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FFOD340 : Whitetails From a Different View · Fist Full of Dirt

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And how to get the outdoors.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: One of my main questions I'm going to ask you is about temperature.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: How that affects deer, because we always think it's that cold front.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_04: But anyway, what's your opinion before you ask him?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: What do you think?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: As soon as that cold front goes through when that high pressure 8 is right over your head.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's my opinion.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: I watched one of his videos that uh they dispel some of that.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's all about temperature.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's fascinating stuff, and it's just entertainment.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Don't nobody get your paintings in a wallet.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's not flying over property.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't have permission to he's just a researcher at heart.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's fabulous.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: But the reason I bring the temperature up is I dropped cranky.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: I went to pick cranky up at football practice.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: One day last.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: I forgot what day it was.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: It was a couple days.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was a hundred and four.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this thing I got in the truck and cranked it up.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: This is after I've been I'd driven 15 miles and 82 on the surface tent was on 104 degrees.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: That that is just insane.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_04: Shortly after that, they moved and practices.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I made a post about it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you did.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: I told you I said I'll pick him up and take him because it's I'm up that early anyway.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, he jumped in the truck and I said it's a tough time to be practicing football.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, Turkey Steve.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I don't want to talk to this guy if I've ever been watching him.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a big YouTube guy.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: And his name's Derek Dixon, and his YouTube channel is called Whitetail Research.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: And uh to me, it's just fascinating.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now he's he's located in Missouri, so Missouri.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: So not everything is tiny.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't have a lot of ag around him and all that.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: But he's doing some myth busting, in my opinion.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's just crazy.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: And he's got a really good drone and he follows deer from way up high, doesn't spook them.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like this one did this and this and this.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to know that.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I want to know it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I look, you can arm yourself with all the information.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: And some people I see comments about, oh, you're gonna teach everybody how to kill everybody.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, he's not.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: He followed one deer for like, I don't know, 24 hours or something like that.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, I I guarantee you, if he told you exactly where that deer was bedded, you couldn't get in there with a bow and kill him.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like everybody relax.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's entertaining and buddy, it's you will learn some stuff.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's not you don't you don't have to uh buy something to get the information or sign up for 12 months.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: He's just hanging it out there.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big deal.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm telling you, I was impressed now.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh at my age is pretty hard to impress, but anyway.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean and I I'm gonna make myself hold it to an hour.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we've kind of decided that's the major number.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm telling you, I could talk to this kid all day.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: He's very young.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Real techie.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_04: I bet his audience is gonna be good.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, you know it will.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: But his name's Derek Dixon and his YouTube channel is Whitetail Research.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if you go there, click on the subscribe button.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: So let's let's head up to southern Missouri and talk to Derek at Whitetail Research.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_07: I've been reading that there's some people that are skeptical about whether or not mature bucks actually locked down with the dough.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_07: This footage was captured on October 24th.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_07: Every other buck in the area was cruising around and shoving does early in the morning and feeding later in the evening.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_07: Except for this guy.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_07: He wouldn't leave her side.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_07: Every move she made, he mirrored it.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_07: This isn't random behavior, and it solidifies that mature bucks can and will lock down with the doe.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_07: Does it happen every time?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe not, but especially as the first does begin entering Estrus, bucks will lock down.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_07: And in most cases, multiple bucks linger around the dominant buck and his lady.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_07: And just like that, the lockdown phase isn't a myth anymore.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_07: It's happening right now as I speak.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Hello.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_08: Hello, hello.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is this Derek?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_08: This is.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_08: How's it going?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: How you doing, buddy?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate you taking some time for us.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, pretty good.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_08: Not not too bad.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_08: I was messing with a little tech stuff so I could hook up my my actual mic, even though we're in a phone call.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_08: That we don't hear my kids running across the background every once in a while.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: So Well Lauren's giving me the okay sign, and she is our quality control nut.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: So you sound good on this.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I told her, I said, I think he's pretty techy.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: I bet he sounds good.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_08: So Yeah, no, I I've got my fancy microphone connected through my MacBook, and yeah, I've I've picked up picked up the phone call to the MacBook.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_08: So hopefully hopefully it sounds pretty good.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_08: I just got it working literally like 30 seconds ago.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_08: Good.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_08: That's how it is.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds great.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I gotta tell you, you don't probably know me from Adam, and that's okay.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm an older guy.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've been in this industry for decades.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: I am so, so impressed with your channel for a lot of reasons.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you got that message through my text.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_08: No, I I appreciate it.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_08: And not to not to pat you on the back too much or anything, but I I actually do know did did preemptively know who you were.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_08: Um I'm I'm into camera work pretty heavily.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_08: I love I love wildlife photography, videography, you name it, and I mean, I don't know if you self-proclaim to be like a pioneer as it pertains to being, you know, videography on on wildlife and hunting situations, but definitely one of the one of the earliest to go out and record hunts, especially on turkeys.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_08: I mean so yeah, no, I I knew I definitely knew knew who you were in the history of that with primos and all that type of stuff.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, preemptive.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, being a pioneer means is all that stuff was really heavy.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's all it means.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_08: It was way, way bigger.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_08: Well, I I I try to get away from the heavy camera stuff, but it seems like the more I do, the more I want to combat low light, and the more I want to combat low light, the heavier my camera equipment gets.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm still running pretty heavy stuff.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that I tell you about that heavy stuff though, it was easy to hold still and had big, big, big viewfinders on it, and the the zoom or gears, and man, you could shoot some good stuff.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's just now the quality of everything.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like your stuff is so good.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's mind-boggling for somebody like me.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the first camera I ever actually took into the woods, the recording deck stuff, it had tubes in it, and you can start talking about that, and people just roll around.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know what that was, but yeah, yeah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: The reason I locked onto your channel, and I told you this in our text story, is there's uh so many there's so much information out there, it's just you get an overload.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I love working on data.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and the stuff you put out there is just you say it and then you see it, and I'm like, buddy, that's very different.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just to me, it's just fascinating.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I wanted to share you with our audience.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: You never know.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Same people are listening, sometimes it's different people.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: I wanna I want to drive some people to what you got going on because uh you're not really selling anything but information.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Is that correct?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_08: No, I mean I I guess technically I'm not sell I'm not even selling my information.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I I just have a YouTube channel and I post my findings and a lot of it is you know, I've I think I've received some messages here recently from guys and they're like, Well, where's the where's the peer review literature on this, you know, this project?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_08: Why are you even talking about it if you if you're not you know posting all of your data and your literature and stuff like that, and it's like, well buddy, here's you know, peer-reviewed literature doesn't just happen in like a month.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_08: So if I was gonna make a YouTube video and every single one of them was gonna be peer-reviewed literature, then I'm not I'm gonna post a video every two years and it's you know, it's gonna take a tremendous amount of work.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, I have projects that are in the process of becoming peer-reviewed literature, but peer-reviewed literature costs money.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_08: It takes a very organized effort and a and a really dedicated project to even you know have think about putting it into being peer-reviewed literature.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_08: And then on top of that, I would I wouldn't be able to make any content.