Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 271: Tracking Midwest Whitetails On Foot with Todd Havel

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Ep. 271: Tracking Midwest Whitetails On Foot with Todd Havel · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number two and in
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: seventy one, and today I'm joined by Todd Havill, a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: serious white tail hunter from the Upper Midwest, specializing in
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: tracking down bucks on the ground. All right, welcome to
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and Todan. The show. I've got Todd Havil with me,
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  Speaker 1: and as I just mentioned, Todd is a tracker. Now,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I've talked to a couple of folks over the years
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: that track down deer in the snow on foot, but
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: they've always been people up in the Northeast states like
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Maine or New York or New Hampshire, were tracking deer
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is a really popular practice. But what's unique about Todd
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: is that he's adapted this style of hunting to the Midwest,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and in particular he's up in the Upper Great Lakes
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: region of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and that makes
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: him pretty unique in the white tailed tracking world. So
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: in our conversation today, we discuss how we got into
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: the style of hunting, how he specifically identifies mature buck tracks,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: which I think can be helpful for any of us,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: regardless of if you're gonna be tracking or not. Um,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: we discuss the approach he takes to following and hunting
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: these deer. And then finally, and maybe most interestingly, we
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: cover the specific things that he's learned about mature bucks
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: by way of tracking hundreds of them down on foot
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and and noticed how they moved through the woods, and
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: how they how they bed, how they maneuver, all these
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: different things. I mean, it's it's pretty fascinating the inside
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: he's gained over years of doing this. So, without further ado,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: we do not have a pregame show in the books today,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So let's take a quick break and then we'll get
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Todd Havill on the line. All right with me? Now
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: on the show is Todd Hovel and Todd welcome to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the show. I appreciate you, appreciate you coming on. I
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: was just saying before we start recording, buddy of mine,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Ross Uh. Listeners of the podcast might recognize him as
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Ross hass Um. He is an even more thorough lurker
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: on the Hunting Beast Forum than I am, and so
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: he keeps tracking things more more frequent than I do.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: In a while back, he said, yeah, I talked to Todd. Yeah,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: I talked to this guy. He's he's tracking bucks on
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the foot. He's doing some really cool stuff. And he's
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: not doing it, you know, in the Northeast, where most
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: of these trackers are doing it. He's doing it in
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the Upper Midwest. And that intrigued me because I've been
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: kinda tinking around the idea of trying something like that
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: up in northern Michigan because I got a property up there.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And um So that's a long way of saying that
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  Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad this is finally happening Todd, and I'm
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: personally I'm selfishly interested in trying to pick your brain
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and those are always the most fun podcast for me.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking forward to this. Um So, DoD, how
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: did this whole thing come to be you tracking bucks?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: How hard did that happen for you? Uh, that's a
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: good question. It's kind of interesting answers as well. Um,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I was a farm farm country hunter central Wisconsin and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I was looking for a different challenge and uh, mid nineties,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I headed north to northern Wisconsin take on the big Woods,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and UM, I took on my style of hunting up there,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: which is fine, a spot sit there forever, you know,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: just don't give it up dark to dark, put you know,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: grinding hours out um and in the big woods it
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: can get pretty lonely. Um. Over the years, I probably
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: averaged seeing one deer a day and UH, so it
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: could get really you could get boring. When the weather
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: is really in clement, you freeze the down. UM. I
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: reached a point of just it just wasn't in fun anymore.
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  Speaker 1: I just wasn't enjoying it. And I needed something as
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: a spark to do something different, uh, something that to
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: spice things up a little bit. And uh I had
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: played a round with the idea of tracking, and I
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: had done some still hunting, but the tracking I really
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of success. But then I ran
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: into uh information from the Benoits from out east, and
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I started piqued my interests. So I started studying it
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and started buying their DVDs and their books and and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: finding out more and more about tracking. And UM, I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: wasn't sure if we could even be done in our
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: area because maybe the train was different, situations are different, whatever,
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  Speaker 1: But I was born determined to try something different, and
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: uh that's what got me going. And I just studied
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: a lot and just start to jump the tracks and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and lower behold, I became a tracker. How were those
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: early years when you're first doing it? Did you struggle
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: or did you figure it out pretty quickly? Ah? Well
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  Speaker 1: I had success quickly. Uh, but even as being quick,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I'm I always want. I expect things to happen, you know,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I expect to make things happen. So it didn't happen immediately.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I thought I was gonna be able to go out
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  Speaker 1: and just jump the very first track, track them down,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: shoot him, and this is gonna be easy, you know.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And it turned out to be that way at all.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: And uh, after about for frustrating hunts, I kind of
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: drugged myself back to the camper, uh, licking my wounds,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and I decided, well, Tiger Woods didn't become the golfer
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: he was the first time you went golfing, So I
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: can't expect to be a tracker the first time I
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: go tracking. And and so I decided to try something different.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And what I told myself was, I just want to
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: learn something new each time out. Each time out, I
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: want to track and then evaluate, figure out what I
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: could have done different or could have done better, learned
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: from that experience, and apply it toward my next track.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And I thought, Okay, that's how I'm gonna do this,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and eventually I'm going to be successful. Well well and behold.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: The next day I shot one, so that kind of
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: went out the window, but I was happy to have
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: be to taste success right away. UM, and it was
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: an interesting I'll tell the story about a brief story
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: about that two because it's it's an interesting tracking story,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: but it's it's really a little different than the normal
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: track you would have. UM. I grabbed the track and uh.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I followed him for quite a ways and he hooked
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: up with a doll with two fawns, and I sorted
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that all out, and I was pretty proud of myself
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: that I stayed with the track and uh, and they
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: they took off out of that area. Of course, you've
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: chasing her at that point, and the fawns were staying
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: with her, which was making all kinds of tracks. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I followed him into an area where they just started circling.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: She just started running in circles and circles and circles,
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  Speaker 1: and I had no idea what to do with this.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I was walking around and around and and it was
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: like there was, you know, fifty deer in that area,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: but in essence there was only four deer. But they
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: were just running around and around and around. So I
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: made a big loop around the area trying to figure
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: out where they came out of there, and they never did.
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  Speaker 1: I just couldn't find a track where they left. So
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: since it was such a big loop that I made,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking they must be in here yet. And I thought,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm just gonna stand here for an hour.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get my check, my watch, and I'm gonna
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: stand here for an hour. And it was kind of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: on the edge of a swamp, so it was kind
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of a funneled edge there, and I'm thinking, if they
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: come back around that this swamp might push them right
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: along this edge and I might get a chance at him.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm gonna wait one hour before I try to
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  Speaker 1: figure this out anymore. So I moved over about fifty
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: yards or so. It's where I had a really good
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  Speaker 1: vision and stopped and stood there for maybe the count
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  Speaker 1: of five, and here they came, all four of them rotting.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: There was a dose two fads and his buckets chased
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  Speaker 1: up and he was to say. I put the gun
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  Speaker 1: up and I took two shots at him, and I
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  Speaker 1: did pretty good. I hit him in the front shoulder
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  Speaker 1: two times, about three inches apart on the run. So
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  Speaker 1: I just really good shooting and uh folded him up.
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  Speaker 1: He wasn't a monster. A matter of fact. I was
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  Speaker 1: a little disappointed because he was about a three year
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  Speaker 1: old and he had a smaller rack on him, and
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: it was not a buck I normally would have shot.
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  Speaker 1: I would have let that dear goal. But it's sank
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and I killed a buck. Tracking This is awesome, you know.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't the typical track where you follow a deer,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: come up behind him and shoot him. But still the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: fact that I tracked this deer led me to this spot,
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  Speaker 1: led me to make the decision, well, he's chasing her
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  Speaker 1: around in circles here, I'm going to stand here and
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: give it an hour, you know. And it ended up
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  Speaker 1: tracking brought me a deer and it was like, this
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  Speaker 1: is fantastic. So that was my very first one and
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: I've never looked backs hits. Wow, so you said just
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: before that hunt, the day before whenever, it was that
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  Speaker 1: you wanted to try to just learn something a little
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: bit more each time you go out. So then the
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  Speaker 1: next time you go out you end up killing one.
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  Speaker 1: But did you ever get a chance after that to
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: sit back and think, like, Okay, what did I learn
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  Speaker 1: from that hunt? Even though it was a successful one,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: and you thought that you were gonna have to hunt
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and hunt and hunt and keep on learning every single
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  Speaker 1: time for for dozens and dozens more hunts. Now it
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: happens so quick. Was there still any aha or lesson
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: learned from this unique hunt? Um? From that hunt and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: every other hunt since I'm I'm learning, I think, I'm all,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know ten twelve years of this now, Um,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I'm learning something every time out. The art of tracking
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: um is an art. It's a skill, and you never
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: you never master it. There's always more you can learn. UM.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I am just so jealous of a proud of these
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: trackers in Africa on sand, on dirt with multiple species,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: and they can sort out all these tracks from all
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: these animals and stay with one particular animal on dirt.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Those those people are superhuman, and there's no way I
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: don't think in one lifetime I could ever get that
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: good at at staying with the track. I'm I struggle
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: with snow. Uh you know it's it's it's amazing. So
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: it's it's something you never you never master, You just start.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: You get a little bit better at it as time
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: goes on. So I think it is. It's it's a
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: never ending process of getting better and better and better.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Do you do anything in particular to try to, uh,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: you know, in some way record what you learned or
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: in any way like I asked this because I like
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: to say that I try to learn something remember singing
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: one of my hunts too. But then I oftentimes find
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: myself off having hunted fifteen days straight during the rut
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: or something, and then realize I've never haven't taken any
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: time to sit back and think about all these things.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So sometimes I'll be laying in bed late at night
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and then I have to force myself to think through
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: all these days and what I learned from that, or
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: what what what what went wrong there? Or when I
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: start kind of looking at my maps or maybe tracking,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: like I wish I did a better job with a
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: journal or something like that where I recorded everything that happened.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not good at that. Do you have any trick
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: or any processum or system to try to help you
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: record these lessons learned or actually kind of make them
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: hammer home in anyway? Yeah, A couple of things. Um.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: The first thing, turn your GPS on a track where
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you go when you get done tracking for the day,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: sit down, and if you can transfer that onto a
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: bigger screen like a computer monitor or something, take a
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: look at that and look at aerial photal and an
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: overlay of topographical map and see that deer did and
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: what happens is is over one time, ten times, a
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: hundred times, a thousand times of watching how these mature
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: bucks run the land, you start to think like they
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: they all do the same things, they have tendencies. Um,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you start to see the woods like they do after
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: you follow them. And why it's so important to to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: track it is when you're following them, you're not really
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: paying a lot of attention to a lot of things. Besides,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you're focused on the track and watching for the deer,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: so you're really not catching where they're going and how
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: they're using the land quite so much. But later on,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: when you start looking at the maps, things start popping
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: out at you. And UM, yeah, I've got to say
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: that if a young man came to me and said, hey, Todd,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: teach me how to track or teach me how to
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: hunt deer, I would say, do you take a journal
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: they go in the woods and follow mature bucks. And
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: then after you've done that, come back to me. And
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: at that point you won't need to be taught anymore.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: You can teach me. So it's um that that's that's
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the first thing is map those deer. Uh um. And
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I hope I don't lose my thought on this, but
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: there's something I want to talk about as far as map.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: And he's deer too, But I want to go to
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: my second point. Um, watch what they do, not only
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: where they go, but watch what they do, how they react,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: what they eat? Um? How you know do they run
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: through valley? Do they run the hillside? Do they run
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the top of the hill. Um? When they come to
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: a road where they like to cross, and when they
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: come to a creek where they like to cross. Um,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: start documenting behavior. What do they eat? Where do they
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: bed down? You know when they when they bed where
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: do they bet? Um? How do they walk the land,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: how do they walk the train? All the little things
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: that they can teach you about their behavior. Um. Again,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: after you follow a lot of them, you really get
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: inside of a buck's head. You get inside you know
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: exactly what he's gonna do. When you walk through the woods.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Do you say, well, I'm sure I'm surprised that deer
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: hasn't been eaten off of this, or you know, if
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: he came across here, he'd eat that for sure, Or
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: if he comes through this area, I'm sure he'll cross
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: right here more than likely. And what this does is
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: it allows you to make really wise choices when there
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: isn't snowtting ground, so you're able to kind of apply
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that shoot. Probably someone who doesn't always track, even someone
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: who hunts from a tree stand could probably take a
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: lot of that same data and a eye that to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: their own way of hunting too. I mean, you can
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: almost look at this as just like a scouting method
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: like go out somewhere, track a few bucks, learn from it,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and then even if you don't like that style of hunting,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: you could probably still apply those lessons back to stands
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: as well. Oh you the biggest The biggest UH gain
