Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 807: Top 10 Pre-Season Tasks to Finish Before Opening Day

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Ep. 807: Top 10 Pre-Season Tasks to Finish Before Opening Day · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
0:04
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
0:09
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
0:13
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
0:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
0:23
Speaker 2: the show, I'm going to be walking you through the
0:25
Speaker 2: top ten preseason tasks to finish before opening day of
0:30
Speaker 2: hunting season. All right, welcome back to the Wired to
0:41
Speaker 2: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their new,
0:46
Speaker 2: brand new Reinvented reintroduced the line of whitetail gear and
0:52
Speaker 2: their camera for Conservation initiative. If you're not familiar, a
0:56
Speaker 2: portion of every sale of first Light Spectrum Cameo pattern,
1:01
Speaker 2: which is our white tail pattern, portion of every one
1:03
Speaker 2: of those sales goes to support the National Deer Association.
1:07
Speaker 2: That said, today, what I want to do is talk
1:11
Speaker 2: about summer prep and early fall prep, the last things
1:16
Speaker 2: we need to do before hunting season. And the way
1:21
Speaker 2: I thought we'd do that is walk through what's on
1:25
Speaker 2: my to do list, walk through my final projects, the
1:29
Speaker 2: things that I need to get done before the season begins,
1:32
Speaker 2: and use those things as examples. Use those things to
1:36
Speaker 2: illustrate a number of different ideas, concepts, projects that you
1:42
Speaker 2: might want to add to your repertoire as we come
1:45
Speaker 2: down to these final weeks and months before the season starts.
1:49
Speaker 2: So as we talk, it is, you know, as I
1:51
Speaker 2: record this, at least it's August twelfth, and my opening
1:55
Speaker 2: day in Michigan is October first, so we are less
1:59
Speaker 2: than two months away from that opening day. I know
2:02
Speaker 2: some people kick it off in September, so we might
2:05
Speaker 2: be less than a month out. For you, that means
2:08
Speaker 2: we're getting down to the wire. It's time to get
2:10
Speaker 2: serious about this stuff. It's time really to cram for
2:13
Speaker 2: the final exam because it's just about here. So that's
2:18
Speaker 2: what I want to do here. I want to talk
2:20
Speaker 2: through things like, you know, getting ready with our shooting.
2:25
Speaker 2: I want to talk about some final habitat work. I
2:27
Speaker 2: want to talk about, you know, prepping tree stands and
2:30
Speaker 2: saddle sets and clearing access routes and some scouting advice
2:34
Speaker 2: and you know, cameras and glassing, getting access to new properties.
2:40
Speaker 2: All that kind of stuff is on the to do
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Speaker 2: list here today. And before we get to that, though,
2:46
Speaker 2: I want to give you a couple quick heads ups
2:48
Speaker 2: on things, a couple house cleaning items I think I've
2:52
Speaker 2: called it in the past. Number one, we do have
2:56
Speaker 2: that new first Light white tailed gear out as I
2:58
Speaker 2: mentioned at the top, on over to first light dot
3:01
Speaker 2: com to check it all out. There are three new
3:03
Speaker 2: kits that are part of the system. That's a jacket
3:06
Speaker 2: and bibcombo for kind of the early to mile type temperatures.
3:10
Speaker 2: That's the Phase. Then there's the Core kit, which is
3:15
Speaker 2: that peak of the rock kind of laid Ouctober November
3:18
Speaker 2: kind of thing, very versatile. You could use it earlier,
3:20
Speaker 2: you could use it later. Then there's also the Thermic
3:23
Speaker 2: and that's the super late season, very very very cold
3:26
Speaker 2: weather kit. So check those out. I won't belabor the points,
3:31
Speaker 2: but they might be something you want to look into.
3:35
Speaker 2: The other heads up just another reminder Whitetail Edu Tony
3:39
Speaker 2: and I. We've got this educational video series over on
3:42
Speaker 2: the meat eater Clips YouTube channel going over there. There's
3:45
Speaker 2: new videos coming out about mature buck travel. We had
3:48
Speaker 2: one that came out about scrapes, rubs, deer droppings, all
3:52
Speaker 2: sorts of stuff. If you want to level up your
3:55
Speaker 2: foundation of deer hunting knowledge before the season. This would
3:58
Speaker 2: be a good way to do it. Finally, if you
4:03
Speaker 2: listen to this one and you've got more kind of
4:05
Speaker 2: you know, you've got more energy, you're interested in kind
4:08
Speaker 2: of scratching that whitetail edg some more. I wanted to
4:10
Speaker 2: give you two other episode recommendations that would be useful
4:14
Speaker 2: at this time of year. Number one, take a listen
4:18
Speaker 2: to number two ninety nine, so Wired to Hunt Podcast
4:22
Speaker 2: two hundred and ninety nine. It's titled locating the Best
4:26
Speaker 2: Buck in Your Neighborhood with Adam Hayes. I think this
4:29
Speaker 2: one's particularly irrelevant right now because Adam, if you if
4:33
Speaker 2: you're not familiar, he's a tremendously successful deer hunter, and
4:36
Speaker 2: one of the things he's done very well in the
4:37
Speaker 2: past is he will not just stick with the same
4:41
Speaker 2: properties over and over. He will seek out the best
4:44
Speaker 2: buck around and then find a way to get access's
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Speaker 2: where that buck lives, and then hunts that deer. So
4:49
Speaker 2: this is a very good time of year to do that.
4:52
Speaker 2: If it's August or early September, you can go out
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Speaker 2: there glass Fields, find the caliber deer you're interested in,
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Speaker 2: and then you'll have time to try to get access
5:00
Speaker 2: in that area. So go on listen to episode two
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Speaker 2: ninety nine if that sounds interesting to you. My second
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Speaker 2: recommendation is episode number four forty nine, and this one's
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Speaker 2: titled Mastering September with Sean Luckdel, David Skinner, Brendan Nating,
5:15
Speaker 2: and Greg Godfrey. And this is like a compilation best
5:19
Speaker 2: of podcast featuring you know, a handful of different guys
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Speaker 2: all giving their best advice for hunting in September. So
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Speaker 2: September is knocking on the door. It's just about here.
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Speaker 2: If you want to get ready for that one, go
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Speaker 2: ahead and give episode number four forty nine to listen.
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Speaker 2: So there's two more suggestions for you after this one,
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Speaker 2: two ninety nine and forty nine. Check them out if
5:42
Speaker 2: this is if this one's wrapped up, or if you
5:45
Speaker 2: listen to this here, Hey, I'm bored with Mark. I
5:47
Speaker 2: want to hear someone different. Go check out those two
5:49
Speaker 2: as well. So that's that's it for suggestions and we'll
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Speaker 2: heads ups. Let's get to our top ten preseason tasks.
6:00
Speaker 2: Talk through what I'm up to right now. Why I
6:02
Speaker 2: am running around like a crazy person every year when
6:06
Speaker 2: August comes around, I just kind of know to wall
6:10
Speaker 2: off my calendar, evenings, weekend days, any little bit of
6:14
Speaker 2: spare time I have, I'm just going to be in
6:16
Speaker 2: the field. There's a thousand things to do at this
6:18
Speaker 2: time of year. Even if I try to get stuff
6:20
Speaker 2: done the spring, which I do throughout the middle of
6:23
Speaker 2: the summer, it seems no matter what, there's always a
6:26
Speaker 2: pile of stuff to do here at the end of
6:28
Speaker 2: the year. And the reason why this piles up for
6:31
Speaker 2: me in August is because, as I alluded to at
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Speaker 2: the beginning, my opening day in Michigan is October one,
6:38
Speaker 2: and I set a one month out deadline. So by
6:45
Speaker 2: that I mean I don't want to go in the
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Speaker 2: woods or hardly have to go in the woods at all,
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Speaker 2: for at least one month before opening day. So that
6:52
Speaker 2: means all of my preseason projects need to be done
6:55
Speaker 2: by the end of August so that I can leave
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Speaker 2: all of September for this area to be quiet and
7:01
Speaker 2: safe for deer, so that once opening day comes, I
7:04
Speaker 2: have deer that are feeling unpressured, unbothered, and are to
7:08
Speaker 2: some degree vulnerable for an early season hunt. So I'm down,
7:14
Speaker 2: you know, two three ish weeks to get this stuff
7:18
Speaker 2: done here and I'm gonna give you my first piece
7:21
Speaker 2: of advice, and this is a simple thing I've talked
7:24
Speaker 2: about in the past, but it has been really powerful
7:26
Speaker 2: for me, and that is to write things down, actually
7:33
Speaker 2: build a list. I have two lists, or two sets
7:35
Speaker 2: of lists. I have a digital to do list, which
7:38
Speaker 2: is like my master list, my master deer hunting to
7:41
Speaker 2: do list. And I break this list down by property,
7:45
Speaker 2: so each different property that I've access to, I will
7:47
Speaker 2: have a to do list, and then I will sometimes
7:50
Speaker 2: put like you know, date ranges when I want to
7:53
Speaker 2: do these things, or I'll put things in chronological order,
7:56
Speaker 2: like this property needs to get worked one first, this one,
7:59
Speaker 2: this one, this, and I do all of this. I
8:01
Speaker 2: write all this stuff down because if you keep all
8:05
Speaker 2: of the things that you need to get done up
8:06
Speaker 2: in your head, it's stressful. It's nearly impossible to keep
8:11
Speaker 2: it all straight, and you have like latent stress, like
8:15
Speaker 2: wheels are turning the back of your mind when you're
8:17
Speaker 2: trying to keep all these balls up in the air.
8:19
Speaker 2: And that is stressful, that's exhausting, and it's an easy
8:21
Speaker 2: way to forget things. But as soon as you write
8:24
Speaker 2: it down, it's like taking weight off your shoulders, and
8:28
Speaker 2: it's also more effective. You're more likely to do these things.
8:30
Speaker 2: You're more likely to get all the stuff done that
8:32
Speaker 2: you want to get done if you have a way
8:34
Speaker 2: to keep track of it and if you can actually
8:37
Speaker 2: also feel the good vibes of checking things off that list. So,
8:41
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, I have the master to do list.
8:44
Speaker 2: I use Google Docs for that. I break it down
8:47
Speaker 2: by property and I write everything down that I need
8:49
Speaker 2: to get done on each one of these properties. Then
8:53
Speaker 2: I have a I don't know where it is. I
8:55
Speaker 2: have a physical book right here which I personally use,
9:00
Speaker 2: something called the Full Focused Planner. And this is a
9:03
Speaker 2: daily planner and weekly planner that my whole life revolves around,
9:08
Speaker 2: not just my deer hunting life, but this is something
9:11
Speaker 2: that allows me to keep track of things on a
9:14
Speaker 2: week to week basis and day day basis. So at
9:17
Speaker 2: the beginning of every week, Sunday night, I go and
9:20
Speaker 2: I actually have a seven day outlook. I can see
9:23
Speaker 2: my full seven days ahead and I can write in
9:25
Speaker 2: what I need to do on each one of these days.