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_08: And YouTube is how I make my living, but between YouTube ad revenue and sponsorships, I mean that's that's how I'm able to do it, and how I'm able to continue out with my observational research.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_08: And at some point, yeah, things will be peer reviewed literature, but at the moment it's not.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: So Well, let me just tell you something.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: I could care less.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: It passed my smell test, and I'm pretty good at wading through all that stuff.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I'm uh I'm I'm I'm still binge watching.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh sometimes I don't have 30 minutes, but I'm I'm going back.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing it wrong.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm starting with the latest and working my way back, and then I went through stuff on the ag and all that that is fascinating.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so I just wanted to share you with a bunch of people.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna just I'm gonna just interview you if that's all right.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I know I picked up on a bunch of stuff that you're a big bull hunter and all that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: First, I want to know where you grew up and and was hunting part of your childhood.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, oh yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_08: No, I mean I'm from Howe County, Missouri, so southern Missouri, um, and all of my research has taken place in this kind of Ozark plateau region of Missouri.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_08: Not all of it, but probably over 85% of it.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_08: There's there's been some that's in the n northern Arkansas area, and then like you just mentioned with that ag video.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_08: I did travel out of state.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_08: I went to Indiana, Kansas, northern Missouri, um, Iowa, and uh and a couple other places, and I and I flew the drone.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_08: I've been down south, and I've been to Mississippi, and I've been to Alabama, and now I've been up north and I've been in Wisconsin, and uh I'm slowly expanding my range, but I have to I guess I I started going down the research rabbit hole.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_08: You asked my core question as to what got me into hunting in the first place and and was I was I from a hunting family, which yeah, yeah, and I mean my my family's hunting culture is pretty heavy.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_08: My grandpa is probably the main inspiration behind everything.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_08: My dad was a hunter, he he in later life he he started getting a little bit more out of it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_08: He still is.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_08: He's he's a kind of a hobbyist with old muscle cars, that's his gig.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_08: He loves it more than anything and that doesn't allow a lot of time for hunting, but he still he used to do a lot of hunting whenever he was younger.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_08: Um his first his very first bow was an Allen bow, an Allen compound bow.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_08: And then he ended up getting like a Jennings and a PSE and so he he worked through the ranks and he was he was a bow hunter throughout the seventies and the eighties and stuff.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_08: And then uh but my grandpa, he was the one that was like way serious into it.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_08: He'd go out west, he'd he'd hang out in Missouri and travel all over the place and and go hunting, and really what happened was in the seventies they bought a property my grandpa did.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_08: And I it was uh the core property was seven hundred and sixty-five acres.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_08: He bought it with two of his friends.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_08: And I I don't know, it was like two hundred bucks an acre or something like that, maybe less.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_08: And uh and that that property, I mean at the at that time it was way too expensive for any of those guys to be attempting to purchase it, you know.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_08: But they were wanting to get into land management.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_08: They were worried about quail and uh a bunch of other things back then.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_08: So they they purchased this property together and they started immediately implementing land management practices onto it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_08: And this is at a time frame like you know, whenever deer they weren't crazy abundant at that time, and over time that property became pretty dang hot.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, there's a lot of deer moving around it, and they implemented various forms of clear cuts and food plotting efforts, and then maybe backing off the food plotting efforts and starting to light more things on fire and things like that.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_08: And I was kind of brought up in that during that land management process.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_08: So from the time I was a little kid, I was standing out and I was helping with burns and and going out and cut felling trees and I was swinging an axe and taking wood to old grandma's and nearby towns and stuff like that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_08: And whenever I turned six years old, I mean it wasn't a question if I was gonna go and hunt.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, I was going hunting.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_08: Everybody before me, I had an older brother, I had an older cousin, they're all out there hunting and their their goals were were big bucks or you know, early on brown it's down, let's see what we can get.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_08: And uh so I was I was doing this and you know, my first my first hunt ever was was quite an eye opener for me because I'd never obviously shot a w shot at a wild animal that that was that big.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_08: I'd shot at squirrels and stuff, you know, a little bit younger, but um whenever I made it out there then I went with my dad and we were hunting on the ground in a field that was called Sawdust Pile.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_08: And there's just a it was quite simply there was a sawdust pile at the far end of the field, so that's why we called it that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_08: It was a pretty new field as well.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_08: And uh we were laying on the ground and I we had a doe come out at about eighty yards after an hour and a half or so, and she's standing broadside, sun's in her back, the sun was setting and a a terrible sight picture to try to shoot into.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_08: And I got got honor, got the crosshairs where I needed to.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_08: Dad had me rack the bolt and the guns on safety and put the thing off safety, the whole process.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_08: And I barrel down on on that rifle and I'm looking down, crosshairs, I've got it right where I want it.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_08: I hadn't shot prone before.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_08: I'd only ever ever shot from a bench.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_08: So I I clean up on that trigger, little two eighty, and I let it fire, and I created the perfect little scope ring around my eye cut.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_08: I just cut myself like crazy.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_08: I that scope popped me so hard in the face and completely missed the dough.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_08: I don't know how much I missed her by.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I look down and I'm starting to maybe a little bit cry.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_08: I'm trying not to cry.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_08: A little six-year-old just got hammered by a 280 in the face, no idea what's going on.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_08: And my dad kind of looks at me and he's laughing a little bit and he's like, You want to shoot again?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_08: She's still standing there.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_08: And I was like, kind of nodded my head, yeah, I I want to shoot again, I want to shoot again.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_08: So he he shows me how to rack the bolt again, I rack it real quick.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_08: Gun's gun's hot, you know, be ready.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_08: Like this thing, we're we're live.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_08: So I get down on the gun again, I'm looking down the scope, get the crosshairs right where I want it.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_08: And as soon as I get it where I think that I need to pull the trigger on, I lean my head away and I look straight down at the ground, and I look away from the gun and I rip the trigger off.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_08: Absolutely drop the dough from 80 yards.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_08: So my my very first kill, I no scoped or technically.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_08: I I shot without looking, and uh that's that's kind of a historical thing for me.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_08: That's priceless.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: That scar from the scope's a badge of honor.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my youngest grandson got one a few years ago during turkey season.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Man, he wore that.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's it it is it's a badge of honor.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's cool that you grew up in that environment because uh uh you're you're you're very well spoken and and very scientific on your your YouTube channel, but I just had a feeling that that's how you grew up.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: Why bow hunting?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this has got nothing to do with drones.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna get to it, I promise you, but why why bow hunting?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know why I turned to that.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: I want to know why you why that's your favorite.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, no, we don't we don't have to talk about drones if you don't want to, but um no, we uh basically in in Missouri we we have a two two week rifle season, and like a lot of guys I recognize pretty early on.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, well my grandpa hunts all season long and my cousins hunting all season long.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_08: Why can't I hunt all season long?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_08: So uh, you know, September 15th to January 15th, that's a lot longer of a season than two weeks in November.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_08: So um and and throughout that time frame when I was younger I was I was getting into shed hunting and uh kind of going along and getting packed on hunts with my grandpa in some places and uh so I was spending time outside of season out in the woods, but I wasn't actually getting to hunt myself because I couldn't pull back a compound.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_08: And then finally, um we we kinda had a test.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_08: My grandpa just had this it was uh Matthews outback and he had it cranked all the way back.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_08: I think it was sixty pounds is what it was to.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_08: And um whenever I could draw that bow back, that's whenever I could go shoot something with with it, you know, with a bow.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_08: So um I was able to draw it back whenever I was like eleven years old, eleven or twelve, and uh then he just basically gave me the reins.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_08: We walked out to a target.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_08: Uh I think he set up uh a target of like thirty yards, twenty yards at first.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_08: I shot it at twenty, set it up at thirty, and I was holding the group kind of like a bowling ball size at thirty yards, and he was like, Yeah, that's good enough.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_08: And uh so sends me out into the woods and first first year I ever shot was a little doe from about twenty-eight yards out of stand whenever I guess I was eleven or twelve and uh yeah, no, I mean that bit the bug pretty quick on that, just seeing the arrow launch from the bow and then I wanted to learn everything from it really quickly, and I I got into making PVC bows, old PVC recurve bows, and I made some custom ones that had four limbs on 'em so that way I could expand on how much draw link power you could have.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_08: And I was walking outside with my dad's old East and Autumn Orange arrows, and I was flinging them across the backyard at like 70 yards and into the woods, and my mom's coming out like, what the heck are you doing?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_08: They're gett getting furious with me.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_08: So I was just that kind of kid.