Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1063: Back 40 - If You Could Only Follow Five Deer Hunting Rules, What Would They Be?

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Ep. 1063: Back 40 - If You Could Only Follow Five Deer Hunting Rules, What Would They Be? · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What is going on? This is Jake Holfer. Welcome to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: another episode of Back forty and this week we have
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: our panel of guests once again, Aaron Warburton, Adam Key,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Bill Winki, and Jeff Sturgis. And building off of last
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: week's episode and as we build up to the opening
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: day of many archery seasons October first, this is our panel.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: They're giving us a quick rules and advice and guidance
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: leading up to this upcoming season for twenty twenty six.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: And so this episode is all about rules. And I
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: know rules sometimes get a negative connotation, but the root
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of this question is more so guidelines pillars to keep
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: in mind across a broad spectrum of guests and get
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: their perspective of what comes top of mind. What are
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the biggest rules that will help point you in the
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: right direction? Almost bumpers and you're going bowling, They're going
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to keep you on the bowling lane and headed in
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the right direction. So we're going to kick things off
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: with Aaron Warburton. Welcome to another episode of Back forty,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: presented by Moultrie. Here we go, all right, I think
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: this is my opinion. People say they hate rules, but
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: people kind of like rules to have an idea if
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: they're on the right guidelines, and maybe rule and guidelines
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: is somewhat similar. So I want to boil it down
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to five rules, five five principles, five guidelines that hunters
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: should certainly consider for this year and probably perpetuity.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: So what do you got, Number one thing? These and
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: these are mine. This is my perspective here, So take
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: that with a grain of salt. Everybody's got a different one.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Number one thing for me is to have fun and
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: enjoy what you're doing. So there's a bunch of different
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: ways to skin the cat. When it comes to whytail
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: deer hunting. You can hunt specific bucks, you can hunt
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: with a group of buddies, you can do deer drives,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: you can solely bow hunt, etc. Whatever you're choosing to
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: do with that. Try to have fun and learn as
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: much as you can. That's my main thing. If it
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: gets to the point where you're getting so serious about
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: it that it's getting stressful and it's causing you problems
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: with family, problems with friends, problems with neighbors, et cetera,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: then I would I would advise you just to back
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: up and go back to that rule. Just keep it fun.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Nobody's starving. We're not. We're not shooting deer today because
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: that's what we have to We have to survive on them,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: you know, we Although I love eating them and I
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: do eat a lot of them, but it's modern times.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: We need to have fun and remember that always, like
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: remember the fun and then the learning aspect. That's the
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: that's the number one rule, real quick, real quick, before
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: you go to rule number two. When's the last time
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: you broke your own cardinal rule? Oh? I do it often,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: But the last time that I broke at big time
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: was well, actually it's when I when I guess I
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: invent this rule in my brain. When I was like
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one years old, I had taken I was
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: going to college and working at the same time, and
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: I'd taken time off school and work and hunted all
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: day long for a specific buck on the farm, the
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: private land that we hunt, my family farm. I'd hunted
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: like nine days in a row day like dark, same tree.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: And I had a picture of one deer. I had
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: one picture of him, and I was waiting for that
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: one deer, and I, I mean, I was getting worn out.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I did not want to I mean, you've sat all
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: day in a tree. I'm sure it's not necessarily an
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: enjoyable thing. Sometimes not nine days in the road. No,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: you get to three or four, you're like, oh my gosh,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: I've had enough. While I took ten days off and
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: I was on the ninth day, I think, so I'm
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: running out of time, and I've let some bucks walk
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: that I probably shouldn't have. And I climbed in the
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: tree that day and I rattled in a big buck
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: and he comes in underneath me snort, waez is understand
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: makes us great? Does every everything? He's seven yards broadside,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: dead to rights, and I'm sitting there measuring his points
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: and thinking about which deer he is. And I let
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: him walk off, and I right before he left the
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: field and jetted into the woods about one hundred yards out,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I said, well, I let me have one more to look.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I pulled on my binoculars and I look, and I said,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: are you kidding me? That's the deer that I've been
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: hunting all fall. I literally i'd had one picture of him,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: so I'd never seen him, you know, on the hoof.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: And he came in and I don't know if he
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: just wasn't quite as big as I was hoping or something,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: he just didn't meet my criteria. And as soon as
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: I saw that it was the deer I was trying
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: to shoot, my mind completely switched and I'm like grunting
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: and trying to get him to come back in and everything.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Well by that time, he's already gone, you know, he's
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: he's out, he's out, He's gone. And I was so mad.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: I just climbed down and left. It was like, I
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: just I just spent nine days of my vacation. I
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: only have two weeks of it a year, you know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: and I'm on my I'm on out of it. I
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: just spent all that time trying to kill that deer,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: and I just could have killed him, but I was
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: worried about all these external factors, about how big is antlers,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: wearing all that. I wasn't focused on just being in
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: the hunt, being in the moment.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Of the hunt.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I was focused on all this other crap. And from
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: that point forward, I said, I ain't never doing that again.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go back. I the reason why I
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: started hunting was because I heard a deer coming in
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: the woods, crunching in the leaves. My heart started pounding.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: I turned around. It was a dough and I just
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: about had a heart attack trying to shoot her. When
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I was eleven years old. I said, I'm going back
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: to that mindset, and I'm never I'm never going back
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: to this. So that's where that rule comes from.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: That's an excellent story. That's uh, that's that's awesome. It
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: sucks to happen, but I guess it was just so
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: ticked off.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Walking all the way back to the truck, and I say,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: this is stupid. This ain't why I signed up for this.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: This ain't why I started hunting. I started hunting because
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: it gets me freaking excited when I see a deer
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: or a turkey or something like. I mean, you know,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: if you're hooked when you're a kid, if you have
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: that feeling, I said, I am never going to lose
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: that feeling again. And I should have just been torn
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: to pieces by that buck coming in and making a
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: scrape right underneath me. There's a big, old mature buck,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: and I let him walk. He's probably one hundred and
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: forty somethingch deer. So I ain't never doing that again.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: So I haven't, and it's been glorious ever since. So
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: that's the number one rule. Okay, rule number two. Rule
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: number two. I'll get into tactics a little bit. Obey
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the wind, everybody says it, but understand what the wind
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: does in different environments and understand how it behaves in
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: your environment that you hunt. That's a complicated thing and
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: you could go way down the rabbit hole on that,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: but I'm telling you, if you don't have the wind
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: right on, it's going to you're going to lose more
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: opportunities at mature Bucks than you get if you don't
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: have that one nailed.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And so just for out of clarity for people, not
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: just the wind of the thermals and how the wind
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: and thermals behave is what you and do you think
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: that is something? How does someone improve off of that?
