Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 957: How the Experts Kill Mature Bucks in October

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Ep. 957: How the Experts Kill Mature Bucks in October · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
0:04
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
0:09
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
0:13
Speaker 1: Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
0:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week, on
0:23
Speaker 2: the show, I am conducting a comprehensive review of the
0:28
Speaker 2: many different tactics for killing mature bucks in October that
0:31
Speaker 2: have been shared with me over the course of Wired
0:34
Speaker 2: to Hunt's seventeen year history. Really all right, welcome back
0:41
Speaker 2: to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
0:43
Speaker 2: First Life. Today in the show, we are kicking off
0:47
Speaker 2: the month of October with a little bit of a
0:49
Speaker 2: different kind of episode. Today, we are going to be
0:53
Speaker 2: reviewing the entire month. We're going to be discussing ideas
0:57
Speaker 2: and tactics and strategies that you can use from October first,
1:01
Speaker 2: which if you're listening to this right now when I'm
1:03
Speaker 2: releasing it, that would have been yesterday. But you can
1:06
Speaker 2: you can use these tactics from early October all the
1:09
Speaker 2: way through to Halloween. And these are going to be
1:12
Speaker 2: ideas that are not coming from me. They're not coming
1:15
Speaker 2: from just one expert guest. As we've done on many
1:18
Speaker 2: different episodes, this is going to be a set of
1:21
Speaker 2: ideas that is going to pull from hundreds of guests
1:25
Speaker 2: and at least, you know, a handful of core people
1:28
Speaker 2: who have significantly influenced myself and many of you, because
1:33
Speaker 2: I have been running this thing Wired to Hunt or
1:36
Speaker 2: somewhere around seventeen or eighteen years now, and I've talked
1:40
Speaker 2: to hundreds and hundreds of different die hard, incredibly serious
1:45
Speaker 2: and successful whitetail hunters from all across the country, and
1:49
Speaker 2: over the course of that, I've gotten this very unique,
1:52
Speaker 2: high level, kind of thirty thousand foot overview of the
1:56
Speaker 2: many different ways to do this thing we call deer hunting.
2:00
Speaker 2: Maybe if there's been any one takeaway for me over
2:02
Speaker 2: the last almost twenty years, it's been that there are
2:05
Speaker 2: many different ways to skin this cat. There's not just
2:09
Speaker 2: one approach to killing deer, or one approach to successfully
2:13
Speaker 2: tagging big bucks, or one single way you have to
2:17
Speaker 2: go about things if you want to kill mature bucks.
2:19
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different ideas out there and many
2:23
Speaker 2: different of these processes and approaches that can work. So
2:28
Speaker 2: I was recently struck by this realization that I've had
2:31
Speaker 2: the very unique and fortunate opportunity to have talked to
2:35
Speaker 2: so many of these different people, not just here on
2:38
Speaker 2: the podcast, but also in real life. I've gotten to
2:40
Speaker 2: read dozens of different books from these people. I've gotten
2:44
Speaker 2: to consume hundreds and hundreds of different articles from these people.
2:47
Speaker 2: And because of my job, I've had this unique chance
2:52
Speaker 2: to just absorb so much of this, and I've tried
2:55
Speaker 2: to share a lot of that over the years in
2:57
Speaker 2: the podcast. But you know, in any one of our
2:59
Speaker 2: episodes is we're usually just hearing from one person, and
3:02
Speaker 2: that one person has their one unique set of ideas,
3:05
Speaker 2: but it's it's kind of narrow. We're getting these little
3:07
Speaker 2: narrow slices of how to do this. We're getting a
3:12
Speaker 2: small window, as if you're looking through a straw at
3:14
Speaker 2: what's really a very very big picture. So I got
3:17
Speaker 2: to thinking, what if we could zoom out on occasion,
3:21
Speaker 2: on specific issues, or on certain times of the year
3:24
Speaker 2: and get that bigger picture, not just from one person's perspective,
3:28
Speaker 2: but get a bunch of people's perspectives, get that high
3:31
Speaker 2: level overview. There's there's a process. I guess there's an
3:36
Speaker 2: example of this outside of the hunting world, but in
3:39
Speaker 2: like the science world, and they call us a meta analysis,
3:42
Speaker 2: which is which is a fancy term for basically taking
3:46
Speaker 2: a bunch of different studies and combining the results and
3:51
Speaker 2: looking at all of these different studies together to come
3:54
Speaker 2: to conclusions. So rather than just one single scientific study
3:57
Speaker 2: telling us, well, you know, the world is X, they
4:00
Speaker 2: instead will go, let's go look at every single study
4:03
Speaker 2: on this topic. Let's look at a hundred different studies
4:05
Speaker 2: on this topic, and then use that aggregate to come
4:08
Speaker 2: to hopefully a better conclusion or a more diverse set
4:12
Speaker 2: of options to help us understand this topic. That's kind
4:16
Speaker 2: of what a meta analysis is. There's also something called
4:19
Speaker 2: a literature review that's kind of similar to this, where
4:22
Speaker 2: like in the academic world, they'll take in twenty thirty
4:26
Speaker 2: forty different published studies on an issue or a topic,
4:30
Speaker 2: study all those and then publish kind of the high
4:33
Speaker 2: level takeaways from that literature review of everything. That's kind
4:36
Speaker 2: of what we're doing today. What I want to do
4:38
Speaker 2: is talk about the month of October, how to kill
4:41
Speaker 2: mature box in the month of October, And I'm going
4:43
Speaker 2: to pull from all of these hundreds and hundreds of
4:46
Speaker 2: conversations I've had with these different experts, the hundreds of
4:48
Speaker 2: different articles I've read with these experts, the dozens of
4:51
Speaker 2: different books you can see behind me. I've got a
4:53
Speaker 2: lot of books. I've read a lot of different perspectives
4:56
Speaker 2: on hunting deer. And then pulling also from these podcast conversations,
5:01
Speaker 2: these videos, all the different content that I've been fortunate
5:04
Speaker 2: enough to either create with these people or consume from
5:07
Speaker 2: these people. So I want to walk through the month
5:10
Speaker 2: of October. I want to share with you what I've
5:12
Speaker 2: learned from these people, cite some specific examples from these people.
5:16
Speaker 2: We're even going to look at very specific quotes and
5:20
Speaker 2: excerpts from books, from podcasts, from videos, hearing from these
5:25
Speaker 2: different folks who are consistently having success killing deer in October.
5:30
Speaker 2: How they do it, when they do it, why they
5:33
Speaker 2: do it the way they do. That's what we're covering
5:35
Speaker 2: here today, and I'm going to try to synthesize all
5:38
Speaker 2: of that into an hour hour and a half of
5:41
Speaker 2: highly concentrated, highly relevant and useful information so you can
5:45
Speaker 2: listen to this today and be armed with a set
5:48
Speaker 2: of tools to help you throughout this next month of
5:51
Speaker 2: hunting that are not provided just by you know, John Aberhart,
5:54
Speaker 2: not just from Adam Hayes, not just from Dan Enfalt
5:57
Speaker 2: or Andre Toquisto or whoever it might be, but from
6:00
Speaker 2: all these folks. That's the goal with today's podcast, and
6:04
Speaker 2: that's what we're going to do. So it's you and
6:05
Speaker 2: me talking, but we're pulling from this wide array of
6:10
Speaker 2: different ideas about how to kill deer in October. Now,
6:14
Speaker 2: very quickly, before we get into that, I want to
6:17
Speaker 2: give you one quick housekeeping item. If you are listening
6:19
Speaker 2: to this the week it dropped, this is dropping on
6:22
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6:26
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6:29
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6:33
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6:39
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6:41
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6:45
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6:48
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6:51
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6:55
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6:58
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7:01
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7:07
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7:10
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7:13
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7:16
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7:20
Speaker 2: design their Beta Pro grunt tube. And then within the
7:23
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7:25
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7:27
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7:29
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7:31
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7:34
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7:37
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7:40
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7:43
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7:47
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7:50
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7:52
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7:56
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8:00
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8:02
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8:05
Speaker 2: and this is a custom chosen black rubber bellow tube.
8:09
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8:12
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8:15
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8:18
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8:21
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8:23
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8:30
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8:35
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8:38
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8:42
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8:44
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8:47
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8:50
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8:52
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8:54
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8:57
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9:00
Speaker 2: discussion for me. Thanks for dealing with that today. The
9:04
Speaker 2: meta analysis, the literature review, the deep dive, the full
9:08
Speaker 2: month comprehensive everything I've ever heard about Killing mature bux
9:13
Speaker 2: in October begins now, So there are I would say
9:20
Speaker 2: three brackets, three phases of the month of October that
9:24
Speaker 2: many of us kind of break this month into. The
9:28
Speaker 2: first being the early part of the year, the second
9:30
Speaker 2: being you know, kind of the lull. We'll talk about that,
9:33
Speaker 2: but folks kind of discuss the mid October as this
9:36
Speaker 2: October low. And then finally there's that last phase of
9:38
Speaker 2: the month, which which many people describe as the pre rut.
9:41
Speaker 2: This is like that pre rut portion of October, at
9:44
Speaker 2: least if you live, you know, on the upper two
9:46
Speaker 2: thirds of the nation, that's going to be the case
9:48
Speaker 2: for you. So I'm going to kind of organize this
9:51
Speaker 2: discussion around this three part framework. Early seasons is the
9:55
Speaker 2: beginning the early October months. You know, for some people,
9:58
Speaker 2: if your season open to September, this is no longer
10:01
Speaker 2: early season for you. So some of this will be
10:03
Speaker 2: a little bit different for those of you who open
10:04
Speaker 2: October first, as I do in Michigan, versus if you
10:08
Speaker 2: opened in September first, as might be the case in
10:11
Speaker 2: Nebraska or the Dakotas or these other states that open
10:14
Speaker 2: either in early or mid September. All that said, when
10:18
Speaker 2: it comes to the early part of October on average. Right,
10:23
Speaker 2: if we look at what most deer are doing across
10:25
Speaker 2: the country, these deer are still on a pretty steady
10:29
Speaker 2: bed to feed pattern. So what that means is they
10:32
Speaker 2: have a handful of places they are bedding, and they
10:34
Speaker 2: have a handful of key food sources in early October,
10:38
Speaker 2: and their life basically revolves around those two things, going
10:41
Speaker 2: to feed in the evenings and overnight, and then going
10:44
Speaker 2: back to a safe place to bed during the day.
10:47
Speaker 2: It's relatively consistent. It is relatively small in scope of
10:52
Speaker 2: space and scale of space. Right, most deer have a
10:56
Speaker 2: relatively small home range at this time of year. You know,
10:59
Speaker 2: for bucks, it's you know, likely going to be less
11:01
Speaker 2: than a square mile six hundred and forty acres less.
11:03
Speaker 2: Probably that core that the highest percentage, since like eighty
11:06
Speaker 2: percent of the time they're probably spending in less than
11:08
Speaker 2: two hundred acres. Many studies have shown give or take
11:12
Speaker 2: somewhere in that ballpark. So in the early season, you
11:15
Speaker 2: have a situation where you can, if you do the work,
11:19
Speaker 2: if you have the scouting in the intel, if you
11:21
Speaker 2: understand the area or your local deer herd, you can
11:24
Speaker 2: go into a hunt having a pretty good idea of
11:26
Speaker 2: where these deer might be and where they might be headed,
11:29
Speaker 2: at least a handful of ideas that are that are
11:31
Speaker 2: pretty sound. So because of that, there's a unique opportunity.
11:36
Speaker 2: There's two things going for it. Number One, what I
11:37
Speaker 2: just describe, these deer are relatively patternable because of that
11:42
Speaker 2: bed to feed, bed to feed, bed to feed pattern
11:44
Speaker 2: that has been going on all through the summer through
11:47
Speaker 2: most of September. Things start to shift in September because
11:50
Speaker 2: of velvet peeling as food sources and habitat starts changing,
11:54
Speaker 2: but usually for that first portion of October, we're still
11:57
Speaker 2: in that phase as long as you know, things haven't
12:00
Speaker 2: been thrown totally out of whack by hunting pressure, which
12:04
Speaker 2: if you open September that could be the case. But
12:06
Speaker 2: if you're in Michigan or New York, or Iowa or Illinois,
12:11
Speaker 2: are any of these states that open in October, or
12:13
Speaker 2: you know, late late September, you should still have some
12:17
Speaker 2: of that early season magic where these deer have not
12:20
Speaker 2: been yet significantly pressured and are still on a bed
12:23
Speaker 2: defeed pattern. That is a big thing in your favor.
12:27
Speaker 2: Number Two, you have the fact that they are doing
12:32
Speaker 2: that same thing over and over again. So consistency of
12:35
Speaker 2: behavior with lack of hunting pressure means that you have
12:41
Speaker 2: daylight activity that's somewhat consistent, so you can take advantage
12:45
Speaker 2: of it. That's why I look at the early days
12:47
Speaker 2: of October is one of your best chances to have
12:50
Speaker 2: success throughout the whole season. Now, if you were opening
12:53
Speaker 2: in September, those first couple of days of September were
12:55
Speaker 2: probably the case. All that said, I look at this
12:59
Speaker 2: first phase of October over as a chance for a
13:01
Speaker 2: big swing, as a chance for you know, a couple
13:04
Speaker 2: hunts that might be extra special. I'm willing to go
13:07
Speaker 2: to better locations if the conditions are right, if the
13:10
Speaker 2: timing is right. I'm willing to take a trip out
13:12
Speaker 2: of state somewhere that I think could be pretty good
13:15
Speaker 2: for those first couple days of their season. Because again,
13:17
Speaker 2: this is a special opportunity. And I'm not unique in
13:20
Speaker 2: saying that there's a lot of people to look at
13:22
Speaker 2: this early October time periods as a real slam dunk.
13:26
Speaker 2: You know, folks like Adam Hayes looks at early October
13:29
Speaker 2: is one of your best chances. The druries talk about
13:32
Speaker 2: this time period late September or early October, as deer
13:36
Speaker 2: start changing into green food sources. They love this time
13:39
Speaker 2: of year. John Eberhart here in Michigan has always looked
13:43
Speaker 2: at the first couple days of this season as a
13:45
Speaker 2: slam dunk opportunity. There are just you know, it's pretty
13:49
Speaker 2: darn consistent. If you open in the beginning of October,
13:52
Speaker 2: those first couple days are a high odds great chance.