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: from this tracking is not shooting a big buck. It's
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: what you learn about behavior. That's that's the biggest gain
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you get from tracking. Yeah, because you're not going to
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: be tracking on UH in many cases early bull season, um,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: seasons when you don't get snow, maybe even seasons when
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: you get really crunchy snow, and it just doesn't pay
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to even try to, you know, go after him. Um.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: But you know what these gear are gonna do, you
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: know how they think? Um? And I want to now
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I want to jump back in time a little bit too,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: to this mapping. Yeah, because there's something even more important
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to be discovered and now is when you when you
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: map that box and he goes through that area, if
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: that buck comes back through, he's gonna take that same trail.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: And if he comes through again, he's going to take
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that same trail. And if he comes through next year,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: he's going to take that same trail. If he lives
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to be another two or three years older, he's going
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to take that same trail. Now, you go into the
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: northern regions and it's all continuous woods and there's hundreds
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: of thousands of acres. Where do you put a deer stand. Now,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: when I get to learn specific bucks by following and
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: mapping their trails, when I throw a stand up, my
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: odds still are really bad, But now they went way
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: up compared to everybody else because now I'm sitting on
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a trail that I absolutely um certain that a trophy
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: buck is using. And that's huge. That's huge, And you
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: can get interrupt. I was gonna say that something that
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: you personally still do. You do still sometimes throw up
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: a tree stand in certain situations and hunt a spot
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: like that. I don't because I don't. I don't do
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of archery hunting um and stand hunting. Yes,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: I'll go back and sit you know with the rifle. Uh,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: jump on spots that I that I know that that
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: bucks are using, or a particular buck is using. Um.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Not only that, A lot of times I go back
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and look for his track there if he got good
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: snow it uh, because I know if he's if he's
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: still alive and he's coming through this area, he's going
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: to come along the edge of this swamp here and um,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I just know that's part of his route. So I
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: can go and check that every day until I catch
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: them coming through again, and and so it helps me
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: there as well. And if it's bare ground, I can
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: go sit um on that spot as well with just
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you know, stand or sit on the ground and just
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: watch that edge and see if he's If he comes through,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: then I you know, can get a shot at him.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I know that if if I had time with my business,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I don't get up north until November. Um so I
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: don't do a lot of archery hunting anymore. But if
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I was up there for archery season, I'd be sitting
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: all these trails that these bucks are using. And especially
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: late November, late October, early November, when these bucks start
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: cruising nett ruts just starts getting going. They started going
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: out and opening them the scrapes and and running those edges. Boy,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: to have a bowl in your hand, it's sitting on
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: those edges. It's phenomenal. I mean, your your odds will
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: go way out. And unfortunately I don't. I don't get tied.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I know spots that I could have killed big deer,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and I just can't get up there to hunt them
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: with the bowl, you know. And then and then after
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: two or three years they disappeared. Well I'm sure they're
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: you know they're dead by that. So, so as you're
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: describing all these things, Um, one of the things I
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: was originally kind of curious to hear from you was
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: was almost like your sales pitch for tracking bucks. But
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I feel like you've already kind of given us that
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: sales pitch just by having these things that you're learning
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: from it, because it's so obvious that these are some
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: huge benefits tracking deer, just the lessons you can learn
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: from it. The it's almost like a master's degree and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: dear behavior by simply following a deer, which I guess
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: you know, if you wanted to learn how to paint,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: like Picasso or something, I imagine if you follow Picasso
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: around a hundred times or a hundred different days, you
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: learn a lot um Probably just like falling around the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: mature buck a hundred times, you would learn a lot
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: to UM. So that sure seems like a great sales
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: pitch for why you should try this, But is there
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: is there anything else? If somebody's listening, they're like, Wow,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: you know it sounds cool, but I don't know if
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: it's for me. Um, what else would you would you
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: bring up? Were there any other reasons? Why? Why you
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: personally love it so much, or why you think other
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: people might want to consider it. Yeah, think of me
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: every time you're sitting to your dear stand freezing, and
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: your knees are knocking, and you're brutally cold, and and
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: you're miserable because you've been sitting there for eight hours
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and the wind is blowing hard, and and and and
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: you're just you just had had it. I mean, you're
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: so cold, you can't even think straight anymore, and you're
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: so bored because you haven't seen a deer all day.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Think of me running around through the woods, having a
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: great time, all the adventures. I mean, I carry a
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: camera with me. I stopped. I take pictures of things
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: that other hunters never see. Animals, pictures of love. I've
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: got a picture of a huge pine tree that got
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: struck by lightning and it just chattered it. You know, um, lakes, rivers,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: beaver ponds that that normal people don't see. Um. You know,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. The buddy of mine took me
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: up beaver trapping. I went with him one day and
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: he dropped his snowmobile off the truck and away we
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: went in the woods, and and I said, where are
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: we going? And and he says, oh, we're heading Norris
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: up in here. I says, oh, that little beaver pond,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: way back up in the woods, way back out there.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: He looks at me and he says, yeah, how do
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: you know about that? Well, I'm a tracker, you know,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: you get to learn the land. It's it's amazing what
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: you learned. You see things that other people don't see. Um,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I come up on moose, I come up on you know,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: fox woves, um anything, uh, hotters, all kinds of different things.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: You know, things that the average deer stand hunter just
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't get to see your experience. And uh so you know,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: if you want to sit in the stand, you're welcome
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to it, you know. Um, here's here's another nice thing
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: about tracking. Um, you did your stouting and you're gonna
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: sit in this spot. And you go out there and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: there's a guy. It's public land, and here's a guy
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: sitting eight yards away from you hunger stand. You didn't
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: even know he was going to be there. Now what
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: you know? Um, you're you're a bait hunter. You throw
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: a bait down. Um. Then another guy comes and he baits,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you know, on fifty yards away from you not what
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you know? I mean all these things that nobody stops
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: me from going and doing what I want to do,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and nobody really gets in my way, you know. Um,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the whole woods is mine and I just go. I can't.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you know, if there isn't, if
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I've learned good enough reasons, then I don't know. What
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: are you know? Um, here's a here's another good stat
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: for you. Let's say I'm successful five percent at the
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: time I gotta chase twenty deer. I got a trophy
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: buck on the wall. How good of a hunter are you?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: How you know? What's your success rate? You know? Ah?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I mean it's phenomenal. I don't know of any other
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: method where I can walk into a wood somewhere I've
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: never been before. I have no idea where I'm going nothing,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: jump the track and and have a deer on the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: ground a two hours a trophy here, and I've I've
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: done it. You know. It's it's there's no other method.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I don't even have to pre scout, I don't even't
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: have to look at maps. Um, there's no other method
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: that can produce deer like that, you know? And and
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: it it's tough. I mean, I'm making a sound easy,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: but it's tough. And this year I don't shot a
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: deer the one I when I caught up to with shed,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I have wanted to mention it, and he was shed,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: so you know, I mean, that's the way it goes.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: In Minnesota, I was right on one tail all day long.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: It was actually two bucks Jason a dole and heat,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: and I should have the boy. I should have caught
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: up with him, and I never did. There was I
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: was right behind them all day. I got one glimpse
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: of those deer all day long, but I know I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: was right behind him. They you know, they just he
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: got rocky. All he had to do was turn and
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: chase another buck back towards me one time, and it
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: would have been I would have shot that deer. You know.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: It just needed one break all day long, and I
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: just never got it, you know. So it's just the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: odds were against me this time around. In Wisconsin, I
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: tracked down a nice buck and I jumped up up
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: and I had one if you shot at him, and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I took it. And then yes, so um, I went
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: over three. I could have went three for three. Wow. Yeah,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: like you said, it's it's, uh, you just never know
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: when you go out there, and I think, for now
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I've never done this. I'm never hunting this style that
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: you have, although I'm seriously thinking about trying it here soon.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: But I gotta imagine for somebody trying this out, it's
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: important to remember that you might, just like you mentioned,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you might go over and over and over a whole
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: season and not get your chance, or you might go
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: out the first day or second day and it happens.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: But it's it's no different than any other style of hunting,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: where of course there's a whole lot of variables outside
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: of your control that sometimes it's just aren't going to
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: go your way. But at least in in your style
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of hunting, you do have some amount of certainty because
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: if you find a mature buck track, you know that
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: there's a mature buck ahead of you somewhere that you're
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: heading towards. While I could go sit on a a
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: scrape or go sit in the edge of the betting
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: area and I might I have no idea if there's
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: a mature buck within five miles, I'm hoping I'm the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: very kind of area, but you just don't know. So
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: at least there's some amount of certainty around around your
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: style that it's got to be kind of comforting when
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: you're when you're hiking out there, at least you know
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: there's something up there. So the adrynline flow on a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: good track, I mean, when you find a big track,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: the addreynline flow, it just pushes you forward. You know,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: you know he's there, and you want to get him.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I don't care how tired you are, I don't care
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: how beat up you are or whatever. I'm fifty six
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: years old and I get on a track, I'm like
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a twenty year old man again. I mean, I I
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: want to catch that deer. I don't care how much
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: my back hurts and my hips heard, or my knees hurt,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: or whatever the case may be. If you know, if
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I stopped and check my bearings where I'm at, and
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: I'm four miles away from my truck, and i still
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: only have three hours left to goal um, and I
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: know that if I keep going, I'm going the wrong
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: way and I'm gonna have one heck of a long
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: walk back. I still keep going. You know, I know
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: he's right in front of me there somewhere, and I'm
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: hoping to catch him, you know. But it's uh, yeah,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: it's exciting. It's an adrenaline rush for me. I knowing
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: that there's a big buck in front of you. Um.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: It's similar to beer hunting a stand hunting. Let's say
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: you set up a stand and you you've got a
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: big buck peg. Then you know he's in a betting area. Um,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and you know he's been coming out. You've got trio
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: camera pictures of over or whatever the case may be.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: That adrenaline that you're feeling when you're sitting that stand
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: is adrenaline I feel every day when I'm on a
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: big track. Yeah. Yeah, that's exciting stuff, no doubt about that.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So how do you how do you get into that situation? Then?
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I've talked to a handful of folks over the years
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: that the track. Some folks I've heard just drive back roads.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Some people drive you know, pulp forest roads through the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: national forest until they cut a big track on the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: snow and they start on that. I've tried other people
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: that know there's certain ridgelines where they've seen good tracks
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: in the past, and so they'll head right to a
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: little terrain feature and walk that kind of stuff. How
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: do you approach the beginning of this kind of hunt?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: How I do it is they based more on my
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: age than anything else. I do a lot of driving,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: um uh, simply because of my age. If I was
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: twenty years old and I felt like putting on ten
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: miles a day every day, I think I would cut country,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: um just simply because I think a lot of these
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: older bucks are a little bit road shy um and
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: and they kind of keep to themselves ah and or
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: they might be locked out with those and and so
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: they just never do come out to the road. Um.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I think you could probably find more quality deer just
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: cutting country. But being fifty six years old, I kind
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: of kind of temper the amount of walking I have
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: to do. Um, So I stick to the roads mostly.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Or if I know where, you know, pararily there's been
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: a deer in the past, I'll go and check those
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: areas out. And I might walk in the ways and
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and and check some of their runs out to see
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: if they're coming through uh particular bucks. But for the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: most part, yeah, it's it's a lot of road time.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: How often do you actually come across the track that
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt? I mean, is this something like every
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: day you find a track somewhere to hunt, or do
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: you just find over course of the season, there's a
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: handful of actual stocks you get because it's been that
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: many days to catch the mature about crossing the road.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: It's getting worse. It's getting a lot worse. Uh. The
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: age structure in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan is getting really bad.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: So those numbers are going down. It's getting harder and
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: harder and harder. Uh up in Michigan particularly, Um boy,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: I might I might work four or five days to
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: find a good track. Um, it's it's getting there's numbers. Uh,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: there's numbers a deer, but the age structure is shot.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the problem is. Unfortunately, was the
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: winner we've having this year isn't going to help anything either.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's it's getting harder. It's it's getting
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: a little bit tougher to find good tracks. So you
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: gotta work for him. And when you find a really
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: really good one, you know, it's it's it's pretty exciting,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: you know. In the past, in the past, I usually
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: don't bother to try to catch up with the same
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: deer again. This next day, if I don't get them.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: But I'm starting to rethink that just because of the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: numbers of quality deer that are out there. Um, if
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the situation weren't that, I think I would definitely go
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: back after the same deer another day. How do you
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, how would you go about that?