9:28
Speaker 2: And then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, there's a full two
9:31
Speaker 2: pages for each day in which I prioritize the top
9:34
Speaker 2: things I need to do for work, top things I
9:36
Speaker 2: need to do for my outside of work projects. And
9:38
Speaker 2: this is where my deer hunting stuff lives. So I
9:41
Speaker 2: have this master list online and then each week, especially
9:45
Speaker 2: this time of year in the summer, I am then
9:47
Speaker 2: looking at that master list when I do my weekly
9:51
Speaker 2: planning in the physical book. And this is where I
9:54
Speaker 2: can say, Okay, this week, the week of August twelfth,
10:00
Speaker 2: am I going to try to get done? What am
10:01
Speaker 2: I going to take off my master digital list of
10:04
Speaker 2: to do list items? The thousand different deer hunting stuff
10:06
Speaker 2: I got to get done. Which of those things can
10:09
Speaker 2: I get done this week? And then I can actually
10:11
Speaker 2: pencil them into the days or the you know, the
10:14
Speaker 2: weekend days, whenever it might be when I can do
10:17
Speaker 2: those things. And I'm telling you by actually scheduling this stuff,
10:20
Speaker 2: by putting it in a calendar of sorts, I know
10:23
Speaker 2: it sounds nerdy, I'm a nerd, I get it. But
10:27
Speaker 2: by writing this stuff down and scheduling it, stuff actually
10:31
Speaker 2: gets done. Like there's a saying in the business world
10:33
Speaker 2: like what's what gets what gets on the calendar and
10:36
Speaker 2: gets done, And that's very true, because life is chaotic
10:40
Speaker 2: life is nuts. It's very easy for the chaos of
10:43
Speaker 2: the day to you know, just make it be react reactions, right,
10:47
Speaker 2: we react to this, we react to that, we get
10:49
Speaker 2: this kind of fire, drill taken care of me, run off,
10:52
Speaker 2: take up, take care of that errand, and we will
10:55
Speaker 2: never get the big stuff done that's important if we
10:57
Speaker 2: don't prioritize those things and actually find a place in
11:01
Speaker 2: our day to do that stuff. So for me, this
11:05
Speaker 2: two list system and this planner system. Again, I know
11:08
Speaker 2: it's nerdy, but it works. You will get more stuff
11:12
Speaker 2: done if you plan to do that versus just thinking
11:16
Speaker 2: in your head, Oh, when I have time, I'll go
11:17
Speaker 2: get this project done, or okay, next Saturday, I'll do
11:20
Speaker 2: some stuff. Yeah, that might work some of the time.
11:23
Speaker 2: But if you really want to check all the boxes,
11:26
Speaker 2: if you really want to do as good of a
11:28
Speaker 2: job as possible and be efficient so that you can
11:31
Speaker 2: get this stuff done in the allotted time and then
11:34
Speaker 2: be fully present and there for your family or friends
11:38
Speaker 2: the rest of the time, this system is a good
11:40
Speaker 2: way to do it. So consider the list system, whether
11:43
Speaker 2: it's digital or physical. Consider that. So that all said,
11:51
Speaker 2: that's how I'm organizing all these things. Now, what's on
11:53
Speaker 2: my list? What do I have on my master to
11:55
Speaker 2: do list? What are the things I've been working through recently?
11:58
Speaker 2: What do I have coming up? Let's talk through that stuff.
12:01
Speaker 2: Number One, this is an ongoing one for me. Excuse me,
12:07
Speaker 2: but it is shooting. It's shooting my bow. It's continuing
12:11
Speaker 2: to get ready from that perspective for the upcoming year.
12:14
Speaker 2: That's something that starts for me in the spring and
12:17
Speaker 2: it continues through the summer, and it kind of gradually changes.
12:20
Speaker 2: We've talked about this a lot in the past. I
12:22
Speaker 2: won't spend a lot of time on it, but I
12:24
Speaker 2: will just give you a couple quick updates when it
12:26
Speaker 2: comes to shooting and how my shooting regimen changes in
12:29
Speaker 2: these final weeks. So in the spring and summer, I'm
12:33
Speaker 2: basically in rep mode, Like I'm just trying to get
12:35
Speaker 2: reps in, just getting in, staying comfortable shooting my bow
12:40
Speaker 2: and making it feel like second nature. Now this year
12:43
Speaker 2: has been a little bit different for me because I
12:44
Speaker 2: have switched bows. I switched this year to the Matthews
12:48
Speaker 2: Lift thirty three, and I'm using a new site, the
12:52
Speaker 2: Dialed ARCSOS. It's a single pin site, so new bo,
12:56
Speaker 2: new style site, a lot of new stuff. So I'm
13:01
Speaker 2: honestly still in the getting comfortable phase. I switched to
13:04
Speaker 2: this stuff early in the summer. Throughout the middle of
13:07
Speaker 2: the summer when I was home, I've been shooting. But
13:10
Speaker 2: now that I am kind of in this final sprint
13:14
Speaker 2: to the opening day, which for me is about two
13:16
Speaker 2: months out, I'm shifting what I'm doing. So I'm shifting
13:20
Speaker 2: from just getting reps and just getting comfortable to now
13:23
Speaker 2: shifting into a more of a you know here in
13:26
Speaker 2: the you know, the next couple, next couple of weeks
13:29
Speaker 2: will be rep mode. And then once we get to
13:31
Speaker 2: about a month out, that's when I start getting a
13:33
Speaker 2: little bit more strategic with my shooting. That's when I
13:36
Speaker 2: start doing, you know, some of the stuff that Andy
13:38
Speaker 2: may talked about a few weeks ago. He's doing that
13:41
Speaker 2: longer than I am. Admittedly, I start doing that about
13:44
Speaker 2: a month out. That's when I start, you know, shooting
13:46
Speaker 2: from different positions in my saddle. That's when I start
13:49
Speaker 2: shooting from weird wonky angles, or on my knees, or
13:53
Speaker 2: standing up on top of a hill shooting down at an
13:55
Speaker 2: awkward angle. I try to plan for the different pop
14:00
Speaker 2: scenarios you could find yourself in when bow hunting, I
14:03
Speaker 2: try to practice those. I will say that, you know,
14:09
Speaker 2: I'm getting used to this new setup. Still it's not
14:14
Speaker 2: quite what I I'm having a hard time describe as
14:19
Speaker 2: I'm still getting comfortable, I suppose, so we're not there
14:23
Speaker 2: yet when it comes to getting strategic. I'm still trying
14:25
Speaker 2: to figure out the right way to make this bow
14:27
Speaker 2: set up work for me. As we talked about the spring,
14:31
Speaker 2: making changes, trying to figure out some new things, trying
14:33
Speaker 2: to reduce complexity and make my bow set up and
14:37
Speaker 2: my shooting set up as simple as possible. So shorter
14:40
Speaker 2: range shots for me this year, single pin, trying to
14:45
Speaker 2: you know, learn when and how I want to adjust
14:47
Speaker 2: that single pin. So it's going to be an interesting
14:49
Speaker 2: year for me. I'm working through that stuff right now.
14:51
Speaker 2: But that's a key thing, and probably the most important
14:54
Speaker 2: thing when it comes to my shooting at this time
14:56
Speaker 2: of year, is that it has to be a daily routine.
15:00
Speaker 2: Early in the winter, in the spring, honestly, I don't
15:04
Speaker 2: do it every day, but when it comes to the summer,
15:06
Speaker 2: every single night. This is a part of what I
15:09
Speaker 2: do and what works for me in my life is
15:13
Speaker 2: to put the kids down for bed, And as soon
15:15
Speaker 2: as the kids go down for bed, that's like the queue,
15:18
Speaker 2: all right, trying to go outside, grab my bow. And
15:21
Speaker 2: what's nice is that I've got my bow set up
15:24
Speaker 2: at my barn. Everything's ready to go. I have an
15:26
Speaker 2: archery target set up in front of the house so
15:29
Speaker 2: that I can go in the barn, grab my bow
15:31
Speaker 2: and arrows, step out to the front of the house
15:34
Speaker 2: and I can shoot, you know, just shoot, zone out,
15:39
Speaker 2: do the things I want to do. It's cool in
15:41
Speaker 2: the evening, it's nice. There's some fields around me. I
15:44
Speaker 2: sometimes see deer outside. My binoculars out and kind of
15:47
Speaker 2: glass deer off in the distance. And it's a very
15:50
Speaker 2: enjoyable way to end the day, kind of therapeutic. But
15:53
Speaker 2: by having this kind of locked in time frame that
15:56
Speaker 2: I'm doing it, I stick to it more often. Right.
15:59
Speaker 2: It goes back to the whole like putting things on
16:01
Speaker 2: the calendar. If I were to try to shoot just
16:03
Speaker 2: some random time that I find a few minutes, it'd
16:06
Speaker 2: be very easy not to do that. But when I
16:09
Speaker 2: have a locked in time like I'm going to do
16:10
Speaker 2: it every night after the kids go sleep. You stick
16:13
Speaker 2: to that, you keep that time open. My significant other,
16:17
Speaker 2: my wife, knows that that's what's going to go on,
16:19
Speaker 2: so it's no surprise. She's not going to ask me
16:21
Speaker 2: to do something different. And these little things help me
16:25
Speaker 2: stay consistent and help me actually get the stuff done
16:28
Speaker 2: that I know I need to get done. So that's shooting.
16:31
Speaker 2: That's what I'm up to right now. That's what the
16:33
Speaker 2: routine looks like from here all the way to October. First,
16:38
Speaker 2: next up, I am doing some final habitat things. So
16:44
Speaker 2: I hunt a variety of different kinds of places. I
16:48
Speaker 2: hunt some public I hunt some buy permission properties, and
16:51
Speaker 2: then I hunt some properties that I have management access
16:53
Speaker 2: in which I can actually do some habitat work. And
16:57
Speaker 2: so this time of year is always a scrambled trying
17:00
Speaker 2: to get that last habitat stuff done. I got a
17:03
Speaker 2: few things going on. I've got two different properties where
17:07
Speaker 2: I can plant food plots. One of them is our
17:08
Speaker 2: family deer camp. One of them is a property I
17:11
Speaker 2: hunt in southern Michigan. So on the Southern Michigan piece,
17:15
Speaker 2: the first step has been spraying. I just got out
17:19
Speaker 2: there and sprayed these plots. And what I plant is
17:23
Speaker 2: a two two phase system. The last maybe three years
17:29
Speaker 2: I've been doing this, I've been planting seed from a
17:31
Speaker 2: company called Vitalize, and they have a spring planting and
17:35
Speaker 2: a fall planting, and the idea is to rotate these
17:39
Speaker 2: so spring planting then fall planting, and they each help
17:42
Speaker 2: each other. So what you plant in the fall provides
17:45
Speaker 2: great deer attraction, and then in the spring it greens
17:49
Speaker 2: up early, keeps weeds from growing, and then when you
17:53
Speaker 2: knock that out and plant, you are spring planting. Your
17:56
Speaker 2: spring planting takes advantage of the organic material that's there
17:59
Speaker 2: from the fall. It then builds up a bunch of
18:04
Speaker 2: nitrogen in the soil that when you knock that out
18:08
Speaker 2: and plant your fall planting, your fall planting basically uses
18:12
Speaker 2: the organic matter and the nitrogen from your spring planting
18:15
Speaker 2: as fertilizer to then grow. So this is like a constant,
18:18
Speaker 2: perpetual cycle that builds off of each other. The spring
18:22
Speaker 2: planting which I put in the ground this spring, that's
18:24
Speaker 2: in those plots right now included stuff like barley, forge peas, soybeans,
18:30
Speaker 2: sun hemp, some clover, some sorghum. It's getting a lot
18:34
Speaker 2: of stuff. There's a lot of organic matter. Now, what
18:38
Speaker 2: I just did yesterday I believe it was, is I
18:43
Speaker 2: sprayed that stuff and it's going to knock out most
18:46
Speaker 2: of that competing vegetation. And then I've got a friend
18:49
Speaker 2: who's going to come in. It's the first time I've
18:51
Speaker 2: done this. In the past, I've done a basically like
18:54
Speaker 2: a spray and spread where I have sprayed or I
18:58
Speaker 2: actually broadcasts the seed and then kill the vegetation, had
19:02
Speaker 2: that die on top of it, and then had basically
19:05
Speaker 2: a no till planting without any equipment. That's worked okay
19:08
Speaker 2: for me, but I would say my germination rate has
19:11
Speaker 2: not been as high as i'd like. So this year,
19:14
Speaker 2: I've got a friend who has a drill, a no
19:17
Speaker 2: till drill, who's going to come in and drill in
19:20
Speaker 2: my fall planting. And so again I sprayed the old stuff,
19:25
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of growth that's going to die,
19:29
Speaker 2: provide organic material and kind of an armor on top
19:32
Speaker 2: of the soil. And then later this week, just before
19:35
Speaker 2: the rain, my buddy's then come in with a drill
19:37
Speaker 2: and he's going to drill in. He's going to plant
19:39
Speaker 2: what's called the carbon load, which is a bunch of
19:42
Speaker 2: grains at winter rye and wheat and oats, and then
19:46
Speaker 2: radishes and clover and turnips and all sorts of good
19:49
Speaker 2: stuff like that. So a lot of attractive things for early,
19:52
Speaker 2: mid and late season for deer. It's a diverse blend.