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_08: I was always I I was really fascinated with archery from pretty early on, and then you know, quickly as soon as I got into it, I I just want to know how it works.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_08: Like, I want to know why did we move to compound bows?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_08: How do compound bows function and how is this arrow stabilizing itself?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_08: And I started asking those questions really early on and just became obsessed with it.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_08: I love it.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: You can pick that up there on your channel if you listen enough, because a lot of times you'll be tracking something and so on, and that that works good if you're rifle hunting.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Not so much if you're a bow hunter, and you can just tell in there.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: So have uh have you always been and uh I'm gonna ask you two questions at once.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Have you always been that inquisitive and or were you the same way with technology?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, no, um probably always been that inquisitive.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_08: Uh I think early on at you know at school and stuff, it kind of got written off as maybe I was potentially retarded because I I was so uninterested in school that it like I hated.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, I hated school.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Me too.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_08: I wanted out of there and I wanted to go and research the things that I wanted to research, whether it was trees or soil or uh whitetailed deer, I mean you name it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_08: Those those were the things I was fascinated in and I wanted to learn everything about that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_08: I didn't want to sit through a uh learn an algebra or anything like that.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_08: So um yeah, I performed pretty poorly at school, but uh outside of it I was I was very inquisitive on top of sports and everything.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_08: Sports kind of took a lot of time as a kid.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_08: But um yeah, I know I mean whenever I could, I was always I was always getting really fascinated to it and you know, I kind of got bit the wildlife bug as it pertained to to th photography as well.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_08: My grandpa, he was he was also a photographer and he did a little bit of wildlife photography, landscape photography, um did a lot of nighttime photography as well, astro stuff, uh lightning, things like that.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_08: And wow.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_08: He he didn't really teach me anything, but his interest in it made me interested in it as well.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, at that time YouTube was kind of starting to crank up a little bit more, so I I was a self-taught photographer pretty quick.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_08: And I remember probably the first time I decided I wanted to take a picture of any wildlife, we were floating down I guess it would have been uh Norfolk River, me and my parents and and my brother and were on kayaks and uh there was a blue heron at this point.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_08: I don't know how old I would have been.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_08: I was I was probably eight or nine.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_08: And there was a blue heron and I'd never seen a blue heron at this point.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, to to this to this moment in life I'd never seen one this close at least.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_08: And it was probably fifty yards away from me.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_08: And I don't know if you've ever seen a blue heron kind of down in a bluff setting all the way down at the water, but whenever they take off and they want to fly away from you, they have to make a couple passes back and forth throughout that length before they can get to the right height to fly out of that bluff system.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_08: And that's what this one did, but whenever it took off, it flew right at me and it flew right over my head.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_08: And then it circled back and it flew and flew and flew.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_08: And whenever that happened, I immediately thought to myself, man, if I could have taken a picture of that, that would have that would have been the coolest thing to hang up on my wall.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_08: Like I I I wanted it really bad, so I started telling my parents that I really wanted a photography camera.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, at the time I was playing sports and I was into hunting and I had so many other passions, it's like, we're not buying you a camera.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_08: So I waited.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_08: It took me until I I got a job landscaping whenever I was thirteen or so years old, and I did some landscaping all summer long in between school, saved up enough money, and I bought I think it was an icon Z5100 and a 70 to 300 mil lens, and I started doing my own photography from then on and just you know, beating the camera around.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_08: I had no idea what I was doing, but um you you get something that young and y you have the bug for it, you're gonna you're gonna learn pretty quick.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_08: And that that was kind of my first initial entry into technology.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I I grew up through the through the technology age, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_08: I was born in nineteen ninety seven, so the iPhone came out in two thousand seven.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_08: all the kids were crazy about, you know, all the new phone tech and video games and everything that was coming out, so I was naturally interested in that, just being exposed to it by all these other kids, but my dad was pretty stingent as it pertained to video games and stuff like that.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_08: You know, we'd me and my brother we'd get home and we would have a like an Xbox or something back at our house and we'd hop on it as quickly as as we could for twenty, thirty minutes, and then whenever my dad would get home, we there's no carpet on the stairs at at this house that we lived in.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_08: And whenever he'd take his first step on that bottom step, me and my brother moved so quick.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_08: We'd have that TV shut off, the Xbox was turned down.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_08: We'd pull out books and we were laying across the bed or the floor of the house and we're we're researching, we're doing work, or we'd just rent outside and act like we were throwing apples at each other or something.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_08: I mean we we were not playing video games.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_08: We were not doing anything tech related.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_08: Our our dad was not not too fond of the d of the introduction of technology.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_08: So um yeah we we didn't really deep dive technology until I got out of uh my parents' house and then whenever I I moved away I moved away for college and while I was off at college I had uh started going to a church about forty five minutes away from where I'd lived up in Springfield, Missouri and that's where I met my my my now wife.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_08: I actually I knew she was there, that's why I was going to church there.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_08: I I seeked out that church on purpose.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_08: And while I was there I ran into a guy uh his name is Brian and he he was a uh director of operations at a school and he just kinda started picking up on the fact that like, oh gosh this guy he kinda understands technology a little bit better than your average guy for some reason and it was just because I naturally picked up on things quickly.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_08: And he offered me a job that was essentially going to pay more than what I would be making if I'd finished my degree at at university or about the same.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_08: So it's like why am I going to college?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_08: I'll just drop out and take this technology gig.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_08: That's what I did and I did that for five years.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_08: And at at around the five year mark is whenever we all parted ways and and I started the YouTube channel.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_08: And that's uh that's a whole story in itself but uh yeah that was but it as to whether or not I've always been intuitive and just kind of interested in a lot of various things.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_08: I mean I yeah I have more hobbies than a lot of people you can imagine I I'm interested in mechanic work and I I just always want to know how stuff works.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_08: I just I'm always fascinated with you know if I look at this hard drive sitting in front of me uh this 3.5 inch little mechanical hard drive I I want to know how it functions internally.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_08: I don't just want to plug it in and go, all right, thank you for giving me three, four terabytes of storage.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_08: Like I I want to know how it works so that way if anything happens or it makes a weird whine or a grind, like I I'm I'm interested in it.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_08: I don't know why.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_08: It's just something I'm fascinated by.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_08: That's that's interesting in itself.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: And here again I'm guessing that you're you're so inquisitive I'm guessing that the one of the reasons you started doing drone research is you were probably not satisfied with some of the information you get because a lot of times these days if you're reading something or if you're looking at social media posts or YouTube.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of times people are trying to say you something I think you just wanted to get to the nitty gritty of so you would know yourself.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: Does that sound reasonable?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah no that's I mean that's pretty accurate.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_08: I you know throughout probably whenever I was 16 I started getting that's whenever I got really really obsessed about bow hunting and and and really really trying to like target the biggest bucks in my area and and get one on the ground and from then until you know I'd I left my job and started white tail research I I I did what everybody else does.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_08: You know I I watched all the guys on YouTube and I was always learning everything that I possibly could.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_08: I I was buying biology books uh from universities on on whitetail deer and just learning about them themselves and trying to understand the white tail deer itself better.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_08: I was buying every hunting book that I could possibly get my hands on and then we had a lot of GPS card research that it that existed and still is going to exist and um one of the things that I just started noticing was that with GPS collar studies was that basically the guys would go out, they would conduct their big study, collar X amount of deer and then they would get their pins dropped back to them at you know every 15 minute intervals or 10 minute intervals and play connect the dots with all of those l little sections and then kind of have to look at that information and go, well we think that he's you know doing this here.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_08: We think he's doing this here, we think he's doing this here and we think he's doing this here.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_08: But what we do know is that this is his home range here and this is definitely his home range here.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_08: Like those are the two biggest walkaways like wow these deer they they have a fall range, they have a summer range and some deer have a summer range, fall range and then a winter range and then he circles back into a like a springish range and back into a summer range like all these different ranges.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_08: And that was really fun to look at but whenever I'm looking at that that information from the GPS car studies that I became obsessed with as well because I I'm I'm wanting to learn more about deer like I said.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_08: Same thing like I mentioned with the hard drive you know I I'm seeing it and all these guys are standing sitting at podcasts and they're going, well we think that this is what he's doing here and it just says the we think is not good enough for me.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_08: I I want to know what he's doing in that in that moment.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_08: And you know the the the biggest thing that's probably been a takeaway from my research and it it stemmed off of people leaving comments or emailing me at the fact that like my my drone research is going to run hunting forever and it's gonna spoil everything and you're gonna teach people all this information and no mature bucks ever going to be able to hide from you.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_08: And probably one of the biggest things I've learned is that there are so many variables.