13:55
Speaker 2: So if you're listening to this on Thursday, October second,
13:59
Speaker 2: this Friday, or Saturday or Sunday, you know, the third,
14:03
Speaker 2: or fourth or fifth, you might still have some of that.
14:06
Speaker 2: Being the first weekend days of the hunting season, you
14:09
Speaker 2: might still have some deer that are on their bed
14:10
Speaker 2: defeed patterns and have not yet been blown out of
14:13
Speaker 2: there or impacted by hunting pressure. Keep that in mind
14:16
Speaker 2: in these coming days. Now. There are also some major
14:21
Speaker 2: habitat changes underway which are going to be something you
14:24
Speaker 2: can take advantage of. Or if you aren't you in
14:27
Speaker 2: the right places, or don't have the right food sources,
14:29
Speaker 2: or aren't aware of these changes, it might be a
14:32
Speaker 2: reason why you're not going to have success. So deer,
14:35
Speaker 2: as we discussed their lives revolve around their stomach right now,
14:39
Speaker 2: bed to food, bed to food. So understanding what the
14:43
Speaker 2: key food sources in early October and really almost all
14:46
Speaker 2: the way through this month is very important, maybe the
14:49
Speaker 2: most important thing to understand as this month goes along,
14:52
Speaker 2: at least until we get to that rut phase at
14:55
Speaker 2: the end of the month. In early October, you've got
14:58
Speaker 2: a few things going on an egg country, at least,
15:01
Speaker 2: crops are changing. The green soybeans have defoliated, They've dried
15:07
Speaker 2: down throughout the month of September, in many parts of
15:09
Speaker 2: the country at least, so you probably have deer that
15:11
Speaker 2: have moved off those bean fields. You maybe even in
15:15
Speaker 2: some parts of the country are having those bean fields
15:17
Speaker 2: being harvested already, especially in a year like this where
15:20
Speaker 2: it's been very dry, across the large parts of the country,
15:22
Speaker 2: beans are already being harvested. I've already seen, like right
15:25
Speaker 2: outside my window there's a harvested bean field. It's not
15:27
Speaker 2: even October yet. That's happening all across the country. So
15:30
Speaker 2: that's changing things. Corn is drying down. You have corn
15:33
Speaker 2: in your area, That drying of the corn is going
15:36
Speaker 2: to make that more and more attractive deer as well. Finally,
15:39
Speaker 2: you also have mass hidden ground. Depends again on the
15:42
Speaker 2: part of the country you live in, but in many
15:45
Speaker 2: parts many states, you know, acorns are dropping through parts
15:48
Speaker 2: of September and definitely throughout October. That might be peaking
15:51
Speaker 2: in some places very soon. So having a sound understanding
15:56
Speaker 2: of what your acorn crop looks like. Understanding all those
15:58
Speaker 2: things very key time of year. Finally, soft mast is
16:03
Speaker 2: often starting to drop now or already has been dropping
16:05
Speaker 2: for a little bit. Apple trees, per simmons, crab, apples, pears,
16:10
Speaker 2: whatever that might be in your neck of the woods.
16:13
Speaker 2: If you have soft mast, if you have fruit, understanding
16:16
Speaker 2: when those are dropping and taking advantage of that window
16:19
Speaker 2: very key. So I want to share with you two
16:22
Speaker 2: different perspectives on food sources in early October. One is
16:27
Speaker 2: going to be from Mark and Terry Drury with Drewy Outdoors.
16:31
Speaker 2: We've had some very good conversations with them over the years.
16:34
Speaker 2: My first podcast ever with Mark, Episode sixty three of
16:38
Speaker 2: the podcast has a great review of really each phase
16:41
Speaker 2: of October and each phase of the year. Highly suggest
16:44
Speaker 2: going back to listen to that or my masterclass with
16:47
Speaker 2: him about patterning deer. That was a really good one
16:51
Speaker 2: lots to review there. Let me play for you a
16:54
Speaker 2: very brief excerpt from one of their explanations about this
16:57
Speaker 2: early October timeframe they call this green Pastures, is like
17:01
Speaker 2: their kind of title for this phase of the season.
17:04
Speaker 2: For them, it runs from late September through early October.
17:07
Speaker 2: But I think this will be very relevant for many
17:09
Speaker 2: folks when they're considering how to hunt and what deer
17:12
Speaker 2: might be doing in agg country for that first maybe
17:15
Speaker 2: ten or so days of the month of October. Play
17:18
Speaker 2: list for here real quick.
17:20
Speaker 3: I love that phase. I also love the phase that
17:22
Speaker 3: follows it, which is Greener Pasture September twenty fifth through
17:25
Speaker 3: October to twelve. To me, greener pastors is one of
17:28
Speaker 3: the best phases to kill a mature buck because there's
17:32
Speaker 3: a defoliation that goes on during this phase throughout the Midwest.
17:35
Speaker 3: And I'm only talking in terms of the hunting that
17:38
Speaker 3: I've observed here in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas. Well,
17:41
Speaker 3: those beans that were planted back in May and June
17:44
Speaker 3: eventually turned from green to brown and defoliate. There is
17:47
Speaker 3: a major switch within the herd to go to the
17:50
Speaker 3: next green food source and if you've got that green
17:53
Speaker 3: food source close to where you've seen the tur buck
17:56
Speaker 3: all summer, you're going to go through what I call
17:58
Speaker 3: green and green transfer. There's a good chance he's going
18:00
Speaker 3: to transfer from that green beans field into your green plot.
18:03
Speaker 3: That phase to me is want to the best, not
18:06
Speaker 3: the whole year.
18:07
Speaker 2: Okay, before we go too much further with that, the
18:09
Speaker 2: key thing there being they're shifting from green to green.
18:12
Speaker 2: They're shifting off those green beans, They're shifting off whatever
18:15
Speaker 2: the crops are to supplemental food sources. So if you
18:19
Speaker 2: have a food plot, or if there are other green
18:21
Speaker 2: fields in your area, like maybe there's a cover crop,
18:24
Speaker 2: or maybe there's an alfalfa field that still is is
18:26
Speaker 2: green and hasn't been harvested, maybe there are clover pastures
18:29
Speaker 2: in your area, if you can find that green that
18:32
Speaker 2: these deer are shifting to, huge opportunity, great thing to
18:36
Speaker 2: be keying in on. I'm fortunate that I have a
18:38
Speaker 2: couple green food plots on a number of properties that
18:40
Speaker 2: I hunt. That's something I'll certainly be keying on as well.
18:43
Speaker 2: But even more attractive in some cases than green food
18:48
Speaker 2: plots and green food sources at this time of year,
18:50
Speaker 2: are acorns. It's really hard to beat the massed crop,
18:54
Speaker 2: especially acorns or something very like a candy crop like apples.
18:58
Speaker 2: Somebody who has talked a lot of about this, who
19:00
Speaker 2: spends a lot of time planning for that is John Eberhart.
19:05
Speaker 2: John Eberhart, of course, is a diehard deer hunter for Michigan,
19:08
Speaker 2: an author, a frequent guest on this podcast and many others,
19:13
Speaker 2: and one of his key approaches to early October is
19:17
Speaker 2: to rotate through a series of food related tree stand
19:21
Speaker 2: locations that are back in the cover. So this is
19:24
Speaker 2: a key point if you are hunting or mature buck
19:28
Speaker 2: in early October in a place with heavy hunting pressure,
19:32
Speaker 2: the key thing is to find that attractive food source
19:35
Speaker 2: back and cover back in a place where these deer
19:38
Speaker 2: are feeling safe moving in daylight. The dreary situation is
19:42
Speaker 2: they discussed it, you know, going onto these big green
19:44
Speaker 2: food plots that works in the area of ad country
19:48
Speaker 2: where you have sanctuaries like they have, where you have
19:51
Speaker 2: managed locations that are not getting pounded by other people,
19:54
Speaker 2: or maybe even in Michigan the first day or two
19:57
Speaker 2: of the season before it gets pounded. But once you
19:59
Speaker 2: get beyond that or if you're on public land or
20:02
Speaker 2: something along those lines, you need to find this food
20:05
Speaker 2: because they still want that food, but they want to
20:07
Speaker 2: also feel safe, so they want to be away from
20:09
Speaker 2: the road, they want to be away from other hunters,
20:11
Speaker 2: they want to be in security cover. So I'll read
20:14
Speaker 2: to you what John describes as the key things he
20:17
Speaker 2: is considering for food sources at this time of year.
20:21
Speaker 2: He says in his book The Ultimate Guide to diy Bucks,
20:25
Speaker 2: Volume one, he says, much of our spring scouting is
20:29
Speaker 2: focused on finding early season mass and fruit tree locations
20:33
Speaker 2: in hopes that they'll offer food in the fall. What
20:36
Speaker 2: he does to confirm that is he scouts in the
20:38
Speaker 2: spring to find these food source locations, and then he
20:40
Speaker 2: does a speed scout just before the hunting season to
20:43
Speaker 2: check those spots out and confirm is that white oak
20:46
Speaker 2: tree producing acorns, is that old apple tree producing apples,
20:49
Speaker 2: et cetera. Then he'll know exactly where these places are.
20:53
Speaker 2: He needs a long list of food source sites like this.
20:56
Speaker 2: Then he will rotate through them, so he might have
20:59
Speaker 2: ten or fIF fifteen different massed tree options. And then
21:03
Speaker 2: based on the wind and based on as long as
21:06
Speaker 2: they have not been hit by other people and if
21:08
Speaker 2: they have food that is producing this year, then he
21:11
Speaker 2: will rotate through those stands throughout early October he goes
21:14
Speaker 2: on to set. Depending on the area of the country,
21:16
Speaker 2: the most preferred mast and fruit trees are oaks for simon, chestnut, hickory, beechnut, choke, cherry, apple, crab, apple,
21:24
Speaker 2: and pear. These natural foods are available for only a
21:27
Speaker 2: short period of time and in instances where a few
21:30
Speaker 2: trees are dropping food. Where only a few trees are
21:33
Speaker 2: dropping food, deer will compete for their food on a
21:36
Speaker 2: first come, first served basis from day to day, adding
21:39
Speaker 2: a higher daytime value to them as hunting locations. Mast
21:44
Speaker 2: and fruit trees dropping food are best hunted in the
21:46
Speaker 2: evenings because if hunting them in the morning, you would
21:48
Speaker 2: likely spook deer beating at them. With a prior to
21:51
Speaker 2: daybreak entry. The tree is in an isolated, secure area.
21:55
Speaker 2: There's always the chance of spooking a fawn or a
21:57
Speaker 2: dough with fawns eating there in the early afternoon, but
22:00
Speaker 2: the odds of that are much lower than the odds
22:02
Speaker 2: of spooking a mature buck with a morning entry, and
22:05
Speaker 2: it's all about hunting the highest percentage situations when pursuing
22:09
Speaker 2: mature bucks. He also goes on to discuss how deer
22:24
Speaker 2: have varying preference for types of acorns, like the case
22:29
Speaker 2: the obvious comparison being white oaks versus red oaks. White
22:33
Speaker 2: oaks seem to be preferable, more preferable than red oaks.
22:36
Speaker 2: Red Oaks are a little bit more acidic, higher tanning
22:39
Speaker 2: content in those acorns. So, all things being equal, if
22:42
Speaker 2: you have a white oak tree and a red oak
22:44
Speaker 2: tree both producing acorns, the deer will prefer to eat
22:47
Speaker 2: the whites. But what he points out in his book
22:50
Speaker 2: is that if there is a difference in security cover,
22:54
Speaker 2: they will prefer whichever one is safer. So if the
22:57
Speaker 2: red oak is back in cover, but the white oak
22:59
Speaker 2: is out in the open in kind of a place
23:01
Speaker 2: that feels dangerous to deer, they're probably going to eat
23:03
Speaker 2: those red oaks during daylight more often than the white
23:06
Speaker 2: So consider that same thing goes for an apple tree
23:08
Speaker 2: or a pear tree, or whatever it might be. Big
23:11
Speaker 2: considerations throughout the month of October is that overlap. Imagine
23:15
Speaker 2: this Venn diagram of safe places and food sources. Whenever
23:18
Speaker 2: you can get that to overlap that place in the
23:20
Speaker 2: middle where you have the safe and the food that's
23:24
Speaker 2: palatable and attractive right now. That is really going to
23:27
Speaker 2: be key for your early October hunts right on through
23:30
Speaker 2: much of the month. So those are a couple of
23:33
Speaker 2: things to be thinking about for the first part of
23:37
Speaker 2: this month. Scouting in early October can look like many
23:42
Speaker 2: different things. Of course, running trail cameras this time of
23:45
Speaker 2: year is an obvious tool to be determining where deer are,
23:49
Speaker 2: what they're doing, what bucks are in the area. Probably
23:52
Speaker 2: the best foods or excuse me, the best locations or
23:55
Speaker 2: cameras in early October are similar to what they'll be
23:58
Speaker 2: through much of this month, which is going to be
24:01
Speaker 2: scrapes in and around the edges of bedding years and
24:05
Speaker 2: or the edges of quality foods. So same thing what
24:07
Speaker 2: we just talked about. These deer want to be near
24:09
Speaker 2: the attractive food source. They're living by their stomachs right now,
24:13
Speaker 2: and they want to feel safe if you can put
24:15
Speaker 2: a cell camera somewhere like that, And for me, I
24:18
Speaker 2: really like no matter what it is, if it's next
24:20
Speaker 2: to a food plot, if it's inside corner of a cornfield,
24:23
Speaker 2: if it's a creek, crossing leading into a cornfield or
24:25
Speaker 2: a you know, any kind of food source. I always
24:29
Speaker 2: like to have a licking branch in front of that
24:31
Speaker 2: camera because that is just a little sweetener that will
24:34
Speaker 2: stop a deer right in front of your camera, or
24:37
Speaker 2: that maybe will attract that deer the five yards that
24:40
Speaker 2: you know they need to come off of their normal
24:42
Speaker 2: path to get to where your camera is. So if
24:45
Speaker 2: there's not already a scrape in a place I want
24:47
Speaker 2: to be, ninety nine percent of the time, I will
24:50
Speaker 2: build a mock scrape to have that in front of
24:52
Speaker 2: the camera. So if this is like in a field,
24:54
Speaker 2: I'll cut down a tree and put a tree in
24:56
Speaker 2: the field and make a fake scrape tree. If this
24:59
Speaker 2: is in the woods, I'll you know, break a branch
25:02
Speaker 2: down if I need to, or use a piece of
25:05
Speaker 2: rope to pull down a branch, whatever it needs to
25:07
Speaker 2: be to get a licking branch at deer eye height
25:10
Speaker 2: and then kick out the dirt underneath it to make
25:13
Speaker 2: that mock scrape. I'll pee in that scrape to kind
25:16
Speaker 2: of give it that urinecent that will kickstart use of it.