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Obviously you have milkweed, Like, what are some ways that
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: people can say, Okay, I need to I need to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: follow this rule number two? What are some ways I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: can improve? And or do you guys have many videos
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: or resources that you guys dive deep into.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: That we do, but it's been a few years since
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: we've done something like that. We've talked about it some
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: in podcasts, but it's it's hard it's very hard to
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: explain via video or podcast. It's much easier if you
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: just go to the woods and you drop milkweed NonStop
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: and you watch how it behaves. Now, if the wind's
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: blowing fifteen miles an hour out of the south and
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: you're sitting on a high ridge and it's been doing
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: that for three hours, well it's going to continue to
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: do that, you know. But as the sun falls and
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: the day winds drop off, it's going to change how
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: it behaves. Vice versa. In the morning, as the sun
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: is coming up, it's going to change how it behaves.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: You can feel when you're walking out, like say you
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: got a bunch of ridges next to a creek bottom,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: and you're walking out the edge of that creek bottom
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: where all them ridges play out, and this is an
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: hour after dark or thirty minutes after dark. You can
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: feel that cool air dumping down those drains coming off
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: those ridges. That's those thermals pulling hard right at dusk.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Once you start to understand that, it's gonna help you
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: set up and get closer opportunities, especially at mature bucks.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, and the reason why we know is because
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: I've messed up a pile of them. I've messed up
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: way more really big ones than I've killed because of
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: the wind. I've had everything else dialed, but that wind
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: is critical. If it is not, I'm so anal about
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: it now, Like if if I'm not one hundred percent
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: confident that I know where it's going and what it's doing,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: then I'll just get down and leave. I would rather
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: not hunt that spot, even though my ground since in there,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I don't care about that. I do not want is
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: for him to come in there and smell me in
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: that tree or that setup before I get a chance
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: at him, because that is that's checkmate.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so milkweed and all right. Rule number three.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Rule number three, if your bow hunting or your gun
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: hunting take close, high opportunity shots, don't try to force it.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: A lot of people practice in the yard all summer
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: and they get it in their head that, Okay, well
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I can hit a baseball at forty five yards, so
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I'm good at forty five yards. It don't work that
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: way in the woods. When when you're hunting and your
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: cold and your heart's pounding, and you haven't you know,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: this is the first gear that you've drawn back on
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: all year. There's so many other factors involved. I would
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: just try to make your setups in such a way
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: that you get close high odds opportunities. I would rather
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: have an opportunity at you know, a smaller buck at
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: twelve yards dead broadside than I would a great, big,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: giant bucket forty eight yards through the brush, flinging and errol.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: I just I do not want to lose a deer.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: I do not want to wound a deer, even if
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: that means, you know, if in my mind, if I
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: shoot a deer in the guts and I get him
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: the next day that was a failure, I want to
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: shoot him and kill him as quickly as possible. That's
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: my job as a hunter. So I want close range,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: high odds opportunities.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: That's a great rule. That's great rule, all right, Rule
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: number four.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It kind of it kind of piggybacks off of that.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Set up is everything. And this is coming from this
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: is coming from a guy that hunts primarily big woods
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: type stuff. There's different ways to skin the cat, but
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: in my mind, the way that I hunt, I want
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: to have high quality setups in a bunch of different
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: for a bunch of different conditions. If that makes sense.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: I want to be going into whatever it is, my
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: week vacation, my two week vacation. I want to have
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: stuff dialed. I want to know how I'm getting in
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: and out of that spot. I want to know how
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: high in the tree I need to be. I want
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: to know, you know, do I need to bring a
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: stool to sit on the ground in this brush pile?
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Where's the trail that I'm shooting, where's the scrape at?
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You know, down to the nth detail. I want to
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: have all that stuff figured out if I can, before
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: I go in there.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: How hard is that to do?
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: It's very difficult, but it's it's just time consuming, is
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: all it is. You know, there's a lot of people
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: that want to travel and hunt, and we do it
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: all the time. We love going into new areas, but
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: it is an extreme challenge. You are that local guy
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: that has more time to scout, that's been out there
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: once or twice a week all year long. Is gonna
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: have a leg up on anybody that shows up. You know,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: unless it's Ani may or something. You gotta have a
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: leg up on anybody that shows up because he's gonna
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: know he's gonna have his spots styled in You know,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: whether he's got stands hung there or not, that doesn't
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: necessarily matter. But I'm talking about actually putting boots on
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: the ground and knowing exactly where you're gonna set and
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: when you're gonna set it, and how you're gonna get
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: in and out of there, and that all. I figure
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: most of that out scouting in like late September early October.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: H All right, do you have a rule number five
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: for US?
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Five adapt to the conditions M So basically, take what
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: the defense gives you. Uh. If you have, say, for example,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: you're going into your hunt and there's a warm front
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: and it's record high tempts, everybody's kind of pessimistic camp
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: because the deer ain't moving. You know, it's eighty degrees.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: It's the rut. We're in a T shirt. This sucks,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Well, what usually a company's a warm
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: front is high south winds. So if you get fifteen
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five min south winds during a warm front,
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: don't be sitting around on your butt, you know, waiting
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: and hoping for the next cold front so that you
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: can go out there and hunt. I'd be out there
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: going into the wind every day, scouting as much as
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I could. Because the one thing the advantage, like I said,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: take what the defense gives you. The advantage of that
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five mile in air wind is you can
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: get into the wind. You can scout into the wind
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: and blitz through a lot of areas, cover a lot
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: of ground with your eyes and your boots that you
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: otherwise would not be able to cover if it was calm.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Makes perfect?
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: You're gonna get away with a lot more moving around
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: on a windy day than you are otherwise. That's just
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: one example of many. But I'm always I'm always thinking
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: about whatever conditions it is that day. If it's warm
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: and windy, water's going to be way more important, you know,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: north facing shade in hills is going to be more important.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: So and deer will move around their environment. I mean,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: they're still out there. It's just understanding how they use
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: it under the different conditions. You know. The same could
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: be said if there's a blizzard that comes in big
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: time north wind. All the leaves are gone, their food's
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: covered up with a foot of snow. Where are they
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: gonna go? They're gonna go to south facing thermal cover
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: if they can. If they don't have any hills or topography,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: they're going to go to thermal cover. That means cedars,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: pine trees, you know, et cetera, in a big grove
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: of cedars and pines and hedges and whatever, hedge trees
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: and whatnot. Anywhere where they can get sort of out
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: of those elements, they're gonna go to. And you can
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: really use that to your advantage. You know, I mean
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: your property may not have deer in it, yeah, I
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: mean it may not have deer in it for two
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: three weeks leading up to that point, but all of
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: a sudden, you've got a bunch of south facing thermal
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: cover on your property. Big north wind comes in dumps
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: eight inches of snow. Your property went from holding three
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: or four deer to now it's holding twenty five deer
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: and they're all just stacked right in there. But they're
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: only there because of those conditions.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: So I like that. Those are some great rules. Those
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: are some great rules and guidelines for people to fall
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: along when throughout the season. Do you think when you
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: wake up and it's not ideal conditions, it's not you know,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: a twenty degree temperature drop November seven. It's not that day,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: But do you wake up and like, Okay, what can
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: I do today? These might set me up for tomorrow
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: or the next week when things change. That's pretty much
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: your strategy throughout the year.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always playing the long game. So like, even
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: if I can get out, even if I kill a
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: buck on October twentieth, I can go scout on October
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: twenty first, and it may not help. I mean, I've
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: filled my buck tag, so I can't shoot another one.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: But whatever I find that day might help me kill
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: one next year on October twenty first, or the twenty
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: third or the twenty fourth. So like, if you just
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: go to the woods every time because you enjoy it
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: and want to learn stuff, and you just pick up