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_08: Like I could sit here, I have a list of them that I might include in a video someday of every variable that I've been able able to think of.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_08: It's like two and a half to three pages long and it's unreal how many variables that will play into deer behavior and where a deer decides to spend its time its time, whether it's it's that time bedding or where it's going to be that time seeding or where it's going to be moving throughout throughout the rut.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_08: There's so many things that can affect that.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_08: And really that's why my research it's more so like here's an example of what I saw take place and maybe a portion of that can be applicable for you to up your confidence in that setting but and being able to see it is amazing but there are there's so many different variables as it pertains to white tail deer and I've definitely learned that you you never say never and you never say a hundred percent.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_08: You know there's a hundred percent chance the deer are going to be doing this at this time and there's a never say never on the fact that they won't do something because they they at times it feels like they're they're acting random but really I I think that it's just the amount of variables that people don't or or are incapable of factoring in all of them at one time and how many are actually interacting with the deer's behavior.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_08: It's just there's there's a tremendous amount of it going on and and being able to open that lens and see everything with the thermal drone and just sit there and watch a mature buck that a lot of people would just drool over being able to see in person once in their lifetime.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_08: Uh getting to watch him for five hundred plus hours and where he bed, where he moves, patterning everything about him and and still not being able to have a pattern on him even though you're patterning all this information doesn't mean that you can still pattern his movements.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_08: I I could try to guess a hundred times where he's going to move and be right five percent of the time.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_08: So uh it's very, very fascinating to try to turn all this information that's that's that's coming in and uh yeah no I I'd say I'd say you're pretty close to correct on that.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: I personally place your channel in the entertainment section because I've been deer hunting way longer twice as long as you've been alive and I'm telling you not only are all those situations different with each deer it's different from farm to farm it's a totally different deer so much cover it's total to make it entertaining I got to figure that out you will never figure it out it's like to make your stuff just entertainment and if you love big deer it's very entertaining.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if you love white tails so I you know I I don't I don't need a starist or anything else to figure out your information is entertaining and that's the way I look at it.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah and I mean wait I I've recorded one deer he's uh a big mainframe 10 and he lives on a small portion of the main research property the one that my my grandpa purchased back in the 1970s I believe it was and I made a whole video dedicated on just that deer and if I gave all the information on that deer to anybody that I know in this area if you wanted to go in and kill him with a bow I I don't think you could do it.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_08: I think you would bump him out very, very quickly.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I mean I could t I could teach anyone how to go in there and kill him with a rifle.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_08: I know exactly where to stand to kill him with a rifle.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_08: But if you wanted to go and you wanted to bow hunt that deer you're going to have a tremendous difficult time.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_08: It's not going to be a fun fun fun hunt.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh it's on it's unbelievable.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean you you know just people make so many mistakes there entrance you know like if you go into a stand and get in there right and you think it's fairly close if you go in there the right way it'll take you an hour and a half and you've got every leaf brushed out of the way and you just it's crazy anyway that's not what we're here to talk about.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm I'm on the entertainment level before I start asking you specific questions I don't know because I have a drone nowhere near to the level mine's older now I still love it but how long did it take you to really learn how to fly the drone and get really good with it where you don't spook deer and you got everything figured out yeah so I'd I'd probably I I'd acquired a DJI Mavic Pro is what it was which is just a standard consumer level photography videography drone back pretty soon after it came out.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_08: I don't remember exactly what I paid for it but um I had acquired that drone just for fun.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_08: Like I said I I like photography and whatnot so I wanted to get into into the drone work I've seen a lot of guys using them online and became fascinated by them.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_08: And I had that drone probably two months and um you know growing up through the technology are you probably see this with the grandkids we're we we're able to adapt to technology a lot quicker than older folk are.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's just uh Yeah I don't resemble that remark.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_08: I promise you Yeah I don't know where that innate ability to just pick up a piece of technology and immediately know how to use it comes from but that's kind of where I was I mean I picked up a drone controller and it was just like right at home.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_08: I knew exactly it it was not a difficult thing for me to discern how to fly it left, right, up down.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_08: But I'd I'd owned that drone for probably I don't know a month and a half or two months and I had had it was me and my girlfriend and now my wife and her little brother and I'd taken them to a pond and we were going to go fishing and I was just going to fly and kind of work on cinematography shots and and panning the drone left to right and I had them her her little brother sucked at fishing by the way then I had them casting off the left and I was flying from the right hand side and I was like thirty to thirty five foot up in the air and I was panning.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_08: I mean I'm so far away from them in terms of where they're supposed to be casting it's not even I mean funny.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_08: And her little brother who's terrible at fishing I'll keep saying that he goes to cast and he casted that line right over the top of this little tiny drone and it caught the fishing line and into the into the propel propellers and dropped the drone straight into the pond.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_08: And I ran down and dove stove to the bottom it was like twelve foot picked up the drone pulled it out and sent it in to have it fixed and it was going to cost more to fix it than it was to buy it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_08: So I was pretty depressed with that.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_08: But yeah I mean in terms of of learning how to fly them though I I I'd owned that one and then from there I'd owned probably three more up until the point that I got the thermal drone.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_08: And then whenever I purchased the thermal drone in 2024 I had a whole summer um before deer season started to learn how to use it and dial in all of my custom controls and things like that.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_08: So I was flying nonstop at various properties and where I lived at the time which was closer to Springfield.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_08: And whenever I was doing that I would go out and locate deer and I would fly too close to them so that way I could see how close is too close to these deer.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_08: And I and I was constantly documenting that information so that way I could know whenever deer season came how close is too close so that way I'm not inner you know disturbing them and altering the way that they're behaving because obviously whenever conducting research with the drone if you're altering the way that deer behaves or moves then it's kind of pointless.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_08: All that information means nothing.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_08: So you have to try to keep that drone at a distance and at a height away from the deer to where you're not going to be disturbing them ever.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_08: And over time I've come to know when when and where you can get in close for those kind of tight shots that you guys see in my YouTube videos.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_08: And a lot of times it's gonna be windy or there's going to be some decent rain coming down.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_08: Maybe he's in an area with a little bit more cover or he's nearby the road things like that that allow me to get in closer to him and know that he's not going to get disturbed by by my drone's presence.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_08: But yeah in terms of how how quickly was I able to get onto drone technology and figure it out I mean within within three days I I felt pretty confident.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah that drone you got now is pretty impressive.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: I still got my D I I have the same drone you you stank in the pond and I love it.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do any wildlife stuff.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: I used to I use it from time to time.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: I flew my cornfield this year and threw some shots up it was great.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: When you go to set up on a place how far away and I know there's no set rules how far away do you get from where you're gonna fly?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Do you park a hundred yards, a quarter of a mile?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: How far can you fly your drone?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah so the first year that I was doing it I was uh trying to retain D V loss uh or uh not B V loss but V loss the visual line of sight.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_08: And um oftentimes at the main core research property, the cabin where it's at, there's not a lot of trees around it.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_08: There's a it's a big open field and I could see three sixty pretty far.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_08: And uh so I was able to just do a lot of flying right there from the cabin especially since most of the property is straight to the south from there.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_08: And uh that that enabled me to fly.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_08: I mean I could fly uh a little over a half mile to three quarters of a mile and retain visual line of sight and good connection with my drone from that location.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_08: And oftentimes I'm staying four hundred foot up in the air, four hundred foot AGL and that enables me to once again be able to see everything that I need to.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_08: I know there's a lot of guys that don't really try to follow the uh visual line of sight thing as it is so difficult with trees and it's almost a almost a joke at times but um here soon uh this is this is kind of where my technology's going where my brain has gone is because I don't like being limited to visual line of sight and I don't like being limited to having having to drive to a specific location.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_08: So here s recently I've picked up a um it's a DJI doc drone and what it is is it's essentially a mother hen.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_08: It it houses the drone it charges the drone it keeps the drone warm and wherever I am in the world I can take it off with my laptop and I can fly it remotely.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_08: Kind of like kinda like the military flies are drones across the country.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_08: I very very similar thing and this is a thermal drone enterprise same same same exact drone actually has better battery life.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_08: But um we're still waiting on all of the official V VLOS waivers to come through so that way I can be doing that legally.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_08: So right now whenever I fly that drone I just drive out to the farm and I have my in-person drone and then I have that remote drone and I just I cycle those two off of each other and then uh you know if I go to another property, another place, then I'll drive and I'll try to get to the highest elevation point if I'm on a new property that I've never been to before to do research on it.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_08: And then I'll I'll take off and I'll fly within my range that I can and then I'll I'll move if if I need to to cover a new part of the property.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_08: But um pretty much if you're able to get to a really high spot that's open around you you can cover a lot of ground that way.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_08: I mean these drones they have really good connection and and uh especially in agriculture settings agriculture settings I could see I could see across the whole thousand acre property with the drone in the sky.