25:19
Speaker 2: If you use any kind of send product like preorbital
25:23
Speaker 2: gland scent. Put that in the licking branch. That can
25:25
Speaker 2: work too, But again this is just too sweeten the
25:29
Speaker 2: deal in front of your cameras to give you a
25:31
Speaker 2: better idea of what's in that zone. Because something to
25:34
Speaker 2: really think about throughout the entire month of October when
25:36
Speaker 2: you're scouting for deer with cameras is that cameras show
25:40
Speaker 2: a narrow slice of what's actually happening. You have a
25:43
Speaker 2: very small view of the terrain around you, and there's
25:48
Speaker 2: you know, almost always much more happening around your cameras
25:52
Speaker 2: than they actually show. So do not fall for, you know,
25:56
Speaker 2: the cameras being everything. Do not assume they're telling you
26:00
Speaker 2: the full story. They're just giving you a small glimpse.
26:03
Speaker 2: So cameras are part of the scouting strategy. If you
26:07
Speaker 2: live in a place where you can get eyes on
26:09
Speaker 2: your hunting area from afar, if you can sit at
26:11
Speaker 2: the road with binoculars, or get up on a hill
26:14
Speaker 2: with binoculars, or hunt a tree, stand in a fence
26:17
Speaker 2: row that's far away from the core of your property
26:19
Speaker 2: that still gives you a view to core places. Having
26:24
Speaker 2: long distance glassing opportunities is huge, because again, deer are
26:30
Speaker 2: still on patterns at this time of year. So the
26:33
Speaker 2: name of the game is identifying the pattern, identifying the
26:37
Speaker 2: key food, identifying the bed, identifying the travel between the two.
26:41
Speaker 2: If you can identify that, they're one of these ways
26:43
Speaker 2: we've talked about, scouting with cameras, scouting with your binoculars,
26:48
Speaker 2: or maybe just being there on the ground and scouting
26:50
Speaker 2: sign you can uncover that kind of line in the sand.
26:55
Speaker 2: If you can uncover that those clues, you all of
26:57
Speaker 2: a sudden have an opportunity to go in and enter.
27:00
Speaker 2: That is the name of the game for hunting October
27:03
Speaker 2: first through the early twenties at least, that's it. That's
27:06
Speaker 2: what we're trying to do in a nutshell, So don't
27:10
Speaker 2: forget that sometimes scouting is more important than hunting. This
27:14
Speaker 2: is something that I've heard from so many different people.
27:17
Speaker 2: Andy May is a perfect example of this. He's a
27:19
Speaker 2: guy who on his lunch break before work, after work,
27:23
Speaker 2: any spare moment of time he gets, he's out there
27:26
Speaker 2: walking the edge of a cornfield looking for tracks, or
27:29
Speaker 2: sitting in his truck and glassing a field from afar
27:31
Speaker 2: to see where the deer are coming out into an opening,
27:34
Speaker 2: or moving a camera somewhere else. He is a scouting fiend,
27:38
Speaker 2: as are many of the other best deer hunters we've
27:42
Speaker 2: talked to over the years. Scout scout, scout. You know,
27:46
Speaker 2: sometimes more days of scouting in less actual days. Hunting
27:50
Speaker 2: is a recipe for success, because you know, one well planned,
27:56
Speaker 2: well informed hunt is worth much more than three or
27:59
Speaker 2: four or willy nilly hunts where you're just sitting somewhere
28:02
Speaker 2: to sit. That's something that has been, you know, brought
28:06
Speaker 2: up time after time after time, whether it be someone
28:09
Speaker 2: on managed properties like Mark Drury and Terry Drury, or
28:12
Speaker 2: whether it's someone who's doing DIY public land hunting, or
28:15
Speaker 2: you know, buy permission stuff like Andy may or John Eberhart,
28:19
Speaker 2: or the guys from the hunting public. You know, they're
28:21
Speaker 2: they're either figuring this stuff out in the moment and
28:25
Speaker 2: puzzling those pieces together, or they are spending weeks and
28:28
Speaker 2: weeks and weeks ahead of time to figure out what
28:30
Speaker 2: is going on in October, so then when they show
28:33
Speaker 2: up to hunt, they know where to be and they
28:35
Speaker 2: can do it quickly and effectively without educating. Deer calling
28:41
Speaker 2: in early October is something I want to touch on
28:43
Speaker 2: very briefly. This is not a major focus, I think
28:47
Speaker 2: for most people for the first ten month or first
28:49
Speaker 2: ten days of the month, but you can have some success.
28:53
Speaker 2: There are people that have called in deer in October
28:55
Speaker 2: in early October. Excuse me. There's a few ways to
28:58
Speaker 2: do that that keep on coming time and time again
29:01
Speaker 2: from other people, and that I've found in my own
29:02
Speaker 2: experience as well. Number One, if I'm doing a grunt
29:05
Speaker 2: call of any kind, it's a contact grunt. It's a
29:07
Speaker 2: very lit here. I've got one right here. It's a
29:10
Speaker 2: very simple light just bop like this. You don't need
29:15
Speaker 2: to be aggressive, you don't need to be overly repetitive,
29:19
Speaker 2: you don't need to go overboard with it. You're simply
29:22
Speaker 2: saying to another deer, hey, I'm here. That's it. At
29:25
Speaker 2: this time of the year, deer are curious, deer are social.
29:28
Speaker 2: They're beginning the bucks are beginning to start sorting out
29:31
Speaker 2: the hierarchy of the herd in the area. So when
29:35
Speaker 2: they know, oh, there's another buck over there, just behind
29:37
Speaker 2: those trees, sometimes they might be curious enough just to
29:40
Speaker 2: come and check it out. Who's here, what are they doing,
29:42
Speaker 2: what's going on over there? A contact grunt like that
29:45
Speaker 2: can work. Similarly, very light rattling can work. It just
29:50
Speaker 2: posted something on my Instagram account about the fact that
29:53
Speaker 2: I have seen a ton of pictures and videos on
29:56
Speaker 2: my trial cameras over the last handful of days of
29:58
Speaker 2: bucks just lightly sparring. I mean, like lots, like many, many,
30:03
Speaker 2: many examples on different properties, different places of bucks, just
30:07
Speaker 2: clacking the antlers together, lightly tickling the times, kind of
30:10
Speaker 2: pushing each other back and forth. They're not fighting in
30:12
Speaker 2: any kind of way. It's not aggressive. It's just kind
30:15
Speaker 2: of like just kind of feeling feeling things out. That's
30:19
Speaker 2: something you can take advantage of with some light tickling
30:22
Speaker 2: of the times or just lightly bumping together your rattling
30:24
Speaker 2: bag whatever is you're using. That is something that again
30:28
Speaker 2: could trigger a little bit of curiosity that could get
30:31
Speaker 2: a deer to come, you know, fifty yards out of
30:33
Speaker 2: the brush to come peek into the field, or peek
30:36
Speaker 2: into the opening, or come check out this little scrape
30:38
Speaker 2: area you're hunting. That is an option to consider at
30:42
Speaker 2: this time of year as well. Finally, if you're trying
30:44
Speaker 2: to fill an antler list, tag a great option anytime
30:48
Speaker 2: of October, but especially now if you're trying to kill
30:51
Speaker 2: a dough is a fawn in distress bleat. That's like
30:55
Speaker 2: a high pitched kind of whining sound that a fawn
30:57
Speaker 2: might make kind of sounds like I don't know, i'll
31:03
Speaker 2: describe it, but something like that can bring a dough
31:07
Speaker 2: in closer to see what's going on. If you need
31:09
Speaker 2: to get a shot in antlerless deer in early October.
31:13
Speaker 2: Those are some calling things to consider. The final thing
31:16
Speaker 2: I will note is if you're looking at like how
31:18
Speaker 2: aggressive you want to be with your hunts in early October.
31:22
Speaker 2: This is kind of a phase where, like the first
31:25
Speaker 2: couple of days of the season, if you're opening in October,
31:28
Speaker 2: as we discussed at the beginning, that is a high
31:30
Speaker 2: odds chance to catch deer unaware. So I'm willing to
31:34
Speaker 2: be a little bit more aggressive for the first couple
31:37
Speaker 2: of hunts. If we're going to rank my aggressiveness on
31:40
Speaker 2: like a one to ten scale, maybe a ten would
31:44
Speaker 2: be something I would do during the peak of the
31:45
Speaker 2: rut when stuff's crazy, I'm going to go right into
31:48
Speaker 2: the core of a property for the first couple days
31:51
Speaker 2: of October. I think the general consensus for most people
31:55
Speaker 2: I've talked over the years is that the first couple
31:57
Speaker 2: of days of any season could be worth a relative
32:00
Speaker 2: high risk spot because those odds are especially high because
32:04
Speaker 2: of them being unaware no hunting pressure up to this point.
32:07
Speaker 2: So that might be worth like a seven or eight
32:09
Speaker 2: on the aggressiveness scale. But then quickly after that most
32:13
Speaker 2: people pull back a little bit. And in that case,
32:16
Speaker 2: this might be different if you're on a traveling hunt,
32:18
Speaker 2: but if you're hunting a place that you're going to
32:20
Speaker 2: hunt throughout the rest of the year, now you need
32:22
Speaker 2: to think about how your hunts are going to impact
32:24
Speaker 2: the rest of the month of October, the rest of
32:27
Speaker 2: your hunting season throughout the fall. So i might hunt
32:30
Speaker 2: the first day or two in a seven or eight
32:33
Speaker 2: ten aggressiveness stand and then I'm going to pull back
32:36
Speaker 2: and be slightly more conservative to make sure that I'm
32:39
Speaker 2: not blowing up this property before the next wave of
32:43
Speaker 2: increased dear activity comes along. That's going to bring us
32:47
Speaker 2: into the middle of October. The middle of October is
32:50
Speaker 2: when many people pull back completely and become uber conservative,
32:57
Speaker 2: and this is because of the much ballyhooed, much discussed
33:01
Speaker 2: October lull. Now there's two sides to this coin. We
33:06
Speaker 2: need to discuss. I'll keep it kind of brief because
33:09
Speaker 2: this has been discussed ad nausm over the years in
33:11
Speaker 2: the podcast and many other places, but I do want
33:13
Speaker 2: to present them in case you're not you know fully
33:17
Speaker 2: in the know on this. So the October lull is
33:19
Speaker 2: this idea that come mid October, bucks kind of go
33:24
Speaker 2: nocturnal and don't move as much and activity is slower,
33:27
Speaker 2: and so because of that, you should pull back in
33:31
Speaker 2: the middle of October, be very conservative, maybe don't hunt
33:34
Speaker 2: at all, and wait till the pre rut gets deer
33:37
Speaker 2: moving in daylight again, especially mature bucks moving in daylight again,
33:41
Speaker 2: and that rutting activity starts getting things going, and that's
33:44
Speaker 2: when it's worth hunting, because in the middle of October
33:47
Speaker 2: they're just not going to be in places you can
33:48
Speaker 2: get a shot of them, So you're ruining your hunting
33:50
Speaker 2: spots while not having a good chance of success. Anyways,
33:54
Speaker 2: that is the kind of the frame of mind or
33:57
Speaker 2: the overview of like the October lull approach. On the
34:02
Speaker 2: flip side, the science, all of the studies that have
34:06
Speaker 2: collared deer and observed how they move and where they
34:09
Speaker 2: move and when they move, they have all shown that
34:11
Speaker 2: buck activity actually does not go down through the month
34:15
Speaker 2: of October. There's no lull in the middle of October.
34:18
Speaker 2: When it comes to deer movement, there's actually a slow,
34:20
Speaker 2: steady progression. There's an increase in deer movement and buck
34:24
Speaker 2: movement too throughout this month, So there's no October lull.
34:30
Speaker 2: But what I do think there is, in which many
34:33
Speaker 2: people have talked about, is that there is an October shift.
34:37
Speaker 2: There is a change going on that does change where
34:42
Speaker 2: bucks spend time, where bucks feed, and travel, how much
34:46
Speaker 2: they travel all that. So if you are hunting the
34:50
Speaker 2: same place as you hunted on October first, on October fifteenth,
34:54
Speaker 2: you probably will experience a lull because the deer changed
34:58
Speaker 2: and you haven't. So what hunting the middle of October
35:02
Speaker 2: requires is that you would just alongside that shift. So
35:07
Speaker 2: because of that, there are two I would say camps
35:10
Speaker 2: of hunting the middle of October. You're going to have
35:12
Speaker 2: the generally conservative let's wait for the right moments crowd.
35:16
Speaker 2: I would put people like Marc and Terry Drury. I
35:19
Speaker 2: would put Bobby Kendall, I would put Jeff Sturgis. I
35:23
Speaker 2: would probably put John Eberhart in this camp. Folks like
35:26
Speaker 2: that would be in the camp of let's kind of
35:29
Speaker 2: look at our timing and time our hunts carefully in
35:31
Speaker 2: the middle of October and not blow up things too
35:34
Speaker 2: much at this time because we're still waiting for it
35:36
Speaker 2: to get better. And then you've got another camp, which
35:40
Speaker 2: we'll look at the middle of October, in all of
35:41
Speaker 2: October as like, hey, it's getting better and better every day.
35:44
Speaker 2: Let's keep punching in their punching, and they're punching in there,
35:47
Speaker 2: and they simply will adjust to that October shift. So
35:52
Speaker 2: they shift with the bucks, go to where the bucks
35:54
Speaker 2: are now, and if that requires being really aggressive, they
35:58
Speaker 2: will do that. Many of these folks I'm talking to,
36:01
Speaker 2: people like Dan Infult. I'm talking about the guys at
36:04
Speaker 2: the hunting public. You know, I think the Daquistos have
36:08
Speaker 2: done some of this. I think some of the Daquisto
36:11
Speaker 2: disciples do some of this. Justin Hollinsworth. Folks within that
36:16
Speaker 2: world are going to be aggressively getting in after deer
36:21
Speaker 2: closer to their betting years as the month of October progresses,
36:25
Speaker 2: because that's that's a big thing here. I mentioned there's
36:28
Speaker 2: some changes happening. Number One, hunting pressure is changing throughout
36:32
Speaker 2: the month of October. Right, Let's say you hunt in
36:34
Speaker 2: Iowa or Michigan or Ohio. The season has just opened,
36:38
Speaker 2: either the last couple of days of September or early October.
