana
2:00:08
Speaker 1: elk episode, and then the ones that have already aired,
2:00:11
Speaker 1: which you can go and check out right now if
2:00:13
Speaker 1: you haven't yet. But there's a great Colorado archery elk
2:00:16
Speaker 1: hunt with Jason Phelps and um, I guess since it well, no,
2:00:21
Speaker 1: I won't ruin it in case you just like again
2:00:23
Speaker 1: we're living under rock and you haven't gone to go
2:00:24
Speaker 1: see it, go check it out. There's some good calling action.
2:00:28
Speaker 1: You can watch Jason just like work his magic, which,
2:00:32
Speaker 1: like let me tell you it is there like I like,
2:00:37
Speaker 1: I consider myself a decent caller. I can get it done,
2:00:42
Speaker 1: but and I'm confident in it. But he has like
2:00:45
Speaker 1: the next level confidence where he's almost like like he
2:00:48
Speaker 1: can tell you. He's like, Mark, I'm gonna do this now,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: and the bull is going to do this and you're
2:00:53
Speaker 1: like really, and he does it and then the bull
2:00:55
Speaker 1: doesn't like He's done it a lot more than I have,
2:00:59
Speaker 1: right well, M So yeah, that that's great. You can
2:01:03
Speaker 1: always uh that's on the Metator YouTube channel. UM obviously
2:01:07
Speaker 1: tune into the Mediator podcast Stephen and Ella. I try
2:01:11
Speaker 1: to make it to as many of those as I can. UM,
2:01:14
Speaker 1: and then you can always follow along on my Instagram
2:01:18
Speaker 1: handle with his which is Joannice Underscore who tell us
2:01:22
Speaker 1: and UM nothing too exciting. They're just Johnny's general life,
2:01:29
Speaker 1: which is a lot of hunting, a lot of fishing,
2:01:32
Speaker 1: my dog, I'm cooking, ah when my kids are up
2:01:36
Speaker 1: to a little bit. So yeah, that kind of that
2:01:38
Speaker 1: about wraps wraps it up. That wraps it up. It's
2:01:41
Speaker 1: good stuff. And and thank you, thank you for welcoming
2:01:44
Speaker 1: me to this special place, like it's really man, it's
2:01:46
Speaker 1: really cool to get to be a part of that
2:01:48
Speaker 1: and to see it and experience it, and and I
2:01:51
Speaker 1: know that's no small thing, so thank you. Yeah, well,
2:01:54
Speaker 1: I believe that my dad said as he was leaving
2:01:56
Speaker 1: today that maybe we'll do a hunt together. Sometimes he
2:02:00
Speaker 1: might have been thinking, like Alaskan caribou. You're like, well,
2:02:03
Speaker 1: you know this will work too, A good whitetail place
2:02:06
Speaker 1: about seventy yards from here. Yeah, that would be a
2:02:10
Speaker 1: cool thing someday too. All Right, And that's it for
2:02:12
Speaker 1: us today. Appreciate tune in, thanks for being a part
2:02:15
Speaker 1: of this community and listening to this story. And until
2:02:19
Speaker 1: next time, stay wired to Hunt.