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Would you just hike back into the last spot you've
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: got into and just try to pick it up that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: you know, twelve hours later, eighteen hours later, or would you, well,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: how would you approach trying to pick that deer back
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: up the second day? I would go right back to
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: where I left him. Yeah, that's the most easiest guaranteed. Yeah,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. Um, so you're now you're now driving
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: on the roads, you cut a big track. Tell me
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: how do you make that decision? Because this is probably
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: one of the very most decisions, most important decisions of
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: whole process, right, because determining whether you're gonna actually stalk
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and track a buck or not makes or breaks your
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: whole day probably in some cases. Um, And this has
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: always been one of the things I always wonder about
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: because it seems like there's a lot of ways you
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: can possibly screw this up when trying to determine if
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: a buck track or if a track is definitely a
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: big mature buck or not. UM. I actually watched a
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: video of yours once where you were analyzing what looked
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: like a sure thing big buck track versus a track
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: that might be mistaken for a big buck track. UM,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: could you walk us through that example and maybe some
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: others to help us better understand how to properly identify
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the kind of track we would want to follow. Yeah,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the first thing, the first piece of advice I would
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: give is, um, it's human nature to want to find
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: a big track. So right off the bat, mentally you're
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna find this to be true. You'll start
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to try to convince yourself the tracks that aren't big
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: are big. You'll see that that a shitnabowl track, and
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: you'll in your mind try to make it bigger. And
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: then you'll look at a series of tracks and you'll
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: still you'll always take out that biggest one, and mentally
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: you'll try to convince yourself that that's a big buck
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: because after UH put it on sixty miles driving and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: you haven't found a good track yet, and it's getting
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: to be you know, twelve o'clock in the afternoon, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: you know, and you're you want to get on a
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: track that day, you're going to try to convince yourself
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: to take that deer. Um. So what I do is
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: I always have to say, judge your track by the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: smallest one. So when you're looking at a series of tracks,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: look for the smallest one. Pick the smallest one out
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: of that track series, not the biggest one, because a
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: lot of times they sidestep, in other words, the front
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: or the hind LEGO missed the front just by a
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: little bit, make it wider, or it'll fall right behind
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: it and make it look longer. Um. And so that
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: track looks bigger because it's of course every track is
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: actually two tracks. It's a front foot and hind foot
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: steps right in the same spot. So any offstep of
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the hind leg is going to make that track look bigger. Um.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: So look at a series and and and try to
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: determine a good track. One thing I like to see
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: is I like to see the dudes hitting um, especially
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: in shallow or snow. UM. I like to see him
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: sitting back on his feet. That usually designates one or
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: two things, either that he is awful tired or he's
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: awful heavy or both. Um, But look at a series
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: of tracks. I often walk back into the woods hundred
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: hundred fifty two yards on a track and really looked
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the whole track, over the whole series of tracks to
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: make decisions. I start looking for situations like that he
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: duck between two narrow trees, which tells me he doesn't
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: have any antlers to speak of. You know, if he
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: can go between narrow trees, is he going through thick
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: brush instead of avoiding it? Which is a tendency of
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a smaller box versus a bigger buck is likes to
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: take the easiest path. Um. You know, if he comes
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to an obstruction and like a fallen tree, is he
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: willing to dunk way down to go underneath it or
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: does he just walk around it? Again, another tendency of
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: a big buck is to walk around those obstacles instead
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: of ducking under or having to jump. Um. They're bigger,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: they're older, and they don't like to waste energy. Um.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: So I like to look at a series of tracks
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: to make my decision as to what what if I'm
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: going to take that deer or not? And and you
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: were absolutely correct when you said, that's the most important
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: decision you're gonna make all day is whether or not
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I should take that track, because you do not want
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: to waste your time. Um, unless you're learning and you're
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: just having fun or whatever. Uh, you don't want to
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: waste your time on a subpower buck. You don't you
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: don't want to put four miles in that day chasing
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: a buck. That just isn't what you wanted. So what
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: about when you when you are actually looking at the
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: track and you've identified what you think are some of
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: the smallest tracks of his that you're gonna look at,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and so okay, this is the most realistic option to
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: look at the most realistic example, what characteristics of that
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: or um, you know, measurements or any other you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: tangible things. Can we look at it? Say? Okay, yeah,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: definitely mature buck. You mentioned the do clause. Um, I
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: know some people I've I've even used it sometimes, you know,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: three or four fingers wide might tell you that's a
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: that's a big track. Um. Any specific things like that
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: that we can kind of take home with us just
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: to try to help, you know, gauge the size of
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: a track or not. Yeah, I don't know. What I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: she was thirty got six, So I kind of used
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the shell casing as a as a guide. If if
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: it's as wide as the shell casing, it's it's pretty good.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: If it's wider than the schelle casing, then it's you're
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: getting to be a good box. Okay. I mean you
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: very seldom see what is wide as the showcasing with
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the bullet um and I don't know. I haven't measured
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a thirty six shell. Somebody have to measure that decide.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I think it's about two or three quarters inches wide. Um.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: But again, make sure that there's a walking track. Don't
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: don't measure that track if it's running. If he's walking fast,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: don't measure it. A decent buck is going to take
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: about a two foot long stride. If he's taking more
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: than that, he's probably in a hurry. And when they're
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: it's just like you when you're running. When you're running,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: your foot comes out a lot harder because you're jumping,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: you're you're you're coming off the ground and you're coming
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: down hard. Um, that's going to change the way that
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: track is gonna look. So I always like to judge
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: only from a walking track. Um. And look for one that's,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: like I said, showcasing wide um, and I like to
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: see the dew clause hitting h. Another thing, too, is
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I like to see those dew clause setting at least
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: is why it's a track a really good buck. And
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know why this is, but almost always on
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: a be really good buck and dow clause will sit
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: on the outside of that track. A little bit I saw.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: I saw example you shared where you described wanting a
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: rectangular track versus a V shaped track with um with
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the two sides of the hoof kind of splay it out.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Can you can you elaborate on that a little bit
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: what you meant by that? Yeah, pretty much, when you
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: get a V shaped track like that, it's because they're running.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: It's it's almost always when they're hit that that tolls
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: spread wide apart. And and that that doesn't mean it's
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: not a big buck, but that just means that it's
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: he's probably running, and it could fool you because if
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: it's a really big buck and he runs, his track
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: will splay that way as well. But so will a
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: two year old buck, and so will adult They'll all
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: splay like that when they're running and they will almost
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: always all hit their dow clause when they're running. That's
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: just uh, that nature's traction. I mean they lay back
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: on them and they use those do clause for traction
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and and uh and the hoopsplay in soft soil and
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: or when they're running to give them the traction to
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: give them, you know, stability when they're running. So Um,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: that V shape is a classical example of a deer
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: that's moving fast and then that foot displays when it
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: hits and um, if it's if it's parallel, then they're
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: not most of the time, it's not a running track.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And you can get a lot better gauge. Again because again,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: like I said, you go back to that, uh use
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: a walking track is your guide when you're checking a track. Yeah,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: And for folks who never really looked at tracks or
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: paid attention, can you share a few of the other
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: things to help someone determine whether it's a walking or
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: running track. So you already mentioned display versus non display track.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: You already mentioned the fact that you know, all walking
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: buck might have like a two ft stride length. Um,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: there's going to be some different things in the snow
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: or dirt based off the speed and the jumping of
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: the deer too, right, Can you point out a couple
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: of things that that that might be worth noticing? Well,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: you know, the biggest thing is is the faster they're
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: running or faster they're moving alonger the stride if they'll
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: do if they're doing like a trot or something, it'll
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: be like a three ft gate uh. And then of
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: course you know that no deer is normally doing that
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: as a walk. And and then you know from there
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: they start running, so they start jumping actually then and
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: then you know it could be up to fifteen feet
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: or more. You know, when they jump like that, then
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: of course you really know that they're not walking. And
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and they really pound the ground hard when they when
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: they run like that, so you know again it's it's
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: just do you want to look at it deer walking
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: uh at ease? Um? And do you like to see
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: one that that has is sitting back on its new clause?
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: And and it's as as simple as that, um, and
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I have noticed uh from tracking deer two beds and
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: in away from beds, they walk different when they're tired
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: and when they're rested, just like just like you and I, UM,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: I always get a kick out of it. Um. As
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: I was telling you earlier, I get I get quite
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: an adrenaline rush when I get in a good track. Um,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: if I don't get that, deer and I and I
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: tracked back on my old track. I always laugh at
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: myself when I'm coming out because I have to take
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: long strides to walk in my track that I did
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: when I started out, because now I'm tired. And when
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I started out, I had a little adrenaline rush going.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: So I was taking big, long strides and I always
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: have to laugh. You know, wow, I was really you know,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: really walking a big stride. But but that's a good
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: lesson because deer are the same way. When deer gets tired,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: they lay back on their feet a little bit more. Uh,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: let's at do Claus shoal Um. When you get a
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: big old buck that's really good and tired, he drags
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: his feet in an arc shaped motion and and he
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: most like just like you and I, when you get
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: really tired, you just don't want to lift your feet anymore.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: You know, you just kind of slap your feet forward
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: if you're walking when you're really exhausted. And so they
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: walk different and and it'll surprise you how much different
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: that track will look coming into a bed and then
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: he lays down there for a few hours, he gets rested,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: and he gets up and he walks away. There's been
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: times when it's been so different that it's like I
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: can't even believe that I'm on the same deer. You know,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: they stand back on their toes again, um, and they
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: don't do clause, don't hit very hard, and of course
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: when they're standing on their tiptoes more, the track isn't
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: it big. It's like, wow, you know, it looks like
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: two different deer, but it has to be the same
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: deer because you walked in, late, down and got left.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Now is that something that you can identify accurately enough
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: while you're actually tracking a deer that you can be
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: like in your mind say to yourself, oh, based off
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: what I'm seeing this track now, it looks like he's
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: getting tired. He's probably gonna bed soon, so I'm gonna
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: slow down or something like that, Like do you actually
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: use that to change how your track and hunting? Or
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: is that something that you know you've noticed but you
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: can't say with enough you know surety in the moment,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: If it's if it's indicative of one thing or another. No,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: But I think I pick a lot of tired tracks
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: because of that. You know, I think the track just
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: looks bigger because they're tired, and they're laying back on
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: their feet more and dragging their feet a little bit more,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: and and you know, they're walking a little more sloppy,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: which gives a little bit bigger looking tracks. So I
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: think that just by the nature of the beast, do
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: you you end up picking those tracks that makes sense?