36:41
Speaker 2: Within a couple days of hunts, there are a lot
36:44
Speaker 2: of people in the woods, there's a lot of human
36:46
Speaker 2: scent in the woods, and pretty quickly the deer herd
36:49
Speaker 2: realizes that. So by October fifth, they're sixth, they're seventh.
36:52
Speaker 2: These deer realize they're being hunted. They're being they're realizing
36:55
Speaker 2: the places that used to be safe no longer seem
36:58
Speaker 2: so safe. So all of a sudden movement they were
37:00
Speaker 2: doing out in the edge of the field in daylight
37:03
Speaker 2: maybe is now going to happen after dark. They are
37:06
Speaker 2: still moving though, they are still there, but they're going
37:10
Speaker 2: to be doing much more of that back in that
37:12
Speaker 2: security cover. John Eberhart hammers us over and over and
37:16
Speaker 2: over again. If you hunt in a place with heavy
37:18
Speaker 2: hunting pressure, you constantly need to be thinking about security cover.
37:23
Speaker 2: Where do these deer feel safe during daylight? And for
37:26
Speaker 2: most folks, that's deep in the cover, that's close to
37:28
Speaker 2: the betting areas. You know where I live in southern Michigan.
37:32
Speaker 2: This is near swampy, thick nasty cover, tall grass, water,
37:39
Speaker 2: tons of cedars or cat tails, just anything that makes
37:44
Speaker 2: it hard for you to move through there. That's where
37:47
Speaker 2: these deer feels safe because people don't want to move
37:50
Speaker 2: through there. If you're in hill country, this might be
37:54
Speaker 2: really thick nasty stuff or clearcuts or down you know,
37:57
Speaker 2: tornado blowdown stuff like that. But it might also just
38:01
Speaker 2: simply be topography that will make deer feel safe because
38:05
Speaker 2: of the advantages that topography can give them. Many times
38:08
Speaker 2: in hill country, these bucks will like to bed down
38:11
Speaker 2: off of a ridge, let's say about a third of
38:13
Speaker 2: the way down the ridge, where they can, you know,
38:15
Speaker 2: have thermals coming up to them. They can have wind
38:18
Speaker 2: coming from behind them and rolling over. They can catch
38:20
Speaker 2: these swirling winds. They can see down the valley around them,
38:24
Speaker 2: they can smell behind them, they can hear everything around them.
38:27
Speaker 2: They're going to have these different topographic features in their
38:30
Speaker 2: favor so that they feel safe. That is how mature
38:33
Speaker 2: buck gets mature. It's because he did things. He placed
38:37
Speaker 2: himself in an area where he could stay safe and
38:40
Speaker 2: out of range of hunters for most of the daylight hours.
38:43
Speaker 2: So if you are going to shift with bucks in October,
38:49
Speaker 2: it's going to require you get back in security cover
38:51
Speaker 2: most of the time. If you're trying to kill mature
38:53
Speaker 2: buck at this time of the year, it's going to
38:55
Speaker 2: require you get closer to those bedding areas. And in
38:59
Speaker 2: many cases there's the two ways that people go about
39:01
Speaker 2: doing this. There would be let's say the dan Infalt Way,
39:05
Speaker 2: which would be scouting all winter in early spring to
39:08
Speaker 2: find all these betting years. He spends a lot of
39:11
Speaker 2: time in swampy spots where you know you're gonna find
39:14
Speaker 2: a little bit of high ground out in that cattail
39:16
Speaker 2: swamp and you're gonna find a big bed there and
39:18
Speaker 2: some hair in it and some rubs around it, and
39:20
Speaker 2: you can say, okay, this is where a buck has
39:21
Speaker 2: been bedded. They'll mark that in the map, and he
39:24
Speaker 2: knows he can come back there in the fall for
39:26
Speaker 2: a hunter or two and have a decent chance that
39:28
Speaker 2: there could be a buck in that zone. He'll try
39:30
Speaker 2: to hunt around it, get closer to it, and make
39:33
Speaker 2: a move. The other approach would be if you were
39:36
Speaker 2: hunting in new place where you've not been able to
39:38
Speaker 2: do that kind of scouting. And this is something that
39:41
Speaker 2: you know, Zach and Aaron and Jake and Ted and
39:45
Speaker 2: the rest of the hunting Public crew do a lot.
39:47
Speaker 2: They show up to an area in public land, they
39:50
Speaker 2: look at maps, and they think about where they think
39:52
Speaker 2: the betting is going to be. But then they're going
39:54
Speaker 2: to hunt their way into those spots. They're gonna work
39:57
Speaker 2: their way in. They're gonna go in thinking, Okay, I
39:59
Speaker 2: think there's betting here, so let's push our way in there.
40:02
Speaker 2: Let's get into that cover. But then they're going to
40:05
Speaker 2: let the sign on the ground or let the deer
40:07
Speaker 2: they see tell them when they need to stop. And
40:10
Speaker 2: so I just talked to Ted a couple of weeks
40:12
Speaker 2: ago about this and he described, you know, going into
40:14
Speaker 2: an oak ridge that he thought, man, they're probably betting
40:16
Speaker 2: off of these points. I bet you there's acorns dropping
40:19
Speaker 2: off of this ridge. Let's work our way in there.
40:21
Speaker 2: Once they started bumping does out of their betting ere,
40:25
Speaker 2: they decide, Okay, yep, we've got to this layer of
40:28
Speaker 2: dough betting. There's probably buck betting beyond it. Let's hold
40:30
Speaker 2: up here, hunt here, observe, and then either stick with
40:35
Speaker 2: this or pushing deeper based on what we saw. So
40:38
Speaker 2: you could kind of think of this as like a
40:40
Speaker 2: layer by layer approach where you use sign on the
40:43
Speaker 2: ground or previous scout and to tell you, okay, this
40:45
Speaker 2: should get me into the general zone and then see
40:48
Speaker 2: what happens on your hunt and then make the next
40:51
Speaker 2: move based on that. Again, October is very much trying
40:54
Speaker 2: to identify the betting and the feeding and the travel
40:57
Speaker 2: between the two. So sometimes that's from long tosay since
41:00
Speaker 2: glassing from the road. Sometimes that's from actually hunting, seeing
41:03
Speaker 2: that you're not quite on the X and then adjusting
41:06
Speaker 2: to it. That's something that can work very well during
41:09
Speaker 2: the month of October. I will say this, if you
41:12
Speaker 2: are going to take this aggressive approach where you are
41:15
Speaker 2: pushing in hunting, in security cover, trying to get something
41:18
Speaker 2: killed in the middle of October, it's kind of a
41:22
Speaker 2: you know, swing for the fences or strikeout kind of deal.
41:26
Speaker 2: It is going to make an impact. You can do
41:27
Speaker 2: it a time or two and it very well could
41:29
Speaker 2: pan out. You could kill a deer on the flip side,
41:32
Speaker 2: you might not kill any deer, and you might blow
41:34
Speaker 2: up the whole place. You might blow up this whole
41:36
Speaker 2: betting area and make these deer feel much less safe
41:39
Speaker 2: in that zone for future hunts. So, if you're on
41:44
Speaker 2: a traveling hunt and you're just hunting for a week
41:46
Speaker 2: and a piece, this is a great approach. Make the
41:49
Speaker 2: most of your time. If you are hunting public land
41:51
Speaker 2: and you have a lot of different public land locations,
41:53
Speaker 2: you can hunt here, there, you know, anywhere within a
41:55
Speaker 2: two hour radius, and you have a bunch of different
41:58
Speaker 2: places you've scouted or the earth that you want to hunt,
42:01
Speaker 2: this is a great approach. This is what Dan Infholt does.
42:04
Speaker 2: This is what the hunting public does. These are people
42:06
Speaker 2: who have a bunch of options. They might totally blow
42:11
Speaker 2: up a swamp, but that's okay because they have another
42:13
Speaker 2: swamp and another swamp, and another ridge and another spot.
42:17
Speaker 2: If you only have one place that you're trying to hunt,
42:19
Speaker 2: you've got a small twenty acre property or a seventy
42:21
Speaker 2: acre property that your gramm and grampa's farm, whatever it is.
42:25
Speaker 2: If you are stuck hunting one spot, you want to
42:28
Speaker 2: be much more careful because if you go go in
42:31
Speaker 2: and blow things up on October thirteenth, by doing this,
42:34
Speaker 2: it could really hurt your chances come October twenty fifth
42:38
Speaker 2: or twenty ninth or November second. So this is something
42:43
Speaker 2: that you need to really think about what your circumstances
42:46
Speaker 2: are compared to the people you watch on TV or
42:48
Speaker 2: the people you hear on this podcast. And remember that
42:51
Speaker 2: each of these different approaches is appropriate for a different
42:54
Speaker 2: set of circumstances. So if you are in the have
42:58
Speaker 2: a small property to hunt, or I have a care
43:00
Speaker 2: fully managed farm that I've been trying to make really
43:02
Speaker 2: good over the years, you might want to take a
43:03
Speaker 2: different approach. And the different approach is more of the juries.
43:06
Speaker 2: It's more of the Jeff Sturgis approach, it's more of
43:09
Speaker 2: the Bobby Kendall approach. I would say Don Higgins has
43:13
Speaker 2: a little bit more of this kind of approach where
43:15
Speaker 2: you have a carefully protected sanctuary of some sort. You
43:19
Speaker 2: have your property or a portion of your property, or
43:22
Speaker 2: a food plot on your property, or a betting area
43:24
Speaker 2: in your property, someplace that you know deer like to
43:27
Speaker 2: spend daylight hours, and you keep that feeling safe for
43:32
Speaker 2: those deer if you have control over it with a
43:34
Speaker 2: lease or permission for just yourself or you own it,
43:37
Speaker 2: whatever it is. Throughout the month of October, you absolutely
43:42
Speaker 2: can kill mature bucks in places like that. You certainly
43:45
Speaker 2: can kill them later in the month. The big question
43:48
Speaker 2: is what are the days where it makes sense to
43:50
Speaker 2: go into that sanctuary or to the edge of that sanctuary,
43:53
Speaker 2: or to that good spot. What are the days that
43:55
Speaker 2: give you the highest odds for success versus the and
43:59
Speaker 2: the lowest odds of risk Because every time you hunt,
44:02
Speaker 2: there is risk of deer smelling you, seeing you, hearing you.
44:05
Speaker 2: So every single one of your hunts throughout the month
44:07
Speaker 2: of October, you have to constantly weigh this risk. We
44:11
Speaker 2: talked about this with doctor Grant Woods the other day.
44:14
Speaker 2: You need to think about, Okay, how high are my
44:16
Speaker 2: odds of killing a deer here versus how high are
44:19
Speaker 2: the odds of me educating deer? And every day is
44:21
Speaker 2: going to be a little bit different. There's gonna be
44:23
Speaker 2: some days, like let's say, the first day of October,
44:25
Speaker 2: as we discussed, where your odds for success are a
44:28
Speaker 2: little bit higher because they haven't been hunted yet. And
44:30
Speaker 2: so even if you go to somewhere where there's a
44:32
Speaker 2: little bit of risk, it might be worth it because
44:34
Speaker 2: those odds for success are extra high today. But now
44:48
Speaker 2: let's fast forward to October fifteenth. Let's say, and let's
44:52
Speaker 2: say it's a hot, muggy day. It's still your area
44:56
Speaker 2: has been hunted heavily, and you don't really know where
45:00
Speaker 2: these deer are. You haven't figured out how they've shifted. Well,
45:03
Speaker 2: it sounds like my odds for success on that day
45:05
Speaker 2: are pretty low. If I want to go deep into
45:08
Speaker 2: a betting year now, my risk is very high. So
45:11
Speaker 2: I'm hunting a high risk location when the conditions and
45:14
Speaker 2: my information intel is telling me, well, not a great
45:17
Speaker 2: chance for success anyways. So you're just blowing somewhere up
45:21
Speaker 2: for very little reason. Those are the kinds of hunts
45:23
Speaker 2: you want to avoid in this situation. You want the reverse.
45:26
Speaker 2: You want a place where things are looking really good
45:28
Speaker 2: and you have low risk. That's the ideal. So for
45:31
Speaker 2: many people throughout the month of October, especially mid October,
45:35
Speaker 2: they are being conservative on most days, maybe hunting you know,
45:40
Speaker 2: the periphery of a property, or hunting some public land
45:43
Speaker 2: that they're not depending on fully, or they're trying to
45:46
Speaker 2: kill does on a part of a property that won't
45:48
Speaker 2: impact where they think their main you know, buck betting is,
45:51
Speaker 2: or where their target buckets or whatever it might be.
45:54
Speaker 2: And then on certain key days, when conditions or intel
45:58
Speaker 2: tell them, hey, it's a special day, then they are
46:00
Speaker 2: going to one of these killing stands and taking advantage
46:03
Speaker 2: of it. There's a few different things that could be
46:07
Speaker 2: indicative of a killing day. One of these special days
46:11
Speaker 2: in mid October, one would be the weather. Cold fronts, especially,
46:16
Speaker 2: I think, are something that a lot of us, a
46:18
Speaker 2: lot of hunters put a lot of weight on. An
46:20
Speaker 2: important thing to note about cold fronts, about the moon,
46:24
Speaker 2: about barometric pressure, about any outside factor impacting deer movement.
46:30
Speaker 2: Key thing to take note here is that no study,
46:35
Speaker 2: no science, no research has yet to back this up.