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: little nuggets every time you go, you don't have to
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: you know, you don't have to figure out everything or
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: reinvent the wheel every time you go out there. So
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: if you just pick up a little nugget or two
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: every time you go, and make a point to go
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: as often as possible, all this other stuff we're talking
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: about takes care of itself.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: When you do, you have milkweed with you every single time.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: You go to the woods during season.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Not always, ok, but I mean I'm always kicking myself
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: if I don't have it. You know, it's different though,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: You got to you got to understand the conditions that
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: you're out there. And if I'm scouting in late May
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: or early June, sure, and you know the tree canopy
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: is all on the win's gonna behave differently in there
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: than it does in the middle of December, you know.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: So you could drop milk weed and kind of get
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: an idea of how it flows across that ridge. But
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: you really need to get in there and get up
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: to stand height and see what it's doing. But I
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: can't tell you how many times we've climbed, got fifteen
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: twenty feet up, started dropping that and climbed straight back
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: down because like, nope, and it ain't doing what we
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: were hoping in here. It's going the wrong direction, which
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: I battle.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I think that's a great example because a lot of guys,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: well I'm just gonna write it out or like you know,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want to make more noise. I don't want
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: to get down, I don't want to move, I don't
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: want to you know, it's gonna take me twenty thirty
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: minutes to get reset up. You're very aggressive in that
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: sense where you're, hey, we got to go, gotta do something.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Got to go, gotta go.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Let's go.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Let's go do something that we got confidence in right now.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And like you said, if the conditions aren't good, let's
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: go learn something. Let's go. Is there a place up
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: throw we've never been on before, Let's go scout it.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, even if we burn up a little bit
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: of it, we're getting up some knowledge for later. So
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: it's constantly you're constantly pushing the snowball, you know, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger over time with
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: knowledge about these different spots. But most of the mature
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: buck encounters that we have, we're putting the deer on
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: a spot. We know where they're going and what they're
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: going to be doing based off of our scouting. Now
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I say that we know, we don't truly know, But
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: most of the time when we get those opportunities, it
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: is by design on those big ones. And if the
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: wind is not, like, if the wind ain't cooperating with
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: your plan that you have in your head, sure enough,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: he's gonna come walking down that trail. He's gonna smell
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: you and that's it frustrating.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yeah, I like it. Well, I know everyone
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: can find where you're at, but where can people find you? Aaron?
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Uh, best place probably YouTube, the hunting public. That's where
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: we have all of our current content at, but also
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: on most of the social media platforms as well.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: All right, there, you guys have it? Really liked Aaron's
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: if and number one having fun as the number one rule.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: That's why we do it. We all have goals, we
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: all have ambitions. It could be just filling the freezer,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: it could be shooting a personal best buck, but ultimately
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: keeping it fun because the season goes by so fast,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and laying the framework now in August to hopefully feel
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: prepared this upcoming season. So we're going to roll right
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: into Bill Winky with his rules doesn't give us exactly
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: five but plenty of insight. Here's Bill, all right, Bill,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I feel as much as people don't like rules and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: don't like guidelines and guardrails, as much as people say
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: that they really do want rules and pillars to follow
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: when it comes to this upcoming season. And so I'm
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: going to ask you if you could only follow a
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: handful of deer hunting rules. What would they be? So
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: what's Bill Winkie's rules of the white tail?
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: Well, rule number one is you can't kill them if
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: they know they're being hunted. So you've got to go
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: to extremes. And this really changes almost everything that you
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: do during the course of the season, because every time
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: you step out of your vehicle, even where you park,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: everything that you do from the time you leave your
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: apartment or your house impacts your chances for success that day.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: They can't know that they're being hunted, So take that
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: to the extreme, you know, like the noise that you
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: make going in the wind direction while you're walking to
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: your stand. And you know, I remember reading an article
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: one time when I was just a young bowlin er
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: many many years ago, let's say, I don't know, thirty
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: plus years ago, and it's called Stalk your Stand and
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: it really was about, you know, like getting in clean.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: And I'd never even thought about that before. And how
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: could you be in this, in this sport or in
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: this activity and not understand that you've got to get
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: in there clean. Well, you got to do a lot
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: more than that. There's so many ways that the deer
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: figure out that they're being hunted. You've got to use
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: your imagination and your creativity sometimes to say, okay, what
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: are all the various ways that they can figure this out? Like,
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe you'd have to sneak behind, you know,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: a tractor while it's going out in the field to
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: pick up a round bail, and or maybe you ride
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: on the back of the tractor and when it goes
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: past your tree stand, you jump off and the farmer
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: keeps going, or whatever it is. You've got to come
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: up with ways to beat them at that game. They
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: can't know they're being hunted. I think that's the most
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: important rule. If you do only that, and then the
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: next rule is hunt as often as you can. If
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: you do if you do those two well, if you
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: if you don't let the deer know that they're being hunted,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: and you put in in as many hours as you
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: possibly can, you're probably gonna have a pretty good season.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: Throw a few more rules in, you know, find the food,
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: find the deer. That's a very common one, and typic
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: that's going to be something that applies to the early season,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: late season more so than the rut. And then during
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: the rut, you know, I find the dos, find the bucks.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: You know, another pretty simple one. So we're up to three.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: We up to three rules, let's say three and a half. Yeah,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: three and a half.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: I really have to come up with one and a
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: half more. Okay, what would be another important one? Well,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: obviously you got to play the win. Everybody knows that.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: But I think what would be another good rule? Well,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: it's tricky. Any shot past twenty five yards is tricky
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: with white tails because of the string jumping. So I
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: know it's not like a strategy related rule. But if
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: in doubt aim low, that's another one of my you know,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: very I don't know, it's when I learned the hard way.
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: I didn't want to learn that lesson, but I've had
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: so many experiences with string jumping deer that that lesson
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: got forced upon me. So anything past twenty five yards
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I aim increasingly low, especially if the deer is alert.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: At thirty five yards, my pin is going to be
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: below the brisket. And sometimes they don't drop, you know,
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: sometimes bucks during the rut they're preoccupied and they don't drop.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: But let's say seventy five percent of the time they do. Well,
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: you can't aim normal and have three out of every
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: four of them react, you know, and then you're just
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: going to have, you know, high hits or you're going
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: to miss them or whatever. So that's another rule that
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: I think maybe most people don't really understand very well.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: You've got to aim low on a lot of the
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: shots that you take, and you hear very people say
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: very commonly, well the most common hit is a high
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: hit or a high miss. Well that's they don't have
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: cameras like we do, the video cameras, and I would
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: have said, I'm just shooting high. Why am I shooting
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: high all the time? Well, you don't realize how quick
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: that deer drops and gets back up again. Like when
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: you're watching it on video and you go into slow motion,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: it's like only a couple of frames, you know that
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: the arrow is right on the kill zone, and then
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: just you know, a frame is the thirtieth of a second.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: You know, just a couple of thirtieth of a second,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: that deer drops ten inches and then the arrow hits
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: ten inches high and then it's right back up again
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: because they drop down to load their legs to run.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: So that's that's a key rule. I would say that
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: most people might overlook. So does that count for one
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: and a half?
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that counts as one and a half. What's so
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I know, I know in the past you've done a
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: lot of coaching for track in other sports too. What's
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: a what's the hat from winki for a coaching hat
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: that you can coach up hunters? So give us, give
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: us a word of encouragement or something that you tell folks,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: this is gonna be something that is like, Man, I
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: remember when old Bill was our coach and he always
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: said this. He's like, oh yeah, he said that to
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: us to what's what's the cheap thing that you tell people?