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Do you ever do you ever try to identify individual
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: deer and and come back and say, Okay, I think
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: this is that same buck. It's the buck that has
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: a little chip off his right side or something like that.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Have you ever looked at them that closely? I pay attention,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: uh more soul for the time I'm tracking him now
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: if if it's right right rear hook is the outside
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of the hoof hooks a lot longer and hooks around
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit um. I try to make a mental
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: note of that, because then when I get messed up
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: on the track or whatever we'm I'm trying to sort
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: things out a little bit, and I get back on
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: the track again, I'm following it and I get a
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: nice good imprint, I can say, oh, yees yees, I
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: know this is the same deer. Now. The one thing
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: you've got to be careful of is from season the
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: season is a hoof is like a fingernail. It keeps
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: growing and they keep wearing it off. So if that
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: buck chip set hoof, it's going to grow out. It
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't stay like that forever. So you've got to be
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: a little careful about, you know, saying, well, next year, well,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I see a track here, but it doesn't look he
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a chip in that, you know, on his
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: left foot, so that can't be him. Well that they're
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: they're like a fingernail. They keep growing and they keep
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: wearing them down. So uh, that might not be the case,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: you know, so you can't really judge by that. But
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the toll, the toll is configuration will stay the same,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: you know, if they If his toes are really hooked
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: on the outside on the right foot rear, he will
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: have that the next year as well. That that won't
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: change that. That's pretty that's just the way that his
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: feet growing. Maybe the way he walks, or you know,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: whatever his his skeleton or structure or whatever I don't
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: you know genetics, so yeah, and you do. You do
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: want to try to keep track of that, you know.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately for me, UM, I live at Center, Wisconsin, and
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I and I hunt north. You know, my closest spots
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: are like three four hours away, so I don't get
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: to hunt. You know, I shot a lot of big
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: bucks over the years, and I don't have time to hunt,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: so I don't get I don't get a chance to
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: get familiar with deer um. It's always been something I
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: hoped I would be able to do at some point
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: in my life. Does actually live closer to where A hunt,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: so I could become more familiar with specific deer um.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Knowing what I know, it would be an interesting experience
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: for me too to be more familiar with my dear
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: and actually hut specific gear and see what the results
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: would be. I kind of know, I think what would happen,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: but it would be interesting to actually put it to
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: practice and see, you know, what the results would be. No,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I'm should that be fascinating? To take that kind to
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the next level would be really interesting when you're when
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: you're on a track. Now A few other things I've
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: heard some people mentioned when they're trying to identify or confirm,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: like whether or not they're sure this is a big
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: buck track. Um. I've heard some people look for like
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: antler imprints in the snow. I've heard some people to
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: talk about paying attention to the width of the gate um,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: so the space in between the left and right legs.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you can really supposedly a really big mature buck
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: might have a wider um gate. Is there any truth
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: to that kind of thing? Have you noticed anything like
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: that and had that help you? Uh, the width if
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: it's a really really big one, I mean, if it's
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: if it's and you just don't run into those up
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: north anymore. Let's say one that would probably maybe push
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: the scales dressed at two fifty or something to thirty five. Uh,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: it gets a big, big body like that, you're gonna
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: definitely see uh some with between the tracks. But I
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: don't usually use it as a guide all that much.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Most of the deer I shoot anymore across the board
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: a late post rut or whatever, you know, like during
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: rifle season Thanksgiving, let's say, use it as a guideline.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: These deer are rundown. Most of these deer are going
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: to push the scales about. Um, I've had a something
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: that was sold run down one. Um, they they're they're
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: just you just don't see those big, you know, two
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: forty thirty pound box like that anymore. And if you'd
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: seen one like that, yes, you would see that in
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: the track he would have a wide gate. But I
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: have seen small, young deer with a wide gate. So
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I don't go by the width all that much. I
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: know there's a lot of talk out there about that,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: but I just really don't go by with all that
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: much um length. When they're walking, I do pay attention
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: to that, but again, you know, it goes back to
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: what I said earlier. If they're walking and they're tired,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: or if they're walking and they're excited, um, that that
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: length of their stride is going to change. And uh
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: so again, you know, I can't really tell us that
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: deer was excited when he was walking, or if he's
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: rested up when he's walking. So you know, maybe he's
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: taking an extra two inch stride because he's really anxious
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: to get somewhere, you know, And then maybe his stride
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: isn't is long. Maybe he's a really good buck, but
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: his stride is three inches shorter because he's just exhausted,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: you know. So those are things that I don't put
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of stock into. I'll tell you what I
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: do put a lot of stock can do. How they
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: walk through the country. A big buck walks through the
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: country a lot different than a doll or a young buck.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: They all have their own way of walking through country.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: When you're on a really good buck, it's hard for
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: me to put in the words, but you know it
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: because he always takes the easiest route. It's always easy.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: It's always almost premeditated. And and I shouldn't say always,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: uh uh, almost always it is premeditated. He knows where
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: he's going. That buck has been through their fifty two
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: hundred times before in the past. He knows exactly where
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: he's going. He knows exactly where he has to get
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to get through the cross to that next area he
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: wants to go to. He knows when to come out
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: to the snowmobile trail where it's easy walking so he
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: can get around the swamp and he doesn't have to
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: try to walk through the swamp. Um a good case.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: At point I was following him last year, he's walking.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: He went to the snowmobile trail, walk down the snowmobile
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: trail and then ducked into the woods. And I thought, well,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: that's odd, but it wasn't because right up ahead it
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: got really wet and it was all under water there.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: And he knew before he even got there that if
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: he cuts off to the left, that he could walk
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: right along the edge. It was a hump that he
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: could walk on all the way to get through there.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: So I know that deer knew that deer has been
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: through there a bunch of times before, because he didn't
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: have to come up to the water, didn't make a decision.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: He made a decision before he came to the water,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: so he knew how to get through there. He's been
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: through there so many times before. This is a sign
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: of a really good buck. Um. You got a tree leaning,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: he won't duck underneath it or jump over it, He'll
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: walk around it. Um. He he looks through that the
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: easiest path through an area. Um, it's amazing when you
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: go on some of these big bucks and they take
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: you through an area and then you cut off the
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: deer and you say, well where am I and we
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: check my GPS. I'm gonna walk out to the road. Well,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: if I cut straight that way, I could get back
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: to the road a lot easier. And when I do
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: that every time, I always say, you dummy, don't ever
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: do that again, because that deer knew the easiest way
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: through that area. And when I try to take the
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: quickest path or the straightest path through, it's hell. I mean,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: it's nasty, and I have to keep relearning that. Have
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: you know that that same lesson over and over and
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: over again. That deer went there for a reason because
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: he knows the easiest way through. Um, they'll be going
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: along and all of a sudden they'll cut off to
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: the left and they'll be cutting through some thick brush
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and you'll be thinking, why are they doing this?
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: This doesn't make any sense, And boom they'll pop out
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: onto a beaver pond right at the damn and he'll
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: walk right across it. So what didn't make any sense
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: to me beforehand made perfect sense. Now he knew where
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: that beaver dad was. He knew exactly where it was,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and he knew if he was gonna get through that area,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: that was the best way across that water. So he
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: makes that Hell, he'll push his way through some stuff
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: rough stuff just to get to that crossing. Yeah, and
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's amazing. And you watch this happen
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: again and again and again and again these deer, and
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: and the more mature the buck is, the more you'll
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: tell that in the track, you'll see that he absolutely
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: knows where he's gonna go. He knows where he's gonna go,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and he knows why he's going there, and he takes
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: you on a really easy path through the area. And
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: you just really get that sense. After you follow enough deer,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: you'll know when you're on a really good buck. You'll say, man,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: this is a nice track. Then you start following a
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: track and you see how he runs the country and
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: it won't be long, and you'll say, this is a
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: really good buck. Yeah. You mentioned beaver dam crossings. I
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: heard you talk about this before where you you mentioned
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: that you've seen beaver dam crossings are be in particular
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: good spots to hunt because deer identify that almost as
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: a bridge across water. So even for someone who's not tracking,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: but someone who's maybe be gonna pop up a tree stand,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: is that something you you can on that you've seen
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: him being a hot spot in certain areas don't. Absolutely Yeah,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: and then I'll take that one step further. UM use
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: your wood skills. UM, get in there. Check that wherever
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: there's a beaver dam, there's mud because it's water, it's wet.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Go in there and look for signing that a big
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: buck is crossing. Go look for some big tracks in
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: that mud. If there's a big buck using that crossing,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: he's gonna leave some tracks there. And if there's big
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: buck tracks crossing hunted, that's a high percentage spot. That's
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: a very good spot. I killed a really nice tent
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: point or bear ground up in Minnesota that way you're about.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Four years ago, my area had dried up.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just wasn't seeing any deer in my area,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: and I didn't have a snow and I thought, well,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: let me let me check some maps. So I started
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: looking at maps. Found an area aerial photos you can
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: see beaver dams on them really easy, and and uh,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: I found a spot where there was a couple of
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: beaver dams on a river. Drove back in there, had
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: to push through brush with my truck like you don't
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: believed to get back in there. And then I walked
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: back in and got along the bottom of that river,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: along that river edge, there was a buck running up
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: and down that that edge, tearing the heck out of everything, trees, robbed,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: scrapes everything. I mean, he was just really active. And
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: that's a very good sign of a buck that's just
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: just made it. He's he's old enough. Now he's like
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: a t's like a teenage boy. I'm big and strong now,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: puffing his chest out. I'm gonna act tough, and they'll
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: start ripping a lot of stuff up. Really really old
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: buck usually doesn't do a lot of that run activity. Um,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: but a young one dis feeling as though, so really
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: do that. And he had that hole that holes edge
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: of that river, tore up on one on that one side,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: all the way up and down, and there was two
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: beaver damn crossings. I had three days the season left,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: and I went down to the river edge and I
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: sat there, and I had a hundred fifty yards to
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: one crossing and one seventy five to the other. And
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I sat there for two and it was two and
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: a half days. The first day, it was half a
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: day after I scouted it. I didn't even I didn't
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: worry about all the scent day laid or nothing. I
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: was there, I hunted. I sat there for half a day,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: didn't see a deer. Sat there for the next day
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: all day long, and a Dolana fawn crossed one of
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the beaver damns. The third day, which was the last
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: day of season, I grunted up to that beaver damn
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: at doon he came. I picked up my grunt call
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: at doing and I blew it and he was happy
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: to be on the other side of the river. And
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: he came right out to the beaver dam and he
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: stood right there and I shot up. So he was
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: and he was exactly what I thought he was. I'm
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: sure that was the same buck that was doing that.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: He was a really nice tent pointer. Uh three and
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: a half year old, maybe four and a half, but
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. Um, just a really nice, decent,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: really good buck. Not a monster, but a really good
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: buck and a few Sorry I was gonna say I
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: might have missed it. But did you say that you
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: found a track too when you were looking at all
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: that rub, all those rubs and rutt sign or were
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: you did you make the decisions that they're simply by
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: the fact that you knew that the beer damns were
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: there and you saw the sign or was there a
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: track that said, okay, yeah, for sure, there's a nice
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: buck passing through. Oh yeah, in the in the in
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: the scrapes, there was good tracks. And then uh, the
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: the crossing that I shot him on, I didn't. I
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: didn't see a good track there, but the other one
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: that I was watching as well did have. So I
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: was more expecting him to come out out of the
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: other one. But but he didn't. And it was actually
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: a third beaver damn crossing on that same river, further
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: upstream yet, and that one just didn't have any sign
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: at all. So I just crossed that one off, and
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, I'm gonna watch these two and this this,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: this determination was made with you know, a quick run
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: through one hour scout of the area I've never been before.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: You know, I just see all the sign I made
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: a quick determination. I thought, Okay, I'm gonna PLoP down
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: in here and I'm gonna stay here for the next
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I got two and a half days the season left.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: I know there's a good buck working this, and I'm
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: gonna stick here, you know, and I'm just gonna wait
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: it out. So is that a typical is that your
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: typical plan when you don't have snow, you're gonna go
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: into the best looking area based off of terrain and
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: a quick walk through scout and hopefully find a good track.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: But otherwise without snow, it's it's it's usually a sitting
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: way to fair Or do you ever try to track
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: in dirt and mud? I won't try to track on
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: bare ground. And I'll tell you why. Um, that's during
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: the rut when I'm rife hunting. That's that's the rut.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: And these bucks, uh, four miles, six miles, eight miles,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: that's nothing for these deer. There's no way you're gonna
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: stay with them that long. There's there's no way that
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: you're gonna follow a bearer ground track for for three
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: miles um. And then when they start if they hit
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: some areas where you know it's really not soft, you
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: have a heck of a time. A good buckle leave
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: tracks in the leaves and you can follow them. Um,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: but it's just too time consuming and your your noses
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: to the ground all the time, so you're not even
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: if you did catch up with him, you wouldn't see him.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, he'll see you before you see him, because
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: you'll be looking at the ground all the time. So
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: bare ground, I just don't mess with it. But what
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: I do is if I do have bare ground, is
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: I'll go back to these areas where I know there's
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: been a big buck previous years that I've tangled with
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: and and and I'll go sit them out. And that's
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: basically my you know. And then if I don't have
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: anything to go by, I just get out on foot
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: and I move around. I do a lot of calling,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: and I look for sign and U sometimes I get luckys.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: A lot of times I find a dough and heat
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: in the area, and of course that area is going
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: to be hot for about a day and a half.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: And uh, I've had good success doing that too. I've
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: killed I've killed several good bucks doing that, finding finding
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: a dome heat in an area, and and uh it
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: could be some of the most exciting hunt you'll ever have.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: A Couple of years ago, I shot a really nice
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: background buck up in Minnesota doing that. There was a
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: dough and heat on a slashing that was about or
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: two miles back in off the road, and I walked
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: in there scouting it, ran into bumped a little box,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: and there was a lot of activity, a lot of
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: signing there, and I thought, well, I gotta hunt. This
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: is pretty hot. He came back the next day and
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: by ten o'clock I had my buck on the ground.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: And before I got out of there that day, I
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: had saw five different bucks and a few hunt where
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: I hunted Minnesota. Five different bucks can be three seasons
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: worth a hunting. I saw it one day, you know,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: And and the deer, the buck I shot the bucket shot,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: was chasing a doll and he was split browl eight pointers,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: so he was actually a ten pointer. He had double
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: split browsed, and there was another buck with him, but
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: he was a better rack. He he was a ten pointer,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: but he was a younger buck. He had long tie
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: and times, and he was a ten pointer, real dandy buck,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: but he was younger. And you could tell he wasn't
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: the dominant one because he trailed off on the side
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: while the u when I shot, was great with the doll,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: and I opted to actually take the one that didn't