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_08: That's super easy.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_08: So um yeah hopefully that answered that question.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: It did yeah and just and you say this on your channel all the time you don't fly where you don't have permission.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: You trespassing is trespassing.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: So don't nobody get your your pants and a wad I mean he's going where he has permission to go doing research and it's still fascinating.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_08: I think it's worth mentioning as well to that point um that technically legally I could fly over all properties if I wanted to I could fly over every private property that that exists out there.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_08: Not not well within reason there's some air you know air restrictions as it pertains with the FAA but for the most part all these private properties around my farm if I wanted to legally I could fly right over the top of them and but at the same time it's like I value my drone and I value people's privacy and uh you know if I if I go flying over people's private properties I can fully understand if they walk out with an AR fifteen and drop the drone out of the sky.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_08: Even though that's very illegal I fully understand it and I'm aware of it and my drone is expensive and I don't want that to happen.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_08: So I I I stay within my bounds and I also try to notify everybody around me.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_08: You know I if I'm going to a new area I'll I'll go to every neighbor and I'll knock on their door if I have to or I'll try to pull up their phone number and I'll notify them who I am.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_08: Here's my intentions here's what I'm doing if you see my drone and it's kind of on your property edge because I will fly the edge of their property and stay within my airspace then uh please don't shoot it out of the sky.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_08: So I've had some guys that are that that get antsy on that as well.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_08: I've had some people tell me to screw off and keep that drone away from them and and I I I respect that.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_08: So I do I I fly a big berth around their property and I don't go close to them.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: So and you don't trespass.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to get that out of the way yeah no absolutely nothing you are you're a researcher driven kind of guy and when you started it you got better at it what was your first wow moment when you learned something like they ain't supposed to be doing that.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: I've never read that I've never seen that you you grab something on your your drone that was like wow I didn't know that.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah did you have a moment like that?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_08: I probably had two uh one of the earliest ones because this was one of the first questions I had was you know we all hear it uh deer betting on the leeward side of the ridge and just traditionally the way that my brain processed that whenever everyone was saying that deer were betting on the leeward side of the ridge was that I thought if you just looked at every large ridge system in a hill country setting then on the far side of those ridges dependent upon wind, that's where all the deer are going to be located.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_08: And then I quickly realized that's not the case because there's a lot of micro terrain features that take place all across you know the landscape.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_08: And then there's also some variability where just some deer they're just not bedded on the leeward side of the ridge.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_08: They're bedded on the windward side or they're kind of on the side and it started not make sense so I was trying to discern why.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_08: And uh still trying to figure out some of that and I think that a lot of it pertains to thermals.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_08: I think thermals are are probably uh the most important variable for a lot of deer until until the wind speed picks up to a point that thermals are not as viable.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_08: But um you know the second thing was probably while I was inserting data and just continuously inputting data over and over again.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_08: And this was the way that I did that on my first season was I would go out and I would fly and I would document everything into an Excel spreadsheet.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_08: I had all hundred and seventy plus variables that I was documenting every single day on every deer that I was watching, which most of the time in one day it would be one or two deer.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_08: And uh at the end of that uh at the end of that season from around January 15th maybe February first, all the way until I posted my first video uh in in June, late June, I would go back and I was watching all of my video footage and I was looking back through all of my pins and all my information and I was verifying all of these things across the board to make sure I had it as as accurate as possible.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_08: And while I was doing that in my you know, in my off season and prepping for the YouTube channel, that's whenever I seen that all out of all of the mature bucks that I was watching in relation to temperature, if you just looked at that temperature gradient in the evening, whenever the temps start to drop off, it was like well into the 90th percentile of the mature bucks were standing up right because I was documenting not only whenever they would start moving, but I was documenting when they would just stand up out of their bed.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um they were standing up out of their bed within like 10 minutes on either side of that temperature drop that was taking place.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_08: And that was a big like dinner bell moment.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_08: Like, what in the world is going on there?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_08: Because it is like everybody is doing this.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_08: Night it was well into the ninety ninetieth percentile.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_08: And then the second year I started seeing the same thing again in the evening time.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, some of those bucks, they would stand up and they would walk out to their feeding area.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_08: They would move immediately, they wouldn't stand around stand around and browse and hit rubs, right?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_08: They would just stand up and walk.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_08: And then uh some of those other deer, and and this is most most of the instances, they would stand up and they would just kind of clean themselves and walk over and kind of rub their rub their head on a tree over here and maybe uh lay back down for about three minutes and stand back up and just kind of linger in that area for a good thirty, forty-five minutes, and then they would move out.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_08: And even then, whenever they moved out, it was very laxadaisical, they didn't seem like they wanted to make it anywhere that badly.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_08: They weren't in a rush to do whatever they were doing.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_08: And that kind of I guess that would go into the third biggest finding, which all all three of these findings were posted in my first video, was that the morning time seemed very missional, whereas the evening time seemed like they had already made it where they wanted to be, and they're just kind of taking their time because they know you know it's gonna be nighttime in a second, it's gonna be safer at that time, so we're just moving out slowly to make it to where we want to go.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_08: Whereas in the morning they were making these super long treks from point A to point B, and it was very, very missional-minded.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_08: They they knew where they wanted to be.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_08: They're hitting scrapes at point A, B, C, D, and they're knocking them all out, and they're intersecting does along the way.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_08: Um, you know, oftentimes in a morning trek, a mature bucket, it would seem like he would scent check around twenty to thirty-five doughs, which that's obviously dependent on gear density in your area for how many they could do.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_08: But for my area, it was around twenty to thirty-five, somewhere in that range, doughs in a single morning movement.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_08: They would they would intersect that many doughs.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_08: Whereas in the evening, oftentimes they were they were rarely even scent checking does at all, excluding the peak rut time frame.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_08: Peak rut, and I say this for every every everything, is that during the peak rut, just throw it all out the window.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_08: Like any research that you've ever read or anything that you've ever heard, just toss it out the window if you can identify when that peak rut is for your area, because at that point, nothing makes sense.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_08: You're our betting all over the landscape, and it's just absolute lunacy.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_08: But outside of peak rut, that's kind of where the you know m everything I've talked about takes place with my research.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's so interesting about the morning movement because being a being a bow hunter might answer a question.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: How many absolute great morning spots do you have that you can get into without bumping a deer?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: It is so hard to have a good morning bow spot.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: Do you b do you agree with that?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_08: Oh yeah, no, I mean, I think that you just i in that setting you almost just have to accept the fact that you're gonna be bumping bumping some deer.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_08: Absolutely stuff's gonna happen and it it's it's gonna be difficult.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, you hear that I've heard that a lot throughout the process with a lot of various hunters.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_08: I I just did a podcast with Aaron Warburton and then a couple other guys, and yeah, I mean, morning time it seems seems to be pretty difficult to get into a location where you're wanting to be.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_08: And that's actually, you know, the entry-exit side of things has been something I've been really fascinated by, and that's one of the research projects I'm going to be doing this year is uh the various forms of entry and exit.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_08: You know, where where I did a lot of hunting growing up on that private property, we quickly learned that if you just drove in to that location and you were dropped off, then you're fine.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_08: It almost seemed like none of the deer would have any effect and they would all just start walking by within five, ten minutes from the moment that you got dropped off in your tree stand.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_08: Whereas if you were the last guy in that trail and you were the one on the four-wheeler or the the UTV and you you parked it, and you had you had to park it even within four hundred yards, five hundred yards, six hundred yards of your tree stand to get away from the guy that you've just dropped off, then you would have a terrible hunt.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, you were the one that was gonna you were gonna have a bad hunt because you had to walk in, you had to do all this.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_08: So uh we we quickly learned that uh growing up and um I think I think a lot of those tactics can be implemented in some areas, but then you get into you get into public land setting or public land without habitat variants, and then you start asking the question, how in the world do you walk in in some of those areas in the morning?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_08: And I don't know.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_08: I think it's I think it's very difficult, and you're just gonna have to bump deer in an agriculture setting.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_08: I think there's so many deer that bumping deer is really not going to have that d dramatic of an effect.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_08: I think you can get away with bumping 40 deer out of a small location and if you're gonna sit there all day, because there's so many deer on the landscape that you're likely gonna have another group of 20 to 40 deer move right past you at some point throughout the day.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: So you addressed all this on your YouTube channel.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I want people to go watch.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's you probably never had this question at all.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if there's an area over there, they kind of they kind of hang out in there till it gets dark.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: Is that is that kind of the case or or is it just all over the map?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_08: I think I think that it's gonna be something that's on a year-by-year basis, right?