19:56
Speaker 2: I'd like to have a lot of different things that
19:58
Speaker 2: provide attraction at different parts of the year. They're all
20:01
Speaker 2: going to help each other grow. Some are going to
20:03
Speaker 2: be fixing nitrogen, some of them will be using nitrogen,
20:06
Speaker 2: some of them will be providing organic material. Like I
20:09
Speaker 2: said earlier, some of these things will grain up next
20:12
Speaker 2: year and provide food again in the spring. So diversity
20:16
Speaker 2: and not tilling up the soil so that I'm not
20:19
Speaker 2: getting erosion, so I'm not losing moisture, so I'm not
20:21
Speaker 2: killing the bio kind of the biology of the soil.
20:26
Speaker 2: That's why I'm taking this approach. So that's all happening,
20:30
Speaker 2: you know, over the coming days here, and then you
20:33
Speaker 2: don't need as much fertilizer when you use this method,
20:36
Speaker 2: because you know the organic material and the plants are
20:40
Speaker 2: doing that job for me. So I'm not needing to
20:42
Speaker 2: use as much synthetic fertilizer. I don't need to spray often,
20:46
Speaker 2: so I've minimized my herbicide you significantly from what it
20:50
Speaker 2: used to be when I'd be spraying multiple, many, many
20:52
Speaker 2: times a year, trying to keep any weeds out of there,
20:55
Speaker 2: then disking everything up and then planting into that cut
21:00
Speaker 2: that down a pretty good bit. So the food plot
21:13
Speaker 2: project is underway here in southern Michigan. I'll be going
21:17
Speaker 2: up to northern Michigan here in the next week or
21:19
Speaker 2: two and just managing a plot up there. We've got
21:23
Speaker 2: clover plots, and so in that case, I'm gonna be
21:26
Speaker 2: mowing and maybe spraying a selective herbicide to kill any
21:30
Speaker 2: grasses if that's a problem right right now, but really
21:33
Speaker 2: trying to manage there for efficiency, hopefully getting clover to
21:37
Speaker 2: take over here, take over very well. Up there, we
21:41
Speaker 2: can't visit as often, so having something that clover that
21:44
Speaker 2: just comes back a year after a year is a
21:46
Speaker 2: great option. It's obviously very attractive to deer in other wildlife,
21:51
Speaker 2: and it's something that you know, you don't need to
21:53
Speaker 2: use a lot of chemical, you don't need to til
21:55
Speaker 2: it up every year, you don't need to use big equipment.
21:57
Speaker 2: It's simple, it's effective, and it's good for a lot
22:00
Speaker 2: of critters. So that's kind of our food plot approach.
22:04
Speaker 2: I'm relatively small scale, right, I'm not doing this on
22:07
Speaker 2: the scale like the Juries or someone you know, total
22:10
Speaker 2: I probably have I don't know, three acres of food
22:15
Speaker 2: plots four acres across these two different places. So my
22:19
Speaker 2: system obviously is different than if I was doing this
22:22
Speaker 2: on a much larger scale. But that's my approach. Those
22:27
Speaker 2: are the things that I'm thinking about, and that's, you know,
22:30
Speaker 2: something that does really help me. I'm not changing the
22:32
Speaker 2: world with these food plots, but I'm providing nutrition to
22:35
Speaker 2: a lot of different wildlife species and it does help
22:38
Speaker 2: me get deer to use the properties that I hunt
22:42
Speaker 2: in the places that's most beneficial for hunting in ways
22:46
Speaker 2: that I can access them. And again I can you know,
22:49
Speaker 2: some people give you a hard time about planting food
22:51
Speaker 2: plots and agricultural land because there's food everywhere, right, But
22:55
Speaker 2: what I think you can provide with food plots is
22:58
Speaker 2: kind of like an ice cream stand. The major egg
23:00
Speaker 2: feels all around you, like that's your meat and potatoes,
23:03
Speaker 2: that's the main course that the deer feeding on. I
23:05
Speaker 2: try to provide them something different, something extra special. And
23:09
Speaker 2: something very safe. So it's like if you are in
23:14
Speaker 2: a war zone and it's dangerous everywhere you go, but
23:17
Speaker 2: then there's one amazingly safe bunker with a bunch of
23:21
Speaker 2: ice cream in it, that's the spot you'd want to
23:23
Speaker 2: go to a lot, right, Well, that's kind of what
23:25
Speaker 2: I'm trying to provide the local deer in my area
23:28
Speaker 2: with these food plots. That's my approach. Number three. Another
23:34
Speaker 2: thing that I'm working on on the properties that I
23:37
Speaker 2: do have the ability to do some management. This is
23:39
Speaker 2: nothing dramatic, this is nothing too crazy, but access routes.
23:45
Speaker 2: This is something that sometimes we can overlook. You want
23:48
Speaker 2: to have, if possible, cleared out quiet access routes on
23:54
Speaker 2: properties that you have the ability to do this. So
23:57
Speaker 2: for me, that looks like a couple of different number
23:59
Speaker 2: couple diff things. One just the other day, I've sprayed
24:04
Speaker 2: some of these trails that I have that you know,
24:06
Speaker 2: over the course of the summer they get overgrown. I'll
24:08
Speaker 2: do one herbicide application just to knock down everything right now,
24:13
Speaker 2: and then I will do a mow here towards the
24:15
Speaker 2: end of the summer. Once that's done with a mowing
24:19
Speaker 2: in the spring, you've got a clear, low, quiet trail
24:23
Speaker 2: that you can access your tree stand locations, that you
24:26
Speaker 2: can access spots to change trail cameras, that you can
24:30
Speaker 2: drive your e bike or your UTV or whatever it is.
24:34
Speaker 2: Having those trails is super helpful. I do that with
24:38
Speaker 2: the mower in places that that's possible. But something that
24:41
Speaker 2: I you know, I don't always do this as much
24:43
Speaker 2: as I should. I'm trying to do more and more
24:45
Speaker 2: of this every year. I'll try to create small, cleared
24:48
Speaker 2: out trails to my actual stand locations too. And that's
24:52
Speaker 2: just as simple as going in with you know, for
24:54
Speaker 2: me like some pruners and pruning the branches, just clearing
24:59
Speaker 2: out branches or any brush on the ground, many downtry
25:04
Speaker 2: limbs or anything that are going to make it loud
25:06
Speaker 2: or difficult for you to get to the actual trees
25:08
Speaker 2: that you want to hunt. So this is one of
25:10
Speaker 2: those things that if you can make the time, it
25:14
Speaker 2: can help you because, as we've talked about many times
25:17
Speaker 2: over the years, at least if you're trying to kill
25:20
Speaker 2: and hunt matured deer, the little things matter. The tiniest
25:25
Speaker 2: little mistake can be the thing that keeps you from
25:28
Speaker 2: getting that deer you know, stepping on that one branch
25:31
Speaker 2: or getting your backpack hung up in some bushes behind
25:34
Speaker 2: you and making a bunch of noise. That might be
25:36
Speaker 2: the thing that spooks the buck that's bed at eighty
25:39
Speaker 2: five yards away. So any little thing, any little variable
25:43
Speaker 2: that you can control now will help you, because there's
25:46
Speaker 2: a whole lot of stuff come in the fall that
25:49
Speaker 2: you can't control. So that is the kind of thing
25:52
Speaker 2: that I'm looking for with this access route prep clearing
25:55
Speaker 2: those little trails, raking some vegetation out of the way,
26:00
Speaker 2: or spraying the grassy path so you can get into
26:03
Speaker 2: there more quietly. Again, it's not a huge thing, but
26:07
Speaker 2: it can make a big difference in a few months.
26:10
Speaker 2: Number four scouting Summer scouting. This is something that I love.
26:17
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite things for this time of year.
26:20
Speaker 2: But it's something that you have to look at with
26:21
Speaker 2: a grain of Salt's here's what I mean. Probably most
26:26
Speaker 2: of you know this, but I want to review it
26:28
Speaker 2: just in case you're relatively new to this, because it's
26:31
Speaker 2: very very important. Seeing deer in the summer, feeding in
26:35
Speaker 2: fields or getting pictures of deer in the summer is
26:37
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. It can tell you some things,
26:40
Speaker 2: but it is not the end all be all, because
26:44
Speaker 2: there is a significant rain shift from the summer to
26:47
Speaker 2: the fall for many bucks. So if you see or
26:52
Speaker 2: get pictures of a deer right now, there might be
26:54
Speaker 2: a fifty percent chance that that deer is going to
26:57
Speaker 2: relocate to a totally new zone one September hits. So
27:00
Speaker 2: I scout and I pay attention, but I'm doing all
27:05
Speaker 2: of it without getting overly excited and without drilling into
27:09
Speaker 2: the details of you know, if I saw a buck
27:13
Speaker 2: move into the corner of this field, I'm not going
27:15
Speaker 2: to be like, oh wow, I'm going to kill the
27:16
Speaker 2: deer in the corner of that field if I don't
27:18
Speaker 2: have an early season opener. So if you have an
27:20
Speaker 2: early season opener in September, you know, first week or
27:23
Speaker 2: two of September, then yes, summer patterns might still be
27:26
Speaker 2: relevant and you can kill a deer doing the stuff
27:29
Speaker 2: you're seeing them do now in August. But if you
27:31
Speaker 2: are like me in your opening day is not until
27:33
Speaker 2: October first, it's going to be pretty different. That all said,
27:38
Speaker 2: there are a few things you can gain with summer scouting.
27:42
Speaker 2: There's a few things that I'm personally looking for when
27:44
Speaker 2: I do this. Number One, you can assess the quality
27:50
Speaker 2: of deer in the general area, even if you know
27:53
Speaker 2: a given deer might not be on your property, that
27:56
Speaker 2: is on your property right now. If you are trying
28:00
Speaker 2: to figure out does this zone have mature bucks, your
28:03
Speaker 2: summer glassing and summer pictures can tell you that. You
28:06
Speaker 2: can also get confirmation of deer being back. You know,
28:11
Speaker 2: let's say you had a few bucks that you were
28:13
Speaker 2: hunting last year. Now's a great time to determine whether
28:17
Speaker 2: or not they're still alive and whether they're around. Take
28:19
Speaker 2: a look at them, see how they're looking, See if
28:21
Speaker 2: they're as old as you think they are, See if
28:23
Speaker 2: there's new deer in the area. Again, we alluded to
28:28
Speaker 2: this at the very beginning, but you can also try
28:30
Speaker 2: to find a buck now that maybe isn't a totally
28:33
Speaker 2: new area, and then try to get permission in that zone. Now,
28:37
Speaker 2: be careful if you spot a buck in August, he
28:39
Speaker 2: might be somewhere different in September, So continue that kind
28:43
Speaker 2: of surveillance into September. And that's a key thing I
28:47
Speaker 2: think we should remember is that usually most deer are
28:51
Speaker 2: losing their velvet the first week or so of September,
28:55
Speaker 2: and that is really when most rain shift happens, because
28:58
Speaker 2: you've got a major testostere rise happening this time of year,
29:02
Speaker 2: velvet's peeling off, and bucks are starting to relocate to
29:04
Speaker 2: their fall ranges. From my experience, I would say about
29:10
Speaker 2: a third ish of the bucks that I see in
29:14
Speaker 2: the summer go somewhere else come September. But that still
29:17
Speaker 2: means two thirds are there. And I'm not hunting big properties.