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: have as nice of a rack because I knew he
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: was an older buck and I was sure hoping I'd
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: run into that another one another year, you know. Donder rolder.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: So he was he was a really good buck and
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: he didn't even run away. I shot that one buck.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: They ran off. The doll came right back through about
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: ten minutes later, and she walked right by me, and
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: he walked right by me to the ten pointer. And
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: then when I got down to check out my shot,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: a little spike buck come running up. He got I
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: always gonna poked a little by barrel. He got so
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: close to me. But that was you know, that was
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: by in season scouting and getting in there and you
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: know and hitting the ground, uh, you know, checking, just checking,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: just just staying active and looking. I heard another time
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: you talking about a situation like this where it was
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: a bear ground situation and you you I think, if
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: I remember this correctly, you went back in to an
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: area you previously walked. Maybe you're tracking a buck and
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: something you described as rut routes. So these bucks taking
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: specific rout routes that you knew of based off of
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: previous tracking, and you knew too, you know, if you
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: didn't have snow, you'd go back and check something like that.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Can you describe what you meant by that? Um? Yeah,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly the exact uh story you're talking about.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: But yes, that's that's exactly you know what I was
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: talking about earlier here. I know where these specific bucks run.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: And if I don't have a spot, um, you know,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: if I don't have snow to track, I go right
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: back onto their their runs that they've used from previous youths.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: And uh, that's you know again you're talking sucking hundreds
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: of thousands of acres and you're narrowing it down to
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: one trail, you know, And and if that buck happens
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: to move on that trail, you get a chance. Um.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: And that's that's a And you don't find those without
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: without tracking. Um, you know, you just you just don't know.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, every edge is good. Any edge could be
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: good in the woods. But there's so many edges that
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: which one do you pick? You know? But if I
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: have a, if I have a let's say I tracked
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: the buck to an area last year, and again, UM,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna add rubs are like fingerprints. When a buck
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: makes a rub on a tree, if you study that
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: rub and he makes another rub somewhere else, you can
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: tell it that's the same buck. Feel rub, the same height,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: feel pick the same sort of tree. He's got birds
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: on his antlers that rubbed that tree a certain way. Um,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: you can pretty much tell one buck from another when
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: you're looking at the rubs. So let's say I go
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: in an area and I and I was following a
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: buck through there the year before on snow, and I
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: go in there on bare ground, and next year because
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I don't have any snow to track, and I see
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: rubs opened up on that same rub line along that
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: same route. Well, I know that buck is still alive.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: I know he's still lives. Yeah, so I'll sit it.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: And then not only that, while I'm following the deer,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I'm finding places where they are bottleneck down, where they
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: do cross. And that's the spots I pick out because
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: I know, if he's coming through anywhere from here to
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: go to there, he's coming through this spot. Um. And
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: you find those again, you find those by track and deer. Um. Seck,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I went, what do I The best spot I ever
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: had in my life. I never hunted. I followed deer
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: through there all the time, bucks through there, and it
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: was a crossing like it was unbelievable. And I always
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: told myself, I gotta sit this crossing sometime because man,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: this is every time I chase the deer they come
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: through here. Well, one year I decided I'm gonna actually
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: just put some time in sitting there. I'm gonna just
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take two or three days and just sit
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: there because it's such a good spot. So I walk
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: way back in there, and it was logged out, so
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, wow, can you believe it? You know,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: so I kind of abandoned it. But the one thing
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: it doesn't change is the land doesn't change. The tree.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: You can cut the trees away, but the land doesn't change.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: So oh, let's I don't know. Fast forward three or
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: four years now. Um, this last season, I said, hey,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a walk back in there, and I'm
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: gonna see what's going on. I haven't been back there
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: for years. So I drew up I could get within
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: about a half a mile of there, and then parked
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: my truck and I walked the rest of the way
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: and went on too that slashing where they had cut
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: that out. Come up on top of this big hill
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: and I'm looking down in the valley where they always
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: came through there every time, and nice stood there and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: watched for a while grunted if I got call a
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: few times see if anything with shoul Um. And I
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: walked down in the valley and guess what I found
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: one lone really good buck track coming through there. You know, now,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: you know that's that's that those things don't change. I mean,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: these deer use these some of these. If you find
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: a spot like that, those are gold because if your
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: buck dies, the next buck will come through there too.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: It's just the way the land funnels. And and you
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: can't sit and look at maps and find those on maps.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: I've tried. It just doesn't work that way. You find
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: them by following deer, and then then you have something
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: when you find one of those. If you want to
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: sit all day long, the boy, a spot like that
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: is gold. You know. You you take your ground blind
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: in there popping up on top of in that case,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: they're on top of that hill. You can sit down
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: in that value beautiful. Put a put a pop up
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: ground blind in there, sit in there all day long,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: every day, and eat your granola bars or whatever, and
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: just keep watching that crossing. And you know at some
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: time in that week or two weeks that you're sitting there. Uh,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: chances are a decent bus might come through. Yeah, if
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: that's a kind of honey you want to do, I
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: mean that and that you can't get better odds in
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: that north country. Yeah. Can you describe that area? Like
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: why was it so? Why did so many deer come
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: through there? I'd love to hear, like the what the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: terrain was that funneled that movement? Um, it was a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: combination of several things. Um. One was uh there was
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: two lakes that neck down the land, and then the
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: uh potography there was really rolling hills and valleys there,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: and just the way it laid out, it just brought
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: them right through. And again you know, I mean I
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: could I can look at maps and find fifty spots
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: like that, you know, But for some reason that I'm
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: not seeing when I'm looking at it myself, every deer
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: came through there. I remember I took one. I took
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: one two miles away from there. I started once on
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: a track and he started heading in that direction, and
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: I got a half mile in and he was still
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: going that way. And then I got a mile in
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: and he's still going that way. And I got about
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: a mile and a half into it, and I'm thinking
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: I wonder if he's gonna go through that funnel, you know,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: through that little that little valley there, and sure it
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: is Hackey. There's two miles away when I started up
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: because where he took me right through that spot, you know,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: I mean it's and and that was every year that
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: came through there, every deer. Uh, they always ended up
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: funneling through that. And it's still good today. Uh if
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: a person wanted to go and sit hunt, Um, I
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: don't know a better spot to take. Try to take
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: a deer. You know, it's it's it's tailor made, and
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful because nobody knows about it. Nobody knows their
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: way in there. That they closed the logging roads off,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't know what came in the back way to
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: find that spot. I had a heck of a time
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: finding it, and I knew it was there. I had
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: to keep looking at my my aerial photos to locate
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: my way back in there from the back side because
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: the roads were it was all it was a mess,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: and the roads are blocked off, and you know all
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: loggy roads were plowed in so you can't get through them.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: And and uh, if I would try to just use
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: my senses to get back in there. I never would
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: have found it. So it's a spot that's gonna sit there,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: and it's gonna just it's gonna sit there for years,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: and I'll bet you won't see a hunter back in there. Nobody.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna go in there. You're hard to find that
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: kind of spot without, like you said, actually following a
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: buck that did it and seeing them do it time
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: and time again. Um. And that that that kind of
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: brings me back to something you talked about right at
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: the top, which was just how much you can learn
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: from tracking deer um. And I want to drill more
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: into that. I didn't it to initially. But where What
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: are some the other things you've seen? After watching so
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: many bucks do what they do, have you identified any
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: trends or patterns that you can now say, well, I've
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: seen so many, Dear do X, it's kind of safe
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: to say that most bucks like to travel with the
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: wind this way, or most bucks like to travel I
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: don't know. Is there anything like that that stands out
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: to you, like big AHAs that you can now point
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: to after all these years at tracking them. Yeah, the
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: wind is a very I'm glad you brought that up,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: because that's a really, really good point. I Um, when
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: I was younger, I used to read every magazine I
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: could to try to figure out dear and try to understand,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: you know, I just would soak up everything I could.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: In one year, they come out with an article bucks
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: travel with the wind during the ruck. And in the
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: next year go and behold, another article would come out,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: bucks travel against the wind during the ruck. And then
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: the next year it would come out with bucks travel
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: quartering into the wind. And they always had a theory
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: as to why they were doing it and what was
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: going on, and and here's what happens. And I don't
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: want to pick on people or whatever, but these guys
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: are making determinations based upon a very small yards snapshot
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: of that bucks eight mile walk that night. Okay, they're
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: sitting in a tree stand and this buck comes walking
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: by them, they test the wind, and they make a determination.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, if the next buck they see follows the
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: same pattern, now they've already just they've already convinced themselves
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: that that always do the bucks always do that buck
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: always walks into the wind. If he saw two bucks
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: in the role walking into the wind. But he only
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: saw one yards of that DearS six mile trail. Now,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: when you're following, you're tracking them, do you get to
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: see the whole six mile trail? And the determination I've
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: made by checking the you know, knowing what the wind
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: was they for and watching the way they walk and
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: how they do it and what they go. Bucks go
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: wherever they damn well want to go, and they don't
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: care about the wind one bit. If the buck is
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: here and he wants to go over there, he goes.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: He goes over there. And and if he's here and
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: he wants to go over there and he's been there before,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: which he has been, he'll go the same way he
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: went to time before and the time before, and the
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: time before and the time before. And it doesn't matter
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: which way the wind is going. Now, I'm not going
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: to tell you that deer don't use the wind, because bucks,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: big bucks are using the wind all the time. A
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: big buck may circle downwind of of an area to
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: send check for doults. If he knows there's a dough
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: betting area there, he may set check if there's if
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: he has assumes that there's some kind of danger, or
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: be scared a lot of times they'll circle to get
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: down winto that. They'll use that their nose to to
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: win things. So they're using their nose, and they will
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: use their nose on occasion more so than others. But
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: it doesn't they don't use the wind as determining factor
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: as to where they're going to go. And it's simple
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: that this logic has been used many years already. If
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: that's the case, all of our deer would end up
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: in California because we have a we have a westerly wind, right, Okay,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: for the most part, we have westerly wind. So if
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: if the deer had to travel into the wind all
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: the time, eventually they'd all make their way to California,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: you know, because they'd have to keep going into windy
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a very good point. And
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: like you said, everybody likes to kind of postulate about
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: what they think bucks are doing based off of a
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: little snapshot as you described, and that's uh, that is
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: the downfall of watching a deer just for a short
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: period time versus walking for so long. What about um,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: what about betting areas? This is another specific scenario where
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of folks like to theorize Um, you know,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: I know you're active on the hunting beasts. A thing
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: that Dan likes to talk about a lot is how
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: lots of times heeps a buck's well jay hook into
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: a betting year. It go down wind of the spot
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: where they want to bed and then work their way
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: into that location. Have you ever noticed anything like that? Yeah,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: a buck well more than likely do a jayhook before
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: he uh, before he lays down. Um. I got my
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: own theory on that. I know. Dan postulates that that
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: they circled down the wind of the betting area so
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: that they can send check the betting area before they
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: go in there to lay down. Um. And that may
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: be true, especially in what the type of hunting he does. Um,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: he's hunting oftentimes early season, and it's a bed to
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: feed pattern that this book is on, and he's more
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: than likely going back to the same bed that he
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: used for the last months every day. Okay, I'm hunting
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: here in the North Country and I'm hunting deer during
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: the rut. Um they jay hook. But I think the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: reason that jay hook is different, and and my thought
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: process says is I think that jay hook so that
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: if a predator is following their set trail. It leads
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: the predator past them, and they can see the predator
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: and get up and leave before the predator makes the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: tire jay hook and they're gone. That gives them, That
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: gives them an opportunity two see if something's following their track,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: and then they can just get up and take off.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: And believe me, I've been that predator and I've been
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: made a fool out of a lot of times. So um, yes,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: they do like the jayhook. It's like a dog. I
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: don't know if you have a dog or not, but
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: almost every dog before they lay down, they got to
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: make a circle. I don't know why that is. They
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: have to circle around. Why does a dog circle around
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: every time he's gonna lay down. I have no idea,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: you know, but they do. But it's a tendency that
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: bucks do have, you know, deer do have that. They
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: like to do that that jay hook and then they
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: like to lay down, which if you're tracking, is a
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: very good important lesson to remember because they're jim hook
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: could be pretty big, uh, you know, fifty yards or
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: sol um. So when you're tracking a deer, if you're
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: not watching left and right all the time, you're gonna
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: miss them. Um, they're not going to be in front
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: of you. They're gonna be off to the left or right.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: So if you're not watching that when they do their
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: jay hook, they'll they'll get away. They'll they'll jump up
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: and run away and you won't even know they go,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: they're gone, and then you'll come across the bed. Right. Yeah,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: that's a good, a good thing to be aware for sure.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: Are there are there any other things like this, whether
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: it be a commonly held belief like the deer walk
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: with the one in their faces that you've kind of
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: debunked based off of what you've seen, or anything else
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: like that that that stands out to other than these
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: two examples we just talked through. Yeah, here's a good one.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: If people are gonna laugh at this. Big Bucks aren't
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: very smart And I thought you friends up to it.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: So you know, it's always that there's that hesitation. It's
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: like they're not you know, they're not very smart. They've
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: learned how to they learn how to survive, but they're
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: not very smart, aren't And and being human, we we
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: try to give them a lot more credit. We try
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: to give them the ability to think and reason and logic,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: and they don't. They just react. They'd react to stimulus
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: and that's it. They're just they're just animals that react
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: and and they're they're good at surviving, but they're not smart.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: They don't think. If they if a buck could think
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: and reason like we would, we'd never kill them. I
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: mean they would if they were as smart as we were.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Unless they're stupid as unless they're foolish, they would never die.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: You never, you you'd never catch them, you know, uh,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: they would, But they just have tendencies survival tendencies that
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: that keep them alive. Um, but don't give them too
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: much credit. You know, they're they're not all that smart.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: They're not. They don't think in reason and logic. Yeah.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: The unfortunate thing about that is that we do think
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: and use logic, and we still screw up more times
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, here's my classical example was people like
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: to give dear human traits like drive by somebody's house
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: and you'll see it a lawn, ornaments a deer, and
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: it's always a family group. It's a bucket, door, want
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: a fawn? Right? When do we ever? Have you ever
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: seen a bucket, a door, and fawn together in the woods,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: never not happening, never happened. No, that's not their way.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: But we want to make a human. That's hence, uh,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: the whole Bandi scenario and all that stuff. Yeah, what
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: other tricks like this have you kind of are not tricks?