46:39
Speaker 2: So none of the GPS color studies have shown a
46:42
Speaker 2: statistically significant impact for precipitation, or temperatures, or moon phase,
46:49
Speaker 2: timing pressure, anything like that changing how much bucks move
46:53
Speaker 2: or when they move. All that said, there's a bunch
46:56
Speaker 2: of hunters who feel otherwise. So I want to share
46:58
Speaker 2: with you a few different exits and examples of these
47:02
Speaker 2: different perspectives. The first one is going to be the
47:04
Speaker 2: impact of cold fronts. I'm going to read to you
47:06
Speaker 2: from Jeff Sturgis's book Mature Buck Success by design. All right,
47:10
Speaker 2: So Jeff discussing cold fronts, he spends a lot of
47:16
Speaker 2: time analyzing the weather waiting for these key cold fronts
47:20
Speaker 2: to move through, and when they do in mid October
47:23
Speaker 2: or really all through the month, that is when he
47:25
Speaker 2: will dive into his best locations. So here in the
47:28
Speaker 2: book he says, in simple terms, if the weather is
47:31
Speaker 2: unseasonably hot, mild, or boring, it pays to seek other activities.
47:35
Speaker 2: On the other hand, if the weather is unseasonably cool,
47:38
Speaker 2: make sure to hit the woods. By focusing on high
47:42
Speaker 2: quality days both inside and outside of the rut, you
47:44
Speaker 2: can discover a season full of exceptional days for you
47:47
Speaker 2: to take advantage of. In fact, you may find that
47:50
Speaker 2: some of the days outside of the rut, which might
47:52
Speaker 2: be triggered by wind snow, rain, or temperatures, will rival
47:55
Speaker 2: or even beat some of the best days that the
47:57
Speaker 2: rut has to offer. Best of all, if you will
48:00
Speaker 2: allow the fluctuation of weather patterns to define your hunting opportunities,
48:03
Speaker 2: your land will not become burned out by hunting too
48:06
Speaker 2: many days in a row. Now, there's three parts to
48:10
Speaker 2: a cold front. According to Jeff Sturgis, there is the setup.
48:14
Speaker 2: There's the drop, and then there's the calm afterwards. So
48:18
Speaker 2: a quick extra here discussing the setup for a cold front.
48:22
Speaker 2: Without the actual setup for the best days to be
48:24
Speaker 2: in the woods, there would not actually be any high
48:26
Speaker 2: value days to predict. The extremity of the front plays
48:30
Speaker 2: a major role in the quality of the CITs that follow.
48:33
Speaker 2: The higher the winds and the more unstable the front,
48:36
Speaker 2: including rain, ice, or snow, the more attractive the calm
48:39
Speaker 2: and cold days are that follow. Warm weather, stormy weather,
48:43
Speaker 2: and any set of consistently poor conditions all serve to
48:47
Speaker 2: set up an incredible date to be in the woods afterwards.
48:50
Speaker 2: So what he's saying here is that, you know, the
48:53
Speaker 2: impact of a cold front is all relative to how
48:57
Speaker 2: bad things were beforehand. So stuff was really bad beforehand,
49:01
Speaker 2: Maybe that was like a long stretch of very kind
49:04
Speaker 2: of hot temperature, you know, a lot of stability. If
49:08
Speaker 2: you have a long stretch of the same undesirable condition,
49:12
Speaker 2: then when that cold front finally comes, that's going to
49:15
Speaker 2: make it a dramatic change. Or if you had a
49:17
Speaker 2: very long stretch of like super severe wind and rain
49:20
Speaker 2: and nastiness something else, that would put deer down a
49:23
Speaker 2: little bit when it finally cools down and calms down
49:25
Speaker 2: after that. Again, it's a significant change that, in Jeff's purview,
49:30
Speaker 2: will get you a little bit better of a bump
49:32
Speaker 2: in activity. Now when he talks about the drop, here
49:34
Speaker 2: we go, folks. It doesn't matter if it's September, October,
49:38
Speaker 2: or November. If you see a ten degree temperature drop
49:40
Speaker 2: or more, make sure you head to the woods. Although
49:42
Speaker 2: I really start to take notice of at least a
49:44
Speaker 2: five degree temp drop, I prefer at least eight to
49:47
Speaker 2: ten degrees of change in the forecast. The more extreme
49:50
Speaker 2: the conditions during the front, along with the larger the
49:52
Speaker 2: temperature change, the higher the value of the potential sits
49:56
Speaker 2: to come afterwards when conditions calm. So kind of the
49:59
Speaker 2: same thing we discussed there a second ago. Finally, the
50:02
Speaker 2: calm the first high pressure, cool and clear day that
50:05
Speaker 2: you can recognize following that front, make sure to hit
50:08
Speaker 2: the woods. Keep in mind that predicting a high value
50:11
Speaker 2: sit goes well beyond focusing merely on high pressure conditions.
50:15
Speaker 2: Well out of quality set up and drop. A good
50:17
Speaker 2: high pressure day is just another day in the woods.
50:20
Speaker 2: So to review, Jeff wants a long stable setup, so
50:28
Speaker 2: this might be a long period of hot days or
50:30
Speaker 2: a long period of just like the same old, same old,
50:33
Speaker 2: over and over over again. Then he wants a big drop,
50:35
Speaker 2: he wants a ten degree temperature drop or more, and
50:38
Speaker 2: then he wants those days immediately following that being you know,
50:42
Speaker 2: the days where it gets cold and the days where
50:45
Speaker 2: the high pressure comes in and then things calm down. Those,
50:48
Speaker 2: you know, one, two, three days afterwards can be particularly
50:52
Speaker 2: good days in October. When you have something like that
50:55
Speaker 2: happened on October twelfth, or October sixteenth, or October twenty second,
50:59
Speaker 2: or whatever it might be, Many many folks key in
51:02
Speaker 2: on that those can be some of the best days
51:04
Speaker 2: of the month of October. That is one perspective on
51:09
Speaker 2: conditions and it can impact deer. Someone who has a
51:12
Speaker 2: relatively similar perspective but slightly different particulars is Bobby Kendall.
51:18
Speaker 2: Bobby Kendall from the White Tail Group. He's been some
51:21
Speaker 2: great episodes. I should have mentioned. Jeff Sturgis has been
51:24
Speaker 2: on a number of great episodes with us where he's
51:26
Speaker 2: talked in detail about how he predicts deer movement, about
51:29
Speaker 2: how he sets up his hunts. I highly recommend checking
51:32
Speaker 2: out those as well. As some more recent episodes we've
51:35
Speaker 2: done with Bobby Kendall, who I think as a really
51:37
Speaker 2: interesting perspective on this. He calls the best days a
51:40
Speaker 2: magic X day, and I want to play you an
51:43
Speaker 2: excerpt here from a podcast chat we had where he
51:46
Speaker 2: discusses exactly what he calls a magic X day, how
51:51
Speaker 2: he tracks these, and how that helps him pick the
51:54
Speaker 2: right days in October, especially mid October, late October, to
51:58
Speaker 2: go in and hunt his best spot. Here's what Bobby
52:00
Speaker 2: says about that.
52:02
Speaker 4: So, yeah, in October, so magic X day. So I
52:09
Speaker 4: use the Weather Underground. I'll show you here real quick,
52:13
Speaker 4: maybe on the phone so people can understand.
52:16
Speaker 2: It a little bit better.
52:17
Speaker 4: But I use the Weather Underground, not the app, but
52:21
Speaker 4: I use the the website on the phone, and then
52:26
Speaker 4: I anchor it to my homepage and I'm trying to
52:29
Speaker 4: pull it up here. But it just shows a really
52:31
Speaker 4: big display and any app that shows the pressure line
52:35
Speaker 4: will work, but it just shows it really really nice
52:39
Speaker 4: and big and clear.
52:41
Speaker 2: But essentially what the magic X is.
52:45
Speaker 4: And it's more pronounced that time of year than it
52:47
Speaker 4: is in the summer. But when you have a high
52:50
Speaker 4: pressure front come in, you'll see the black line on
52:54
Speaker 4: that app particularly, but that's the that's the high pressure,
52:57
Speaker 4: and it'll look like that. And then at the same
53:00
Speaker 4: time you have temperatures dropping, so the temperature line is dropping,
53:04
Speaker 4: you know, humidity is usually dropping, cloud covers dropping, so
53:10
Speaker 4: it literally kind of makes an X on the graph
53:12
Speaker 4: and you can see it instantly. And those days in
53:17
Speaker 4: October they trump everything. I mean, you know, if you
53:22
Speaker 4: have a big deer on camera, and it's not just
53:25
Speaker 4: late October, it becomes more powerful in late October. But
53:28
Speaker 4: whenever it whenever it happens.
53:31
Speaker 2: Is really good. Like I think two years ago it
53:34
Speaker 2: was a really good.
53:34
Speaker 4: Stretch like October sixteenth to the nineteenth, and then within
53:38
Speaker 4: the last couple of years there was a really good
53:39
Speaker 4: stretch like the sixth to the tenth or something like that.
53:43
Speaker 2: It doesn't really matter.
53:45
Speaker 4: But you know, there's all these different things that affect
53:48
Speaker 4: deer movement, and when you line them all up, like
53:50
Speaker 4: their mindset in the end of October, they're just so
53:53
Speaker 4: much more rambunctious and rammy. So if you get a
53:55
Speaker 4: magic X day in the end of October, yeah.
53:57
Speaker 2: It's better, all right. So that is Bobby Kendall's take
54:02
Speaker 2: on how he times his hunt in October looking for
54:05
Speaker 2: those magic X days that that rising barometric pressure, the
54:09
Speaker 2: declining cloud cover and temperatures dropping. The third perspective or
54:15
Speaker 2: theory I want to share with you is around the moon.
54:20
Speaker 2: This is a big one. A lot of people believe
54:22
Speaker 2: that the moon can impact your movement in one way
54:24
Speaker 2: or another. This is one that again, the science has
54:28
Speaker 2: not backed up. The research has not backed up, but
54:31
Speaker 2: folks like Mark and terror Jury, like Adam Hayes, like
54:35
Speaker 2: dan Ienfhalt, like Andre Dequisto, countless others have pointed to
54:40
Speaker 2: there being something there. I've described myself as moon curious.
54:45
Speaker 2: I don't really do anything like I don't plan any
54:48
Speaker 2: of my hunts around the moon. I don't have it.
54:51
Speaker 2: You have too much of a bearing on my approach
54:53
Speaker 2: to things. But I'm curious about it. I observe it.
54:56
Speaker 2: I keep on waiting and wanting for something to pop up.
54:59
Speaker 2: This show correlation. But there are some people that live
55:03
Speaker 2: and die by it, and one of those people is
55:05
Speaker 2: Adam Hayes. Adam Hayes is a bowhunter from Ohio. He's
55:10
Speaker 2: had success all over the country. He's killed multiple two
55:13
Speaker 2: hundred inch plus bucks, many many many other matured deer.
55:17
Speaker 2: He's fully ascribed to the red Moon theory. He also
55:23
Speaker 2: sells a product related to it. But he seems to
55:26
Speaker 2: really truly believe in it and has a lot of
55:28
Speaker 2: success with it. So I want to play for you
55:31
Speaker 2: an excerpt from episode two ninety nine of this podcast,
55:34
Speaker 2: where Adam described his take on the red moon theory,
55:38
Speaker 2: what that means, how he uses that to plan his
55:40
Speaker 2: hunts during this month. Just for those that aren't familiar.
55:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I've been using the moon guy for twenty
55:46
Speaker 5: years and it's just really about it has nothing to
55:49
Speaker 5: do with the phases of the moon. It's about the
55:51
Speaker 5: position of the moon in the sky and the gravitational
55:54
Speaker 5: pool and how that affects maturitier to move because you
55:58
Speaker 5: only have a handful of the each month. When that
56:00
Speaker 5: moon is peaking at prime time in the evenings, you know,
56:05
Speaker 5: and it's just another thing added to the wind and
56:08
Speaker 5: the weather to push that deer to get up and
56:10
Speaker 5: move during daylight when he's normally not going to do that.
56:13
Speaker 5: So those are the evenings I focus on. And like
56:16
Speaker 5: I said, anytime you have multiple factors like the wind
56:20
Speaker 5: in the moon, the weather in the moon, or all three.
56:23
Speaker 5: You know, it's about stacking the deck in your favor.
56:26
Speaker 5: It's you know, putting everything in your favor that you
56:30
Speaker 5: can do. And you know, after using the moon guy
56:33
Speaker 5: for twenty years, I've just seen it happen and have
56:36
Speaker 5: killed too many big deer that just normally don't move
56:40
Speaker 5: during daylight. But you killed them right when that moon
56:43
Speaker 5: peaked in the evening.
56:45
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's not a dick.
56:46
Speaker 5: I mean, it's Mother Nature. I didn't invent the moon.
56:51
Speaker 5: The moon the moon and the gravitational pull is strong
56:55
Speaker 5: enough to move the oceans, the biggest mass on this planet.
57:00
Speaker 5: You cannot tell me that that does not affect animals
57:03
Speaker 5: and fish to feed.
57:06
Speaker 2: So obviously he has a strong opinion on this. But
57:10
Speaker 2: to paraphrase this a little bit and to make sure
57:14
Speaker 2: that folks understand, he's using a tool called the Moon Guide.
57:17
Speaker 2: That's the product that he now sells. But what it
57:19
Speaker 2: shows you is the times when the moon is either
57:23
Speaker 2: directly overhead or directly underfoot, when that coincides with the
57:28
Speaker 2: kind of typical primetime hours of daylight or sorry of
57:31
Speaker 2: deer movement, which are the you know, the beginning of
57:34
Speaker 2: the day and the end of the day, when that
57:35
Speaker 2: moon is directly overhead or underfoot during those typical peak windows,
57:40
Speaker 2: the belief is that you have an especially good chance
57:43
Speaker 2: for deer activity. The druries believe that it's a little
57:48
Speaker 2: bit different. They they are looking at like the moon
57:50
Speaker 2: on the edges. So when the moon is rising during
57:53
Speaker 2: one of those peak morning or evening hours, or if
57:55
Speaker 2: the moon is still out in setting during that early
57:58
Speaker 2: morning or late evening hours, that's what they believe is
58:01
Speaker 2: a particularly good time. So again, there's a lot of
58:06
Speaker 2: different angles to this. There's a lot of different perspectives.
58:09
Speaker 2: I think the key thing all these different people might
58:11
Speaker 2: disagree on what's the very most important factor. Is it temperature,
58:15
Speaker 2: is it wind speed, is it bearometric pressure, is it
58:18
Speaker 2: the moon? Or maybe you're one of those people who
58:21
Speaker 2: think that you know, none of it really matters because
58:24
Speaker 2: the science hasn't backed it up. The key thing for
58:28
Speaker 2: most of October, but especially the middle of October, is
58:31
Speaker 2: that you do not want to just mindlessly pound your
58:36
Speaker 2: best hunting places. Goes back to what we talked about earlier.