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: Well, I think with white tails you don't give him
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: too much credit, you know. I think that's one of
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: the things that we make. The mistake is we think
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: that somehow they've got us figured out, and I do
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: believe that they're all killable. Well, I shouldn't say that.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: The reason that we don't kill him usually is not
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: something that we did wrong. Sometimes it is, you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: sometimes we blunder around and we make mistakes. But a
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: lot of times it's just the fact that the deery
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: that has a really big range and he's not around
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: as often as we think, or he's a very you know, nocturnal,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: he's not very daylight active. And then you run into
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: the next buck and he's got the opposite, you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: behavioral personality, and he's a homebody and he's more daylight active. Well,
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you think you're a genius, whereas
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: the other buck major look stupid. So I think you
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: just got to realize that just because you're not being
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: being successful doesn't mean you're bad at the sport. There
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: they can be really tough to kill.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair that that counts as five. So I
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: appreciate the hunting rule is one question I have in
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: regard to hunt a lot. There's also there's the direct
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: opposite of that. That take is you got to be
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: really thoughtful and really strategic with the cyts that you take.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: The less I hunt, the more success I have. And
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: so what is what is your thought with that take?
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Well, the only reason that would make sense is if
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: you're hunting spots that you can't hunt without the deer knowing,
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: you know, like maybe there's certain wind directions that you
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: just can't hunt, and the buck is more or less
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: of a homebody. He does have a fairly small range.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: You know, let's say he's living on forty acres that
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: you know, or your property is forty acres and you
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: know he's in there, you know quite a bit. Well,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: you can only hunt when the conditions are right. I
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: was just like super still in the mornings, you know,
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: like you can't you can't even get in and out
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: of those spots without the deer knowing, you know, because
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: crunching of the leaves and you know. So you just
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: can't hunt in those conditions. Otherwise, you just done as
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: often as you can in the areas where you think
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: or believe that the buck that you're after or one
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: that you would shoot is living. So yeah, you have
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: to use some discretion. You definitely, that's where you could
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: make some mistakes if you were too aggressive and just
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: say well, I'm going in there, I don't care. Yeah,
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: you might get him. You might, And then the next
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: year you're gonna say, oh, I'm a genius because look
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: all you guys saying be careful are such dummies. You
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: never kill anything, look at me. Well, then you might
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: spend the next four years screwing up your hunting spots.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: So you know, over the course of time, like long term,
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: the consistent sea of success is usually going to come
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: when you're careful and you're not being too aggressive and
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: going into spots when the conditions aren't right. If that makes.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, I think that makes that makes perfect sense. Well,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: once again, Bill, appreciate it. Where can people follow along
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: with the rest of your season? Here?
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: Check it out on the bill Winki YouTube channel.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: All right, that's what Bill has to say. And what
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate with Bill is Bill provides a succinct
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: black and white. Here are the rules, and we're going
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: to roll right into the next guest, Adam Atlanta Legacy.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Here we go. All right, Adam, welcome back. We're I'm
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: gonna grillly with one question once again, and we're going
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: to dive into it. And I feel that people like rules.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: People say they don't like rules, but people like rules
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: to follow. They like to have guidelines to understand. Am
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: I on the right track? And so I'm going to
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: put you on the spot, and you can only give
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: me up to five rules I have to follow or
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: principles that I have to follow for this upcoming season
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: that will inherently make me send you a thank you
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: letter in the mail at the end of all, so
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: what are they?
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: I think one of the biggest takeaway that I've learned
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: over the years is the emphasis on betting and changing
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: it from the food plots the crop fields where I'm
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: getting trail camera pictures, because most likely my trail cameras
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: aren't in betting areas, they're close to them, or they're
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: on the edge of food plots, and so I'm not
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: really trying to focus in on where I'm getting pictures.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out where he's betting.
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: So first and foremost, understand where they're betting, and then
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: build off of that and go the next point being food.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: Where is the primary food source? Is it a crop field?
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: Is it a food plot? Hopefully, but I say that
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: tongue in cheek. It's most likely a big patch of
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: timber with acorns all through it, So good luck. That's
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: why we're focus on I'm betting. And then of course,
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: if you've identified those two things, you've identified betting, you
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: identified food, you have to have appropriate access and so
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: that would be number three for me, and then number
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: four being understand the weather patterns, whether it be barometric
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: pressure or temperature or wind Heaven forbid, I say this
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: next one, but where's the moon at in relation in
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: the sky? That would be another one I would throw
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: out there. And so understanding those, okay, I've got all
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: the variables that would put the five and a half
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: gold that I'm looking for on his feet more in daylight.
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: And then of course the last one being trust your instincts.
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: And that's something that's I can't hardly be taught, but
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: understanding what it is that is triggering all this, and
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: then just trusting the instincts that you have all these
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: other four rules in place, it's time to go.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: How often do you break one or two of those
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: rules on a hunt.
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: When it comes to the rut way more? You know,
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: we talked in past ones about the rut. Kind of
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: throw all that out. I just need to put time
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: in the stand and in a travel corridor and in
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: an area.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: That he's frequented, and I'll be I've got a chance.
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: As far as breaking them, I have a you know,
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: I got four kids seven and under, and so it's
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: hard enough for me to find time to get in
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: a tree stand. But ultimately that helps kind of as
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: a buffer to not make me jump into a stand
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: when it's probably not ready for me. The I miss
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: more good days than I do hunt bad days, and
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: so having those young kids have actually really helped me
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: be more successful and as far as less time in
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: the tree, but more successful.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: How on some of those good days, I mean a
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: lot of people, have you scheduled vacation time, whatever the case,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: How painful is it to miss one of the good
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: days and then you and then you over compensate and
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: hunt a bad day. So then it's like double jeopardy,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: but not double jeopardy in the sense of what that
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: actually means. I have a little different approach.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: I'm more of like it's haunting very much so to
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: miss those good days because in reality, my opinion is
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: we might have we have less than ten good days
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: in my opinion, like we can kill them on some
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: mediocre days, but there's like ten days or less a
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: season where it's just like a absolute no brainer, and
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: so missing those days is gut wrenching.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I'll share a quick story.
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: Two years ago, I had a deer show up that
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: had triple beam, a stud for the ozarks, and I'd
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: hunting two or three times and had known Okay, I'm
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: pushing the envelope like I'm waiting. We haven't really it's
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: early October. I haven't really gotten that weather yet to
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: put him on his feet. But I'm gonna get as
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: close to where I think he's betting as possible and
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: just hope. And I was playing cat and mouse like
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: we hunted there and thirty minutes after we left after dark,
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: he walked through. You're like, okay, we just missed him,
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: and uh, it was right at the end of October,
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: and it's just like looking ahead four days. The weather
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: is perfect, the moon's where it's at. Got to get
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: in the stand, Brothers, like, I'm taking off. He's gonna
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: film me. That morning we checked my youngest into the
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: hospital with RSV, and that deer walked thirty minutes before
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: dark right in front of the tree down we were
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: gonna go hunt. So that one still haunts me because
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: it was a my neighbor ended up killing a few days,
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: like the next day or the day after, and it
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: was one seventy three, Oh my gosh, And so he
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: would have been the biggest one on the farm for
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: us harvest. We've grown a little bit bigger, but that
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: one was definitely gut wrenching. And that's one of those
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: where it's like you could have looked at the month
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: of October and been like bing, bing bing, that's the
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: day to be. And of course that's when he walked,
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: and so I would say I look at it going
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: I missed that once that deer was killed. I don't
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: think I hunted the rest of the fall because there
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: wasn't a deer.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: You know, I've tried to.