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: But UM, I'm wondering as a as a big woods
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: hunter sometimes from a tree stand. UM, I've always noticed
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: it's hard to identify anyway to to pattern deer movement
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: in a scenario where they're just isn't a whole lot
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: of terrain change? I mean you mentioned one of the
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: things that being just edges. Um. Is there anything else
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: you've found that that directs deer travel that you're seeing?
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: You know a lot of these buck tracks falling along
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: or is there any kind of edge is better than another? Um,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: any kind of that kind of thing, or I don't know,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: like a little high points in the big in a
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: big woods area or um. Any other features that are
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: worth thinking about whether we're gonna track one or sit
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: over one that might be worth looking for. Well, rubs
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: are a good indication that there's a good buck using that. Um.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: If you have perennial rubs and you can kind of
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: tell that it's the same deer, especially if there's fresh
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: ones from this year, you know that buck is using
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: that edge. Um. And there people find it hard to believe,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: but bucks picked their roads and they stick to their roots.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: And then if that buck dies or if there's other
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: bucks in that area, each buck has his own set
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: of routes that he made. Now sometimes they use the
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: same edges, you know, because it's just a natural funnel
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: in the area. Like I was telling you about that
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: one spot where all the bucks seem to come through there. Um.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: But they have their own paths and when once they
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: once they're taken out, once they die or whatever, the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: other buck doesn't take over his paths. He has his
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: own paths as well. Um. So you have to use
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: like rubs as an indication. That's a very good indication,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: um that he's using that edge and and and to
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: be that would be a good edge to hunt because
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: you know bucks are you know, or a buck is
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: making rubs along that edge. Um. That's probably the number
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: one indication looking for tracks, uh, look for big tracks,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: which when you can where you can if you find
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: if you're following along an edge and you you find
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: a spot where it soft and you see something that
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: really nice buck tracks coming through there. Um, you know
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: that buck is using that edge. It's a good place
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: to hunt. Um. There's a million edges out there. So
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: if you can't find some indication that tells you that
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: a good buck is using it, um, it's just not
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: a good And here's another user, huge mistake. I see
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of people make. They sit at home now
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: with with all this technology we have, and they pour
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: over late night, uh, over these maps and they look
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: at these aerial photos and up to northern Wisconsin, and
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: they find us two lakes. Like I was telling you about,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: like that situation, I added a bottle that coming through there,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's like, oh my god, look at this.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: There's five acres above it and there's fifteen acres below it.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: And if the deer wants to come through, they have
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: to come through there. They have to, Okay, And then
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: they go in there and they hunt. Well, guess what,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: First of all, somebody else has already found that, and
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: it's probably been hunted perennially for fifty years. Okay. Um.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: Usually the mature bucks know about that already. They know
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: where they're being hunted, especially like Wisconsin. When there's they'll
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: throw a bait down in there. Tool those those bucks
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: avoid those spots like the plague. Um. And every year
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: something he falls for that same trap, and they hunt
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: that same spot again and again and again and again.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: You know. So, just because it's a good funnel doesn't
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: mean it's worth hunting. What makes it worth hunting is
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: if you know a big buck is coming through there.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: I'd rather take a crappy looking funnel on a map
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: that shows good rub line and tracks, then a funnel
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: that looks like it's funneling down thousands of acres into
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: one little spot. Um. Again, you gotta there's gotta be
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: a buck using. Again in order for you to shoot
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: a big buck there. You can't shoot one there if
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: he ain't using. It comes down to that. On the
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: ground scouting, Yes, you ought to get in there. And
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: and here's another thing that, Um, don't be afraid to
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: get out there during season. And uh, don't worry about
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: scenting it all up, don't worry about leaving your scent,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: don't worry about it. Get out there, scout, get on,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: get out there, find out what's going on. Look for
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: you know, hot sign, look for maybe a doll and
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: heat uh. Uh, you know an area of being worked
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: up really hard. Uh, and get in there and hunted,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: look for watch for dough areas. You know, shoo, seriously,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: do sign where you kick those up, where they're browsing,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: where there's beer poop. Um. You know most of these seasons,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: like the rifle seasons and so forth, are there during
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: the run. Um, there's no better place. Uh. If there's
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: doose there, I'll guarantee you the bucks will be there
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: at some point. You know. Then you've got edges coming away.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: Then that's where you get your maps out. You know,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: when you're out there, look for rub lines that follow
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: the line the edges coming in and out. Where there's
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: a dough area. Um, didn't look at your maps and
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: see where maybe a good spot and that's a good place,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: a good place to set up, you know, get in
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: there and don't worry about leaving your sand. I I
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: track box, I go out and I walked through the woods.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: The next day, I come back and there's a buck
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: walking in my track. If a buck walks in my
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: boot track that night, do you think he's afraid of
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: my scent? Do you think I scared? Him out of
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: that area. He's walking in my track for having's sakes.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: It's interesting, you know, he's not afraid of my scent
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: that I left behind there the day before. You know,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: I don't. It's not I had a I had a
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: good friend that kept walking back in and by a
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: really good sign every day to hunt a different deer.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: He kept walking by there, and one day he just
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: woke up and he said, you know, I gotta hunt this.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: There's there's a big buck here. And he had walked
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: through there how many times hunting that souther buck way
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: back in, further back in, And the first night he
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: sat there on that ridge coming up out of the swamp,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: he shot that bucket. It was a dandy. He was
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: a bootee, and he had left his cent there every
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: day that when he went through there to go hunting,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: you know. And so two lessons, don't worry about leaving
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: sent in the woods, uh, and then um hunt sign,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: you know, get out there and scout. Yeah. So so
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: speaking of walking around the woods, whether you're scouting or well,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: there's imagine there's one way you're you're hunting in there
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: when you're when you're scouting into hunt. But then there's
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: another way you're walking when you're walking in there tracking
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: a buck. We kind of skipped over the final phase
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: of a tracking hunt. We talked about how you find
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: a track. We talked about identifying the right track. We
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: never did get to the point where you're actually walking
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: down that track, how you're actually doing that? Um, And
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: I figured we better, we better touch on that before
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: we wrap this thing up. UM. Something I'm curious about
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: that I that I haven't talked to other guys about
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: when it comes to tracking, is how you think about
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: wind direction when you're tracking a deer. So what if
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: you're driving down a forrest road, you cut a big track,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: it's a giant track. You're no doubt boy, this is
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: a big buck and it looks fresh. But you step
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: out of the truck, you walk ten yards out there
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: and you see it. The wind is blowing on your neck,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: straight down the trail towards where that buck is. Do
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: you just say, I'm not gonna I can't do it
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: because my winds going me blowing right where he's probably
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: at and it's no good. Or do you say screw
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: it and you track that buck anyways? Well I'm gonna
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: track him because he could be four miles away, so
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: and he could be and he could have turned, you know,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: fifty times during that and he may be going he
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: might be coming back at me, you know. I mean,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know where he is. He
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: could you know, he could make a one mile loop
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: and be coming right back in the same direction that
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: he came that he went in. So I don't pay
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: no attention. There's only one time I pay attention to
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: the wind when I'm tracking a deer, um is, and
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: that's after I bump him. If I bump him, I
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: let him go. I give about an hour a calm
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: down or whatever, and then and then I take up
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: the track again. Um, when I get to the point
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: where I'm catching up to him again, where he's down
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: to a walk and he's going really slow, he isn't
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: going to go that far totally, probably won't go over
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: half a mile from where I bump him before he'll
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: lay down again. So by the time I get to
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: the point where he's walking now, he probably isn't more
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: than a couple hundred yards away from me. Um. And
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: then I I slow way now. But and I mean,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm talking so slow that if you sat and
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: watched me, you would have a hard time knowing I'm
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: moving and uh, but I won't do that. If my
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: scent is blowing right to that deer, I figure he's
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: within two hunter the yards and me. Yet if the
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: if the wind is blowing right at him, I'm sure
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: by now he's already caught my wind. He probably has
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: already blown out of his bed. If the wind is
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: going to him, There's no way I'm going to spend
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: the next three hours trying to creep yards knowing that
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: my scent is blowing right to him. If if I
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: got the wind not in my favor, I will move
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: a lot faster because I feel like the gigs already up.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: There's no sense of, you know, going through that painstaking
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: death creep to try to get close to him when
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: he's probably already blown out of there because he's probably
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: already caught. Me. That the only time I ever paid
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: any attention to wind at all whatsoever. Otherwise I never
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: pay attention to what the way the wind is going.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, you know. And I don't even care
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: about how much noise I make, because again it bothers me.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: It always bothers me when I crack a branch or
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: something that when I'm walking through the woods. But he's
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: probably three miles away, you know, he isn't good to
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: hear me. Um. Yeah, here's another thing too. I do
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: this with the guys in the tracking school. I have him,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: I have him stand, and then I take off walking
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: and I tell them to yell at me when they
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: can't hear me anymore. And you'd be surprised. You can't
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: hear very far in the woods. You can't hear very
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: far at all, So you don't have to worry about
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: making much noise, you know. I mean again, if you're
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: in that death creep part of the tracking, after you
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: bump them and you're you're you know, he's gonna probably
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: bet it down a couple of yards ahead of you,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: and you're going very slow, yes, and you really want
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: to make sure you don't make any noise. I test
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: the ground with every step, I feel for anything that
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: could snap or whatever, and I push it out of
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: the way with my toll and try to get a
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: firm foot on the ground. Um. Other than that, when
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: I'm going through the woods, I don't really care how
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: much noise I make it doesn't matter that deer is
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: not probably anywhere close to me. And and uh, you
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: know here's another thing too. A lot of guys want
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: to go really slow and really watch for the deer
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: when they're tracking. I go as fast as I can.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: I go as fast as I can. And because again,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: that deer is probably four miles away from me, six
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: miles away from me. If I go slow, I'm not
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: we're going to catch them. I'll run out of daylight
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: before I catch them. So I gotta put the miles
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: on in order to catch them. So I just go fast.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: I just go as fast as I can. I try
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: to try to watch it. You know, I always try
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: to stay really active. Um. I try not to look
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: at the ground anymore, and I possibly have to when
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: I try to move as fast as I can and
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: I keep looking for that deer. A matter of fact,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: sometimes it works in your advantage to go really fast,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: because a lot of times you come up on them
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: so fast that if they're distract did you close that
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: last yards really fast? And and they might have been
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: pawing the ground and eating or something, or or maybe
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: they kind of dozed off a little bit or or whatever.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: The case may be, you make up that ground a
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: lot quicker when you're moving faster, and if there happened
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: to be in a slight disadvantage at that very moment,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: you make that ground up really fast and bam, you're
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: on top of them before they know it. Then you
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: do get to jump on him, and you get a chance,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: you know. I I came up on one that was
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: just so happened. I got really lucky doing The fawn
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: head went through right in front of me, and they
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: walked by him. He got up out of his bed.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: He standing there mewing at him. Yeah, it was. It
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: was hilarious. I came up right behind it. I'm standing
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: there watching this buck mewing at this door and this fawn,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't even know I'm there because he's so
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: distracted with this dough on the fawn. And it was
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: but and it was. It was the young bucket. I
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: knew the track wasn't real good when I took it.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: It was one of those day is where I just
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: wanted to stretch my legs and have a little fun.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: And I grabbed the track, caught up to him. It
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: didn't take me that long and and he's I videotaped
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: him that I leaned my gun up against my leg
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: and grabbed my video camera. A videotaped, and he actually
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: walked up to me, and once he realized that there
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: was something there, he stopped and he starts doing a
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: head bob at me, and he starts pawing the ground
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: and I'm just adding there looking at him, you know,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: and I wouldn't move. Here was a guy in blaze
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: orangeading right there, and he opened, you know, and then
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: he walked by me and he kept going and then
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: I pulled the cabra out of my pocket. A videotaped
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: as he walked away. I laughed, But they're going fast.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: Got me close to him, you know, and he was
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: distracted at that very moment. He just got lucky, you know.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: And and uh, I opted not to shoot him because
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: he was a young buck. But it was it was
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: a fun track and it was you know, and I
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: had that happened before. I jumped on a track and
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: I practically ran because he was an open hardwoods and
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: I thought there's noise in a bed down and he's
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: open hardwood. I was wrong. I'm jog it along, went
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: down to a valley, came up the other side, and
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: I froze right in my tracks. He's sitting there on
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: the ground fifty yards away from me, underneath the cedar tree.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: It's like, really, you know? And again it was. It
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: was a buck that didn't really have a real big rack,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: and I opted not to shoot him, and I took
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: a bunch of pictures of him, and then I whistled
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: at him, and he boy, what he realized I was there?