58:39
Speaker 2: Every time you hunt, you were educating deer. You are
58:42
Speaker 2: making your next chance, your next hunt harder. You are
58:47
Speaker 2: going to make these deer smarter every time you go
58:49
Speaker 2: in there unless you are really really careful about how
58:52
Speaker 2: you do so. So the two things you want to
58:54
Speaker 2: do are number one, be very very careful about how
58:56
Speaker 2: you hunt to reduce your impact, to reduce your chain
59:00
Speaker 2: instead of educating deer. And then number two, don't hunt
59:04
Speaker 2: too much or in too aggressive of a manner, or
59:08
Speaker 2: in too many times in the same single place. So
59:11
Speaker 2: one way to do that is to time your hunts,
59:13
Speaker 2: to be selective about the days that you choose to
59:16
Speaker 2: call in sick or the nights that you choose to
59:18
Speaker 2: you know, use the good ad jail free card with
59:21
Speaker 2: your spouse and say, hey, I got I gotta bounce
59:23
Speaker 2: away from this family thing and instead go hunting tonight
59:25
Speaker 2: because it's one of these special days. That's what these
59:28
Speaker 2: folks are talking about. That's when the fronts the pressure,
59:31
Speaker 2: the magic X day, is the red mode, anything like
59:33
Speaker 2: that, that might be the indicator that these could be special days.
59:37
Speaker 2: Of course, scouting intel can also be that. So if
59:40
Speaker 2: you have found, you know, through trail camera pictures, maybe
59:43
Speaker 2: that you have multiple days of daily activity from a buck,
59:46
Speaker 2: that might be the sign like, hey, it's time to go,
59:49
Speaker 2: or maybe you were out glassing on an evening and
59:51
Speaker 2: you were able to see a buck doing that kind
59:54
Speaker 2: of thing right now in the spot you can hunt. Well,
59:56
Speaker 2: then there's the sign you need to go in there
59:58
Speaker 2: and hunt. Another important piece of scouting information that a
1:00:03
Speaker 2: lot of people put a lot of weight behind folks
1:00:05
Speaker 2: we've talked about already, folks like Don Haiggens, folks like Bobby,
1:00:09
Speaker 2: folks like Mark Drury. This would be historical patterns, annual patterns.
1:00:16
Speaker 2: If I didn't mention Don Higgins. Don Haggens was one
1:00:18
Speaker 2: of the guys that really I think brought a lot
1:00:19
Speaker 2: of attention to this early on, this idea that mature
1:00:23
Speaker 2: bucks especially seemed to do something similar year after year.
1:00:29
Speaker 2: If they kind of shift to their fall range at
1:00:31
Speaker 2: the end of September as a two year old, is
1:00:34
Speaker 2: a pretty good chance that they'll do kind of the
1:00:35
Speaker 2: same thing as a three year old, and as a
1:00:37
Speaker 2: four year old and as a five year old. You know,
1:00:40
Speaker 2: these things are always different, but it's weird. It's eerie
1:00:44
Speaker 2: with mature bucks, especially how often they do things kind
1:00:47
Speaker 2: of on a cyclical nature. I had a buck, for
1:00:51
Speaker 2: whatever reason, three different years in a row would disappear
1:00:54
Speaker 2: at the beginning of November, and he seemed to rut
1:00:57
Speaker 2: somewhere else for almost the entire month of November. And
1:01:00
Speaker 2: then every year early December he showed back up. He
1:01:03
Speaker 2: did that three years in a row, and the third
1:01:05
Speaker 2: year he was five and a half. I kind of
1:01:06
Speaker 2: knew this was a thing he had done. I'd noticed
1:01:09
Speaker 2: this pattern from previous years, and I said, I wonder
1:01:12
Speaker 2: if he's going to do the same darn thing this year.
1:01:14
Speaker 2: And so I was keeping an eye on things. And
1:01:16
Speaker 2: then early December, the first good condition day I had
1:01:18
Speaker 2: in early December, I was going in there after him
1:01:20
Speaker 2: and I did, and lo and behold, I saw him
1:01:23
Speaker 2: for the first time in five weeks. I think, and
1:01:25
Speaker 2: kill them. This is something that time and time again,
1:01:28
Speaker 2: these guys are pointing out, these guys are taking advantage of.
1:01:32
Speaker 2: So it's not just what your most recent scouting intel
1:01:35
Speaker 2: tells you, but it's also what years in the past
1:01:38
Speaker 2: have told you. So try to identify trends like that.
1:01:42
Speaker 2: Try to take note of when your target deer or
1:01:45
Speaker 2: when amature buck or whatever dear it is that you're
1:01:47
Speaker 2: targeting this year, What do they do last year? If
1:01:49
Speaker 2: you hunted there in the past, if you have pictures,
1:01:51
Speaker 2: if you have notes, what have the general trends on
1:01:55
Speaker 2: this property been from previous years, and then plan for
1:01:58
Speaker 2: that this year so that you are hunting there and
1:02:01
Speaker 2: waiting for them and they are at the right time
1:02:03
Speaker 2: when they show back up or when that peak of
1:02:05
Speaker 2: activity arrives, whatever it might be. That's another important thing
1:02:08
Speaker 2: to be thinking about throughout this month of October as
1:02:11
Speaker 2: we go throughout it. I want to share one other
1:02:14
Speaker 2: opinion here on how to approach this month, and this
1:02:17
Speaker 2: is from Steve Bartilla, another great hunter writer. In his
1:02:21
Speaker 2: book Big Buck Secrets, he discusses having a hunt plan
1:02:25
Speaker 2: for the month of October and how you can shift
1:02:28
Speaker 2: that throughout the month. So he says here, I'm going
1:02:31
Speaker 2: to read an excerpt. When a hunter believes they can
1:02:34
Speaker 2: safely pull off multiple sits, they're most often best served
1:02:37
Speaker 2: by following the pattern of trying to get it done
1:02:40
Speaker 2: by nipping at the edges of cover and slowly moving
1:02:43
Speaker 2: deeper on an as needed basis. At the same time,
1:02:46
Speaker 2: their stand choices should come from a pool the best
1:02:48
Speaker 2: fits what mister big That's like a buck, what the
1:02:51
Speaker 2: buck is driven by during each particular phase of the season.
1:02:55
Speaker 2: For example, it doesn't make much sense to be sitting
1:02:57
Speaker 2: at your best rut funnel or on the downwind side
1:03:00
Speaker 2: of a dough betting year during the first week of October.
1:03:02
Speaker 2: Save those rut stands for during the rut. Instead, look
1:03:06
Speaker 2: at all the food and water related stands you have.
1:03:09
Speaker 2: Hopefully you have the scouting information that determines which one
1:03:12
Speaker 2: to sit. If not, begin with your lowest impact stand
1:03:15
Speaker 2: that works best for the wind, then slowly climb the
1:03:18
Speaker 2: rankings of impact with each new day. Doing so will
1:03:21
Speaker 2: keep your property fresh for the longest time. If you'll
1:03:24
Speaker 2: be hunting the property all season, it may be best
1:03:26
Speaker 2: to save your highest impact food related stands until the rut,
1:03:30
Speaker 2: or until mister Big tells you to hunt them.
1:03:31
Speaker 3: There.
1:03:32
Speaker 2: Many hunters choose to wait until the rut to begin hunting,
1:03:35
Speaker 2: but I enjoy chasing deer way too much to do
1:03:37
Speaker 2: that and have no desire to waste early season opportunities. However,
1:03:41
Speaker 2: I often won't hunt the high impact food related stands,
1:03:44
Speaker 2: and by avoiding them and nipping at the edges and
1:03:47
Speaker 2: low impact stands, the property stays fresh as if you'd
1:03:50
Speaker 2: waited until the rut, only you've been able to enjoy
1:03:53
Speaker 2: some hunting time and had the potential to tag in
1:03:55
Speaker 2: early season buck. So this again comes back to I
1:03:59
Speaker 2: think what we've spent the last fifteen minutes discussing, which
1:04:01
Speaker 2: is weighing risk and reward and knowing that it's a
1:04:04
Speaker 2: long season and just looking at the month of October,
1:04:07
Speaker 2: it's a long month. So knowing when to be aggressive,
1:04:10
Speaker 2: when to hunt high impact stand versus knowing when to
1:04:12
Speaker 2: lay back and hunt those low impact stands, that is
1:04:16
Speaker 2: that's absolutely critical for the month of October. So taking
1:04:21
Speaker 2: your big swings when the conditions are right, when you
1:04:24
Speaker 2: get the cold front, the magic acts, the moon, whatever
1:04:26
Speaker 2: it is you like, whichever belief you ascribe to, or
1:04:29
Speaker 2: when the wind is just right, or when you're intel
1:04:31
Speaker 2: and scouting tells you it's just right, otherwise being a
1:04:34
Speaker 2: little bit more conservative and waiting, or take the infault
1:04:37
Speaker 2: and hunting public approach, which is like pound pound pound,
1:04:40
Speaker 2: But you are going to all these different places, so
1:04:42
Speaker 2: making a high impact doesn't matter because you're just going
1:04:45
Speaker 2: to go to a new property the next day or
1:04:47
Speaker 2: the next weekend. Those are two different schools of thought
1:04:52
Speaker 2: for mid October. Really the whole month of October, but
1:04:54
Speaker 2: especially in the middle. As we move towards late October,
1:04:58
Speaker 2: we're going to move here into the final phase of
1:04:59
Speaker 2: the month, things again start shifting. And what's shifting here
1:05:04
Speaker 2: more than anything is dear behavior. We get the first
1:05:08
Speaker 2: big curveball in dear behavior because we are shifting away
1:05:11
Speaker 2: from the bed defeed pattern and we're moving into a
1:05:14
Speaker 2: rut pattern. But this is like that intermingling, Zoe. This
1:05:17
Speaker 2: is like talking about ven diagrams. This is where those
1:05:20
Speaker 2: two things intermingle. We're getting the beginnings of the rut
1:05:23
Speaker 2: mixing with the bed defeed pattern. And so because of that,
1:05:26
Speaker 2: this is another extra special window of the season. I
1:05:29
Speaker 2: look at the first couple days of the season as
1:05:31
Speaker 2: one of these extra specials, and then I look at
1:05:34
Speaker 2: the end of October as another one of these extra
1:05:36
Speaker 2: special moments. And again many many folks echo this. I
1:05:41
Speaker 2: know Ben Rising puts a huge priority on late October.
1:05:44
Speaker 2: Adam Hayes, I think he's killed many of his biggest
1:05:48
Speaker 2: bucks during what he calls Red October. Like the last
1:05:50
Speaker 2: ten days or so of October. This is this time
1:05:53
Speaker 2: period where you still have bucks living relatively along the
1:05:59
Speaker 2: same lines of their uneral bed defeed pattern that hopefully
1:06:01
Speaker 2: you've been learning about over the last few weeks. They're
1:06:04
Speaker 2: still betting in the same general handful of places. Probably
1:06:08
Speaker 2: they're still feeding in the same general handful of places. Now.
1:06:13
Speaker 2: Of course, food sources are evolving, so you have to
1:06:15
Speaker 2: constantly be monitoring that. You know, are my deer on
1:06:18
Speaker 2: corn now or are they mostly on acorns? Is that
1:06:21
Speaker 2: apple tree still dropping fruit or is it all eating up?
1:06:24
Speaker 2: This is something that throughout the month we need to
1:06:26
Speaker 2: keep watching. John Aberhart talks about doing this. He's constantly
1:06:30
Speaker 2: rotating through these different food sources and figuring out what's
1:06:32
Speaker 2: actually working, what's not, what's actually here, what's not. In
1:06:35
Speaker 2: an adjusting course based on that one. When we get
1:06:49
Speaker 2: to this time period, you are getting deer still on
1:06:52
Speaker 2: that kind of betting sorry feeding rotation. But now bucks
1:06:56
Speaker 2: are feeling extra excited because they are having these rising
1:07:01
Speaker 2: testosterone levels that have been rising all throughout the month,
1:07:04
Speaker 2: but they're nearing their peak now towards the end of October.
1:07:07
Speaker 2: They are ready to breed. They are just dying for
1:07:09
Speaker 2: those first females to come into heat and to be
1:07:12
Speaker 2: ready to breed. So the bucks are rammy as Bobby
1:07:16
Speaker 2: Kendall describes it. But the does, most of them are
1:07:18
Speaker 2: not quite yet ready. So you have bucks that are
1:07:21
Speaker 2: still doing something that hopefully you understand. You know some
1:07:24
Speaker 2: of their patterns, you know some of their behaviors and hotspots,
1:07:27
Speaker 2: but they're doing it more often, and they're doing it
1:07:29
Speaker 2: in daylight more often. So this is where you get
1:07:31
Speaker 2: some bucks making mistakes. This is where if you have
1:07:34
Speaker 2: a specific buck you've been after, this might be your
1:07:36
Speaker 2: very best time to kill that deer because they're moving
1:07:39
Speaker 2: more in daylight. They're taking a few more risks, but
1:07:41
Speaker 2: they're doing it in places that you understand. When you
1:07:44
Speaker 2: get into November, some of that gets thrown out the window.
1:07:48
Speaker 2: Some of this starts getting kind of subsumed by chaos
1:07:51
Speaker 2: when you get bucks chasing does all over the place
1:07:53
Speaker 2: and bucks making big trips to new areas seeking out
1:07:56
Speaker 2: doors or following doughs into new areas, and it just
1:07:59
Speaker 2: gets a little bit crazy. We have this special window,
1:08:02
Speaker 2: you know, it might be seven days, it might be
1:08:04
Speaker 2: ten days, give or take, where you have this ven
1:08:07
Speaker 2: diagram that really lines up well for hunters who know
1:08:11
Speaker 2: their area. Again, this might not be the very best
1:08:14
Speaker 2: time to just see a ton of deer or a
1:08:16
Speaker 2: bunch of bucks. That might be in November. But if
1:08:18
Speaker 2: you know a spot, if you know a buck and
1:08:21
Speaker 2: you've been trying to figure him out, this is probably
1:08:24
Speaker 2: your best opportunity to do that. I want to read you,
1:08:27
Speaker 2: speaking of Adam Hayes, I want to read you a
1:08:29
Speaker 2: little segment here from a book called Real World White
1:08:32
Speaker 2: Tail Icons, and Adam contributed to this. Don Higgins edited it,
1:08:36
Speaker 2: but Adam contributed a bit here. I'm going to read
1:08:39
Speaker 2: this and kind of echoes some of the things I
1:08:41
Speaker 2: just said, but from the perspective of somebody who has
1:08:45
Speaker 2: done this consistently with a lot of success. So he says,
1:08:48
Speaker 2: when I'm after a specific buck, I want to know
1:08:50
Speaker 2: he's a homebody doing the same basic thing every day.