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: Like committed to five and a half year olds on
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: the farm and there was no other ones, and I'm like,
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: I'm not doing it. I'm gonna go kill a four
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: and a half year old just for the sake of
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: killing one.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: So I just chalked.
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: It up to a fall of spinning it at Silver
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: Dollar City with my family.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah so what? And so that is tough. And I
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: feel like everyone, maybe maybe not the RSV, but everyone
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: has some sort of some sort of gut wrenching experience
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: like that. And I feel like the quick trap to
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: run into is like a I missed it. Now I
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: have to try twice as hard, and then it's like, yeah,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: it just continues to compound to get worse. And that's
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: where like having this framework of you know, quote unquote
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: rules is for your benefit, not to your detriment.
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think the quick thing would be I'm mad,
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: I'm angry at this.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I missed out on that deer.
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: Go shoot a four and a half year old or
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: a three and a half year old because you want
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: to kill something, but that could have been your next
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: best buck the next year. And so now you're then
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: once again behind the eight ball, going Okay, I've got
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: a couple more years to have that age class that
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: I was looking for.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Isn't it weird? It takes five and a half years
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: for a deer to get five and a half years old.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: They don't magically get older faster. Yeah. That's the worst.
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: That's the worst part of land management and habitat management
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: and deer management is going to think that a deer
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: that I'm going that I want to hunt this year,
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: who's going to be six and a half is one
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: year younger than my oldest daughter, and like, whoa, I
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: feel like I've had She's been with me for a lifetime,
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: Like I have a hard time remembering life before her,
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: And it's like, oh my gosh, yeah.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: That is well, is there anything else to wrap up on?
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: The five rules if you want to rattle off, Yeah,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: with the pillars.
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: The instinct thing to me is the one where you're
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: like not banking too much on trail cameras, but at
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: the same time kind of trusting your instincts to going
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: ultimately when to go because I have no inventory or
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: I have no inventory of the buck I'm hunting on
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: this side of the farm, and so like for instincts
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: for me is going, I have a when you're trying
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: to hunt a four and a half year old or
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: five and a half year old, you have a couple
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: of year history of this deer, so you're kind of
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: watching his patterns each and every year as a youngster,
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: going okay, he made this shift, or he did this
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: in mid October, he did this in mid November, and
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: then going okay, you know, like I need to kind
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: of pay attention to that because next year, when he's
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: a hitlesser, we're gonna make We're going to account for that.
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: So like last year, we had a deer. He's got
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: a terrible name, kind of as a joke, tongue in cheek,
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: but Booger is his name because we thought he was
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: multiple deer. We weren't sure, and we're like, oh, it's
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: the same deer. He's been under our nose this whole time.
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: And so we were hunting him as a five and
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: a half year old and he kind of a made.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: A shift the year previous.
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: In the in the year previous, like he kept shifting
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: the north part of the family farm, and we're like, hey,
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: he hasn't made that shift yet. It's typically this time
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: of year. Let's just go in there and hunt that
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: hunt that stand, and maybe today's the day made the shift.
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: And we were in the tree stand last year and
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: I got a email and thirty minutes before we were
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: in that tree stand, he walked by and he's like,
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: we had no pictures. We just trusted our instincts. We
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: were almost there. But that's how deer hunting works.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I instinct for sure. I think that's probably
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: one thing that everyone can lean on more is instinct
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and don't get too analytical with all the other things.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I got to follow your gut, that's it.
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: I would rather a guy learn instincts than be a
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: better shot. I mean, you're probably a pretty sufficient shot
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: by now, and you can kill them out to forty
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: or kill them out to thirty train your instincts.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a great, great thing there. Well, Adam,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: if they want to follow along once again with what
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: you have going on, what's the best place to do it?
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: Check us out on social media platforms Land and Legacy
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: or podcast platforms because we do a weekly podcast as well.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: All right, there is Adams rules to live by when
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: it comes to white tail hunting. We're going to round
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: out this episode with Jeff Sturgis up in Minnesota. So
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: here is Jeff's perspective on the five rules every hunter
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: should pay attention to in perpetuity. All right, Jeff, welcome back.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I feel that oftentimes we don't want rules as people.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: We like to go rogue, we like to do our
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: own thing. But in the same breath, I feel sometimes
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: rules are guidelines. I don't like rules either, so I'm
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: framing it this way. I don't like rules. Ultimately, I
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: want to ask you just to get to brass tacks
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: of like, Hey, if you followed these five things, you're
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: going to have a great season, a successful season. You're
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: going to learn, You're going to learn more. But if
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: you could only follow five deer hunting rules, what would
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: they be.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: You know, one of them.
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: I really do love to hunt by the weather, and
• 39:24
  Speaker 6: so I've been very fortunate even when I worked at
• 39:26
  Speaker 6: a bank and it was mostly all women and no
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: one hunted. Even if I only had two weeks vacation time,
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: I could take a half day off at a time,
• 39:33
  Speaker 6: and so I quickly found in my late teens and
• 39:37
  Speaker 6: early twenties that taking a half day or a day
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: off and a good day was worth far more than
• 39:42
  Speaker 6: taking three days off on bad days. And so whether
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: that was a Wednesday afternoon and a Thursday morning, I
• 39:48
  Speaker 6: really tried to follow the weather hunt the backside at
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: cold fronts. And for people that say the deer don't
• 39:53
  Speaker 6: follow the weather move in the weather, I just challenge
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: you to find how many deer moved heuring a blizzard
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: or a thunderst or high winds or a high heat.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: They just don't move, and so those.
• 40:05
  Speaker 6: Are all weather induce movements or weather restricted movements. So
• 40:09
  Speaker 6: hunting by the weather has paid off very well throughout
• 40:14
  Speaker 6: the last thirty three years. Somewhere around there it had
• 40:17
  Speaker 6: been my early twenties, and so I just found that
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: I didn't have a lot of time off.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: I wanted to be home more with the family.
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: It developed into where I was self employed too, and
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: so I had a pretty demanding job where it was
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: hard for me to get away for a long period
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: of times. So it was time off and I could
• 40:36
  Speaker 6: hunt any time I wanted then, but I couldn't hight
• 40:38
  Speaker 6: for a long time. So between family time off from
• 40:41
  Speaker 6: work maybe a limited amount of time, it was a
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: lot more important for me to hunt weather and prioritize
• 40:47
  Speaker 6: those best days and learn those best days than actually
• 40:51
  Speaker 6: just hunt whenever. What weather has been critical.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: What's one thing that people may misunderstand when you say
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: you know hunt the weather.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: What is that you know obviously before the front, after
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: the front, temperature drop, barometric pressure. If you had to,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: you know, briefly explain you know, this is what makes
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: great cunting.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: Weather barometric pressure.