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_08: So that that first year that I did research, all that data is kind of skewed as it pertains to food plot effectiveness, and it's because we had so many acorns on the landscape that deer, why why am I gonna go out in your food plot, your crappy, you know, rye food plot with a little intermixed clover and and browse on that whenever I've got white and red oak acorns all over the place.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_08: So that's that's what ended up happening in that first season.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_08: And then season two, we had all the food in the food plots, and the deer had zero acorns.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_08: And I you know, yeah, I saw the shift.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_08: It was pretty dramatic.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_08: There were there were evenings where there's twenty twenty plus deer browsing out in the food plots, uh, and they started at like one one p.m.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_08: and in towards the middle of the day at whenever temperature allowed for it.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_08: And uh that was that was really fascinating to see.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, the the massive shift of food plot effectiveness on the property.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_08: But even then, the you know, I know you've mentioned not to uh dive down the hundred and eighty inch bucks.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_08: I never recorded a hundred eighty hundred and eighty inch buck yet with the drone, but uh which is pretty amazing in itself.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_08: They're pretty rare, aren't they?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_08: Shows how rare they are.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_08: I've got I've got one buck this year I think might be 170 inches.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_08: He's he's pretty dear.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_08: But anyways, uh even with that and all of the you know the the food plots becoming the main core thing, daylight activity in them was pretty sporadic with from mature bucks.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_08: We would have some every once in a while.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_08: It almost seemed like if you just if you wanted a basic answer on it, like two times a week uh on on average for a mature buck, he would make a daylight appearance.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_08: And that doesn't mean in the evening and in the morning it was like uh out of seven days, and if you gave him three opportunities per day, you know, whether he was going to come into the food plot in the morning, in the middle of the day, or in the evening, he would do it around two to three times a week, you know, throughout that throughout that span.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_08: So uh not too many times he's actually walking into a food plot and but but with that, I I had I had one mature back last year that I recorded, he spent all day long in a food plot.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_08: Whereas he he he never went into a food food plot hardly at all until right at dark every evening, not every evening, but most mostly every evening, he would walk out right at the last five to ten minutes of of light, and he would start to brow browse into the edge of a food plot, and then he'd move out in the middle of it all night long and he'd move back to the edge and bed down inside of it.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_08: And then as light came back up, he would walk w walk back out of it.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_08: And it was November 4th, I think, he went into a food plot that was deep back in cover, it was it's just kind of a hidey hole, whatever you want to call them, shop plot style food plot, and I think it had a pretty basic mix out of of your Ladino clovers and things like that, maybe crimson clover, arrow leaf, and uh arrowhead.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_08: And uh he went and spent all day from sun up to sundown inside of that food plot.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_08: And he bedded in it he bedded down in the in the last fifteen minutes of light, and he laid there, and I came back the next morning to locate him and I I never found him again.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_08: And that's the video where I I kind of summarized that I think that he was packing his bags.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_08: He he knew he was gonna leave the area, he was kind of done with it, he was gonna shift into his his winter range a little more, and uh he he just kind of browsed out in that food plot all day long and then he left.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_08: He was gone.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_08: So, you know, I I've seen a lot of various things as it pertains to food plots.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_08: I've even intentionally bumped deer out of food plots and had them never come back into that food plot ever again.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_08: And uh that's that's kind of a really fascinating thing as well.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_08: But in the end, I mean, not too common still for a mature bike to come into a food plot in daylight, but if that was your pure hunting strategy and you had the time, availability, and the capability also to not be bumping deer every single time you went in there, um, and deer were solely dependent on food, then yeah, I think you're gonna still have opportunities inside of those food plots.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_08: It's just it's not gonna be a a daily thing in an area that receives moderate hunting pressure.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's crazy.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is there always more retail or there's a lot of ag going on, especially soybeans and corn and stuff like that?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: And when the agent harvested, do they still stay there?
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, so I think it depends on the uh the habit habitat structure around the agriculture, right?
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_08: If it's just pure straight agriculture with zero habitat diversity intermixed with it, then you you might not you might get into a sitting where there's not going to be as many deer in those locations, but you start introducing riparian areas throughout it, and those are gonna be the areas that are so chalked full of deer that you can't even wrap your brain around how many are inside of the woods.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I almost just said an area of Indiana that I went to, I should think I didn't.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_08: But um, yeah, I mean the the properties that I was researching in Indiana and Kansas and stuff with uh intermixed riparian habitat, I mean they're oh my gosh, there's so many deer in comparison.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_08: And we we I feel like I have a pretty high deer density in my area for southern Missouri.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I mean it's it's not even remotely close to to the agriculture setting.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_08: And as for the uh whenever they go in and they harvest things off of off of the area, I think it it's it's gonna depend on what that farmer themselves are actually doing.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_08: You know, in southern Missouri, I have a property in southern Missouri that's an ag property, and I researched it the first year that I did research, and they they plant soybeans and corn, which is very unique for southern Missouri.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_08: And uh they only have I think it's six hundred acres or so total uh in in agriculture down here uh in in that of that property that I was researching.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_08: And whenever they went went in and and cut everything out, then they put it into rye as a cover crop.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_08: And that rye, even throughout the acorn season, was holding well over on across six hundred acres, it was holding well over two hundred and fifty deer on the landscape.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_08: And I think out of those two hundred and fifty deer on six hundred acres, there were only two to three mature bucks.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_08: And I think that's likely because the range itself was still pretty small, the the amount of uh bedding cover was really little, so uh the the dough ratio was absurd.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_08: There were there were so many doughs in comparison to bucks, but there were there still was a decent amount of uh mature bucks on that landscape for the acreage, and uh they were they're big bucks as well.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_08: And um, yeah, no, I I think that it it'll depend on if they what they're doing is in terms of cover crops and whatnot to be able to retain that.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_08: But in in some areas maybe the cover crop might not be as uh nutrient dense or as efficient as a uh as whatever native brows they're gonna have in that area.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_08: But for my area, if there's a cover crop and it's rye, then uh yeah, I know they're gonna be all over those rye fields.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_08: You can see that with shed season, walking out there in in early February, late January, etc.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, there's antlers all over the place inside of those rye fields in comparison to other places.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_08: So about shed hunting that property compared to shed hunting my property.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_08: Shed hunting my property, I could walk 10 to 15 miles and find an antler and a half.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_08: Whereas if you shed hunt that property, you can find twenty on a on a UPV in like 10 seconds.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: So all about that.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: I had a little bit of a wow moment watching one of your videos on white deal research.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's experts everywhere.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, the best time is right over the top of the best time for the white research.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: From your research, it's it's it's kind of more about the temperature.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I know we talked a little bit about temp, but not all.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think according to what you're saying, I don't think all cold front of the theme, are they?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, no, that's that's a really important thing to distinguish for your area.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_08: And it and there's I I feel like I didn't do a good enough job explaining it in in that video because it really needs fleshed out in the fact that whatever that high temperature is, it's it's location dependent, right?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_08: So if you took a Florida deer and you transplanted it into my area, that Florida deer might be like, oh my goodness, this is beautiful.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_08: 90 degree weather.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_08: Like I I love 90 degree weather.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_08: This is awesome.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_08: So like that deer is you know daylight active all day long.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_08: So you have to understand what's hot for you know, and I think uh someone left a comment that they've always used the census as like if they walk outside and it feels exhaustively hot, then the deer probably aren't moving in that in that moment in time, and it's pretty close to accurate.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_08: If it if it feels super hot to you, then it probably feels super hot to them and they're not gonna be moving.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_08: And the biggest thing about that temperature fluctuations that I've seen, and this is you know, in that video I really specialize in focus on the early season.