1:08:53
Speaker 2: A mature buck is going to be the most predictable
1:08:55
Speaker 2: and the most patentable before the rot influences him, and
1:08:58
Speaker 2: that's in October. There's a short window of opportunity in
1:09:03
Speaker 2: the early season. He discussed the following weeks, which are
1:09:06
Speaker 2: referred to as the October Law, can be a difficult
1:09:08
Speaker 2: time to hunt. The weather can be warm, acorns are falling, YadA, YadA, YadA, YadA.
1:09:12
Speaker 2: But then he says, towards the end of October, things
1:09:15
Speaker 2: begin to change, especially a buck's attitude. He's established his
1:09:18
Speaker 2: dominance and won't tolerate subordinate bucks in this area. Along
1:09:22
Speaker 2: with this testosterone levels, something else is changing inside him,
1:09:25
Speaker 2: his urge to breed. The problem for him, though, is
1:09:28
Speaker 2: that there are not yet any does in heat, and
1:09:30
Speaker 2: that's where our opportunity lies. During these last ten days
1:09:33
Speaker 2: of October, our adversary has all this frustration building inside
1:09:37
Speaker 2: of him, but nowhere to go with it. He's primed,
1:09:39
Speaker 2: but he's still doing the same thing every day. He's
1:09:42
Speaker 2: not chasing does in the next county, as he's still
1:09:45
Speaker 2: on a predictable pattern and very vulnerable. This is when
1:09:48
Speaker 2: our mature buck is most likely to make a mistake
1:09:51
Speaker 2: by responding to calling or getting up before dark to
1:09:53
Speaker 2: head for food. If you've done your homework and you
1:09:56
Speaker 2: know where this buck will most likely be during this
1:09:58
Speaker 2: time frame, this is a very deadly window of opportunity.
1:10:01
Speaker 2: I've managed to put three two hundred inch white tails
1:10:04
Speaker 2: on the ground during the last ten days of October.
1:10:08
Speaker 2: So red October, as he describes, it, is an absolute
1:10:13
Speaker 2: dynamite time of year. To pull this out. As I mentioned,
1:10:19
Speaker 2: these bucks that are still basically doing the same thing.
1:10:22
Speaker 2: They're still going bedding to feeding. So hopefully the knowledge
1:10:26
Speaker 2: you've accrued to this point of where these bucks are
1:10:28
Speaker 2: spending most of their daylight hours those bedding years, that's
1:10:31
Speaker 2: still going to be, you know, core to where you
1:10:33
Speaker 2: want to be. The food source still core to where
1:10:36
Speaker 2: you want to be. The only change might be that
1:10:40
Speaker 2: there's going to be some of bucks not heading to
1:10:42
Speaker 2: food sources to feed only in the evenings, but also
1:10:46
Speaker 2: to check for does. So thinking about where the absolute
1:10:49
Speaker 2: most does are right now, that's going to start getting
1:10:51
Speaker 2: more and more important as we get later into October.
1:10:54
Speaker 2: Thinking about how buck might scent check a food source
1:10:57
Speaker 2: at this time of year. He might not just walk
1:10:59
Speaker 2: right into feed he did on October first. He might
1:11:02
Speaker 2: want to kind of circle the downwind edge and scent
1:11:04
Speaker 2: check the trails or scent check the field before because
1:11:08
Speaker 2: he's hoping one of those dos is coming into heat.
1:11:11
Speaker 2: That's a consideration at this time of year. As Adam
1:11:15
Speaker 2: eluded in his expert there in the book, calling becomes
1:11:18
Speaker 2: more effective of this time of year. I would say
1:11:21
Speaker 2: as the month of October progresses more and more people
1:11:24
Speaker 2: are picking up the calls more often, and they're going
1:11:26
Speaker 2: to be more aggressive with them. So, you know, in
1:11:29
Speaker 2: the first couple of days of the season, I'm doing
1:11:31
Speaker 2: just a contact grunt. As we get into later October,
1:11:35
Speaker 2: this is when I'm going to be a little bit
1:11:36
Speaker 2: more aggressive. This is when you're going to hear, you know,
1:11:39
Speaker 2: your diehard deer hunter start using their grunt tubes a
1:11:42
Speaker 2: whole lot more. They might do something that's more of
1:11:44
Speaker 2: like a buck roar. They might do a snort, wheeze.
1:11:47
Speaker 2: And I look at calling, and this is my approach,
1:11:50
Speaker 2: but it's pretty much echoed by most others. You should
1:11:53
Speaker 2: look at your calling as being like a ladder, and
1:11:57
Speaker 2: you slowly work your way up that ladder, getting more
1:12:00
Speaker 2: aggressive as needed. You don't want to start typically at
1:12:03
Speaker 2: the top of that ladder. You kind of want to
1:12:04
Speaker 2: work your way there and then read a buck's body
1:12:07
Speaker 2: language and how he reacts to your call to determine
1:12:11
Speaker 2: whether or not you should take a step up the
1:12:13
Speaker 2: next rung. So, if I see a buck, you know,
1:12:15
Speaker 2: out of shooting range it's October twenty fifth, I'm first
1:12:19
Speaker 2: going to see if I can get his attention with
1:12:21
Speaker 2: a simple contact grunt as I showed you earlier, just right.
1:12:25
Speaker 2: If that does not catch his attention, or if he
1:12:28
Speaker 2: hears that looks my way, but just you know, keeps
1:12:30
Speaker 2: doing this thing like slowly walking along or working a
1:12:33
Speaker 2: scrape or whatever, then I might just give him a
1:12:35
Speaker 2: louder contact grunt or move into something that it might
1:12:38
Speaker 2: be described as like a buck roar or a growl.
1:12:40
Speaker 2: That's going to be deeper, louder, just more of like, hey,
1:12:44
Speaker 2: look at me, something like this, So again just ramping
1:12:50
Speaker 2: up my volume a little more punched to it. And
1:12:54
Speaker 2: then finally, you know, you can get really loud with that.
1:12:57
Speaker 2: If you are seeing that this buck is interested but
1:13:01
Speaker 2: still not committing, maybe he's ripping up a scrape now
1:13:05
Speaker 2: or something, but he's not coming to you, then you
1:13:07
Speaker 2: might take the final step up the ladder, which is
1:13:10
Speaker 2: a snort wheeze, which is basically equivalent to like pushing
1:13:13
Speaker 2: another guy at the bar. This is trying to pick
1:13:15
Speaker 2: a fight, and this is something you can just make
1:13:17
Speaker 2: with your mouth. It sounds like this you make that
1:13:23
Speaker 2: that is, you know, say they're going to really piss
1:13:25
Speaker 2: off a buck and he's going to come into you
1:13:28
Speaker 2: or he's gonna make nope, I don't want to fight,
1:13:29
Speaker 2: and he's gonna get out of there, so you can
1:13:31
Speaker 2: step up that ladder. If the buck is not committing
1:13:35
Speaker 2: to you but still showing like, you know, vague interest
1:13:37
Speaker 2: or disinterest. If a buck is showing the opposite, which
1:13:41
Speaker 2: is getting nervous or scared, then just stop going up
1:13:44
Speaker 2: the ladder. Just give up at that point, because you're
1:13:46
Speaker 2: only gonna make things worse if you do that. Let's
1:13:48
Speaker 2: say you do the buck roar and that buck tucks
1:13:50
Speaker 2: his tail and starts walking away. Don't keep sending him calls.
1:13:54
Speaker 2: Don't start ripping out, snort wheezes at him. He's telling you, hey,
1:13:56
Speaker 2: I'm not interested in this. If you do that contact
1:13:59
Speaker 2: run and he jumps a few steps away and then
1:14:01
Speaker 2: starts walking away, just stop. You know, whatever it is,
1:14:05
Speaker 2: read that language. If he shows aggression, if he puffs up,
1:14:08
Speaker 2: if his ears pin back, if he starts ripping up
1:14:10
Speaker 2: a rubber or a scrape or slowly you know, kind
1:14:13
Speaker 2: of hanging in your zone, take those steps. If he
1:14:16
Speaker 2: starts coming to you, like on a bee line, that's
1:14:19
Speaker 2: another reason to stop. Don't keep calling. If he's already
1:14:22
Speaker 2: doing the thing you want him to do. So that
1:14:25
Speaker 2: I would say is that is a pretty good synthesis
1:14:27
Speaker 2: of calling advice as October moves forward, and as a
1:14:31
Speaker 2: kind of encounter on wines rattling, same kind of thing
1:14:36
Speaker 2: in early October, as we discussed, you know that a
1:14:38
Speaker 2: little bit of time tickling can be okay. John Eberhart
1:14:41
Speaker 2: has been talking about this more recently that early and
1:14:43
Speaker 2: mid October. You know, light rattling has been very successful
1:14:47
Speaker 2: for him. When you get too late October, this is
1:14:50
Speaker 2: when you can start getting more aggressive because bucks aren't
1:14:52
Speaker 2: just like kind of tickling times and pushing each other.
1:14:55
Speaker 2: Now as we get to the last days of October,
1:14:57
Speaker 2: we're getting to real fights. We're getting to really trying
1:14:59
Speaker 2: to aablished dominance. You know, there might be a hot dough,
1:15:03
Speaker 2: the first hot dough, or very close to being ready
1:15:05
Speaker 2: to breed where bucks are all out really wanting to
1:15:07
Speaker 2: get after it. In that case, you can have real
1:15:10
Speaker 2: rut rattling sequences. You can really smash these things together,
1:15:14
Speaker 2: simulate that in pulling some deer, you know, to check
1:15:18
Speaker 2: out what's going on. My experience, and I think this
1:15:21
Speaker 2: has been echoed by many others, is that those kinds
1:15:24
Speaker 2: of aggressive, especially rattling sequences, tend to work better in
1:15:28
Speaker 2: areas where there's lower hunting pressure and higher mature buck presence.
1:15:32
Speaker 2: So if you have a really good aide structure, rattling
1:15:35
Speaker 2: seems to work better if you're in a place where
1:15:37
Speaker 2: there's not many mature bucks and there's not that serious knockdown,
1:15:40
Speaker 2: drag out fight going on very often, and whenever there
1:15:44
Speaker 2: is rattling, it's usually other hunters those GISTs. Does not
1:15:48
Speaker 2: seem to be that effective, So keep that in mind.
1:15:50
Speaker 2: I'm pretty conservative with rattling in Michigan. I'm much more
1:15:54
Speaker 2: aggressive if I'm in Iowa or Ohio or something like that.
1:15:58
Speaker 2: So we've talked calling, We've talked about, you know, how
1:16:02
Speaker 2: our hunting setups are going to shift a little bit
1:16:05
Speaker 2: more towards ruddy stuff. But we're not yet hunting, you know,
1:16:07
Speaker 2: funnels and locations like that. What I will say, though,
1:16:12
Speaker 2: and what is a key difference from early October to
1:16:14
Speaker 2: late October, is the effectiveness of scrapes within your hunting repertoire. Now,
1:16:21
Speaker 2: this is something you can look at all year. Kind
1:16:24
Speaker 2: of going back, I mentioned John quite a few times.
1:16:26
Speaker 2: John has been very influential on myself and many others,
1:16:29
Speaker 2: and he's been a great guest on the podcast. He
1:16:31
Speaker 2: uses scrapes all throughout the month of October. He's looking
1:16:33
Speaker 2: for primary scrape areas, is what he calls him, where
1:16:36
Speaker 2: you're back in security cover and have a zone where
1:16:39
Speaker 2: there are multiple scrapes all kind of clustered in a
1:16:41
Speaker 2: small area. He likes to key in and on that
1:16:44
Speaker 2: all throughout the season. Many others prefer to not spend
1:16:48
Speaker 2: much time on scrapes until late October, but late October
1:16:51
Speaker 2: is the peak of scraping activity. Multiple studies have shown
1:16:57
Speaker 2: that you know, somewhere in that like October twenty third
1:17:00
Speaker 2: of the twenty seventh, give or take, in that window
1:17:03
Speaker 2: is when studies have shown the absolute peak of checking
1:17:06
Speaker 2: scrapes occurs. That's when you have the best chance of
1:17:09
Speaker 2: daylight activity on scrapes. These bucks are trying to collect
1:17:13
Speaker 2: important information because as we talked about the testostroones rising,
1:17:18
Speaker 2: the running excitement is rising to a near frenzy. So
1:17:22
Speaker 2: bucks are just constantly trying to figure out where are
1:17:25
Speaker 2: these doughs, when are they gonna be ready to breed?
1:17:27
Speaker 2: Who else is here, what's going on? It's like the
1:17:31
Speaker 2: tailgate before a football game or something. There's a lot
1:17:33
Speaker 2: of excitement, a lot of optimism and anxiety and all
1:17:37
Speaker 2: those things. They're continuing to go back to this hot
1:17:39
Speaker 2: spot checking, checking, smelling, smelling, sniffing, leaving their own sign
1:17:43
Speaker 2: as well. So scrapes. If you can be in cover
1:17:47
Speaker 2: near those scrapes, that's a great place to be. Obviously,
1:17:51
Speaker 2: a great place for cameras to get an idea of
1:17:53
Speaker 2: what deer are in your area at this time of
1:17:55
Speaker 2: the year. And of course, if you can have many
1:17:59
Speaker 2: of these different things coming together, it's your best case scenario.