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: And I do have a book All Weather, White Tails
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: that explains all of this in a bunch of chapters.
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: But one of the things barometric pressure is very misleading
• 41:23
  Speaker 6: as it relates to when deer actually moved. And what
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: I mean by that is, to me, the entire premise
• 41:29
  Speaker 6: about deer moving after weather is when you have extreme
• 41:32
  Speaker 6: weather come through high winds, high temperature to low temperature,
• 41:40
  Speaker 6: extreme weather of thunderstorms, blizzards, snow, lightning, thunder and it's
• 41:46
  Speaker 6: a big change. So you've had a lot of calm
• 41:48
  Speaker 6: for four or five days, seven days, and all of
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: a sudden bam, everything drops. Then deer feed five times
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: in a twenty four hour period. So when they're socked
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: back in their little heidi hole for up to thirty
• 42:00
  Speaker 6: six hours and a major front that drops the temperature
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: eighteen degrees, not only is there a lot of noise
• 42:06
  Speaker 6: and commotion and stress which burns energy, there's also a
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: big temperature drop which burns energy. And then they're missing
• 42:14
  Speaker 6: quality feedings, so that energy is not replenished. So when
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: those conditions break, there might be the winds went for
• 42:21
  Speaker 6: forty mile an hour down to twenty the winds, you know,
• 42:26
  Speaker 6: have been cut in half. They're still there, but there's
• 42:28
  Speaker 6: been an appreciable change. The temperatures dropped. It's in the
• 42:31
  Speaker 6: backside of rain that's dripping all over the place and
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: making things stressful and noisy in the woods. To me,
• 42:36
  Speaker 6: there's a good twenty four hours of really good hunting,
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: maybe even thirty six hours. That barometric pressure then might
• 42:43
  Speaker 6: still be on the rise two days later and even
• 42:46
  Speaker 6: three days later. But if you wait for the high
• 42:49
  Speaker 6: barometric pressure two and three days later, you missed that
• 42:51
  Speaker 6: sweet spot of twenty four to thirty six hours because
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: it's going to be higher after that. On the flip side,
• 42:57
  Speaker 6: you could have a barometric pressure that deer feeding out
• 43:03
  Speaker 6: in the fields and there's six inches of snow coming down,
• 43:06
  Speaker 6: it's wet, and you see them playing out there. We've
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: all seen that the merimetric pressure is the same there.
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: With a blizzard that's coming in, there's going to be
• 43:15
  Speaker 6: a major temperature drop, lots of snow, heavy winds. For
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: some reason, even though the barometric pressure is the same,
• 43:23
  Speaker 6: the deer notice stay hunkered back in their bedding areas
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: during the blizzard and not during that five inches of
• 43:29
  Speaker 6: wet snow that's just falling down lightly for several hours.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: There's more.
• 43:35
  Speaker 6: They relate more to tangibles. They relate to probably the
• 43:39
  Speaker 6: amount of how dry the area is, how wet areas
• 43:43
  Speaker 6: and humidity levels, the wind, the wind direction, the smell
• 43:47
  Speaker 6: in the air.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: They relate to.
• 43:49
  Speaker 6: They're out three sixty five, So they relate to those
• 43:51
  Speaker 6: tangibles more so barometric pressure can cheat, and you might
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: even have a double drop. And that's another thing too,
• 43:58
  Speaker 6: where you have a big sis that comes through temperature drop,
• 44:01
  Speaker 6: you have a sweet spot to hunt, but because there's
• 44:03
  Speaker 6: another pressure, another low pressure system on the heels of
• 44:06
  Speaker 6: that one. Three days later the pressure staying low. But
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: now you get two major drops to hunt in a
• 44:12
  Speaker 6: span of four days, and both had low pressures and
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: not as high as what follows, And so people wait
• 44:20
  Speaker 6: till what follows, and here you miss two great times
• 44:22
  Speaker 6: to hunt. So as it relates to whether I hope
• 44:25
  Speaker 6: that makes sense, you're just looking for change on the backside.
• 44:27
  Speaker 6: Usually calm is not a good thing, but somewhere in between,
• 44:30
  Speaker 6: but definitely after the front's gone.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Through perfect all right. Rule number two.
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: Rule number two is that you can fool a year's
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: now with any contraption gel, powder, spray and things that
• 44:42
  Speaker 6: a deer down wind is going to be fooled. And
• 44:44
  Speaker 6: you'll even have people online hunting industry that'll take great
• 44:48
  Speaker 6: sponsorship money to prove that and to try to deliver
• 44:52
  Speaker 6: it to you that it's great too. You can use
• 44:56
  Speaker 6: this contraption to hide your scent. And what I found
• 44:59
  Speaker 6: is if down wind of view and it's a mature
• 45:01
  Speaker 6: buck or mature dough, they're going to find out. And
• 45:03
  Speaker 6: if they don't and they don't react to it, it's
• 45:06
  Speaker 6: probably because there's a thermal working that you don't understand.
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: Maybe a buck is following a dough and he really
• 45:12
  Speaker 6: doesn't care in that moment, but the other ninety eight
• 45:15
  Speaker 6: percent of the season he does. And so whether it's
• 45:18
  Speaker 6: even on a mock scrape or you're scent control in general. Now,
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: I do believe you can have clean clothes, you can
• 45:25
  Speaker 6: leave less of a trail in and out. You can
• 45:27
  Speaker 6: spray your boots down to mask a little bit of
• 45:29
  Speaker 6: your scent, but that's on scent left behind on a
• 45:33
  Speaker 6: plant or something where when you're trying to reduce the
• 45:36
  Speaker 6: scent in the stand, blowing add a deer a mature deer.
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: Especially when you get in the high pressure states of
• 45:43
  Speaker 6: anywhere from Minnesota to Wisconsin to Michigan to New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana.
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: You can go out east, then.
• 45:52
  Speaker 6: When you're in some of those high pressure states, then
• 45:55
  Speaker 6: there's really nothing you can do about it. Sometimes in
• 45:57
  Speaker 6: low pressure states they just don't care. Because at one time,
• 46:02
  Speaker 6: I think it was twenty five thousand bowl hunters in Kansas,
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: Michigan at at four hundred and twenty five thousand at
• 46:06
  Speaker 6: that time, sixty five thousand, and maybe Iowa that two time.
• 46:10
  Speaker 6: Two hundred thousand hunters over all in Kentucky at that time.
• 46:13
  Speaker 6: So when you compare to the one point one million
• 46:15
  Speaker 6: gun hunters in Pennsylvania go out in the woods or
• 46:19
  Speaker 6: over that in Texas, it's pretty crazy when you think
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: of some of the hundred numbers in some of the
• 46:23
  Speaker 6: states and how on paper or in a cool video
• 46:28
  Speaker 6: somewhere you can hide your scent, but in reality pretty
• 46:31
  Speaker 6: darn hard.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: They need to make an ad I think I know
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: which one you're talking about of a piece of milk weed,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: you know, going into the detection zone of a buck
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: with the machine going like that. Would I feel like
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: that would be enough to convince more people versus to
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: your point, Like, I don't think people realize what their
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: wind is really doing or what the thermals are really doing,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: and you know, I feel they can get misled in
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: that fashion.