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: He got. Now, what about a situation where, um, other
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: than actually seeing the buck and bumping in, um, other
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: than that scenario, you're going really fast, you're trying to
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: cover ground. When do you know to start slowing down?
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: Is there some kind of something you're seeing with the
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: tracks that's indicative, or something with the habitat that says, okay,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: now it's time to put on the brakes. We're getting close.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: The only time I would really ever do that is
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: if they started feeding really hard. Um, if they start meandering,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: I get a little bit edgy, and I start watching
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: a lot closer and MA low down somewhat. But I've
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: learned from experience they can start meandering for different reasons,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: and and you waste a lot of time. More times
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: than not. You're wrong. They're thinking that they're gonna lay
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: down and you're just wasting time. Um. If they feed
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: really hard, if they really start pawing the ground and
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: they really start tearing up an area, really feeding, they're
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: going to lay down. Um if they stop at nibble
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: old man's beard or some mushrooms off the side of
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: a tree, or they dig up some filler ferns. Um,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: take a little couple of bites. Um, that doesn't mean
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: they're they're gonna lay down that that more times than
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: not they won't even Uh So I just don't. I
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: just keep moving. I've learned. I've went home so many
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: days never catching them that I've just taught myself to
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: go fast and not worry about it. Um. Here here's
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: what they're saying. I have. I've shot zero percent of
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: the deer that I didn't catch up to it. Yeah,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: and that's that's an interesting, interesting statistic. Yeah, you know,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: I've never killed one that I didn't catch up to
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: So I got to catch up to him. And and
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: if my if my percentages go down because I'm moving fast,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: which I don't really think they do. Um, even if
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: they did, I still can't shoot them unless I catch them.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: You know when you learned this lesson in the north, uh,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: after chasing hundreds and hundreds of of me and and
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: just coming home, you know, dragging your tail, but to
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: bind you because you didn't catch up with him. You know,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: you learn to go fast, you learn to just to go.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: You got to catch him already, kill him. That makes sense.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Do you do anything
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: speak uh? Speaking of that, there's one time a year
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: that I like tracking the best more than any other,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: and that's late. The later the better, The later the
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: better because the later you it, the more they start
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: dropping away from the rout and more towards feeding, and
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: they don't travel as much. Now it's a little bit
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: harder to find a track because the less tracks are
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: making the harder it is the finer track. But if
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: your key on areas that you know, whe there's a
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: good bucking and you're watching for him and you catch
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: them there, you're going to catch him because he's probably
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: not going to go real far, you know, maybe a
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: couple of miles um uh, sometimes half a mile. You'll
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: catch them because they're just they're just not moving as
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: much anymore. They they slow down a lot that time
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: of year, so that from that standpoint, they're tired, they're exhausted.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: All they want to do is feed their belly and
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: lay down. UM, And so it's a lot easier. Your
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: percentages go way up the later it gets the Unfortunately,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: the later it gets usually the deeper snow gets, which
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: makes it a lot tougher to track and so forth. Um.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: There's always advantages the deer get no matter what situation
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: you're in, But that's the time of year that's probably
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: the most fun for me. UM. I think my success
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: rate goes up a little bit more that time of
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: year because of that. When you're when you're out there
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: tracking a situation like that, it's late, there's a lot
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: of snow on the ground, you've been following track for
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: long ways. Then you see that situation you just detailed
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: a second ago, where lots of meandering and now like
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: heavy feeding. Everything tells you, okay, this buck is getting
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: ready to bet it's it's it's close. Um, you're within
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: the zone. Now you're just creeping along. At this point,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: do you do this? Do you stop and stand still
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: for five minutes with your binoculars and scan everything? Do
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: you have your gun up and ready. What what what
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: happens when you realize that you're in the zone? Does
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: anything change or do you keep just slowly moving until
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: it bumps? Well, first of all, I have the gun
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: ready all the time. I don't sling it. Um. I
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: took the sling off years ago when I was practiced shooting.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: I learned that when I have my sling on my gun,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: when I throw my gun up with the sling on it,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: my sling swings back and forth like a pendulum. And
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: I watched my bead move back and forth with the
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: swinging of the sling, and it it It's amazing how
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: much that sling swinging will throw your gun. And if
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: you've got a deer that's a hundred yards out there
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: that will push that bead enough to miss them. It's
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: hard enough to shoot them when they're running then, let
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: alone trying to compensate for a sling that's swinging back
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: and forth. So I keep the gun at hand all
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: the time. UM, So I am always ready with the gun. Um. Again,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: it's hard for me to slow down too much. I'll
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: tell you where I like to slow it down. Here's
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: where I like to slow down when I get an advantage.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: Let's say I'm going down to a valley and I
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: come up on and I crested the ridge. I'll usually
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: go up the backside of that ridge really fast. I
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: usually pick up the pace fit the top of the ridge,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: moving fast, and then freeze and stand still, and then
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: I that's where I'll stand for a minute or so,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: and I'll just really survey the area, because now I've
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: got the heights advantage, and I can see quite a bit,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: so I'll just stand there and watch for a while.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: Not for a long time, but for a while. A
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: matter of fact, the one I was telling you about
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: this this last year that I caught up to that
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: was shed That's why I caught him. I came up
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: to a valley, came up the top really fast, got
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: to the top of the ridge, and I froze and
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: I stood there and I started surveying the area, and
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: sure enough he was out there feeding. Didn't have any
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: antlers on him, so I thought, well, it must not be,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: my dear. But I followed the track right to him
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: was so and they were little drops of blood as
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: he went along. To A videotaped that, so I think
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: that he had just shed. I actually tracked backtracked him
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: all the way to where I started again, tried to
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: see if I could find where if he you know,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: dropped his antlers somewhere. But then by the time I
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: got where I started, it was already getting dark, so
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't go and try to backtrack him any further.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: And the next day I wanted to see if I
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: coul shoot a deer, so I didn't go back looking again.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: But um, but yeah, that was you know, on that
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: particular deer. I came up to the valley fast and
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: then I hit the top and I stood there watched him.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: Sure enough, you know, I caught his mood him, but
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: that he was feeding. So other than that, I try
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: to keep moving again. Here's here, Okay, think of this scenario.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: So you're you're you're following a deer and he starts
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: meandering and he starts feeding hard. Okay, so now you're
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: convinced he's gonna lay down. Okay, let's say you're right.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: Let's say he does lay down. But let's say that
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: was eight hours ago, and he laid there for two
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: hours and got up and took off again. Now you
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: just spent an hour covering that last hundred and fifty
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: yards to the bed only to find an empty bed.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: What did you gain? And I've done this so you know,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is what happened. So I try not
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: to again, you know, I try not to error on
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: the side of wasting time when I don't know. I
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: like to move. I like to you know, I'll be more,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: I'll be tuned in a little bit more. I believe me.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: My radar is going full bore. When you know, I
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: start seeing these signals that he could be going down,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: I you know, I get a little bit more intense. Um.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: But again, I unless I absolutely have you know, I mean,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: the only way you really know if he's there is
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: if you see him. So, um, I don't like to
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: waste a lot of time. I've just wasted too minch
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: time on tracks and not caught too many deer and
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: and and so I just kind of you know when
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: I said the lesson, I have to keep learning all
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: the time because I want to slow down. I really
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: want to start picking the woods apart. But you know,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: you just don't catch them and you don't get them. Yeah,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: here's another thing too, I want to touch on. When
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: you come up on a bed. You're tracking this buck
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: and you come up on a bad I'm gonna tell
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: you a story. I tracked the buck is in Centter,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin here and it was a muzzleoader season, and I
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: came up on his bed. It was a nice bed,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: nice buck. So I got my camera out and I
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: was taking pictures of the bed, and I laid my
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: muzzleloader in the bed and I took pictures of that
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: to give an idea how big the bed was and
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: stuff and all little fun with it. Whatever it got, okay,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put away, grabbed my muzzleloader again, and I
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: started taken off on the track again, and I walked
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: about another twenty yards and I blew him up and
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: I he jumped up and he ran away, and I
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: didn't even fired a shot. I just couldn't get the
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: bead settled out of him. The nice dandy, dandy, nice
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: eight pointer, you know, and and and uh, I just
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: couldn't get the beat on him. It was muzzleoader, and
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: you get one chance, you know. So I just waited
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: too long, and I just never got the bead set alowed,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: never took the shot. But the lesson to be learned
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: in this is when you come across the bed and
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: it's empty and he didn't run out of it, so
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: you know you didn't push him out of that bed.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: Be on super super red alert because I've seen it
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: many times since that day, where they'll get up, they'll
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: move forty yards, twenty yards, thirty yards, they'll poop, pe uh,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: maybe nibble a little bit more, stretch a little bit,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: and they'll lay back down. And then they'll get up
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: and do the same thing another hour later and they'll
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: lay back down. And so oftentimes when you come up
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: to an empty bed, that doesn't mean he isn't very
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: close yet a matter of fact, is a good chance
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: he's closed. So when you come up on anti bed,
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: be on full alert because he could be in another
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: bed just thirty yards away. And I've had that happened
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: many times to the point now where I just get
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: excited when I see an empty Betty, if I can
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: tell that he's not running out of that bed and
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: I haven't scared him, I get excited because I'm thinking
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: he's right there, because more times than not, he is.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: It's a very interesting observation, and you had's something you
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: think about, you know, just when you consider, dear, a
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: buck betting behavior in general is that, Yeah, the lots
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: of times they'll have a little spot and then, like
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: you said, get up, stretch, urinate, bed, back down, maybe
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: just reposition. And uh, it's interesting. You might, you know,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: pan out in the way you describe where you might
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: be right there, just yards away, and you might not
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: even know it if you're not paying attention. The biggest
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: buck I didn't I didn't get him. I never got that, dear,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: But the biggest buck I ever tracted northern was God's.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: And that thing was like a horse. Oh my goodness, um,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: the first time my color of that deer. There was
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: a bed and he got up and he moved over, oh,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know, about another ten yards and laid down again.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: Then he got up and he walked right back to
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: the first bed, past the first bed, and he circled
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: around and he went back into some thicker brush and
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: he laid down about another thirty yards over, and I
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: came in, walked to the first bed, walk to the
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: second bed, backtracked into the first bed, blocked past the
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: first bed, and started circling around towards that really thick
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: brush where he was and he blew up out of there,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: and he blew out. It was so thick I couldn't
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: see him, but he was right there, and he I
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: scared him so bad. He actually tripped and plowed the ground.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: He just he hit the snow and just slid along.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: And he got up and he ran out of there.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: And boy, he made he made a lot of noise
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: when he went took off out of there because he
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: fell down. But he was a brute. He was just
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: he was a brute. And and but he had three
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: different beds, right. That was just a you know, that
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: classical example of that. He had gotten up, you know,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: two other times and moved around and reposition. Could be
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: the wind, it could be just he just wanted something different. Um,
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: who knows why they do what they do, but he had,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I see that all the time, where they
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: get to an area where they want to hang out,
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: they'll just reposition a bunch of times to get up
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: to stretch a little bit, you know, move around, and
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: then and then rebd ont again. I never did get
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: that year. I was after him for a few years
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: and he dropped off the radar. So I'm sure he's