29:21
Speaker 2: I don't have any properties I have access to that
29:23
Speaker 2: are more than like one hundred sum makers. So you know,
29:27
Speaker 2: maybe if I had a thousand acre swath, I could
29:29
Speaker 2: keep track of all of these deer. Maybe the deer
29:31
Speaker 2: that are here in August would just be down, you know,
29:34
Speaker 2: on the other side of my property comes September. But
29:36
Speaker 2: I just don't have that scenario. So a third to
29:40
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit more than a third of the
29:41
Speaker 2: bucks I'm watching now I know are just going to
29:44
Speaker 2: be gone. But that's okay in my case. There are
29:49
Speaker 2: for example, in one of my main zones in Michigan,
29:52
Speaker 2: there are two bucks that last year I had been
29:55
Speaker 2: passing on when was a three year old. One was
29:58
Speaker 2: a four year old, and I was really hoping that
30:00
Speaker 2: they would make it to this year. Both of them did.
30:06
Speaker 2: One of these deer is a buck that my youngest
30:09
Speaker 2: son named Bear Deer. He was just like a tall,
30:13
Speaker 2: mainframe eight pointer last year as a three year old
30:16
Speaker 2: with a big inside time, and you saw him a lot.
30:21
Speaker 2: Didn't try to kill him. He just showed back up
30:25
Speaker 2: within the last handful of weeks, maybe two three weeks ago,
30:28
Speaker 2: and he's big and tall, really nice tall bro. I mean,
30:33
Speaker 2: he's just a very very impressive deer, a big deep
30:36
Speaker 2: split in G two. He lost an inside time but
30:38
Speaker 2: now has a split G two, so he's on the list.
30:43
Speaker 2: He's a very cool deer and my son is very excited.
30:46
Speaker 2: The bear deer is still around. So he's a deer
30:49
Speaker 2: that I'm getting pictures of and I'm trying to glass
30:51
Speaker 2: and get eyes on him, and that's that's purely for fun,
30:55
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes summer glassing is just a good time.
30:59
Speaker 2: I realize I'm not probably going to be able to
31:01
Speaker 2: pattern him in any kind of way because i can't
31:03
Speaker 2: hunt him now, but I just like watching deer and
31:06
Speaker 2: watching deer do deer stuff, so that's part of what
31:09
Speaker 2: I'm doing now. The second buck in this zone that
31:14
Speaker 2: is back is a buck that my other son named Bulldozer,
31:18
Speaker 2: and he is a five year old. This year I
31:20
Speaker 2: passed a bunch of the three year old last year's
31:23
Speaker 2: a four year old passed him one time with the
31:27
Speaker 2: muzzle ludder muzzler season and then saw him a couple
31:32
Speaker 2: times but out of range, but he was always around.
31:36
Speaker 2: He's the oldest buck. He's the one five year old
31:38
Speaker 2: that I know of in this area, and we actually
31:40
Speaker 2: found his match set of antlers. I found one antler
31:43
Speaker 2: close to this spot where I thought he betted, and
31:46
Speaker 2: then later found his other side and then went and
31:48
Speaker 2: got my youngest son brought him out and had him,
31:51
Speaker 2: you know, fine to himself. So so yeah, really cool
31:55
Speaker 2: story with that buck having his antlers, having seen him now,
31:58
Speaker 2: you know, for so many years, so those back. He's
32:01
Speaker 2: a big nine pointer, big old body, and blind in
32:05
Speaker 2: one eye, so it'll be interesting to see if that
32:09
Speaker 2: will make him slightly more approachable. I guess I'm not
32:13
Speaker 2: sure what to you know, how much of a factor
32:15
Speaker 2: that'll be, but it'll be interesting to watch him. He
32:18
Speaker 2: was really really big bodied last year during the season,
32:21
Speaker 2: so I'm excited to see what he looks like as
32:23
Speaker 2: those testosterone levels start to rise and he really starts
32:26
Speaker 2: to get runted up, I think he'll be pretty darn impressive.
32:30
Speaker 2: So so yeah, I mentioned this, But there's there's two
32:34
Speaker 2: kinds of summer scouting that I'm doing. One is the glassing.
32:38
Speaker 2: Any night that I can get out and sit on
32:40
Speaker 2: a hill or on the side of the road and
32:42
Speaker 2: glass some of these beanfields or alfalfa fields. I'm doing
32:45
Speaker 2: that one to try to see these bucks that I'm
32:48
Speaker 2: after and just see them, get some footage of them.
32:51
Speaker 2: That's just plain fun. But then I'm also trying to
32:53
Speaker 2: assess new areas and just get a sense of hey,
32:56
Speaker 2: is there a different neighborhood, a different area where there
32:59
Speaker 2: are some like spectacular deer that I should try to,
33:03
Speaker 2: you know, somehow get permission on. That is a possibility,
33:05
Speaker 2: and that's something that I like to try to do.
33:07
Speaker 2: I'll just do like what I call a deer drive,
33:09
Speaker 2: where I'll just go drive around, drive the back roads.
33:12
Speaker 2: It's a good time and sometimes you can learn about
33:14
Speaker 2: a new honey hole that might be worth investigating further.
33:18
Speaker 2: And then secondly, running trail cameras. I'm running these on
33:23
Speaker 2: all the properties I have access to that I've been
33:25
Speaker 2: hunting forever, and then I'm also putting trail cameras on
33:28
Speaker 2: new properties that I'm getting access to to try to
33:31
Speaker 2: assess like what's here, what's the area offer, and do
33:35
Speaker 2: I really need to double down on this spot? Which
33:39
Speaker 2: brings me back to or brings me to another one
33:41
Speaker 2: of these ideas or one of these kind of categories
33:44
Speaker 2: that I'm working on, which is getting new access. And
33:48
Speaker 2: this is something you know that you can't these days.
33:51
Speaker 2: You almost never can stop doing this because if you
33:55
Speaker 2: don't own your own farm, if you're depending on permission
34:00
Speaker 2: or even leases, it's just so common to lose that permission,
34:05
Speaker 2: to lose that access. There's just you know, land is
34:08
Speaker 2: changing hands, there's obviously a lot of demand for hunting access,
34:13
Speaker 2: and I just find myself, you know, every time I
34:15
Speaker 2: get something good and new that I'm excited about, it
34:17
Speaker 2: seems like it disappears in a year or two. So
34:20
Speaker 2: that happened to me this year. I picked up a
34:23
Speaker 2: really nice new property last year that I was excited
34:25
Speaker 2: about a couple hundred acres, and now already this year
34:29
Speaker 2: I don't have access. So a major thing that I
34:33
Speaker 2: try to do all year round, but especially comes summer,
34:35
Speaker 2: especially right about now, is start checking in with the
34:39
Speaker 2: network and trying to find possible new opportunities for hunting locations.
34:46
Speaker 2: I've kind of had a renewed urgency this summer because
34:49
Speaker 2: of losing that spot, and so I've just started like
34:52
Speaker 2: asking random friends who maybe have a family member that's
34:57
Speaker 2: a farm owner, or I bumped in to a neighbor
35:00
Speaker 2: the other day and just brought it up, just asked, hey,
35:03
Speaker 2: you know you happen to know of anyone you happen
35:05
Speaker 2: to have something, And you know, I've landed a couple
35:09
Speaker 2: of little spots, nothing big and extra special, but I'm
35:13
Speaker 2: now in a point where I'm just trying to stack
35:14
Speaker 2: up little spots. So, for example, I talked to a
35:19
Speaker 2: farmer the other day who I've gotten to know over
35:21
Speaker 2: the years, and I knew he had a handful of
35:23
Speaker 2: different properties. I've never tried to get access to them
35:27
Speaker 2: in the past, but we developed a relationship over the
35:31
Speaker 2: years to a point where I thought, you know, maybe
35:34
Speaker 2: he'd be open to that now, and so I just mentioned, hey,
35:36
Speaker 2: you know lost some spots looking for a new location
35:40
Speaker 2: or two, I know you've got a property over an
35:42
Speaker 2: X y Z road or another one down that road.
35:45
Speaker 2: Would you ever be you know open to me, you know,
35:48
Speaker 2: helping out with the dope problem there and hunting sometimes
35:51
Speaker 2: and lo and behold, got me permission on a couple
35:54
Speaker 2: of these spots. And so that is my maybe biggest
36:00
Speaker 2: piece of advice when it comes to this, is just
36:02
Speaker 2: always always ask, you know, anytime there's someone who might
36:09
Speaker 2: know somebody or owns some land or has a family
36:12
Speaker 2: member that owns land, it can't hurt to ask, right
36:14
Speaker 2: The answer is no already if you ask, the worst
36:18
Speaker 2: case scenario is it's going to be no still, but
36:20
Speaker 2: maybe you will get a yes. And you never know
36:23
Speaker 2: where those kinds of conversations can go. And you can
36:26
Speaker 2: never have enough hunting property, right. It's location. Location. Location
36:32
Speaker 2: is so much the name of the game when it
36:35
Speaker 2: comes to hunting deer. So I got permission on a
36:38
Speaker 2: few new spots. They're not, you know, amazing spots, but
36:43
Speaker 2: you never know that one little extra location might make
36:48
Speaker 2: all the difference next year. For example, one of these
36:51
Speaker 2: properties that I just got permission on is something like
36:55
Speaker 2: sixty or seventy acres, but it's almost all crop field.
36:58
Speaker 2: There's just four acres of cover. Rest is standing corn,
37:01
Speaker 2: but the four acres of cover which is mixed grasses,
37:05
Speaker 2: some willows, various shrubs and stuff, and then some trees.
37:11
Speaker 2: This butts up and is adjacent to a really big
37:13
Speaker 2: swamp system. And the swamp system is one that I've
37:17
Speaker 2: known of in the past. I've driven around this area
37:19
Speaker 2: a lot during previous summers and I've seen a lot
37:22
Speaker 2: of deer all on the edges and all around it.
37:25
Speaker 2: So I've just known, like, man, this spot holds a
37:27
Speaker 2: lot of deer, and some big deer like deer get
37:30
Speaker 2: old around these swamp systems in southern Michigan. And so
37:33
Speaker 2: when I knew or when I saw that I could
37:35
Speaker 2: get access to the edge of it, even though it
37:37
Speaker 2: was just four acres, it's still exciting. And so this
37:42
Speaker 2: is another one of my top ten things is doing
37:44
Speaker 2: this last minute scouting. I just went and did a
37:47
Speaker 2: quick speed scout of this new property yesterday. What I'm
37:52
Speaker 2: trying to achieve in this quick speed scout is twofold
37:56
Speaker 2: number one. I want to get a lay of the land,
38:00
Speaker 2: just going out there quickly to get a sense of
38:02
Speaker 2: what's the access like where do I park, how do
38:05
Speaker 2: I get in these places, where will be the routes
38:07
Speaker 2: I can take in without spooking a bunch of deer.
38:10
Speaker 2: And then I want to figure out where's the food,
38:13
Speaker 2: where's the bedding, where's the travel? And you can figure
38:17
Speaker 2: that out relatively quickly, especially on a small property like this,
38:20
Speaker 2: right a four acres, you can relatively quickly figure out. Okay,
38:24
Speaker 2: obviously there's deer feeding in this cornfield. Obviously there's deer
38:28
Speaker 2: betting on the edges of this swamp and inside the
38:31
Speaker 2: swamp in high spots. But as I walked this little
38:34
Speaker 2: swath of ground, I ran up on a buck that
38:38
Speaker 2: was standing in the standing corn feeding, bumped him. And
38:42
Speaker 2: then later I bumped a nice buck out of a
38:45
Speaker 2: bed kind of on the edge of this swampy area,
38:48
Speaker 2: and some like tall, grassy, willowy stuff. So right away
38:51
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, okay, there's bucks in here. Right now,
38:53
Speaker 2: there's all sorts of sign all sorts of old rubs,
38:56
Speaker 2: old scrapes, beat down trails, all the good stuff you
39:00
Speaker 2: want to see. So I've done two things with this.
39:03
Speaker 2: I've figured out where the bedding is, where the feeding is.