1:18:02
Speaker 2: So if you can have like an active scrape right
1:18:04
Speaker 2: you know, on the way to a great late October
1:18:07
Speaker 2: food source where you know there's been a lot of doze,
1:18:09
Speaker 2: and you're right in between that great food source and
1:18:12
Speaker 2: a bedding area that you know has been frequented by
1:18:15
Speaker 2: a target buck. If you can line all that up,
1:18:18
Speaker 2: then you have a great setup. Combine that with what's
1:18:22
Speaker 2: hopefully a good conditioned day, maybe one of those cold
1:18:24
Speaker 2: fronts or Magic X day or whatever it is, then
1:18:27
Speaker 2: you have a really terrific hunting opportunity. Those are the
1:18:30
Speaker 2: kinds of days where magic happens. That's what we're dreaming
1:18:34
Speaker 2: of in the hunting season. When you can, you know,
1:18:37
Speaker 2: use your information, use your scouting intel, use your week's
1:18:41
Speaker 2: worth of learning to take advantage of something you know,
1:18:45
Speaker 2: making a predictable mistake that you predict put yourself in
1:18:48
Speaker 2: the right place on the right day, and voila, it
1:18:51
Speaker 2: finally comes together for you. So that is a high
1:18:56
Speaker 2: level review of October took you from the early October
1:19:01
Speaker 2: days to the late October days. I will tell you
1:19:05
Speaker 2: that I kind of look at it as a as
1:19:07
Speaker 2: a I guess I don't know how to describe it.
1:19:08
Speaker 2: If you imagine like a roller coaster October. First, I'm
1:19:11
Speaker 2: gonna start hiring that roller coaster with excitement and you know,
1:19:15
Speaker 2: taking some swings. I'm gonna drop down after that as
1:19:18
Speaker 2: hunting pressure impacts my property. And then it's a slow
1:19:21
Speaker 2: rise throughout the month for me at least and for
1:19:22
Speaker 2: many other hunters. As you're slowly getting more aggressive, bucks
1:19:26
Speaker 2: testosterone slowly rising, and then you're reaching that next peak
1:19:30
Speaker 2: as you get to late October. I spend a lot
1:19:32
Speaker 2: of time that lasts five to seven days of the
1:19:35
Speaker 2: month aggressively hunting near the core areas of bucks that
1:19:39
Speaker 2: I'm interested in putting a tag on. I put a
1:19:41
Speaker 2: lot of priority on those days. Adam Hayes, as we discussed,
1:19:45
Speaker 2: he does too. Almost everyone on the podcast we've talked
1:19:48
Speaker 2: to over the years, they are keying in on those
1:19:51
Speaker 2: days as being absolutely peak opportunity. So as you progress
1:19:55
Speaker 2: through the month of October, don't forget that the best
1:19:58
Speaker 2: is probably yet to come. So don't, you know, push
1:20:02
Speaker 2: all your chips into the pot unless you have things
1:20:05
Speaker 2: lining up just right throughout this entire month. I want
1:20:07
Speaker 2: to go back to this final thought to leave you
1:20:10
Speaker 2: with is that you're constantly like, imagine like an old
1:20:13
Speaker 2: school scale, right, There's like these two metal trays, and
1:20:17
Speaker 2: you put stuff on either side of the tray. One
1:20:20
Speaker 2: side is our risk, one side is our reward, And
1:20:23
Speaker 2: you're constantly thinking every day you're going to hunt, or
1:20:25
Speaker 2: when you're choosing a hunting location, you're constantly thinking, Okay,
1:20:29
Speaker 2: how are the scales going to going to move on
1:20:32
Speaker 2: this particular day, with this set of information, with this
1:20:35
Speaker 2: set of conditions, at this time of year, Knowing that
1:20:39
Speaker 2: deer behavior is changing through the month, Knowing that deer
1:20:42
Speaker 2: do seem to at least hunters. We surely have seen
1:20:45
Speaker 2: anecdotal evidence that certain conditions can change behavior a little bit.
1:20:50
Speaker 2: Knowing that hunter pressure does impact what these do deer
1:20:53
Speaker 2: do throughout the month, all of that is going to
1:20:56
Speaker 2: shift the scales and hopefully will be in your mind
1:20:59
Speaker 2: as you make your decisions every weekend or every night
1:21:02
Speaker 2: when you get out to hunt. Whatever it is speaking
1:21:05
Speaker 2: of this, something I did not mention, but something that
1:21:08
Speaker 2: is a major topic to consider in October is hunting
1:21:12
Speaker 2: mornings versus hunting evenings, and this is the exact same
1:21:16
Speaker 2: set of issues is relevant here. It's always the scale.
1:21:21
Speaker 2: There are some people like Don Higgins, who has advocated
1:21:24
Speaker 2: in the past to not hunt mornings too terribly often
1:21:28
Speaker 2: because they are harder, and John Eberhart said that in
1:21:32
Speaker 2: the ex the book I read earlier in this episode,
1:21:34
Speaker 2: talked about how many parts of October, especially early to
1:21:38
Speaker 2: mid October, many times mature bucks will be back in
1:21:42
Speaker 2: their bedding years quite early in the morning. So if
1:21:45
Speaker 2: you are trying to slip in to hunt at the
1:21:47
Speaker 2: same time that these bucks are either already in their
1:21:49
Speaker 2: beds or approaching their beds, there's a very high chance
1:21:54
Speaker 2: of you spooking that deer and educating him in the
1:21:57
Speaker 2: dark before we ever got to hunt him on the side.
1:22:00
Speaker 2: For an evening hunt, you can get in there while
1:22:03
Speaker 2: he's betted down, and you can slip up to whatever
1:22:06
Speaker 2: location you want to hunt while knowing he's bedded somewhere,
1:22:09
Speaker 2: and you can avoid you know, sending your wind there.
1:22:11
Speaker 2: You can avoid walking so close that'll hear or see you,
1:22:14
Speaker 2: and you can get an undetected So it's easier to
1:22:17
Speaker 2: have an undetected safe hunt in the evenings, easier sell
1:22:22
Speaker 2: than it would be for a morning hunt in most situations.
1:22:25
Speaker 2: So that's why I would say, on average, for most
1:22:28
Speaker 2: of October, evening hunts seem to be a safer bet,
1:22:31
Speaker 2: and many die hard deer hunters prefer to hunt evenings
1:22:34
Speaker 2: and do not hunt mornings as much. There are, of course, exceptions,
1:22:39
Speaker 2: if you're on a short trip, if you are hunting
1:22:43
Speaker 2: public land, if you are you know, trying to take
1:22:47
Speaker 2: advantage of a special set of conditions like a big
1:22:49
Speaker 2: cold front or something. Morning hunts. You know, A, if
1:22:52
Speaker 2: you're on a short trip, make the most of your time,
1:22:54
Speaker 2: get out there and hunt, give it a try. B.
1:22:56
Speaker 2: If you have that big cold front come through or
1:22:58
Speaker 2: if you believe in the moon and the moon phase
1:23:00
Speaker 2: is a little bit better on a certain morning, you
1:23:03
Speaker 2: give it a shot. The biggest thing here is just recognizing,
1:23:07
Speaker 2: like what's the high risk that we're looking at and
1:23:09
Speaker 2: how do you work around that. So if we're worried
1:23:11
Speaker 2: about spooking deer on the way to hunt in the morning,
1:23:14
Speaker 2: but you want to hunt the morning, you just really
1:23:16
Speaker 2: need to think about how do I get to a
1:23:19
Speaker 2: spot without educating deer. So you need to make sure
1:23:21
Speaker 2: that you're hunting a location that's not going to require
1:23:24
Speaker 2: you walk through a food source, or that's not going
1:23:26
Speaker 2: to require you blow out a bedding area when you leave,
1:23:29
Speaker 2: or whatever it might be. So access and entry is
1:23:33
Speaker 2: really really important anytime of year. It's really important morning
1:23:36
Speaker 2: or evening, but it's especially important or entry on morning
1:23:41
Speaker 2: hunts in early October when those bucks can be going
1:23:43
Speaker 2: back earlier in the day. That said, as you move
1:23:47
Speaker 2: through the month of October, I mean get into late October,
1:23:50
Speaker 2: you're going to find that bucks do stay on their
1:23:52
Speaker 2: feet later into the morning. And once you get to
1:23:55
Speaker 2: that last week or ten days of October, all of
1:23:57
Speaker 2: a sudden, mornings start getting better, better and better. Until
1:24:01
Speaker 2: they get like very good and might be the best
1:24:04
Speaker 2: once you get to that phase. And so at that
1:24:05
Speaker 2: point you want to shift and you want to make
1:24:07
Speaker 2: sure you're hunting those mornings in late October and definitely November.
1:24:11
Speaker 2: And and you know, some studies are starting to show
1:24:14
Speaker 2: that there might be a little bit more morning movement
1:24:16
Speaker 2: in October than we have given deer credit for. We
1:24:19
Speaker 2: just did a podcast with with a gentleman who's been
1:24:24
Speaker 2: doing with Derek Dixon, who's been doing drone research using
1:24:28
Speaker 2: a thermal drone. Hopefully you guys heard this episode, but
1:24:31
Speaker 2: he found when he was actually watching this deer with
1:24:33
Speaker 2: his drone, watching them all day every day, that they
1:24:36
Speaker 2: were moving a lot more in the mornings than we
1:24:38
Speaker 2: give them credit for. Now, it is back in security cover,
1:24:41
Speaker 2: it's in hard places to hunt. So can you hunt
1:24:44
Speaker 2: it without educating them and without spooking them that's still
1:24:47
Speaker 2: a question. But they are moving more in those morning hours.
1:24:50
Speaker 2: Maybe then we have sometimes given them credit for. So
1:24:53
Speaker 2: ken mornings work in October. Yes, but you need to
1:24:57
Speaker 2: be very aware of the challenges and have a plan
1:25:00
Speaker 2: for your entry and exit that accounts for that same
1:25:05
Speaker 2: thing goes for the whole season. You know, if you're
1:25:07
Speaker 2: gonna hunt evenings in October, that's great, and it's great
1:25:10
Speaker 2: getting in for those hunts, but you better have a
1:25:12
Speaker 2: good way to get out, because if you have to
1:25:14
Speaker 2: walk through the food plot, or if you have to
1:25:16
Speaker 2: walk through the cut cornfield, or if you have to walk,
1:25:18
Speaker 2: you know, past all the apple trees or something after dark,
1:25:21
Speaker 2: after the hunt, and that's where all the deer are
1:25:23
Speaker 2: right now, you are going to educate those deer and
1:25:27
Speaker 2: you are going to have worst hunts in the coming
1:25:30
Speaker 2: days because of it. So always thinking about that, always
1:25:34
Speaker 2: thinking about the scales risk and reward, Always thinking about
1:25:37
Speaker 2: how your hunts are going to educate deer in the future,
1:25:39
Speaker 2: and making sure you're making smart hunting decisions every day
1:25:42
Speaker 2: of October as the months go on, or as the
1:25:44
Speaker 2: days go on, because in October, these deer are still
1:25:48
Speaker 2: survivable machines. They have not quite gotten to the point
1:25:51
Speaker 2: where they throw caution to the wind and chase ladies
1:25:55
Speaker 2: without thinking that will happen for most of us, it
1:25:57
Speaker 2: happens in Novemberber. They still kind of had their head
1:26:02
Speaker 2: screwed on straight, So you too need to keep your
1:26:05
Speaker 2: head screwed on straight. Make good decisions. Work your way
1:26:09
Speaker 2: through the month, take those stabs when the timing is right,
1:26:13
Speaker 2: when your intel tells you what's right, when the conditions
1:26:15
Speaker 2: seem right, or when the time of yours right. At
1:26:19
Speaker 2: a high level, that is my meta analysis, my literature review,
1:26:24
Speaker 2: my comprehensive analysis of how to Hunt Mature Bucks in October,
1:26:30
Speaker 2: based on the perspectives that I have come to from
1:26:34
Speaker 2: so many, so many different podcasts, so many different conversations
1:26:38
Speaker 2: with these guys. You've heard me mentioned number of folks.
1:26:40
Speaker 2: I've mentioned Adam Hayes, I've mentioned Don Higgins, I've mentioned
1:26:43
Speaker 2: Ben Rising, I've mentioned Jeff Sturgist, John Eberhart, Mark Drury,
1:26:47
Speaker 2: Terry Jury, Bobby Kendall, Andre Toquisto, Dan Infalt, the guys
1:26:52
Speaker 2: from the hunting public. All of these folks we have
1:26:55
Speaker 2: had very deep, concerted, comprehensive conversation with on these topics,
1:27:01
Speaker 2: and would highly encourage you to go back search those
1:27:05
Speaker 2: names and Wired to Hunt find our episodes, listen to
1:27:08
Speaker 2: those full episodes for more. But I hope that with
1:27:11
Speaker 2: this kind of overview, giving you insights from a bunch
1:27:14
Speaker 2: of different people all about this one month, it will
1:27:18
Speaker 2: be helpful to kind of hear it all in one
1:27:19
Speaker 2: place and to give you a starting point as we
1:27:22
Speaker 2: kick off what is one of the very most exciting
1:27:25
Speaker 2: months of the entire year. So thanks for tuning in,
1:27:28
Speaker 2: Thanks for being with me for this one. Let me
1:27:30
Speaker 2: know in the comments. I would love to hear from you,
1:27:32
Speaker 2: whether it be on social media or YouTube or an
1:27:35
Speaker 2: email whatever. I'm curious what you think about this format show.
1:27:38
Speaker 2: Is this helpful? Is this something that I should do
1:27:40
Speaker 2: for November and December. I've considered doing this more topically too,
1:27:45
Speaker 2: so maybe doing like a comprehensive review about approaches to scrapes,
1:27:50
Speaker 2: or an episode like this all about trail cameras and
1:27:53
Speaker 2: getting all these different perspectives on cameras and stuff like that.
1:27:57
Speaker 2: Let me know if you think this is helpful or
1:27:59
Speaker 2: if you think this is junk, let me know that too.
1:28:02
Speaker 2: So thanks for listening, thanks for your feedback, thanks for
1:28:05
Speaker 2: being a part of this community. And if you are
1:28:07
Speaker 2: kicking off hunting season as i am, here best a lout,
1:28:10
Speaker 2: have fun out there. It's a beautiful time of year.
1:28:13
Speaker 2: It's a wonderful time of year. Make sure you are
1:28:16
Speaker 2: sharing it with your friends and family. Get some meat
1:28:20
Speaker 2: in the freezer, get some great memories, and be safe
1:28:24
Speaker 2: doing it. So until next time, thank you, and stay
1:28:28
Speaker 2: wired to hunt.