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_08: And that's because in the early season as a as a bow hunter, I've always I've always focused all of my efforts in the evening.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_08: That's it's very common.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_08: Everyone they like their evening time that evening time feeding pattern that's what they want to get on whenever they're trying to kill a buck in in the early season.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_08: And from what I've seen, and this is just from from my area in southern Missouri, uh morning activity is like three to four X in in terms of how how daylight active those deer are.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_08: It's significantly greater in the morning.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_08: And that if if you just look at the temperature for your day, I mean it's pretty it's pretty simple and explanatory.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, like today, right now, in where I'm located in southern Missouri, we'll just pull up the temperature app.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_08: It's this easy.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_08: This morning at 7 a.m.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_08: it was sixty-five degrees.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_08: By right now, which is eleven a.m., it's eighty-four degrees.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_08: At 2 p.m., it's gonna be 92 degrees.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_08: So we we had a fluctuation today.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_08: This is just a great example, I pulled the weather app, from 65 degrees all the way to 95 degrees is gonna be the peak at 4 p.m.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm going to assume I wasn't flying this morning as much as I could have.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_08: I'm going to assume a lot of those deer started bedding down around 10 to 11 a.m.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_08: That's gonna be their time frame.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_08: As that temperature started rising really hard throughout the 80s, they're like, alright, screw this, it's gonna get hot in s in a second.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_08: They backed out and they bedded down.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_08: And they're gonna stay bedded down all the way until it looks like around 5.30 to 550.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_08: That's whenever the temperature is gonna start to drop.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_08: And I was in in this setting, it's not the same as, you know, that where I mentioned mature bucks, they it appeared that they were starting to get up right as the temperature starts to drop within 10 minutes of of the gradient.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_08: Whenever temperatures are crazy hot like this, that doesn't seem to be the case as much.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_08: It seems to be like 30 minutes after the temperatures start to drop, because they they let that first five degrees drop off hard, and then you can feel all those cooling drafts and everything start to move in a little bit more.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_08: So around 6 50 p.m.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_08: today, whenever it's 90 degrees, there's a five degree temp drop from from the hive today.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_08: I would say most of the deer are going to start moving.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_08: And then that leaves them, uh let's see, around an hour of daylight remaining.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_08: So there would be an hour of evening daylight movement, whereas in comparison, uh sun up this morning was around 6 uh 30 a.m.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_08: And I think they moved all the way until around 10 30 a.m.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_08: So there's there's four four hours of movement compared to one hour of movement, and that's where your four X times the greater movement comes.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_08: And that's just uh that was as easy as as an example gets.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_08: So I I I and I and that's that's one of those settings where I would love to be able to just say there's a hundred percent chance, and I would say I would be I'd be so close to a hundred percent accurate on that for this area for today that around four hours of movement was whenever all the morning activity took place from 6 30 to 10 30, and then there's gonna be a little bit close to an hour of evening movement this evening.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I I just I almost guarantee it, but like I said, never say 100% as pertains to stuff like this this year.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_08: There could be a deer.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, another thing to point out to that is uh these deer they're gonna be moving throughout the middle of the day, they're gonna be shifting the shade, moving their beds, moving it back into further and cover whenever the sun is shifting throughout the day because they can't sit in one underneath one tree in one side of it all day long, so they're gonna have to move.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_08: And then some of those deer I've seen, you know, fawns, I've seen a couple mature bucks do it, um, especially does and fawns, they'll move out and they'll just go stand in a pond in the middle of the day for like 30 minutes or 45 minutes, and then they'll back out of the pond and walk back over to their shade cover.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_08: But oftentimes those ponds are completely invisible to human activity.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_08: They're you know, n there's no line of sight unless a human stopped the vehicle and walked off the dirt road and looked over the edge down into the pond.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_08: So um it's a pretty remote uh little area that receives near zero human pressure that they're doing that that type of activity in.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I could keep you on here.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think the biggest mistake?
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think the biggest mistake they make deer?
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think it is?
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I I mean I think there's there's a lot of mistakes that could be out there.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_08: But if I if I'm basing it just purely off of the average guy, if there's anyone out there that's listened to me before, they're probably already they already know what I'm gonna say, and it would be uh chasing trail cameras a little too heavily.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_08: So I I think tra I think trail cameras are are an amazing tool, and I think that there's a significant amount that can be learned from them in your private setting.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_08: But I see a lot of guys and I know a lot of guys and I've been that guy where you have trail cameras out, and I mean the simplest explanation for it is that let's say across the thousand acres uh over here, I want to go hunt a thousand acres over here, and I've got ten cameras on that thousand acres, so one one per 100 acres.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_08: If I get pictures, you know, this morning and I decide I'm gonna go hunt this evening, this it's early season evening, I'm not gonna go hunt the morning.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_08: So I get pictures this morning though, and camera A, you know, camera one has a picture of a mature buck, and all nine other cameras don't have a picture of a mature buck, then I let the camera A, I let that one camera that had a picture of mature buck.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_08: completely influence my decision on where I'm gonna go and hunt that evening.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_08: That becomes my guideline for what I'm gonna be doing that day.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_08: And you know there's some people that use it a little bit better than that and they're they're capable to kind of around it and know that like, well, you know that you're he was he was there this morning but he might not be there he but he's gonna be in that area this evening.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_08: So you're not focusing right on top of the camera but you're still focusing in that area because you've seen that's where this one mature buck was at that moment in time.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_08: And I think that a lot of guys they let that control them just a little bit too much.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_08: And you know I've I've done a couple of small form trail camera research projects, nothing crazy large form yet.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_08: But you know the the most obvious thing to me was especially acorns even whenever we have an acorns like I mentioned.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_08: Um I would have a trail camera plates on a on a rich I had three or four plates on the rich system.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_08: Maybe it was five, I don't remember but I would get like three pictures of deer that evening and in that landscape with my drone there was like 25 to 30 deer on that one ridge system in that location that you would have had the potential to see.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_08: But if you if you back out and you think about it as a guy that didn't have a drone and you look at the trail cam pictures you got and it's like a pretty slow even maybe a couple not that active but in reality the biggest buck that I've ever recorded today with standing thirty yards from that trail camera for two hours that evening just browsing in the snow.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_08: And you have no clue that that took place.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_08: So allowing that trail camera to dictate purely dictate your decisions I think is a poor decision.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_08: I think that there can you know there can definitely be situations where like it it is more important than anything.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_08: If you if you have a mature buck and he's walking by your camera every single morning, every single evening and he does it for a couple days in a row, there's probably something to it you might you might have you might have hit the lottery and put your camera in a grade spot and like that using there every single day.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_08: You should probably try to find a way to find it.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_08: But if if you're just getting a taken kind of one off pictures a couple pictures a week of mature buck in an area I mean he's using a large portion of that landscape.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_08: You need to understand how he's traversing the landscape and start backing out and and reading deer sign going in in person and seeing things with your eyes and using things like Onyx, Onyx and the and terrain X and LINAR and things like that and and mapping out how deer can actually traverse across your terrain and trying to find those funnels and the high side drainages are really deep and and finding ways to get in those spots and hunt them versus going and diving right on top of your trail camera because you got a picture of a mature buck.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's that's probably one of the biggest mistakes I think.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well said and well put like I said I could talk to you for hours I you know everybody associates me with turkey hunting.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: I get tied up in that deer hunting too especially bow hunting.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_02: Of course I've spent most of my life filming it and then the second half putting grandkids and kids and all that on deer and I love it.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm just fascinated with it.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now best way to follow you talk about your channel what's the name of it all that kind of stuff how can how can we keep up with Derek?