39:05
Speaker 2: I've seen a bunch of the trails I identified a
39:08
Speaker 2: couple little pinch points. For example, there's like a like
39:12
Speaker 2: a canal or a channel, like a drainage ditch. I
39:14
Speaker 2: guess it'd be coming out of the swamp that butts
39:17
Speaker 2: up right to the edge of the cornfield. So this
39:20
Speaker 2: drainage ditch is full of water, it's pretty wide, not
39:23
Speaker 2: easy for deer to get across, And then it comes
39:25
Speaker 2: right up to the edge of that cornfield and stops
39:28
Speaker 2: maybe five yards ahead of it, and you can just
39:31
Speaker 2: see how all the deer, you know, rather than crossing
39:35
Speaker 2: this big drainage ditch, they all funnel around the top
39:38
Speaker 2: of that ditch in the edge of the cornfield. So
39:41
Speaker 2: here's a major travel pinch. Anything that wants to come
39:44
Speaker 2: from the north side and wants to get to the
39:46
Speaker 2: south side, a lot of these deer are going to
39:48
Speaker 2: move around this little corner. So right away I knew, Okay,
39:51
Speaker 2: this is a possible hunting location, and this is definitely
39:53
Speaker 2: a good spot for a camera. So I put a
39:55
Speaker 2: camera out and that's going to give me back to
39:59
Speaker 2: the summer scout that's going to help me assess the area.
40:02
Speaker 2: So again I'm not necessarily trying to pattern a deer
40:05
Speaker 2: with these cameras right now, I'm just trying to get
40:07
Speaker 2: a sense like, hey, am I right? Are there some
40:10
Speaker 2: older deer in this area like I would expect given
40:12
Speaker 2: the swamp, given the habitat, you know, could there be
40:16
Speaker 2: something worth chasing even though there's just a little four
40:18
Speaker 2: acre window I have here. And then number two. As
40:22
Speaker 2: I do that, I'm also looking for spots that might
40:25
Speaker 2: be worth coming back and hunting in the fall. So
40:27
Speaker 2: in this area, like for example, I found this pinch
40:31
Speaker 2: and then I started thinking, Okay, this is a great location.
40:34
Speaker 2: I can see this is like close to the bedding.
40:36
Speaker 2: It's this area that a lot of deer travel is
40:38
Speaker 2: going to want to be funneled through. Is there a
40:40
Speaker 2: tree around here I can hunt? And the answer to
40:43
Speaker 2: that was actually no, there's not a good tree to hunt.
40:46
Speaker 2: So what could I do? Well? I got to thinking, man,
40:49
Speaker 2: I really think this would be a place worth hunting,
40:51
Speaker 2: but there's not a tree. So what could I make
40:54
Speaker 2: work on the ground? And what I came up with
40:56
Speaker 2: was that actually, there's so much deer activity in this
40:59
Speaker 2: area that the corn field was like mowed down, Like
41:02
Speaker 2: the corn most of it was eaten down to like
41:04
Speaker 2: waste height. And I realized if I were to stand
41:07
Speaker 2: and hide in the standing corn about thirty yards back
41:11
Speaker 2: where it isn't mowed down by deer, you could actually
41:14
Speaker 2: hide on the ground in the standing corn and have
41:17
Speaker 2: a clear view right to the edge and where this
41:20
Speaker 2: water source butts up to it. So I went in
41:24
Speaker 2: there kind of found a perfect spot, marked a waypoint,
41:29
Speaker 2: and have a setup now where I know if I
41:32
Speaker 2: want to come back in here in October when the
41:34
Speaker 2: season's open, I have a pre planned location. I mapped
41:37
Speaker 2: it out to make sure I could see like shooting
41:39
Speaker 2: lanes to the pinch point, to a couple other spots.
41:41
Speaker 2: I found that perfect spot marked a trail, so I
41:45
Speaker 2: can go and actually hunt from within the standing corn,
41:48
Speaker 2: aiming out towards this ditch and this cleared out area
41:51
Speaker 2: where the deer have already been feeding and mowing down
41:53
Speaker 2: the corn. That's what I'm trying to do with this
41:57
Speaker 2: summer scouting is determine quality and like presence of deer
42:01
Speaker 2: with cameras, and then number two get some potential hunting
42:06
Speaker 2: locations planned out. I don't in most cases anymore going
42:10
Speaker 2: prep full tree stands anymore. Right, I'm a saddle hunter,
42:13
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of the time on new spots. I
42:16
Speaker 2: like to be pretty mobile. I don't want to get
42:18
Speaker 2: committed to anyone location too much. So in this case,
42:22
Speaker 2: I just found a spot like this for the ground.
42:25
Speaker 2: I found another spot where I found like probably this
42:27
Speaker 2: tree or that tree would be the ones, and I
42:30
Speaker 2: just marked those pins. So I didn't go in there
42:32
Speaker 2: and do any major prep work on the trees. I
42:34
Speaker 2: didn't go in there and hang a tree stand or
42:37
Speaker 2: a permanent set. I didn't trim a thousand tree limbs.
42:40
Speaker 2: I just marked a couple of trees. Now while I
42:42
Speaker 2: could walk around while I saw where the trails were.
42:45
Speaker 2: It'll make things a little bit easier for me if
42:47
Speaker 2: I do come back in October, I'll have like an
42:50
Speaker 2: easy idea, a quick idea of where I want to go. Now,
42:54
Speaker 2: that's kind of what I will do on some of
42:55
Speaker 2: these newer properties where I'm not committed to anyone spot
42:58
Speaker 2: in a big way. If I were to be doing
43:02
Speaker 2: my prep work on a property that I know I'm
43:04
Speaker 2: going to hunt a lot, it would look a little
43:06
Speaker 2: bit different. And I'll get to that in a second,
43:07
Speaker 2: because I definitely am doing some more thorough prep work
43:12
Speaker 2: in other locations. But when it comes to this new stuff,
43:15
Speaker 2: I'm trying to cover a bunch of ground. I'm trying
43:17
Speaker 2: to give myself a bunch of options, and so you know,
43:21
Speaker 2: this little four warker piece just eyeballed it. Took a
43:24
Speaker 2: quick walk, put two cameras out located to possible hunt locations,
43:28
Speaker 2: mark those, and now we're going to move on and
43:30
Speaker 2: wait and see what shows up there, and wait and
43:32
Speaker 2: see if it ends up being something i want to
43:33
Speaker 2: spend more time on. I've got another property like this
43:36
Speaker 2: that I picked up access to that I'm going to
43:38
Speaker 2: go later this week and do the same thing too.
43:40
Speaker 2: There's a couple other pieces of public that I'm going
43:42
Speaker 2: to do something similar, so again not doing not making
43:47
Speaker 2: a huge investment into them yet because I'm casting a
43:50
Speaker 2: wide net. I don't want to get stuck on any
43:53
Speaker 2: one piece. I want to cast a wide net, have
43:55
Speaker 2: a bunch of different options, and maybe the buckle pop
43:58
Speaker 2: on one of them but nothing on the other, or
44:00
Speaker 2: maybe I'll have time to hunt one more more than
44:03
Speaker 2: the other and I'll be able to spend more time
44:04
Speaker 2: prepping trees that or bounce around while I'm in hunting
44:07
Speaker 2: season and get to know it in that kind of way,
44:09
Speaker 2: but right now I'm just trying to get a sense
44:12
Speaker 2: of the place and have a starting point. Now, another
44:16
Speaker 2: one of these that'll be coming up is a pretty
44:21
Speaker 2: exciting new situation down in Illinois. And this kind of
44:24
Speaker 2: goes back to like always be asking, always be thinking
44:28
Speaker 2: about new access. This kind of came up when I
44:31
Speaker 2: was spending time with my buddies Casey Smith and Tyler
44:34
Speaker 2: Jones from the Element last week at a work thing.
44:37
Speaker 2: We were talking about how we really need to find
44:39
Speaker 2: a piece of ground that we can share and hunt together,
44:41
Speaker 2: and wouldn't it be great to be able to do
44:43
Speaker 2: some stuff kind of in collaboration, And we got to think, of, man,
44:47
Speaker 2: we just need to like send out some mass messages
44:50
Speaker 2: to anyone we know in like Illinois or Ohio and
44:54
Speaker 2: just see is there anything we might be able to
44:56
Speaker 2: get on. And long story short, one of our contacts
45:00
Speaker 2: that Casey reached out a shared contact, ended up happening
45:03
Speaker 2: to know of a person who might have some land
45:05
Speaker 2: they'd be willing to let us get on, maybe for
45:08
Speaker 2: a small lease fee or access to use their stuff
45:11
Speaker 2: and help them out with some things. And long story short,
45:14
Speaker 2: it looks like that's panned out. It looks like we
45:16
Speaker 2: have a few properties that the three of us could
45:19
Speaker 2: hunt in Illinois. And so our plan later this week
45:23
Speaker 2: is to go and do a speed scout similar to
45:25
Speaker 2: what I just discussed. I'm going to go down there
45:27
Speaker 2: and drive down there to Illinois and kind of burn
45:30
Speaker 2: across these properties as fast as I can, just to
45:33
Speaker 2: get cameras out with the same goals in mind which
45:36
Speaker 2: I mentioned are get a sense of the place, see
45:39
Speaker 2: what the quality deer is out there, and you know,
45:42
Speaker 2: maybe we'll get lucky and some of these deers stick around.
45:45
Speaker 2: But again I'm not trying to pattern on them right now.
45:47
Speaker 2: I just want to see, like a general vibe check
45:49
Speaker 2: is what I'm going for in the summer, and then
45:52
Speaker 2: again speed scouting, walking the borders, walking all the main
45:57
Speaker 2: interesting zones of habitat right I'm doing a pretty significant
46:01
Speaker 2: e scout for every one of these new properties ahead
46:04
Speaker 2: of time. And when I'm looking at that and trying
46:06
Speaker 2: to identify, you know, where does it look like there's
46:09
Speaker 2: the best cover, Where is the possible betting, where's the
46:12
Speaker 2: possible food, Where are the possible funnel funnels or pinch points?
46:16
Speaker 2: Where are the possible water sources. So mark all of
46:19
Speaker 2: that on my map that I'm looking at. I use
46:21
Speaker 2: ONYX for this, get that all done ahead of time.
46:25
Speaker 2: That way, when I show up in person and I've
46:27
Speaker 2: got one day to scout, I can then go and
46:30
Speaker 2: hit all of those highlights, so I don't need to
46:33
Speaker 2: cover every square inch. I can just go and check
46:36
Speaker 2: all the places that I thought had the best opportunities,
46:39
Speaker 2: that I believed were the most interesting, and then I
46:41
Speaker 2: can ground trooth them. I can then see, Okay, yes,
46:43
Speaker 2: this actually is awesome. Cover check market, this is a
46:47
Speaker 2: good betting era. And then when I'm in these different locations,
46:49
Speaker 2: then I'm also going to be pinning possible trees. So
46:53
Speaker 2: anytime I find something that I find that could be
46:56
Speaker 2: useful for a hunting location, Like maybe they'll be a
46:59
Speaker 2: little isolated corner of a bean field that pokes into
47:03
Speaker 2: some good bedding off of a ridge, and I see
47:06
Speaker 2: a patch of big oaks on the edge of it. Man,
47:09
Speaker 2: this could be a great early season location. Let's think
47:11
Speaker 2: about what the wind might be here, and let's try
47:14
Speaker 2: to find a tree or two that I could hunt,
47:17
Speaker 2: and I'll pin that. I'll try to find one that
47:19
Speaker 2: you know has good access. Maybe you know, maybe it
47:23
Speaker 2: makes sense to trim a couple of tree limbs off
47:24
Speaker 2: real quick. But again, in this kind of speedy scenario
47:28
Speaker 2: where it's a new place, I haven't been able to
47:31
Speaker 2: commit to it for a long period of time. I'm
47:33
Speaker 2: not going to go hung a day, hang a dozen stands.