• 46:52
  Speaker 6: So the bottom line, you know, if you just always
• 46:56
  Speaker 6: set up your stand location so that you're blowing yourself
• 47:00
  Speaker 6: hunt into a non deer area or hunting the edge
• 47:02
  Speaker 6: of cover instead of in the cover, you're hunting the
• 47:04
  Speaker 6: edge of movement instead of in the movement. Then you're
• 47:08
  Speaker 6: going to be safe. And to me, hunting that safe
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: way allows you to live and hunt another day and
• 47:13
  Speaker 6: eventually shoot your target about eighty percent of the time.
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: I like it.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Our rule number three.
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: Rule number three is you can kill more deer by
• 47:23
  Speaker 6: sitting on the couch. Patience is key, strategy is key.
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: Hunting smart at key, not hunting every day, And especially
• 47:32
  Speaker 6: some of us with limited stands, limited locations to hunt.
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: We're not like the Hunting Channel where xyz star might
• 47:42
  Speaker 6: have seventy different locations to hunt or fifty or forty.
• 47:45
  Speaker 6: They're in a low pressure state and they can just
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: skip around hunt every day if they want. We really
• 47:51
  Speaker 6: have to pick and choose. And again I like hunting
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: by the weather. But what I found is that over
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: the years, instead of hunting one hundred different times, one
• 48:00
  Speaker 6: hundred different sets and shooting two bucks, you sit twelve
• 48:03
  Speaker 6: times and shoot two bucks because you're hunting smart. And
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: I believe by not hunting a lot of those days
• 48:10
  Speaker 6: that were bad days, then it's even more of a
• 48:12
  Speaker 6: premium when you do choose to sit and those locations
• 48:15
  Speaker 6: aren't spoiled. You're allowing them to age like a fine wine,
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: and you go in there and really have a high
• 48:22
  Speaker 6: percentage set in that location.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, do you have a real number four
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: in mind?
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I do you know?
• 48:31
  Speaker 6: Food source when it comes to does in dough family groups,
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: as long as the food is adequate and the cover
• 48:37
  Speaker 6: is thick year round. They like fawning cover in the summer,
• 48:42
  Speaker 6: escape cover in November December, browsing in December November, and
• 48:47
  Speaker 6: beyond all winter long thermal protection you're in the winters,
• 48:50
  Speaker 6: and that all adds up to similar cover and if
• 48:52
  Speaker 6: you have similar food sources in there that you know,
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: maybe they're not great, but they're always there. Those are
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: really small homebodies. They have a small home range and
• 49:01
  Speaker 6: they like to stick close to home, and so it
• 49:05
  Speaker 6: could be very deceiving that, oy, we have all these
• 49:07
  Speaker 6: dos around, there's going to be mature box or mature buck.
• 49:10
  Speaker 6: His home range is several times greater than a dough
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: family group, five times greater, eight times greater, whatever that
• 49:16
  Speaker 6: number is. It's a lot and three mile home range
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: on average. Right, I'd say a dough family group might
• 49:21
  Speaker 6: have a half mile three quarter mile. Now we're not
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: considering yarding areas in migration, but in the typical area
• 49:28
  Speaker 6: mature buck to me, he moves with that food and
• 49:33
  Speaker 6: so public land. He's on the food source of the moment,
• 49:36
  Speaker 6: but it's got to be low pressure, and it's got
• 49:38
  Speaker 6: to be relating to thick cover. During the summer. His
• 49:42
  Speaker 6: summer range might be a mile to a mile and
• 49:43
  Speaker 6: a half different than his fall range. So that buck
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: will move with the food source and he'll go to
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: the best food source with the lowest amount of hunting pressure.
• 49:53
  Speaker 6: Maybe that's an adequate food source, but it's low amount
• 49:56
  Speaker 6: of hunting pressure. And it's not just hunting pressure, it's
• 49:59
  Speaker 6: a low amount of dough pressure and dough social stress. Dear,
• 50:03
  Speaker 6: social stress in general. So properties that have an enormous
• 50:07
  Speaker 6: amount of dozen fauns, maybe he wants to be around
• 50:10
  Speaker 6: there a little bit during the rut. But if you
• 50:14
  Speaker 6: have high dome numbers in an area and he's repelled
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: because of that the majority of the season, he may
• 50:20
  Speaker 6: not even show up during the rut because obviously where
• 50:23
  Speaker 6: he's at has dozen funds and he's got exhaust those
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: first before it even goes over to that area, And
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: to me, that all relates to food. And I think
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: we've blurred into a fifth topic of too many doughs
• 50:35
  Speaker 6: and how many doughs you're seeing, how many deer you're seeing.
• 50:37
  Speaker 6: But really, those food sources rule his roost, and he's
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: willing to travel long ways. And I believe the older
• 50:44
  Speaker 6: he gets, he has three or four areas in mind
• 50:46
  Speaker 6: that have kept him alive instead of ten when he
• 50:48
  Speaker 6: was young, and he gravitates to those areas, and if
• 50:52
  Speaker 6: you spook him out of one, he's likely to stay
• 50:54
  Speaker 6: in the next the rest of the season or until
• 50:56
  Speaker 6: that food runs out. Public land might be the food
• 50:59
  Speaker 6: source the moment, but that might be clear cuts in December,
• 51:03
  Speaker 6: white oak stands in September, maybe red oak stands in
• 51:07
  Speaker 6: the middle of the season. Maybe a neighbor's food plot
• 51:10
  Speaker 6: or agfield that dwindles out in November, golf course, neighborhood.
• 51:14
  Speaker 6: But bottom line is those food sources are always changing,
• 51:17
  Speaker 6: so you need to learn to change with them. Or
• 51:19
  Speaker 6: if you have private land, build it and keep them
• 51:20
  Speaker 6: there for the entire season.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a lot of questions there, but I
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: think in the spirit and the spirit of this. Do
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: you want to do you want to pick that for
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: the year fifth? Your fifth rule deer food rule.
• 51:31
  Speaker 6: Number number of deer. Yeah, number of deer we could
• 51:34
  Speaker 6: get into. Let me see, uh, because I can only
• 51:37
  Speaker 6: pick five. You know. One of the things that I think,
• 51:43
  Speaker 6: you know, high deer numbers are bad, you know, and
• 51:46
  Speaker 6: I'll I'll blend this into a number, you know, like
• 51:49
  Speaker 6: five by kind of bridging the gap. But high deer
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: numbers are bad. They does and fall ins fill space
• 51:56
  Speaker 6: and it makes it stressful for mature box. So that
• 52:01
  Speaker 6: leads into my number five rule, which is morning betting
• 52:05
  Speaker 6: areas have made my hunting career. I hunt in a
• 52:10
  Speaker 6: morning betting area with a bow less than twenty percent
• 52:14
  Speaker 6: of all sits, maybe fifteen percent of all sits. Yet
• 52:16
  Speaker 6: they account for sixty to seventy percent of all my
• 52:19
  Speaker 6: mature box four years older greater let's say forty to
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: fifty mature box at that age, and that morning sit
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: is what I'm always looking for. So so many people
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: think afternoon food source, they're coming out into this afternoon food.
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: For one deer will beyond those food sources, especially a
• 52:36
  Speaker 6: mature buck of very low percentage of the time. If
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: you look at the entire season. However, he's in his
• 52:42
  Speaker 6: betting area during the daylight the majority of the time.