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: dead by now. Wow, that's cool to We'll see that though,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: and actually have you know proof that that actually happens
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: by getting to see the beds and bump them out
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: of there. That's another great benefit of what you're doing.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: Just getting to see that kind of signed firsthand. Is
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: uh really useful? Um? Well, we have to wrap this
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: up because I've been keeping you here for a pretty
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: long time. UM, but I want to ask you as
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: two more questions before we do before we do wrap
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: it up, And the first of those, I'm just kind
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: of curious. Is is there anything that you do that
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: most other trackers, most other deer trackers would think you're
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: crazy for doing? Is there anything out there that everybody
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: else that does your style of hunting would be like Todd,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: that's nuts, but you still do it. Is there anything
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: that comes to mind when I when I lay that
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: scenario out. I don't know if technique or or anything
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: that I actually do, um, not not really um, but
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: I will say something that that kind of gets into
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: a strange realm and a lot of people you kind
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: of kind of like the turning walk away. Um. The
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: it's the mental aspect of it. Ah. I think there's
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: something much greater than we're capable of understanding that comes
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: along with the mental aspect of it. I believe I
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: want to kill every deer I chase. I believe I'm
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: going to get everyone. I believe I'm going to be
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: successful all the time. And I think something changes when
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: you have that mental aspect, and not just that it
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: pushes you to try harder or anything like that. I
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: think there's something even beyond that that that things happen.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: I've had weird, strange luck that just it is hard
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: to explain, and and it always seems like when my
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: mental attitude is there, things go my way. Yeah, how
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: do how do you put yourself in a position to
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: have that positive attitude? How do you keep that mental
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: state strong without losing hope or getting discouraged? You're getting frustrated.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: That's a good question. And if I could figure that
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: one out, I'd write a book and be a millionaire.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: It's a mindset, it's I think it's it's a practice skill,
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: it's a learned skill. Um. You see some people run
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: around and um, you know they talk about the glass
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: half bold, glass half empty. You know, mentalities and stuff.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: And I think the people that have the positive attitudes
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: and so forth. Um, it's a practice to learn skill.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: If you don't have it, and you practice it long enough,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: you will become it. So if you you tend to
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: be negative or you tend to not have confidence, then
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: fake it till you make it. Yeah, just keep telling yourself.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: Keep telling yourself, you know, keep telling you, I'm gonna
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: get this steer, I'm gonna catch this steer, I'm gonna
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: be successful, I'm gonna shoot this steer. You know, I
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: did that muzzleloading. When I first started muzzleloading, I have
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: to pull the hammer back on my muzzleloader. And I'm
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: used to running a thirty six pump. I don't have
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: to pull a hammer back or anything that's totally rooted
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: foreign to me. You know, I don't. I'm not used
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: to that. And so I was really concerned when I
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: took that muzzleloader in the woods that I was going
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: to freeze up at the moment of truth and try
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: to pull the trigger without pulling that hammerback. So what
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: I did was I told myself probably a thousand times
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: every when I first started, you carrying that gun, pulled
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: the hammer, pulled the hammer pull. I kept telling myself
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: that is I'm walking along, you know, just mentally in
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: my head, pull the hammer, pull the hammer, pull the hammer.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: I kept doing that, kept doing it, rop doing that
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: when I shot my buck, I first buck with that muzzleloader.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: I don't remember pulling the hammer which did it, but
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: I did because it won't fire unless I do so.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: If I could do that with the hammer, you could
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: do that with your mental attitude too. I'm gonna get
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: this buck. I'm gonna get this buck. I'm gonna get
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: this deer. I'm gonna get this deer. And I'll tell
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: you if you're out in the woods and you and
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: you stop walking and you check your your GPS and
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: you find out your three miles from the truck, and
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: you're getting tired, and all of a sudden you start
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: thinking about it all My back hurts three miles away. Oh,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many you know. It's you quit.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: You quit. You'll give buck if you if you start,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: if you if you let that voice inside your head
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: start to mess with you, so you just and you
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: can train yourself out of that. You can tell yourself,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna get this buck. I'm
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: gonna keep I'm gonna get this buck you know, and
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: and and like I said, it not only helps you
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: from that standpoint, I believe there's something else beside that.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: I think think the universe bends to you to some
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: to some extent, just by things that I've experienced in
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: my own life. It's it's amazing, you know, uh, when
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: your attitude is right, how incredibly lucky you become. I
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: think there's something to it too. I'm a d percent
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: right there with you. There's something. I don't think there's
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: anything more important in the hunting pursuit, more important than
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: your mental state than being positive, being mentally tough, mentally focused.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: Um and and you you described a lot of the
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: things that I try to do that self talk is
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: so important. Like sometimes no matter how how much of
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: a positive person you might be, or how confident a
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: person might be, at least in my case, I find
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: myself I think I'm pretty darned positive and pretty confident
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: in a lot of things that I'm doing. But I'll
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: still you'll still have that doubt creep and you'll still
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: have that frustration creep in. But I think I think
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: there's value in being able to identify when that's happening
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: and say hey, okay, well I see what's happening here
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: in your own mind, and you kind of say, all right,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: that's that frustration creep in and I see it. I'm
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: stopping it right now, and and just start telling yourself
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: like you just said, it's you know, any second, ow
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: can angs. You just gotta stay ready and the second
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: out that big Buck might comen walking her and his second. Now,
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: all the bad luck you've been having that's going to change.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: You just gotta, like you said, will it into existence
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes And let you know, if you're positive and and
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: working hard and doing the right things, sometimes the universe
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: will present that opportunity. You just got to be ready
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: there to take it. And um, what's interesting is is
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: I actually started doing a study on this a little bit,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: and I never really followed through on it. But um,
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: I've got all the annoying information, all the books and
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: the DVDs A and uh. One thing that I noticed
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: because I studied this quite a lot, the mental aspect
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: of things. When I was going through the annoyed books,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: I started noticing that popping out of what was getting written.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: And so I started one day I went back through
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: when I started copying all the times that that was mentioned. Um,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: don't worry about what's going on at home. Stay focused.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get the deer. I always think I'm
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: gonna get every deer I hunt. I mean this. Those
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: themes are in in the Benoits books. And you may
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: think they're suproved trackers or excellent woodsman. I think they're
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: fantastic manifestos. I think they're tapping more than just hunting,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: you know. And and um Bruce Bruce Townsley, when he
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: wrote the book and he spent a lot of time
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: with Lanny the Oldest Boy, he made a statement in
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: the book. He says, Lanny, when he enters the woods,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: he's in a zen like state, that focus is so
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: sharp and and it must impressed him because he impressed
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: him enough that he actually wrote it into the book.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: So you know, that's that that mental aspect of that.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: You know. I think that annoys are they're successful because
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: of it. And I think if you look at anybody,
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: I don't care if it's business, personal sports, I think
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: you're going to see that theme. Yeah. I tend to agree.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: I think anyone who has reached a level of excellence,
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: there's a very strong mental mastery component, being able to men,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: being able to master your inner self and your attitude
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: and all those things that to your point, I think
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: it's a very consistent across those in that top tier
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: of any kind of pursuit. So in the end, like
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: you said, it is something that doesn't get discussed a
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: whole lot when it comes to hunting and tactics and stuff.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: Like you said, sometimes people want to kind of turn
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: and walk away from that kind of discussion. Um, it's
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit outside of the realm of pinch
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: points and tracks and grunting and bucks. But um, but
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: really there's a whole lot to it, I think. Um,
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: So I'm really glad you mentioned that it's uh, it's
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: hard to put a finger on exactly how to control it,
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: like you said, but um, but I do think there's
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: something to be said for it is being. It is
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: a learned trait is a practice. It is something that
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're thinking about it and trying to
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: be more focused, trying to be more positive, trying to
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: be you know, enter somewhat whatever that whatever is then
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: mean to you and each person individually. Um, Being in
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: that state where you're fully present, where you were focused
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: where you are. Um, I don't know. I mean, like
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: you said, it's hard to put words to it sometimes,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: but having that mental mastery, that mental focus and control
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: and toughness, I think really is maybe the ultimate differentiator
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: between your average running the mill person and the excellent,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: the expert. Um, the person who's kind of mastered anything
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: and hunting is right there with anything else like football
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: or business or whatever it might be. So that is
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: a perfect way to wrap things, Upton, thank you for
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: bringing that up. No, I know that you've got a
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: few other resources online that that people that want to
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: learn more about this kind of stuff and more about
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: your experiences and expertise. Um, there's some places they can
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: do that, right Where can they go online to find that? Yeah,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: I've got a Probably the best spot is I've got
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: a Facebook blue Um, I've got a Facebook site, But
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: I also have a group, and the group is kind
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: of the fun place because that's what we do a
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: lot of our our stuff. It's a lot of interaction. Uh.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: I do some online tutorials, live videos, I share a
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: lot of things on that site and then then people
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: can interact back, which is the fun part about it
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: is is uh people can interact back to me on
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: that and UM, that's a Facebook group page. It's Misty
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: River Trackers base camp is what I call it. And
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: then uh, and then I also have a website, uh www.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: Misty River Trackers dot com. And that's uh a good
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: place where I kind of draw everything together. UM. I
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: have all most of my resources listed out there, or
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: how to find all the resources that I have. UM.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: It's also gonna be on my online store for tracking class,
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: offering a tracking class, teach this and other things. I'll
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: have logo hats and so forth. UM. As a matter
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: of fact that I'm going to be talking to a
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: clothing manufacturer coming up here about a tracking jacket hat,
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: um and some other things. I don't know what's going
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: to happen to that. We haven't really talked too much
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: about it yet, just kind of in the inter beginning
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: stages of talking about that. But if something like that
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: comes available, that will be on that store too. That's
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: my website, is going to be my store basically for
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: selling things. UM. And then I also like to mention
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: one other site. UM. Troy Spooner uh started a site
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: uh www Old School white Tails dot com. UM and
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: he asked me to have import and help and and
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: it's been a fun project. He wants to stress the
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: old style way of doing things. Um. Uh, not a
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: lot of fancy gear and not a lot of you know,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: high tech stuff or whatever. Just kind of like how
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: your grandpa would have hunted, you know, that kind of thing,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: getting back to some of the roots of hunting and
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: public land, big woods type situations. Uh, he's going to
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: kind of cover a lot of those kind of things
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: on that site. So, um, a lot of really cool
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: stuff out there. Uh that's uh www, old school white
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: tails dot com. So go check that out too. Great.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: There's something to be said about just the woodsmanship and
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: uh sometimes that's a lost art. So I think that's
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: great that that you guys are covering that kind of
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: that kind of content and making sure that folks can
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: can keep learning about that. I I think there's value
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: for sure. So and there's been value with all of this, Todd.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for taking the time to
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: share all this with me and our listeners. Um, I've
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: really enjoyed it, so so thank you very much. Yeah,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: no problem, it's been funny. I've had a good time
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: to let's chat against him, all right? And that is
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: a rap today. So thank you all for listening, appreciate
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: you tune for this one. Hopefully you've been inspired to
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: at least pay attention to tracks a little bit more
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: and know I have. So until next time, best of luck, shot,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: dunning or scouting, and until we chat again, stay wired
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: to hunt. H