47:37
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to get a bunch of starting points,
47:40
Speaker 2: and then when I start hunting a new place, I
47:42
Speaker 2: go in there with a sal and I hunt my
47:44
Speaker 2: way to the deer. So I'll start with a starting location.
47:48
Speaker 2: I'll observe, I'll learn, I'll adjust, I'll scout, i'll adjust,
47:51
Speaker 2: i'll watch, I'll adjust. I've really gotten away from hanging
47:55
Speaker 2: a bunch of stands on day one on a new
47:57
Speaker 2: property and doing a bunch of work, because then you
48:00
Speaker 2: kind of over commit yourself. And if you spend all
48:03
Speaker 2: this time putting up a permanent set and trimming out
48:06
Speaker 2: a thousand trees and cutting an access trail to this location,
48:09
Speaker 2: if you do that and then you hunt it, you
48:11
Speaker 2: hunt it, and it stinks. It's much harder to pick
48:15
Speaker 2: up and move to a new spot when you are
48:17
Speaker 2: so committed to a permanent location. So I've gotten away
48:21
Speaker 2: from that, very light and fast and adaptable. Yeah, that's
48:25
Speaker 2: my new approach now. So when we're there in Illinois,
48:28
Speaker 2: we're gonna do the speed scout. We're going to ground
48:31
Speaker 2: truth all these locations. We're going to mark some possible trees,
48:34
Speaker 2: We're gonna put up some cameras to do our vibe check,
48:37
Speaker 2: and then I'm probably gonna do an evening drive around
48:40
Speaker 2: the neighborhood again, getting a sense of the place, getting
48:44
Speaker 2: a sense of what our expectations should be for the area.
48:47
Speaker 2: Is this a place where there's a bunch of four
48:49
Speaker 2: and five year old bucks running around like we hope,
48:52
Speaker 2: let's see you know, is a good buck here like
48:54
Speaker 2: a four year old one? Or is it a five
48:58
Speaker 2: year old one? Sixty? Are there dear bigger than that?
49:02
Speaker 2: That's the kind of thing that you can determine in
49:04
Speaker 2: the summer. Again, yes, things change, but the general sense
49:08
Speaker 2: of the place, the general sense of the neighborhood is
49:12
Speaker 2: usually a good barometer for what you can expect to
49:14
Speaker 2: come fall. So that is That's what I've got going
49:19
Speaker 2: on when it comes to these new properties with these
49:22
Speaker 2: quick scouts, there's a lot of that happening over these
49:26
Speaker 2: coming weeks. I'm going to do some more of that,
49:28
Speaker 2: some kind of last minute public checks too. Did some
49:31
Speaker 2: of that in the spring. But there's just always more locations, right,
49:35
Speaker 2: And I'm trying to get better since I don't have
49:40
Speaker 2: I don't own a bunch of big farms, I don't
49:41
Speaker 2: own anything like that. What I've found that I need
49:44
Speaker 2: to do is have a lot of different small things,
49:48
Speaker 2: a lot of different opportunities, because if you are dependent
49:51
Speaker 2: on any one spot, which I have been in the past,
49:53
Speaker 2: sometimes you can get yourself in a bad spot if
49:57
Speaker 2: that location is, you know, not producing for whatever reason.
50:02
Speaker 2: Maybe there's more pressure around it, or maybe the one
50:04
Speaker 2: deer year after got shot by a neighbor, or maybe
50:07
Speaker 2: the winds just wrong for most of the farm for
50:10
Speaker 2: a whole week, whatever it is. If you are beholden
50:14
Speaker 2: to a single location, you just inevitably are going to
50:18
Speaker 2: find yourself in times when it's just not right and
50:22
Speaker 2: you're stuck at home. I don't want to be stuck
50:24
Speaker 2: at home, So I'm trying to get better every year
50:27
Speaker 2: at adding new places, even though I keep losing them,
50:30
Speaker 2: trying to add these little spots, and public land is
50:33
Speaker 2: a great option for that, as well, because there is
50:35
Speaker 2: great opportunity on public land, you have to work hard
50:38
Speaker 2: at it, you have to search these places out. But
50:41
Speaker 2: you know, one way I like to look at this
50:44
Speaker 2: is that you know, I might spend the best weather days,
50:46
Speaker 2: the best conditioned days, in my best private land locations,
50:50
Speaker 2: but then there's going to be a Friday night or
50:51
Speaker 2: a Saturday night, inevitably during the hunting season when the
50:54
Speaker 2: conditions aren't great, and you might say, well, I don't
50:57
Speaker 2: want to hunt my good spots right now because I
50:59
Speaker 2: don't want to blow it up on a bad day.
51:02
Speaker 2: But at the same time, you want to hunt. So
51:04
Speaker 2: this is a great opportunity if you have these places
51:06
Speaker 2: planned out and scouted and have some ideas on the board.
51:10
Speaker 2: On the maybe not great day, go and hunt those
51:13
Speaker 2: public spots and sure, maybe it's not a great night
51:17
Speaker 2: and you don't see anything, but no harm, no fault,
51:19
Speaker 2: you didn't blow up your good things, no big deal.
51:22
Speaker 2: On the flip side, maybe get lucky. Maybe you discover
51:26
Speaker 2: this spot's actually better than you thought. Can you go
51:28
Speaker 2: in there and you see a bunch of sign and
51:30
Speaker 2: you realize you want to put more time to it,
51:32
Speaker 2: or maybe you see a great buck maybe you shoot
51:34
Speaker 2: a deer when you never expected it, because deer don't
51:38
Speaker 2: always follow the playbook. Deer don't always do what we
51:41
Speaker 2: think they'll do. So you want to be out there
51:44
Speaker 2: as much as possible to take advantage of these freak
51:49
Speaker 2: mother nature kind of events. And if you're sitting on
51:52
Speaker 2: the couch because you don't want to hunt your good
51:54
Speaker 2: private spots, you might be missing out. So for that reason,
51:59
Speaker 2: adding some more public scout into my repertoire for this
52:02
Speaker 2: last month, too, suggest you do the same. So that's
52:15
Speaker 2: property access, that is last minute speeds gouting new properties,
52:19
Speaker 2: which I'm doing a lot of back to prepping on
52:24
Speaker 2: committed properties which I have as well, so the properties
52:28
Speaker 2: that you have hunted for years in the past and
52:30
Speaker 2: you continue to do. So the next thing that I'm
52:33
Speaker 2: doing that I suggest you do is go and check
52:36
Speaker 2: every one of your sets that you currently have up.
52:39
Speaker 2: So if you have tree stand locations or prep saddle
52:42
Speaker 2: trees or blinds that are out there all year round,
52:46
Speaker 2: you got to go check them every year. And so
52:48
Speaker 2: I make a point every late summer to go and
52:53
Speaker 2: do a couple of things. Number one, I go and
52:55
Speaker 2: check the straps on any sticks and stands, and make
53:00
Speaker 2: sure the straps are number one, loosened up enough so
53:03
Speaker 2: that you know they account for the growth of the tree.
53:05
Speaker 2: You don't want them stretched out because that'll lead to
53:07
Speaker 2: them breaking and inhibiting the tree growth. So I make
53:10
Speaker 2: sure that the tree straps are loosened a little bit.
53:13
Speaker 2: I then check the straps, of course, to make sure
53:15
Speaker 2: they're not ripped or torn or damaged in any kind
53:17
Speaker 2: of way. I do the same thing to every tree stand.
53:20
Speaker 2: Adjust the straps, check all the you know, connection points
53:24
Speaker 2: to make sure the tree stands are safe and good
53:26
Speaker 2: to use, make sure my safety lines are in there.
53:30
Speaker 2: I then will trim out every one of these stands.
53:32
Speaker 2: So any permanent location, like a spot that I keep
53:35
Speaker 2: maintained year for year, these are the spots where I'll
53:39
Speaker 2: do some significant you know, tree limb cutting. Making sure
53:42
Speaker 2: I've got good lanes, making sure, as I mentioned earlier,
53:45
Speaker 2: that I have access trails to them, making sure that
53:48
Speaker 2: I have room around the base of the tree to
53:51
Speaker 2: lay my bow down and to get hooked into the tree,
53:54
Speaker 2: or to throw my lineman's belt around, whatever it might be.
53:57
Speaker 2: I'm doing a lot of that, So lanes, straps, access trails.
54:00
Speaker 2: Another thing I do in these locations is I will
54:03
Speaker 2: also every year try to improve these sets a little bit.
54:07
Speaker 2: One way I found to do that is by modifying
54:11
Speaker 2: maybe the deer movement just a little bit. Like try
54:13
Speaker 2: to like if you've hunted a location year after year
54:17
Speaker 2: and you found that a lot of deer, maybe fifty
54:20
Speaker 2: percent of the deer travel a secondary trail that's just
54:22
Speaker 2: out of range, well, now is a great time to
54:25
Speaker 2: go and cut a tree or two and block part
54:29
Speaker 2: of that trail that pushes them. Hopefully that funnels them
54:32
Speaker 2: closer to you into range. So you can manipulate deer
54:36
Speaker 2: movement a little bit by blocking trails or opening trails
54:39
Speaker 2: where you want them. You could do this and a
54:43
Speaker 2: food plot, you might lay a tree top down across
54:47
Speaker 2: part of the food plot so that any deer that's
54:50
Speaker 2: coming through that area has to go around that tree limb,
54:53
Speaker 2: which then pushes them to ain shooting range maybe of
54:56
Speaker 2: a stand location. That type of thing I'm doing and
54:59
Speaker 2: is definitely worth doing this time of year. Speaking of
55:03
Speaker 2: modifying deer movement, another thing that I'm adding to the
55:07
Speaker 2: to do list right now. Anywhere that I hunt a
55:11
Speaker 2: food plot or open field, I am putting in a
55:14
Speaker 2: scrape tree location where I want it. So what I
55:17
Speaker 2: mean by that is I am either adding or reopening
55:22
Speaker 2: a mock scrape underneath a real tree if there's a
55:25
Speaker 2: spot like this within shooting range, or if not, I
55:28
Speaker 2: am going to create a fake scrape tree location. I
55:33
Speaker 2: do this for a couple of reasons. Number One, mock
55:36
Speaker 2: scrapes are terrific locations to get trail camp pictures, both
55:41
Speaker 2: in the summer and during the hunting season. I like
55:44
Speaker 2: to have a location like this buy some of my
55:46
Speaker 2: top tree stand locations, especially if it's like an open
55:50
Speaker 2: field there, like we're talking about, because we'll just use
55:54
Speaker 2: one of my examples. I have at like an acre ach.
55:58
Speaker 2: Yeah about an acre food plot in one of these spots,
56:02
Speaker 2: and there's not a lot of trees on it, and
56:05
Speaker 2: deer will kind of come in and out of it.
56:07
Speaker 2: In many different locations, it's hard to zero in on
56:10
Speaker 2: the entry or exits into this food source, but there's
56:12
Speaker 2: deer comeing to it. But by putting a scrape tree
56:15
Speaker 2: in the middle of that field, it is a magnet
56:18
Speaker 2: for deer activity. So you can take that acre worth
56:22
Speaker 2: of deer travel and narrow a bunch of it down
56:24
Speaker 2: into this one spot right where you want it. Because
56:28
Speaker 2: just like bass will be attracted to a Christmas tree
56:31
Speaker 2: sunk in the middle of a pond, deer will be
56:35
Speaker 2: attracted to a single tree, a single scrape location in
56:38
Speaker 2: the middle of an opening because it is it's like
56:40
Speaker 2: the water cooler. A scrape is a message board, is
56:43
Speaker 2: a communication center for deer, and if it's the only
56:47
Speaker 2: thing like that in an open area, they're just they're
56:50
Speaker 2: going to be pulled to it like with a tractor beam.