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah yeah white whitetail research across the board I tried to make it as simple as possible and um pretty much most of the stuff I post right now is on on YouTube.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_08: Um I've I've been trying to get into other forms of social media.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_08: I don't have any of them on my phone so it's not readily available to me so I don't think about it that often but I do have a Facebook and I have an Instagram and I think I even have a TikTok.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_08: My wife claimed the white research on TikTok a long time.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_08: I've got it all and and then on top of that if you just look at WhiteTill Research you'll see I've I've got a website and I'm gonna start posting uh kind of short stories and things like that onto the website.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_08: Uh little field note content type things there.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_08: That's also a great way to contact me if you want to go to my website have a contact page whitaleresearch.com.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_08: And uh yeah I think that's that's kind of the main I mean if you look me up you're gonna find me it's uh I'll I'll pop up all over the place.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_08: So Whitale Research.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna keep twisting your arm so you work on your Facebook a little bit.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_08: A lot of people follow me on Facebook so I'm gonna twist your arm on that but I gotta tell you I I made a bunch of shorts and I was going to post them and then I just never I never got to you but I will I will I will start posting you need to you need to do better on Facebook.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_02: And look if you go to his channel on YouTube and if you if you're an older guy and you can't find it just hand the phone to your grandson and say go to YouTube and find it.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when you find his channel subscribe I can't tell you how many there's me there there's so many people like listen to this podcast that don't download it.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well if you go watch the video and don't subscribe he probably don't get credit for it.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_02: So if you go there subscribe you're gonna learn some stuff I'm telling you it passed my cheese meter.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_02: So Derek I want to thank you for your time I I I feel like I could keep you on here for hours and hours so I I want to revisit maybe we'll do it later in the season one of these days when your rut is over with up there ours doesn't start down here till Christmas or after I'm gonna I'm gonna get you to come down here.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can leave your drone at home and just go bow hunting with the old man.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna throw that invite out.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm amazed that I'm amazed we didn't even talk about you know right now I I've been doing coyote research for the last 70 days so you were able to keep my brain off of coyote research which is pretty difficult because when my brain gets you know trap traveling down that avenue to where it's all I think about it it's pretty difficult for me to talk about anything else.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm predispositioned to think about turkeys so you know I we may do a whole nother podcast on that.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_08: I had to focus one the first time you started talking you said something about a muscle car my mind went to muscle cars because I'm I'm all into that so yeah I've got a I've got a secretive I'm I'll plug this I've got a secretive channel out there that nobody nobody knows about and I've never really talked about it much but if you look at Cam Hearst Cam Hearst I never show my face on it.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_08: I started this car channel as a bit with my dad he was he was he he didn't think he thought that I got lucky with Whitale Research and he was like you're a punk and you just got lucky on the first drive you couldn't do it again and I said give me a topic buddy and he's like alright old cars that's his gig and I was like alright I'll do old card give me a month and I'll think about it.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_08: So I thought about it and I made so far I've made two videos and uh I haven't posted on there in a couple months because your season's coming up and also white research is kind of my gig so I don't know how long how much I'll continue the Cam Hearst thing but I mean they're basically cinematography films.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_02: I never talk I never show my face and uh the channel's got over five thousand subscribers and first video got like two hundred and first video got two hundred and fifty sixty thousand views on it and so then I went back to my dad and I was like look at that punk yeah maybe I didn't get so lucky yeah what a great name Hearst Shifters I mean who who who hadn't dreamed of having a Hearst force beat in their car and it can that's my little Elias there Cam Hearst Cam Hearst uh Lauren pulled it up and showed it to me guess what you've getting another follower right now as soon as I hang up so Derek it's been a pleasure man I love watching your stuff again I've got it in the entertainment side uh you know as far as Bob just coming at you from this and that don't worry about it there's haters everywhere envy is a terrible thing so you just keep doing what you're doing and you and I will visit again brother I appreciate your time for sure absolutely thanks for having me on man thank you brother if you enjoy listening to Fistful of Dirt podcast then you've probably heard give us a rating leave us a review if you like it.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_04: Well if you like it here's what you can do open your iTunes podcast app available in the App Store if you don't already have it on your phone and type in Fistful of Dirt.
• 1:13:52
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• 1:13:57
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• 1:14:02
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• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for listening.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_06: We'll see you in seven days God bless America Uncle Ted reporting for duty my life is a fistful of dirt and I'm a Mossyoak celebrant of truth logic and common sense right here on the Mossyoak Fistful of Dirt broadcast God bless the Spirit Blood Brothers you're listening to Fistful of Dirt the official podcast of Mossy Oak Properties find your favorite place visit mossyoak properties dot com busting I love it.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_04: Man he I like how he talked about not everything's peer reviewed and this and that and I'm like sometimes people don't want you coming up with that new innovative information because it could disprove some things that they've done in the past.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_04: But why why can't we all just be a fan of what's accurate?
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the most entertaining things ever.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_02: And look I I went to the uh whatever the turkey thing was yeah and I I had to keep my phone on the SARS listening to those guys.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it's fascinating stuff but his is just he talks about it and he shows you what they're doing from that drone up there whatever 800 feet and it's like I didn't know that.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that neat and what he is I'm telling you what he's found is what everybody knew they are very individual.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right like people that's exactly right.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_02: But the fact that he talks about it and then shows you is just absolutely fascinating.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I I just roll some dice and say he's gonna be back on here again.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_02: I liked it.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah people worry about drones.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's why in the middle of that I made him talk about uh he only flies where he has permission.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_02: He don't fly over other people's property and stuff.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_02: He's just doing research.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_04: And he kind of tested that how close can I get where where am I not too invasive and he adheres to it.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah he uh I just think it's fascinating stuff.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_02: And uh hey I'm I'm a drone guy.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_04: What a perspective.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_02: I you know I don't use mine for that I ain't good enough.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_02: He at some point he's talking about uh line of sight.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I fly.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_02: If I lose sight of that drone man I'm sweating and he's way past that with thermal and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_02: But hey you know knowledge is power.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Whether it helps you deer hunting might not who knows but it's something fun to think about.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_02: It is fun and relax and watch some of his stuff.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And like I say Whitetail Research on YouTube.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have I don't have a dog in that fight but if you go there hit the subscribe button he's trying to make a living working hard he's working hard and he's very young and he's a bow hunter.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_02: We need all we can get so with that said I want everybody to send me I'm gonna make some kind of post somebody send me a comment I this worked one time when I needed rain and I wanted everybody to send me a rain dance.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_02: I want somebody to send me a coal front dance something we can just bust it.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Just get it under 95.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man you know we I don't know how many days we hit 100 boom boom boom boom and I yeah I can't remember having that many in a row but you know it is what it is.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_02: One more comment I'm gonna let you go I made a post about getting all the food plots ready.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right uh you know I sprayed them I got everything exactly where I want it and I said now my next move is to hook to the the drill and be on standby and I got lit up because it's too early.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Remember them army worms.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I didn't word that right I'm not planting my food plots right now I'm just I'm sitting on go ready to go right because Lauren's got me scared to death with this El Nino that I'm gonna be planting through the snow by Halloween.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I just she's keeping up with that and look I mean the more I scroll the more I see about it.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's pretty interesting.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah it's pretty interesting stuff so I'm just saying that I'm gonna be ready you know if I see something coming weird I'm gonna all I gotta everything's ready all I gotta do is crank that tractor go to the food plot and drop the drill and and let it eat but no I'm not planting my food plots in the middle of August so get that out of the way.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_02: So for me and our weather girl Laureen keeping up with the El Nino from the Camo Cave from Mossy Oak Mossy Oak Properties God bless all y'all we'll see you in seven days find your favorite place.com