• 52:45
  Speaker 6: So when I choose to go in there at the
• 52:46
  Speaker 6: end of October early November, when it's starting to get
• 52:49
  Speaker 6: into those cold front mornings up here, when we first
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: get those those first frost October twenty seventh, I'm coming
• 52:55
  Speaker 6: into the non food side waiting for him to come back.
• 52:58
  Speaker 6: And if you have too many, too many falls, it's
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: a stressful, chaotic property. He might not be there, He's
• 53:04
  Speaker 6: somewhere else. But if you have that good balance where
• 53:08
  Speaker 6: you got to have dozen phones or why would he
• 53:10
  Speaker 6: be there. But the point is, if you have good balance,
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: then you have that mature buck betting at the right depth.
• 53:15
  Speaker 6: It allows you to come into the backside. And although
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: you might not sit there very often throughout the season,
• 53:22
  Speaker 6: is an extremely high likelihood he's going to be there.
• 53:26
  Speaker 6: And even if he moves a mile that day, he
• 53:30
  Speaker 6: might not have left that seven acres of cover, which
• 53:33
  Speaker 6: puts him at your feet multiple times here in the day,
• 53:35
  Speaker 6: gives you opportunities to shoot him. And when you figure
• 53:39
  Speaker 6: in that, you're blowing your scent, not trying to hide
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: it to the outside of that, you're hunting cold weather
• 53:45
  Speaker 6: and you're hunting those weather fronts. You're hunting a location
• 53:50
  Speaker 6: that has good food sources and betting areas that are
• 53:52
  Speaker 6: supported by that food. Using those first four then that
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: fifth one and hunting that morning is an opportunity. So
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: to me, it's your system, not just one, two, three,
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: four or five.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, they built off each other. Here's a
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: quick question. We're, you know, relating back to four. So
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: if you for someone that has this past summer, they've
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: had just a bunch of pictures of fawns and doze,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: should they be it's not super excited about this upcoming season?
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Or is that an indication that they have good funding
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: habitat which could be good deer habitat, or like what
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: could someone deduct from.
• 54:26
  Speaker 6: I think I think there's a couple of ways to
• 54:28
  Speaker 6: look at it, Jake. If you have an enormous number
• 54:31
  Speaker 6: of dozen fauns during the summertime, that could be a
• 54:33
  Speaker 6: really really bad thing just because mature box will stay
• 54:38
  Speaker 6: away from that. Sometimes mature are a large dough population
• 54:41
  Speaker 6: and fawns is reflective of poor hunting strategy and spooking deer.
• 54:47
  Speaker 6: And so if you're spooking deer doz and funds can
• 54:50
  Speaker 6: take that young bucks. If you don't have enough depth
• 54:53
  Speaker 6: for bucks to actually bet in, meaning to go one
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: hundred yards and other food source one hundred yards of
• 54:58
  Speaker 6: wood's edge, you don't have an core area for a
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: mature buck to live, then you're gonna have all dozen fawns.
• 55:04
  Speaker 6: And so that's that's a big part of it. Too
• 55:07
  Speaker 6: many dozen fawns can be reflective of a bad area
• 55:10
  Speaker 6: to hunt. If you have too many dozen fauns. Socially,
• 55:14
  Speaker 6: that buck and might not want to be there, and
• 55:15
  Speaker 6: you think, well, I'm gonna have these dozen funds are
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: going to come in in the fall. Well, if he
• 55:21
  Speaker 6: is choosing to set up shop somewhere else because of
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: those dozen fawns, because there's not enough cover for him,
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: then he might show up during the rut, but it's
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: going to be a very low percentage of the time.
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: And as the ages.
• 55:32
  Speaker 6: What I find is if he chooses because the property
• 55:35
  Speaker 6: is nocturnal, because you have a lot of dozen fawns,
• 55:38
  Speaker 6: because it's over pressured because you have food everywhere, then
• 55:42
  Speaker 6: if he chooses to be somewhere else when he gets
• 55:45
  Speaker 6: to three, four, five, years old. To me, that pattern
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: is only cemented in so you might find a buck
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: that all of a sudden you thought, this is a
• 55:53
  Speaker 6: really cool looking eleven point that had a stick or
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: a kicker somewhere when you're three and a half where
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: to go? Poachers must have took him. Well, then you
• 56:00
  Speaker 6: find out that, hey, that's that buck that neighbor shot
• 56:03
  Speaker 6: is one hundred and eighty inch buck a mile away.
• 56:06
  Speaker 6: He didn't just die to poachers. He moved because he
• 56:09
  Speaker 6: grew out of the reclusive, reclusive reclusiveness level of the
• 56:14
  Speaker 6: property that was offered, largely because of too many doughs,
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: maybe hunting pressure, and the older he got, he just
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: looked at it like, not only am I not going
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: to come on your property during the night as a
• 56:24
  Speaker 6: nocturnal property. If it's out of my property during the daylight,
• 56:28
  Speaker 6: why do I even go there at all?
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So for someone that has that, it could be
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: lack of cover and just too much food in too
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: many places. Is that the most common reason you would
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: say that someone would fall into this.
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: Too much food, too much summer food, too many dos
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: and falls, maybe indicative of a poor hunting strategy, and
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: that you're spooking the mature bucks off.
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: And it could be.
• 56:50
  Speaker 6: Though that you're just your property is really set up
• 56:54
  Speaker 6: to where you have thick cover, you have a minimum
• 56:56
  Speaker 6: amount of food during the summertime, your doughs are more
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: of a bad and in that case, then it's more
• 57:03
  Speaker 6: likely that you'll have mature box in the fall because
• 57:06
  Speaker 6: it's not too many dos. You're gearing your property more
• 57:09
  Speaker 6: towards fall food. You already have fall cover, and that's
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: more of an indication that you'll have a good hunt
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: in the fall than if you have a lot of
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: mature box on there during the summertime and they're going
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: to leave because you don't offer that fall food and cover.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, Well there's the five rules. They all
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: tie together, and I think I do think if people
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: follow those principles, they're going to be pointed in the
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: right direction for this fall. So I appreciate that Jeff
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: white Till White Tail Habitat Solutions is the best place
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: to find everything.
• 57:41
  Speaker 6: You got, Yeah, YouTube, Instagram, and then on Google our website.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: All right, there, you guys have I hope you guys
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: enjoyed this week's episode of Back forty. I really appreciate
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: all the guests taking the time to hop on here
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: and share their insights, and like I said in the
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: very beginning, I feel that these are guidelines. These are
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: your north star. This is a way to get pointed
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: in the right direction and avoid the pitfalls. I know
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: we talked about it in the last episode of Back
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: forty about the eighty twenty what is going to be
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: most helpful most often? And that is the root of
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: this question in the direction of this episode, of what
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: do people need to pay attention to? And I think
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: that this provides a sense of clarity for this upcoming year.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: So I hope you guys really enjoyed this week's episode
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: and we'll be back with another episode of Back forty
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: in two weeks with the same panel of guests, with
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: a new question, with a new dilemma that will hopefully
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: help everyone out. So I appreciate it, and I'll be curious,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: what are some rules that you live by when it
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: comes to white deal hunting that maybe we're not discussed
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: in this episode. I'll read all the comments. So that
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: is it. We will see you of a great rest
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: of your week.