56:53
Speaker 2: And so I will add these scrape trees to each
56:56
Speaker 2: one of my food plots in the open within shooting,
57:00
Speaker 2: so that not only can I get pictures, but also
57:03
Speaker 2: you have this possible increased chance of a deer that's
57:07
Speaker 2: entering that area to come within range of you and
57:10
Speaker 2: to also stop where you want him, so that scrape
57:14
Speaker 2: not only gets him close, but he gets them stopping
57:17
Speaker 2: gets him focused on something other than you, because he's
57:19
Speaker 2: focused on that scrape, and if you do it right,
57:22
Speaker 2: he'll hopefully be facing that scrape in a direction that
57:26
Speaker 2: gives you a good broadside or quartern away shop. So
57:31
Speaker 2: highly recommend if you have any of these openings. If
57:33
Speaker 2: it's a meadow or a crp field, or a food plot,
57:37
Speaker 2: or the inside corner of a crop field that doesn't
57:39
Speaker 2: get planted. This is something that can really be a
57:42
Speaker 2: useful add on for any stand location. And I'll tell
57:46
Speaker 2: you I've used a lot of different things to achieve this.
57:49
Speaker 2: I've tried a lot of different ways, and I've kind
57:51
Speaker 2: of come upon my favorite scrape tree method. What I
57:57
Speaker 2: found works best for me is to cut down a
58:00
Speaker 2: tree about four to six inches in diameter, so a
58:06
Speaker 2: pretty hefty sized tree. I don't want a little tree.
58:09
Speaker 2: I've used little trees in the past, they just don't
58:12
Speaker 2: seem to work as well for me. I like a
58:14
Speaker 2: big tree because a big tree can be sunk deep
58:17
Speaker 2: down into the ground, can be locked into place. I
58:21
Speaker 2: like to bury it like at least two, if not
58:23
Speaker 2: three feet deep, using postal diggers, and then I really
58:27
Speaker 2: try to pack in the dirt around it. I know
58:29
Speaker 2: some people will put gravel or cement around it. I
58:31
Speaker 2: haven't done that, but you really want it firmly in place.
58:35
Speaker 2: And what you get with that big tree is that
58:39
Speaker 2: eight number one. It's much less likely for a deer
58:43
Speaker 2: to knock that out of the ground, or bend it over,
58:46
Speaker 2: or you know, cant it in any kind of way.
58:48
Speaker 2: These little trees they've used in the past just never
58:50
Speaker 2: seem to hold up because what happens is come fall,
58:54
Speaker 2: Bucks will use this scrape tree and they will rub
58:56
Speaker 2: it and push it and do all sorts of stuff
58:58
Speaker 2: to it. And if you've got a little dinky tree,
59:01
Speaker 2: they just beat it up too much. But if I
59:03
Speaker 2: have a four to six inch diameter post essentially driven
59:08
Speaker 2: into the ground, Bucks can work that and it won't
59:12
Speaker 2: it won't destroy it. But what I will have is
59:15
Speaker 2: you will see this post this tree, especially if it's
59:17
Speaker 2: a real tree. I've not tried using like a what
59:23
Speaker 2: am I trying to stay here? A post that you
59:26
Speaker 2: can buy at the store. I've not used a post
59:29
Speaker 2: you can buy at the hardware store. But what I
59:31
Speaker 2: do know works with a real tree is that they
59:34
Speaker 2: will rub up on that and they enjoy all the
59:36
Speaker 2: benefits of a real natural rub Right there's there's some
59:40
Speaker 2: sap in there still, they get the peeling effect, they
59:42
Speaker 2: can leave their scent on. It's very natural thing. So
59:45
Speaker 2: I've created effectively a manufactured rubbing post. And in the
59:50
Speaker 2: past I used to try to cut down a tree
59:53
Speaker 2: and use the actual branches attached to that tree. But
59:55
Speaker 2: I've gotten away from that. I've started actually buying or
1:00:00
Speaker 2: doing this yourself. I've done it myself and I've bought
1:00:02
Speaker 2: the tool for it, but effectively creating a licking branch
1:00:06
Speaker 2: holder and attaching that to the post. And the thing
1:00:09
Speaker 2: I found that I like the most is a tool
1:00:11
Speaker 2: called the scrape stick, I think, and it is a
1:00:17
Speaker 2: tool that you can either strap or drill into your
1:00:20
Speaker 2: post and it has then a adjustable limb holder. So
1:00:25
Speaker 2: imagine like a fishing pole holder where you can just
1:00:29
Speaker 2: stick the butt into your fishing pole into this tube. Well,
1:00:32
Speaker 2: this tube is instead of a fishing pole. It's there
1:00:35
Speaker 2: to hold your licking branch and then it has an
1:00:38
Speaker 2: adjustment on it so you can adjust the angle of
1:00:40
Speaker 2: tilt for that fishing pole holder. So what you can
1:00:43
Speaker 2: do is go find an ideal licking branch for me.
1:00:47
Speaker 2: I want something that's very leafy, very bushy. I like
1:00:51
Speaker 2: oak trees a lot, and then I've also had success
1:00:54
Speaker 2: with like cedar limbs, conifers, that kind of stuff, but
1:00:57
Speaker 2: I would say oaks are usually my number one. So
1:01:01
Speaker 2: let's say I've got my post buried two to three
1:01:04
Speaker 2: feet deep in the middle of the food plot, within
1:01:06
Speaker 2: shooting range of my stand. I then attached the scrape stickholder,
1:01:10
Speaker 2: the the you know, fishing pole holder type thing, and
1:01:14
Speaker 2: I angle that I get that to a height about
1:01:17
Speaker 2: maybe just below chest height, I guess, give or take.
1:01:21
Speaker 2: And then I'm going to, based on the limb that
1:01:23
Speaker 2: licking branch, adjust the angle so that that licking branch
1:01:28
Speaker 2: is about deer head height. And I have found that
1:01:33
Speaker 2: you do not want it too high. I sometimes have
1:01:36
Speaker 2: accidentally made my licking branch a little bit too high,
1:01:38
Speaker 2: like more like my eye level. And you got to remember,
1:01:41
Speaker 2: deer is shorter than you realize, Like in real life,
1:01:45
Speaker 2: most deer are not that tall. Yeah, big mature buck
1:01:49
Speaker 2: might be. But you want the doze and young deer
1:01:53
Speaker 2: to be able to rub their faces and their noses
1:01:55
Speaker 2: and their glands in that leafy licking branch too. And
1:02:00
Speaker 2: if those doughs can't reach it, they can't leave as
1:02:02
Speaker 2: much scent. There's less of an attraction for the bucks.
1:02:04
Speaker 2: So do your licking branch a little bit lower than
1:02:07
Speaker 2: at least I have to tell myself to do my
1:02:09
Speaker 2: licking branch a little bit lower than I think is right,
1:02:13
Speaker 2: because too many times I've just seen these doughs come
1:02:16
Speaker 2: up to the camera and the licking branch and they're
1:02:19
Speaker 2: you know, not being able to reach it. So that's
1:02:22
Speaker 2: something that I'm doing in a handful of different locations,
1:02:25
Speaker 2: is creating this like ideal scrape, big post, big oak
1:02:29
Speaker 2: tree limb, perfect height. I kick out a really big,
1:02:34
Speaker 2: very obvious scrape in the ground. You know, I've done
1:02:37
Speaker 2: different scent things in the past to try to kickstart
1:02:41
Speaker 2: a mock scrape like that. I've peed in it myself
1:02:43
Speaker 2: and that seems to work fine. I'm trying something this
1:02:47
Speaker 2: year called DH three from a friend who's got a
1:02:50
Speaker 2: new company. It's got a licking branch scent and a
1:02:54
Speaker 2: synthetic urine TBD and all that kind of stuff. But
1:02:59
Speaker 2: that's something I'm trying some different places. But whatever you need,
1:03:03
Speaker 2: open up a scrape, have a licking branch. If it's
1:03:05
Speaker 2: in a obvious location where it stands out, deer going
1:03:09
Speaker 2: to use it. And then I always like to have
1:03:12
Speaker 2: one of my cameras facing these spots because they become
1:03:15
Speaker 2: a great place to get an idea of what's visiting
1:03:17
Speaker 2: these open areas. So scrape trees big project of mine
1:03:22
Speaker 2: this time of year, and again I try to get
1:03:25
Speaker 2: these in by the end of August, and I like
1:03:27
Speaker 2: to not do them too early. This is a key thing,
1:03:29
Speaker 2: is that your scrape trees, especially if you are putting
1:03:33
Speaker 2: on a limb, I don't want to have to change
1:03:35
Speaker 2: that limb a bunch. I don't want to go in
1:03:37
Speaker 2: there in the middle of the hunting season and walk
1:03:39
Speaker 2: around these places. So most of the time I will
1:03:42
Speaker 2: put a limb, a licking branch limb on these fake
1:03:45
Speaker 2: scrapes at the very end of August. It's the last
1:03:48
Speaker 2: thing I do, and then they still hold their leaves
1:03:51
Speaker 2: and are good into October and maybe November. Especially if
1:03:55
Speaker 2: you use oaks, like a big leafy oak seems to
1:03:57
Speaker 2: hold onto those leaves very well. For some reason, I've
1:04:00
Speaker 2: found that that kind of licking branch would be a
1:04:03
Speaker 2: little bit more attractive. So let's see here, We've talked
1:04:08
Speaker 2: about checking and improving our old sets. We've talked about
1:04:11
Speaker 2: access routes, glassing, summer photos, habitat work, shooting your bow,
1:04:17
Speaker 2: prepping new locations. You know, I guess I will say
1:04:21
Speaker 2: that one thing I will do on these committed properties,
1:04:24
Speaker 2: so kind of differentiating here the new properties like my
1:04:29
Speaker 2: wide net bunch of new spots, I'm not prepping trees.
1:04:32
Speaker 2: I'm just having trees marked for my mobile running gun possibilities.
1:04:37
Speaker 2: But on properties that I'm for suregun hunt that I
1:04:40
Speaker 2: have hunted in the past and I definitely will here
1:04:42
Speaker 2: again in the future, I will still prep trees for saddles, right, So,
1:04:48
Speaker 2: even though I don't put as mainy tree stands up
1:04:49
Speaker 2: as I used to, I still like to have new
1:04:52
Speaker 2: trees prepped for saddles, especially in locations that I've found
1:04:56
Speaker 2: to be historically good. So like I've run, I've done
1:04:59
Speaker 2: a bunch of run and gun hunting, hunting new places,
1:05:01
Speaker 2: trying new spots, and over the years I found like, man,
1:05:04
Speaker 2: this is the place that I keep coming back to
1:05:06
Speaker 2: a year after year, or this is a spot like
1:05:08
Speaker 2: just needs to have a prepped location. So something I'm
1:05:11
Speaker 2: doing over the coming weeks is going to those locations
1:05:14
Speaker 2: and trimming around the tree to make sure I can
1:05:16
Speaker 2: easily maneuver at the base. So I talked about this earlier,
1:05:20
Speaker 2: but it's an important thing, making sure there's room around
1:05:23
Speaker 2: the base of the tree to set down your backpack
1:05:25
Speaker 2: or your bow to get your sticks on the tree,
1:05:28
Speaker 2: to do all that kind of stuff. Make sure that
1:05:31
Speaker 2: the tree is prepped up so you can put your
1:05:33
Speaker 2: sticks up, or maybe even install permanent tree steps or
1:05:38
Speaker 2: you know, a set of ladder steps, whatever it is.
1:05:42
Speaker 2: If this is one of those locations that you find
1:05:43
Speaker 2: yourself coming back to over and over, maybe it makes
1:05:46
Speaker 2: sense to put a permanent way to get up into it.
1:05:50
Speaker 2: And then finally I will go up in the tree
1:05:52
Speaker 2: with my saddle and identify shooting lanes that I want
1:05:55
Speaker 2: to clear. It's nice to have, even with a saddle.
1:05:58
Speaker 2: It's nice to have pre set trees that you can
1:06:01
Speaker 2: just slip to climb right up and know like you're
1:06:04
Speaker 2: gonna have great shooting lanes, you're gonna have the cover
1:06:07
Speaker 2: you need, and you can be as efficient and quiet
1:06:10
Speaker 2: as possible. Yes, this is extra work, but it's still
1:06:13
Speaker 2: not nearly as bad as doing twenty different tree stands.
1:06:17
Speaker 2: This way, you can just have you know, ten fifteen
1:06:20
Speaker 2: trees prepped and ready, and then you bounce around with
1:06:23
Speaker 2: your saddle whenever you want to hit one of those spots.
1:06:26
Speaker 2: So that is what I'm doing with my tree prep.
1:06:32
Speaker 2: Last thing cameras. We talked about summer cameras in summer
1:06:37
Speaker 2: intel and how you have to take it all with
1:06:39
Speaker 2: a grain of salt. What I didn't mention is that
1:06:42
Speaker 2: my summer camera locations are different usually from my fall
1:06:47
Speaker 2: my fall camera location. So a summer camera location is
1:06:50
Speaker 2: going to be very It's gonna be very related to
1:06:54
Speaker 2: summer food because deer are specially slaves to the stomach
1:06:57
Speaker 2: in the summer, and they're feeding on things like at
1:07:00
Speaker 2: least an agg country that I hunt, they're feeding on
1:07:03
Speaker 2: soybeans or alfalfa. But come September or October, that's going
1:07:08
Speaker 2: to start to shift. So I like to make my
1:07:10
Speaker 2: camera adjustments at the end of August, very beginning of
1:07:13
Speaker 2: September and move those cameras to the spots I want
1:07:17
Speaker 2: them to be in leading in the hunting season. So
1:07:20
Speaker 2: this is going to be, you know, on the edges
1:07:22
Speaker 2: of betting and staging where I think like they'll be
1:07:25
Speaker 2: heading to fall food sources. So a staging area in
1:07:29
Speaker 2: between a betting area and a cornfield. The action might
1:07:32
Speaker 2: not be there right now alongside of cornfield because they're
1:07:35
Speaker 2: just not feeding in there as much right now, But
1:07:38
Speaker 2: come October, come November, they absolutely will. So I'm going
1:07:41
Speaker 2: to move my cameras to those kinds of spots now.
1:07:44
Speaker 2: I'm going to, like, if there's a spot deep in
1:07:46
Speaker 2: the timber in some backwoods funnel location that historically is
1:07:51
Speaker 2: really good in the rut, I don't want to go
1:07:53
Speaker 2: hang on camera in October. I want to hang that
1:07:55
Speaker 2: camera now, even though it won't be good for another
1:07:58
Speaker 2: month and a half. So important thing here is that
1:08:01
Speaker 2: when you're putting up your cameras at the end of
1:08:02
Speaker 2: August or early September, make sure you've got a power solution,
1:08:06
Speaker 2: either with a solar panel or really good lithium batteries
1:08:10
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. Make sure that you know that
1:08:12
Speaker 2: you can put your cameras up now and not need
1:08:14
Speaker 2: to worry about them, you know, just before hunting season
1:08:17
Speaker 2: or in the middle of hunting season, especially if it's
1:08:19
Speaker 2: in a hard to get to place. So that's the
1:08:23
Speaker 2: final thing. I'm just moving all my cameras to their
1:08:25
Speaker 2: final spots before the hunting season, you know, and ideally
1:08:29
Speaker 2: in locations that will give me good early season intel.
1:08:31
Speaker 2: And really I can keep a lot of these cameras
1:08:34
Speaker 2: up all season these days, so putting them in those
1:08:36
Speaker 2: spots that will get me the information that I know
1:08:38
Speaker 2: I'm gonna need in October, in November, or whatever. It
1:08:43
Speaker 2: might be. A final note, I suppose on these fall
1:08:47
Speaker 2: camera locations, almost always I will make sure that there
1:08:51
Speaker 2: is a mock scrape or a real scrape in front
1:08:54
Speaker 2: of that camera. So by that, I mean, let's go
1:08:58
Speaker 2: back to that stage in location. Let's say I know
1:09:01
Speaker 2: I want a camera in a staging area between a
1:09:04
Speaker 2: bedding area and the cornfield, because that's gonna be good
1:09:06
Speaker 2: come October. Okay, So if I'm going, then I'm walking
1:09:09
Speaker 2: through the staging area, which is like mixed cover in
1:09:12
Speaker 2: between the bedding and the food. As I walk through
1:09:14
Speaker 2: that mixed cover, sure, I'm going to look for trails. Sure,
1:09:17
Speaker 2: I'm going to look for convergences of travel or pinch
1:09:20
Speaker 2: points of travel in between there. But I will also
1:09:23
Speaker 2: be looking like, is there a historical straight scrape. Is
1:09:26
Speaker 2: there a big old scrape that's been used year after
1:09:29
Speaker 2: year after year that's going to be like the spot
1:09:31
Speaker 2: within the spot for the camera. And if not, if
1:09:33
Speaker 2: maybe I just have like three trails that all come
1:09:36
Speaker 2: together at a crete crossing in this staging area, that's
1:09:39
Speaker 2: pretty good. I'm going to add a licking branch in
1:09:41
Speaker 2: front of it to have that little extra attraction or
1:09:44
Speaker 2: that little extra thing to stop a deer right or
1:09:47
Speaker 2: I want it for the picture, and I'm going to
1:09:50
Speaker 2: have that on. I mean, I have a hard time
1:09:52
Speaker 2: thinking of any place I wouldn't have that. I will
1:09:55
Speaker 2: always have a mox scrape. If there's not a scrape,
1:09:58
Speaker 2: I'm going to make sure that there's the licking branch.
1:10:00
Speaker 2: Either I bend down into the zone or or make
1:10:03
Speaker 2: sure I pick my camera angle to have some kind
1:10:06
Speaker 2: of liking branch in the frame, and I will kick
1:10:09
Speaker 2: out a scuffed up area in front of it, make
1:10:11
Speaker 2: sure that looking branch is present, Put some scent, you know,
1:10:14
Speaker 2: take a take a leak in at whatever I got
1:10:16
Speaker 2: to do to make sure that I have a chance
1:10:18
Speaker 2: of a scrape, you know, starting to get used there
1:10:21
Speaker 2: in front of the camera. I almost always always always
1:10:24
Speaker 2: sweeten the deal with that mock scrape. And that's what
1:10:28
Speaker 2: I'm doing. That is the final piece of the puzzle.
1:10:31
Speaker 2: Like I said, I try to do that at the
1:10:32
Speaker 2: end of the summer because I want to make sure
1:10:35
Speaker 2: that I'm taking advantage of the shift which happens in
1:10:38
Speaker 2: the beginning of September. And this is this is another
1:10:41
Speaker 2: good point. You can do things in August that in
1:10:47
Speaker 2: September might really mess stuff up. But if you do
1:10:49
Speaker 2: it in August, not only is it a long ways
1:10:51
Speaker 2: away from opening day at least if you are hunting
1:10:54
Speaker 2: somewhere like I am, where opening day is until October,
1:10:57
Speaker 2: but there's that rain shift. Remember I always look at
1:10:59
Speaker 2: like September Uber seven is when those bucks are usually
1:11:02
Speaker 2: shifting by. And so if I do a big project
1:11:06
Speaker 2: at the end of August, I might be mucking up
1:11:08
Speaker 2: this spot and putting a camera on the staging area,
1:11:10
Speaker 2: and the bucks that I'll be hunting in a month
1:11:13
Speaker 2: might not even be here yet. They might be a
1:11:15
Speaker 2: mile down the road. But if I were doing this
1:11:17
Speaker 2: project on September fifteenth, well, every buck who's going to
1:11:21
Speaker 2: be here for the hunting season, he's here now, and
1:11:23
Speaker 2: he's smelling this, and he's hearing this or seeing this.
1:11:26
Speaker 2: So I like to get it done well ahead of that.
1:11:29
Speaker 2: Give these dear time to calm down, give these dear
1:11:32
Speaker 2: time for the new ones to move into the area,
1:11:35
Speaker 2: and make sure that I am ready both with cameras
1:11:37
Speaker 2: and fall locations. Trees prepped, saddle locations pinned, a plan
1:11:44
Speaker 2: in place, access trails cut, and getting as much laid
1:11:49
Speaker 2: out as possible, even though you know that there will
1:11:52
Speaker 2: be new ideas to try out come fall, even though
1:11:56
Speaker 2: you know things won't go quite as you planned. If
1:11:59
Speaker 2: you have a well prepared playing field, it gives you
1:12:04
Speaker 2: an opportunity to start from a position of power. I
1:12:08
Speaker 2: think would be one way to think about this, like,
1:12:10
Speaker 2: if you show up unprepared at all, you're just kind
1:12:14
Speaker 2: of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.
1:12:17
Speaker 2: But if you show up with a well prepared plan,
1:12:21
Speaker 2: you at least can start well. You got to adjust,
1:12:25
Speaker 2: you need to pivot sometimes you need to learn in
1:12:27
Speaker 2: the fly. But start well prepared in your hunting season
1:12:31
Speaker 2: will go much much more smoothly. It will be much
1:12:35
Speaker 2: more enjoyable, and you'll have pretty darn good odds to
1:12:39
Speaker 2: wrap attack on something. That is what I am doing
1:12:44
Speaker 2: over these coming weeks. That's my top ten preseason tasks.
1:12:49
Speaker 2: Those are the projects I'm focusing on. These are the
1:12:51
Speaker 2: types of projects I would suggest you consider if you
1:12:54
Speaker 2: were not already. I would love to answer any questions
1:12:58
Speaker 2: you guys have about these, so please head on over
1:13:00
Speaker 2: to Probably the Wired to Hunt Instagram would be the
1:13:03
Speaker 2: best place for you to message me or leave a
1:13:05
Speaker 2: comment or We also have video versions of this podcast,
1:13:10
Speaker 2: so if you go to the Meat Eater podcast Network
1:13:13
Speaker 2: YouTube channel, comment on this YouTube video for the podcast
1:13:18
Speaker 2: with your questions and I would happily answer your questions
1:13:21
Speaker 2: there too. But I hope this is helpful. I thought
1:13:25
Speaker 2: this would be a good exercise for me to walk
1:13:27
Speaker 2: through these things to make sure I'm staying up on them,
1:13:30
Speaker 2: to make sure that I'm incentivized to stick with my plan,
1:13:33
Speaker 2: to keep on checking things off my list, to talk
1:13:36
Speaker 2: through all these things and make sure I'm not forgetting
1:13:38
Speaker 2: something to which I don't think I am. The writing
1:13:40
Speaker 2: things down thing does help, so I'm feeling good about this.
1:13:44
Speaker 2: I'm chipping things off the list, checking things off the list,
1:13:47
Speaker 2: chipping away at them and makings of progress, and I'm
1:13:51
Speaker 2: very excited. It's an amazing time of year. It's just
1:13:55
Speaker 2: a lot of hope, a lot of anticipation, and before
1:13:59
Speaker 2: you know it, hunting. So make sure you are working
1:14:02
Speaker 2: on a list of your own. Make sure you check
1:14:05
Speaker 2: out those other podcasts I mentioned at the top, Episode
1:14:08
Speaker 2: number two ninety nine with Adam Hayes. Is all about
1:14:11
Speaker 2: finding the best bucks in your neighborhood, seeking them out,
1:14:14
Speaker 2: getting access, and putting together a plan. I think that's
1:14:16
Speaker 2: really relevant to what we're talking about here. And then
1:14:19
Speaker 2: check out episode four forty nine Mastering September. That's going
1:14:23
Speaker 2: to be all about tactics to use during this first
1:14:26
Speaker 2: month of the hunting season if you start in September,
1:14:29
Speaker 2: and I think there's some good things to get brushed
1:14:31
Speaker 2: up on. So well, that all said, I appreciate you
1:14:35
Speaker 2: tuning in, thank you for being here, best of luck
1:14:38
Speaker 2: with your final summer projects, and until next week, stay
1:14:43
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt.