Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #150: “The Professor” Joe Elsinger Takes Us To DIY Big Buck School

Transcript

Wired To Hunt Podcast #150: “The Professor” Joe Elsinger Takes Us To DIY Big Buck School · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number one hundred and
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: fifty and today the show we are joined by a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: super successful d I Y public land deer hunter known
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: by some as the Professor, Joe Elsinger. And this, in
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: my opinion, is one of the most interesting and helpful
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: interviews we've recorded in a long time. So get ready
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: for some serious learning. All right, Welcome to the Wire
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by SI Gear. And
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: today on the show, we are diving deep into the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: mind of a super successful d I Y public land
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: deer hunter, a man known by um as the Professor
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and to the rest of the world by the name
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: of Joe el Singer. And today we're going to poke
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and prod and question and harass Joe until he shares
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: with us everything we need to know to have the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: same kind of deer hunting success that he's had. So
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: what do you think, Dan, does that sound like a
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: good strategy for today? Uh? Yeah, it does. I've been
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: thinking about property in general. Uh, today I called I
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: called today an access route day because for some reason
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I get in these days where I have these days
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: where I just think a lot about access routes. I
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: don't know why that's good. Access routes are important. Did
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: you come to any kind of like monumental conclusion. Do
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: you have a new access route planned or you're gonna
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: call someone new to get permission on a neighboring property
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: or something good like that. Yeah, a little bit of
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: all that. Um, I don't know if you remember me
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: talking about using cricks at the beginning of this past
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: year to access some stand locations. Well, because I tagged
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: out so early, I didn't I didn't do any of that.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: So this year I'm gonna try to implement a little
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: bit more of that strategy. I like it. Do you
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: have like a specific crick that you're thinking about? I mean,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: is that a general idea or do you have like specifics,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: like to get to this stand or I want to
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: stand off this creek? Right? I need I have some
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: specifics already. UM, I'll go in. I'll hang the stand
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: here probably in July June or July, and that way
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: it's up. Uh. And the only thing that I'll need
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to do is probably put the bottom two sticks on
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: and so then so then that's all I need to
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: do for the setup. Right now, my problem that I'm
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: running across is do I leave my truck parked on
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the road or not? And I don't know if I
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: like that idea. So A I might have somebody drop
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: me off, or be I might um talk to a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: farmer just to see if I can park my truck
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: in their field. Now, why don't you want to park
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: on the road just because you're worried about your truck
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: getting messed with or you people know you're hunting there,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: or what a little bit of both? Um, dude, I
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: there was a time when I was hunting back to
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Shipwreck this big deer. In the first two years, I
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: almost had the place to myself. And then, you know,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, people must have recognized put me in
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: my truck together. And then the next couple of years,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: more and more and more people started hunting that property.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And now I don't even hunt that property anymore. So
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I got a question about that. Well, where do you
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: stand on stickers on your truck? Do you have any
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: details or stickers hunting related on your truck? Uh, not
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: on my truck. No, I don't have any. I don't.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, for some of that, it's just a big
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: hey look at me sign And for me, I don't
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: know about you. But for me, I don't own property, don't.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I don't least property, So I can't tell you, know, hey,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: stay away from me. I can't say that. So I
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: have to be as under the radar as humanly possible
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: on some of the areas that I hunt. And uh,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: And that's part of the reason I went with the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: truck that I went with. It's low key when I
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: when I decided to buy a truck, it's low key,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's not flashy, it's not jacked up. And uh, it's
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the same color as my current as my previous truck.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: So it's just kind of no stickers. People they'll drive
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: by it and they won't think about it. But if
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you have some giant bone collector uh decal on the
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: back window of your truck, people will remember that and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: they'll recognize it. Yeah. Yeah, I've bounced drawn on this
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a lot. I've gone back and forth between like I
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: don't want anything on my truck too. Then one day
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know what, damn it, I want something
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: on there. And then like a couple months later, I'm like,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I don't want attention to draw on and I'm kind
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: of in the I ended up putting some stuff on
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: my truck and then like I end up having someone
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: like tweet like, I think what you'd hunt is that
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: this exit off such and such highway, and I'm like, oh, jeez, right,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: because there are some stickers that kind of made it
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: gave him a good guess that this might be my
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: vehicle and it was. So here's my idea to cope
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: with that, Okay, okay, that that would be to take
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: all the decals that you've ever wanted to put on
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: your truck and put them on your wife's minivan. Yea,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: my wife's car. No, no, no kids, no kids yet,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: no minivan yet. But she does have a wire and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: sticker in a car. So there, she needs a bone
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: collector sticker, she needs rage in the cage sticker, she
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: needs what else? What's a popular sticker? That browning deer
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: right or the buck with the dough and then they
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: look like they're in a heart. That's pretty one of those.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: That's perfect. Yeah, alright, I'm gonna get right on that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Speaking of speaking of your suggestions for what me and
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: my wife should do, I told her about your suggestion
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: last week that we should fumigate our camper with car exhaust,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and she thinks you're an idiot. So there's that. You know,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I need to have a sit down conversation with your
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: wife sometime because you know, I'm not here to brag,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: but you know, I'm a nice guy. I'm kind of cool.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of cool in a way. I think she
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: thinks I'm some dumbass. She just thinks you're trying to
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: kill us dan camper. Well, if you do that, you're
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the idiot. Yeah, it can be done. It can be
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: done and done right, trust me. So so we shouldn't
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: be in the camper when we're doing that though. Right.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I have good news, though, But I have I have
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: dealt with the mice problem without needing to use car exhaust. Okay,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: so what do you do? How do you do it?
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: We used a multi pronged approach, utilizing several different mouse
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: traps in a number of different locations, and we ended
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: up harvesting three. Oh we tagged three nice Uh well too, Well, heck,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know I'm not sure if they're white ming
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: mice or Montana mice um, but we got one of
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: them killed while we were in Wyoming, and then we
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: made the switch to Montana, and there were two more
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: that I think came along for the ride, is my
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: best guess. And one of them, unfortunately, might be with
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: us for a long time though, because we heard a
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: snap one of the traps go off in the middle
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: of the night, and then I kept hearing this clunking
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: and all this noise and stuff, and I'm like, oh man,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: what is that. So, like I know, ten seconds later,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I go walking into the bathroom and I opened up
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the cabinet and you just saw in time the back
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: end of one of these traps trailing behind There's this
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: there's just opening underneath their sink that goes down behind
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the shower, and that must be where they're coming in through.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: And we must have got this this mouse by the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: foot or the leg or something. He was able to
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: drag himself back in there. And then for the rest
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: of the night underneath the camper, somewhere in some part
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: of the camper I can't get to. You can just
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: hear this clanking around and shifting and clicking and clacking,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and he probably died down there. And so I've got
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: a rotting mouse that we're gonna be carrying around. But
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: three hopefully that's it. I'll tell you what. My grandpa
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: had this machine shed with a like a room that
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: was that was framed in well, well, just listen, it's
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: kind of a cool story. So he he has he
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: got some mice in his insulation and the cats weren't
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: doing their job, and he puts he puts this regular
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: mouse trap down and it goes off. In the next day,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: it's not there. Well, there was a possum that got
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: into the garage and it had a mouse trap stuck
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: to its tail, and you could hear it in the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: machine shed. Dragged that mouse trap across like the I
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: beams when it would walk in h up in the
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: roof of it, and it was hilarious. And it took
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: him like, oh, five months to kill it because he
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: could never find it. But when he killed it, finally
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: he found the mouse trap still attached to this possum's
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: tale and easy to reuse it after that. I don't
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: know about that, but is this the is this the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: grandpa that was married to your grandma who used to
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: make you beat rodents over the head with a bat
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: when you guys trapped him or something like that. Yep,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: that was that same family. Yep. I like that. I
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: was the I was the executioner for the animals that
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: were still alive in the traps, and and all the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: questions people have had about nine fingers, this answers it
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: for you. Hey, Mark, we better start talking about deer
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: because we don't want any more negative reviews. Okay, we
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: get a couple of those, that's all right. I want
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to talk about two more things not related to deal
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: that really quickly. Okay, okay, because you know, I'm taking
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: my little deer um break while I'm out west. Although
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing deer and thinking about dear. But number one,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I saw seven grizzlies in one day, a couple of days.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: That is ridiculous. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. Now that
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: you know that they're in the area, do you ever
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: get a little freaked out, like, uh, really, a grizzly
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: bear could get into this camp or if they really
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: wanted to. Well, where we're camped right now, We're not
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: worried about bears. We were camped right now, We're down
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a valley that's that's bears wouldn't
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: be that close where we saw these bears actually in Yellowstone,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: about fifty miles south of us where there. So I'm
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: not worried about that. And I've I've camped a lot
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: in places where there's grizzlies, and I'm just not really
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: worried about getting in the camp or anything. And when
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: we when I backpack and you're like in a little
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: tiny ten ten miles in there, you know, all by yourself,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: then you think about a little bit more. But you know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: like we've talked about in the past, when you're in
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: bear country, you just follow the basic best practices. Don't
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: have food in your tent, don't cook next to your tent,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: don't do anything stupid like that. And they're gonna mind
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: their own business as long as you mind yours. So
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: when I first started doing stuff, I definitely was really
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: nervous about it. But now I've I've gotten pretty comfortable
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and um, on this hiking trip, it was pretty cool.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: We headed down there. We saw one black bear on
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the drive down. We pull off at this trailhead. We
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: are um when we're getting our stuff together and everything,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and a guy pulls the next to us and pulls
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: on a spotting scope, and so you guys want to
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: see grizzly, Like sure, and there's a grizzly I don't know,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: five yards away off from this kind of this dead
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: fall cluster of trees and stuff. So that was kind
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: of how it kicked it off. Start hiking, and about
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: three or four miles back in there, Um, I spotted
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: this like low brown shape coming our way. And every
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: time I saw anything that looked like that, pull out
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: my mind. I was just check it out. Because that
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: guy who showed us the bear and the spining scope,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: he also said that he saw seven grizzlies all together
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: feeding on a dead carcass some I don't know if
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: it was an elk or bison whatever, um, but not
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: too far away, so we definitely knew there in the area.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And um, long story short, here's a grizzly, probably a
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: hundred yards away, walking towards us and where you know,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: three or four miles back off, just the two of us.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And that was actually the first time I've seen a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: grizzly while out in the wild, you know, hiking all
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the other grily settings I've had have been from the road, um,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: but this one was just us out there, just him
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: out there, and he was walking towards us, and so
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I then eventually just started kind of talking a little
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: bit louder to make sure he knew we were in
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the area and we weren't gonna surprise him. And he
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: stopped and kind of looked up at us, and we
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: watched him, and he looked watched us, and he just
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: sat down. He sat down like a dog and just
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: kind of looked at us. And it was just the
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: coolest thing, just kind of being in some small way,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: you know, having this like one to one connection with
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a big grizzly bear in the wild. Um. I don't
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: know how to describe it, but it was. It's it's
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: a unique kind of special thing that we don't get
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that often these days. So we got to watch him
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: for like fift twenty minutes. He slowly went back and
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: started walking away, and we gave him this distance and
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: just kind of hung back and watched, and he walked off,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and we continued down the trail past him, um, far
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: out of his range, and then we stopped and looked
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: back again, and he was kind of watching us. Then
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: he walked the other way, and as I'm watching him,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I caught a little bit of movement on the horizon
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: on this other ridge, maybe a couple hundred yards away,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and pull the buy nose and there is a monstrous
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: grizzly bear another one that he I mean, like a
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: tank like the bear we were watching. We're like, oh,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that's a nice like mature bear. Looked like a good
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: sized bear. But this one looked like something from Alaska.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I mean it just looked like a tank with four
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: legs lumbering down this ridge towards us. That was like
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a holy crap moment. And uh he you know, luckily
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that was That was a fine encounter too. He just
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: kind of walked down the ridge a little bit then
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: turn went the other way and we continued hiking and
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: saw another black bear. And um, when we came walking
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: back a little later that day, the original grizzly was napping.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: We could see him up on the hillside laying down
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: like a dog. Again. Um, so just a super cool encounter.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And uh, I end up seeing two different sets of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: grizzly sows with cubs on the dry I've backed that
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: day too, and one of them was like fifty yards
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: off the road. Um, so the bears are definitely out
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: and feeding right now and packing on the pounds post hibernation.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: So did any of those bears look at you, like, man,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: that thing over there looks delicious? I don't think so.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I think the only two the two bears saw us, Um,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: you know when we were out there hiking, and it
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: was mostly just kind of curiosity. They're just kind of
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: what's that? And they looked at us, and we looked
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: at them, and you know, we didn't intrude on their space,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and we just made sure that they knew we were
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: there and we're going our own way, and um, they
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: just did their thing. So it's pretty cool. You know.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people assume, especially if you're not,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: you know, often around these animals or in these types
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: of places. I think the average American assumes these a bloodthirsty, scary, vicious,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: monstrous creatures. And while they are definitely wild animals and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: they definitely can be dangerous, um, nine times out of ten,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: they just want to go about through business. And if
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you let them do that, and you, uh, you know,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: respect there the fact that they are wild animals. I
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: think it's it's a pretty cool situation. So I'm very
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I'm very glad there are still places out there where, um,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: you know, the full suite of wildlife and predators are
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: out there and you can still experience what it's like
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: to you know, really be in a wild, wild ecosystem.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: So right, did um the correct me if I'm wrong?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: But isn't spring? Uh? They have their cubs in hibernation
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: right then they come out, and aren't the mother's like
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: really territorial. They're they're very very protective. Yeah, yeah, you're
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: right that they do have their they do have their
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: cubs other hybernate they come out, and yeah, that's probably
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the most dangerous bear is a mama bear with cubs
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that you've surprised and are like close. That's like probably
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the most dangerous situation. So definitely this time of year.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: You know, if you're hiking around places where there's lots
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: of cover or lots of noise you know from a
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: river or something. We always just make sure to be
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: loud when we're hiking through there so that we don't
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: surprise anything. And um, you know, to this point, you
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: know we've been out here in grizzly country, for you know,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: taking trips for probably decade now, and knockna would we
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: haven't had any kind of dicey encounter because I think
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: we've made sure not to let that kind of situation happen, right,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Now I will say I'm about to embark
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: on an adventure that is probably the most sketchy grizzly
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: related thing I'll have ever done, because starting this weekend,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start my bear hunt, my black bear hunt,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and I'm not in Montana, yep. And I've switched up
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the destination where I'm going to do that hunt, and
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: now I'm going to be bear hunting in territory that
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: grizzly bear is also in habit. Originally is going to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: be a spot where there weren't grizzlies, but we kind
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: of found a nice spot that we like here and
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I got some get some research and chat with some people,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and I found a pretty good spot. I thing to
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: go chase some black bears. But there's also the cential
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: of running into a grizzly so um, sneaking around, being
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: quiet with you know, grizzly bears around, and the potential
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: surprise when I think I will be kind of a
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: little more on edge than it usually a but that'll
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: be the fun part, right, Yeah, I'm really pumped though,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I'm really really grizzly bear with the same tag or
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: does it have to be a black bear? No, grizzly
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: bears are. They're still in danger species, so it is
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: illegal to shoot one. Okay, I got you in the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: lower fort So no shooting grizzlies. I can only shoot
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a black bear. Um. You know, if it's a life
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: threatening situation with a grizzly and it's self defense, um,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: you know that can happen, but you know hopefully that
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: hopefully that won't be an issue all bear spray, worst
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: case scenario, something comes up close use that. But I'm
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: really excited chasing black bears and get up the mountains
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and hike in and glassing. And I don't know what
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I'm doing at all though, So I've just been like
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: watching YouTube videos and reading articles and talking to a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: few people and like I was watching YouTube videos and
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: how to properly keep out and skin out of black
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: bear and all this stuff. So it's gonna be a big,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: a big new experience. But is this a backpack can't
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: type of hunt or is this a hunt from the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: truck or hunt from your camper type of hunt? I'd
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: like to backpack in there, but because my wife is
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: here with me and the dogs, I don't think she
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: really wants to be left alone for three or four days.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go in and just do day hunts
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and come back and meet her at the camp at night.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So it will be a little more hiking probably, but
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: we'll make it work so perfect. That's the game. PLA,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: thank you. I'm finally catching fish too. Yeah I saw that. Yeah,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: there's been you eat those or do you have to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: throw those back? You can eat them. I've just been
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: throwing them back, I think. I don't know for whatever reason,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: um trout, I just catching release. Um it seems like
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: that's just the thing to do. So it has been
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a good cat as hatch, catching some rainbows and some cutthroat.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: And that's my story. So I think we gotta what
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: am I trying to say? I think we gotta shut
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: this down though, and uh and get our our guest
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: on here, because we gotta talk big white tail box. Amen. Alright, well,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break for our sickest story, and
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: then we're gonna get Joe on the line. So our
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: sickest story today is going to be a little different
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: than planned. The sickest story today is going to be
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: from me actually, because since I recorded this initial interview
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: with Dan, my plans from a bear hunt have changed.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And now today, actually that's Thursday, I'm gonna be heading
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: out on my very first black bear hunt, but not
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: on my own now is originally planned. Instead, I'm gonna
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: bear hunting with my friend, the ultimate public lands advocate
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and TV and podcast host, Randy Newburgh. Randy was gracious
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: enough to invite me a long to hunt with him
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: after we met up the other day, and I'm pretty
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: excited because I don't get to learn from someone that
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: has been a tremendously successful bear hunter. So right now,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: here's what I'm feeling. I'm you're really excited to go
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: out and see some bears. I'm feeling much more confident
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: that might actually feel a tag since Randy knows a
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: whole lot more than I do about what about what
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: to do when actually chasing these bears. And finally, I'm
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: also feeling a little bit nervous because I'm afraid Randy
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: might outhike me up and down these mountains. I mean,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: he lives out here in Montana all year round, so
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: I might be about to get embarrassed here in the
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: next few hours. I'm not sure, but this is a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: sick of story still in progress. So in our next
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: episode we'll return with updates and how the hunt went,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: and maybe even have some audio from the film that's
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: going to come from this hunt. So I'm excited about that.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And on this adventure, I will be wearing my sick
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: core lightweight tops and bottoms in my pants and jacket.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: And if you'd like to make a sick of story
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: of your own someday, you can learn more about sitcass
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Technical hunting apparel at Sitka gear dot com. And now
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: let's get back to the show and bring Joe on
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: the line. And now with us on the phone is
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Joe Elsinger. Welcome the show. Joe. Hey, guys, thanks for
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: having me. Yeah, absolutely, how are you that? I'm good? Yeah,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: sons finally out after about three days a raid. So yeah,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: we've been dealing the same thing. I'm temporarily in Montana
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: and it's been raining and snowing for the past weeks,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: so I'm hoping spring, hoping spring will finally be here.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: But Joe, I appreciate taking the time to do this. Um.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I first found out about you not too long ago,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: UM by way of my friend Andy May, and he's
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: been putting together these little Q and A blog posts
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: for Wired to Hunt, and recently he featured you and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: You're hunting tactics. And after reading through that, I, um, man,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I just really enjoyed your perspective that you shared on
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: that you had a lot of interesting tactics and experiences
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you shared, but I just like the way you approached
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: hunting and the things that you know, the way you
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: explain things. I think it was I don't know, I
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of value there. So immediately after
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: reading that, I was like, all right, I need to
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: get Joe on the podcast to dive into this stuff further.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: So so that's what I want to do today. I
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: really want to get into a lot of things as
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: far as how you hunt, um, why you do the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: things you do. But um, but before that, I guess,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: can you just give us kind of the the Joe Ellisinger,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: one oh one, what's your story? UM, how did you
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: get to this point? What's the evolution of of you
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: as a deer hunter looked like to this point. Yeah, yeah,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: well I guess first it's a it's a little sury,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: albeit on this podcast. I'm not gonna lie. I'm pretty
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: sure I've listened to every single Wired Hot podcast. Thank
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: you have a podcast, Junkie. Yeah, and I've listened to
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of Dan's the Nine Finger Chronicle podcast to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: he does get a great job too, So who goes
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: to both you? I love it, so I know I'm
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: not the only guy. Um well that's all we need
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: for today. Guys, Joe, we're done with you. That was perfect. Yeah, yeah,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I'll promiso. I live in Iowa. I lived
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: a few other places too, and in between now and
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: growing up, but um, I kind of live in eastern Iowa.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I started a lot of I like a lot of
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: other guys, I started hunting at a young age, um,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: small game deer. I worked my way up to deer.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think I think I shot my first year,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: maybe when I was twelve years old. Um, but I
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: killed a pile of rabbits and squirrels before that, and
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: just I mean the first thing I remember hunting when
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I was maybe six or seven, was I had my
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: baby gun and I was trying to shoot the heads
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: off grasshoppers and I beat him to the chicken. So
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: that gives the idea. I think I was born a hunter, um,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: for better or worse, and I'm still that way. So
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I was shot a grasshopper in a long time. So
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: uh so yeah, I mean I started both hunting when
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I was thirteen or fourteen, and both hunted. I haven't
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: missed a season. Um. I've spent a lot of my
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: time here in Iowa, but I've the last few years
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I've tried to branch out, kind of push my boundaries. Um.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I've gone el counting a few times, tagged a couple
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: of elk um, and I've started hunting deer up in
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: northern Wisconsin, which is really cool. I think I've learned
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: a ton up there. I've learned about as much up
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: there in the last three or four years as you know,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the last ten years down here in Iowa, because it's
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: completely different, different deer numbers, they move differently. There's wolds,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: there's you know, it's big woods. So um yeah, any
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I guess anything specific you want me to touch on um,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: fire away. Nice. That's definitely interesting to hear about that
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: unique perspective based on trying to hunt some different places. UM.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to be interested in hearing about some
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: of those differences and what you did learn. UM. But
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I guess let's continue set the stage. Can you dive
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: into a little more detail in regards to what your
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: current hunting situation is, like, um in Iowa and then
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I guess you can. You can touch on the Wisconsin
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: is too. And I'm kind of curious about you know,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: what are the types of places you're hunting. I mean
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: these big parcels, smart parcels, public, private, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. Yeah,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: So so I grew up, you know, hunting farms around
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: where I where I lived, Um, like a lot of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: rural kids. UM. Yeah, I kind of grew out of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: that when I went to school, UM and came back
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and in the meantime, you know, you never keep access
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to the same piece of private land for very long. UM.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: And I've never had the opportunity to hunt any big
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: you know, exclusive access hunting a state unfortunately. So UM,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I've transitioned more to public land. And I'm really drawn
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: to public land, UM because it's really a level playing field.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: You know you and everybody else out there at the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: same set of rules. You gotta play by anybody who
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: goes there with the tag and played by those rules. UM.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: So you know kind of for the last decade, I
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: transitioned to just about uh well, I both hunt almost
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: all public land, and I still I hunt late season
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and the muzzle older as well. UM. And I hunt
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: some private land there. Um. But for those that tune
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: that out, I'll just say I've never shot a deer
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: out of a food plot in my entire life. I'm
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: not one of those kind of hunters. Um. But so
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: I you know, I both hunt publicly and I cover
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of publicly and I've learned, um you know,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: unfortunate to live in Iowa hunt Iowa, and we still
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: have good age structure of the books four open access land,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: but it's nothing compared to what you see MTV. I
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: can sure you that, um. You know. They I'll try
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: to find a four year old or older buck um
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and to hunt every year UM and usually I try
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to find four or five or six of those. UM.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: But I have to cover like right now, I'm covering
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: probably five tho acres of public land UM across about
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: ten different parcels to find that that number of deer
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: you know, resident box to hunt. Sure there might be
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: a few more that drift through in the rut, but
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: UM got work your tail off to find them, you know.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: And and they're not where everybody else is hunting. So
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I'm sure guys, guys have heard uh that song and dance.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: You gotta you know, um, you gotta look where everybody
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: else is in huntings. But um, that's that's my situation
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: right now. Um. And I mean, I just love the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: love the chase. I love. I love hunting down those deer,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: you know, that's my passion, um, and anything else for
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: that matter, But UM, I really like the you know
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: that just a year round chase. I'm scouting year round. Um,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the day I kill a deer, the next day or
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: you know, the next almost after, as soon as I
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: have that deer cut up and in the freezer, I'm
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: thinking about how to get uh, you know, next year's dear.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, we we definitely can relate to that
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: for sure. Me and as you know, Dan and I
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: both were share in that year round obsession. UM, I
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: want you to elaborate on the on the scouting piece
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: because one of the things that you mentioned in that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Q and A that we published earlier, UM, was this
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: scouting journal that you kept and you kept track of
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: all the details of how much you scouted, how many
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: miles you walked, what you saw, all these different things. UM.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Can you walk us through everything you could possibly share
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: with us about your scouting plans and strategy and that
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: journal and how all that helps you. Yeah, so so yeah,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I did that journal. I think it was for the
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: two I was in a fifty year a couple of
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: years ago, but it's still very valid. UM. My strategy
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: of vaults a little bit every year, but it's the
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: same approach generally, UM overall. So so it really my
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: scouting starts. If you want to look at a year
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: in time, my scouting starts the previous season for that year,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and really, you know, every year kind of blends together.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at stuff too from two years ago even.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: But a big part of my strategy is keying in
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: on annual patterns UM and and I think that's extremely
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: important for anybody hunting mature bucks, UM, because by that,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're hunting mature buck, let's say, a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: four year older older bock. Um. That buck has been
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: around several years, and so if you're not new to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the area, you should have some observations from the previous
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: years and something's changed, but a lot of things stay
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the same of how they uh, you know, how they
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: move across the land, what betting areas, they use, some
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of their preferred food sources, how they move through there
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: during the rut and anyway the previous year. When I'm
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: not hunting, and um, I actually really don't hunt a
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: whole lot. I mean that sounds weird. I'm talking about
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: bow hunting, you know. Um, I I do a lot
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: more scouting the bow hunting. I probably do two to
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: three times as much scouting as actual bow hunting. UM.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: And even if I have a tag, Um, I'm only
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: actually hunting when I think I'm going to kill a buck. Um.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: And by no means am I only you know I'm
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: not bad to hunt a percent, I'd be thrilled. I
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: fellas bat and you know, UM, usually it's more like
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: one in ten or one in six to be honest,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: in the last few years, UM, which is still pretty
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: darne good. UM. But I don't, you know, I try
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: to I try to get out there once or twice
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: a week, whether the scout or to hunt. Um. I'm
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: looking at tracks, Um, I'm looking I'm tying in previous
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: year's observations. I'm looking at food sources. UM. You know,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: a big bucks pattern. Um, through the fall. I think
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of guys have a little bit of a
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: misconception of Um. You know, he's doing the exact same thing.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: It's really changing day by day and week by week. UM.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Early season patterns can be a little more extended. But
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: as you get in October, the ruts eating up food
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: sources are switching on and off. UM. Hunting pressure is
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: changing every week. You have season coming on and going off,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: and more and more interested in does so. Um. You
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: really got to take advantage of something the instant and
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: you see it. Um, you know, oh you know, oh
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: you know, he's frequent in this betting area and it's
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: you know, the late pre rut there he's uh, you know,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: he's probably heading this direction to nose around the dose
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: in the area and boot the hunt. It you have
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the right wind, you kill him. Um. And Uh. Anyway,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I I'm scouting the previous Paul, the previous winter, I
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: mean through the winter. If they snow on the ground,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: you can't really see a lot of that rot sign
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: or really any sign on the ground. But you see
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: deer tracks everywhere, and they may or may not be
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: in the same areas as the rest of the year. Um.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: But you can just learn how they move across the land.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Find find a set of tracks and follow it around.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: And for anybody new to tracting, I highly recommend that, like, um,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: you know, go tracks, just see how they move across
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the land, because every terrain is different. You know, I
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: hud a lot of hills and farm country in eastern Iowa. Um,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: and you know a little bit of big wits up
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: there Wisconsin. But uh, um, my bread, you know, my
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: bread and butter is is hill country, bluff country. Um.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: And I know that very well. But and I couldn't
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: tell somebody who's hunting pancake flat land, um you know
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: how deer move him there. But I can tell them
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: how to find it out, you know. So Um, it's
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you learn so much. I just follow the deer around.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I that when I was a kid, and that helped
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: my understanding it to your immensely. When you're doing that
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: and then comes splitting Yeah, when quick question, Joe. When
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: you're doing that, you know, in the winter there's snow
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: on the ground. Um, like, are you are you just
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: walking and following around these tracks and just kind of
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: taking it all in and thinking about it and just
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: kind of out of curiosity following or are you following
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: a set of tracks and then like writing that down
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and taking notes? Okay, I thought that, you know, most
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: of the tracks all can through this little low spot
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: in the field. Check that off in my journal. In
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the future, I'm going to know that at this time
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: of the year they're coming through here. And then you're
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: looking for specific betting areas. I mean, I mean, how
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: detailed do you get with that? And is it kind
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: of just all in your head or do you record
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: it some way or what do you do with that stuff? Yeah?
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I take notes. Um, I probably take more
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: detailed notes than your average your average on or no doubt,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: but I try not to get too details because I
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: mean I don't want to write page in the pages. Um.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: And so it's a little bit of both. I mean,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes I'm just following tracks for the heck of
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: it and see where they leave. Other times, for instance, um,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I killed a buck late season, not late season, late
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: November with a bow in two thousand fifteen, and um
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: in the spring. Oh it was it was like January,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: so it was it was still winter of taous and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: fifty and so almost a year before that. Um, I
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: was circling around this one betting area and I caught
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: this great, big square set of tracks coming out of
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: that betting area. There is a fresh snow, real fresh
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: sticky snow, and it was a northeast wind. Um and uh,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I followed the end and he bedded on the down
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: each side down wind side of a thicket, kind of
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: on a little point um public land. This is uh,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: you know, three quarters of a mile in from access.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: It was probably almost a mile U. And anyway, um
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: here my two thousand fifties season was. You know, Um,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I was having a little hard time getting onto bucks,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: a little harder time than usually getting on the bucks
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: in two thousand fifty and here comes late in November,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: and um that betting area. I knew, um that it
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: was a primarily a dull betting area, but I've seen
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: that big set of buck tracks going through there. Well,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I thought, what the heck, I'm gonna hunt that betting area.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: It was late late rot. I figured a big buck.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: My circle passed there on the downwind side, sent checking
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: for dose and it was potential for a buck even
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: betting right in there. Anyway, long story short, I saw
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: that book flitting through there, um, and I couldn't get
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: a shot. And I went back three days later and
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: set up and I killed him. Um, I was probably
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: set up within. I was set up in forty yards
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: where I saw the big set of tracks eleven months
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: earlier coming out of the bedding area, and I set
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: up there for a reason. I knew that was probably
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: how he was going to go in and come out.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: So every time you see something like that, you gotta
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: take note of it. So in that situation was a
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: perfect example. That is a perfect example in that situation, UM,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: can you tell us about how you how you set
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: up on that too, because okay, so you knew there
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: are tracks coming out of there the winter before you
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: went back in, did you? So you did two hunts?
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I'm curious, did you change your location from night one
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: night number two or you know, when did you set up?
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: How did you do that in the middle of the
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: season like that? Yeah, So that so that was kind
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of a quirky series of events because it was late
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: late November. Anybody who remembers that an Upper Midwest we
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: got a huge snow store. Um, I remember the exactly
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: It was around November twenty I think. Um. So the
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: first time I hunted there was right on the front
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: side of that snow store, and that big buck was
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: in there behind the dough late dough and heat. Um. Well,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: usually I wear a snow camo and the ground's white, um,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and by snow came, I just wear plain white and
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I think it blend in fantastic when the when the
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: ground's white, and I was actually hunting from the ground
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: because I knew so to give you a little better
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: idea of um, it was on the top of a
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: ridge and it was an old clear cut about twenty
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: years old, so it's all grown up, um, but nothing
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: big enough for a stand. And frankly, you wouldn't even
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: want to be off the ground because the canopy is
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: so low you can actually see fast if you're at
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: ground level. Well you're a ground level that you know,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: you're prone to get timmed down by a deer. And
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened on the first time. Because I
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: was wearing, you know, my usual brown based camo and
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: everything was white out. I think I was wearing rain
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: gear actually because it was it was still snowing. UM.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: And a doe pegged me and she busted out of
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: there and clear, and I just caught sight of that book. Well,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I thought it was worth a second shot simply because
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: you know, there was a dough that looked like she
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: was coming into heat and uh that we got a
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: foot of snow. So that actually it took I think
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: it was two days later. Um. It took that long
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: for the roads to get clear for me to get
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: back there, and I hunted there again, and sure enough,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: here came this I set up. Basically, there was UM.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: When deer enter betting locations, often they hooked in from
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the downward side. It's kind of called a jay hook. UM.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And that this is something UM that I'm a member
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: of the Hunting Beets website and I highly recommend that
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: place for anybody who wants to really understand white tailed
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: deer UM. In my opinion, it's the best, the biggest
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: collection of good beer hunters in the nation right now.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: As far as an online forum period and the discussion
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: UM and Uh. Anyway, they talked about this jay hook
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: quite often, and I've witnessed as well. Well. I set
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: up on the downward edge of this cover, figuring they
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: were going to come kind of around the ridge and
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: hook into there, and sure enough, that's exactly what they did. Uh.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: There was a doll came first, and it was actually
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: perfect because she urinated about thirty yards in front of me.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: And the second hunt, I was wearing white camos, so
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I was sitting in a clump of saplings, completely blending
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: in and a foot of snow, so only half of
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: me was really sticking up out of the ground. Uh.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: She urinated like thirty yards in front of me, and
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: that bot came following her and he buried his head
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: right in the snow. And that was that because I
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: had a perfect open shot. He was brought side, so
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: that is perfect. Yeah. Yeah, as soon as she was
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: peeing in the snow in front of me, I was like, yeah,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: this is going to be perfect. So that Dan, What
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: do you think about this? Yeah? Now, you mentioned you
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: put in a lot more time scouting than you actually
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: do hunting, and I think I heard you say some
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: figures like one in six and one in ten. Does
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: that mean that it only took you ten hunts throughout
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: a specific year to to harvest your buck. Yeah? Yeah,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, um that that's a pretty good average. So
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: so let's see on public land last year, I killed
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: my buck on my second hunt toward the two thousand
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and two thousand fifty, I think it was twenty hunts. Um.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I struggled mostly because I was going
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: after one buck in particular. So I ran off ten
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: or twelve hunts after one buck in particular. I probably
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: never should have. I never got him, but I came
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: so darn close a couple of times. Man, that was frustrating.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Two thousand fourteen, I killed my buck on my first hunt. Uh.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: You know, in et cetera, usually usually I like, like
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: I said, I mean, it sounds weird, And I'm not
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: bragging like I say that because I want people understand
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: how much work I put into preparing. You know, I
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: am exhaustive in regards to preparations. And I don't start
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: hunting you know this this passing. You know, I'll hunt
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: whenever I think I'm opportunity to kill a buck. It
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: might be early season, it might be pre rut, it
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: might be rut um. But until I think, okay, I
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: can go in and kill this buck, I don't start hunting.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I keep scouting. I keep I keep running trail cams.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: You know. Maybe we can get in a trail camstil later.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: But um, you knowing areas, yeah, yeah, I'm looking for bucks,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and I'm looking for opportunities, you know, anywhere. You know,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I think there's a high odds, you know, probability that
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: a buck is going to somewhere, you know that's where
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: it starts. It might be you know, bed the food patterned,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: it might be you know, coming through a dough betting
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: area in the rut. You know, anything, um, anything that
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: I can intentionally, you know, go in there and find them,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: I'm doing it. But until then, I don't touch it,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: and I stay out of there like the plague. And
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: I've learned that the hard way, you know. So, I
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: mean in high school, I would hunt every day I could.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I would hunt sixty eight times in the season. And
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I started out hunting much like everybody else. You know.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I would have two or four or six or eight
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: stands pre hung at the beginning of the season, rotate
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: through them. By the time the rut came around, I
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: just hunted Holliday spots, you know, three or four six times.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I wasn't seeing hardly anything except non residents coming through
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: For the very first time, I was, you know, had
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: a huge impact on on deer in the area. And
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: about ten years ago I started hunting at more mobile
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: kind of hand in hand with hunting more public land.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, if there was any secrets to my
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: success when I started hunting mobile and when I you know, um,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: really focused on you know, kind of first time sits
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: like that. Um, that's uh, I mean just night and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: day different I saw in the dear activity I was,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I was catching deer by surprise. They were
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: not expecting to me to show up where I was
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: showing up. And even if I blew up an area,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I go somewhere else and I try it again, and
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: I don't stop. So so I'm kind of going back.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: How do you locate specifically these deer that make your
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: hit list? You know, say, okay, my goal is to
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: is to shoot a four year old? How do you
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: go about locating these these bucks? Yeah? Yeah, so, um,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I'll little bit of so scouting. You know, I'm always
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: looking for a really big set of tracks. Um, I
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: think most tunters underutilized tracks. Um. I know some guys
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: poke fun of me, like I'm I have a foot
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: foot fetish, apparently because I just look. If I see
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: a dead big buck, like laying the back of somebody's truck,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: like everybody's grabbing their antlers, I'm looking at his feet
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: like I'm weird. You know. So what do you consider
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: a big track? Just for people that aren't familiar with
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: you know, how can they tell if it's a big Yeah,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: So a lot of guys use hand size. I use
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: hand size too. Well, Um, that's relative to the size
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: of your hands. And you know, I'm a fairly big
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: dude and I have kind of flippers for hands. So
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of guys say a four finger track, Well,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: four finger track for me is an alec so Um,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: like like I measure. Um, I've measured a few tracks,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: and like, I think the biggest track that I ever
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: measured s far as with So the width of a
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: track I think was like two and five as inches across.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: And that's a not split out track and not running
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: track that's just standing you know in hard grounds that
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't think in real deep when they think in they
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: splay out more to um, so to give you an idea.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: And and buck ofs you know up in Canada that's
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: probably not a very big buck, but here that's a
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: that's a wopper of a buck. Most books are probably
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: around uh you know, two and three ace to two
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: and a half inches across that that print at its
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: widest point and again not splayed out. That's just a
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: standing print like you'd find a screat. You know that's
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: a big buck. Um. And also you know I do
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: a little shed hunting. Most shed hunting for me a
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: second to scouting, And I think you have to you
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: have to pick your priorities. If you love finding shed antlers,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: by all means, go find shed antlers, but know that
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: you know you're gonna miss stuff scouting and vice versa.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I've walked by a bunch of shet antlers, probably because
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: I'm busy looking off in trees and it rubs and scrapes,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not looking explicitly for antlers. Um.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: And then finally, you know, I rely on cameras a
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: lot um, And that was that was kind of perfect
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: segue question. I guess um, because um, I ties into
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: those late season paths or not like UH annual patterns
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I was talking about. I really like to watch look
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: at like up and comer bucks, and a lot of
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: those don't make it. You know, I'd say at least
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: fifty three year olds disappear, probably closer to seventy five
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: percent a three year olds disappear UM on the lance
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: that I hunt. UM. But you know, I'm looking at
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: all those. You know, that'd be a good buck. That'd
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: be a good buck. And if I just get one
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: glimpse of him that next year is a four year
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: old or you know, maybe you even make it to five,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and I have a couple of years of following him,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I just need one limps and I know
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: generally how he moves the area UM, and you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: I know some things he prefers and I might be
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: able to take advantage of UM. So my trail cameras,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I've really focused on UM inventory and low impact monitoring UM.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: And this is kind of all freely and this is
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: kind of a soapbox issue for me. UM. I think
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of guys misused cameras. I think, you know,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: the average hunter thinks, Okay, you know, I'm going to
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: hang my camera by my stand, check it every week,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: and I'll get a good buck on it, and I'll
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: go back and I'll kill him. Well you know how
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: often that happens? Basically never, Like I mean, the proof
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: is in I read tons of stories from successful hunters,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: you know, everywhere I can find him. I'll read a
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: story and I take note of details like that, like, Okay,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: how did he find it? How did you kill it? Well,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: you know, you might have trailcamp pictures of it, but
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: did you intentionally kill at the location of the camera
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: or a near the location of camera? You know, yeah,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: go buy a power ball ticket if you actually did.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way, you know, for a couple
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: of reasons. It goes back to uh bucks. Patterns change
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: over the course of the fall. Like I said, so
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: there's a very good chance you're gonna be a daylight,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: you know, um. And secondly, just going in there and
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: check in, you're you know, you're intruding on that area,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: you're leaving ground sent um, and you're a lerning him
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: to your presence. So and I know there's some ways
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: around that, Like I know, some guys have had good
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: luck checking them off the backs of foo wheelers and stuff.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: But still I really like to focus on inventory so
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: I know what it bucks are in the area, and
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: then I refer to the previous years intel of how
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: to kill them a lot and stuff like tracks where
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: I can find tracks along field edges and all of
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: them for cameras long field edges sometimes and see what
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: direction they're coming. But I honestly it's pretty rare that
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I put a camera and two yards of where I
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: intend to hunt. Um. In every situation is a little different,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: but um, I'm hunting based on my scouting in previous
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: year's observations and those cameras. UM. In the fall, I
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: like to park them out there. UM. One that one
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: really thing I really like to do in the rut,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: I drop him in two potential setups that I probably
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: won't get to hunt because, like I said, I don't
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: do that much hunting. Um, you know the exactly, you know,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: especially during the rut. I'm not a huge fan of
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: hunting during the rout, mostly because of hunting pressure. It's
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: just you know, I don't like hunting and brown to
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: other hunters. And that's all my property. All this public
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: land is shared access, um, and if everybody takes their
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: two weeks with publication, UM, which is all well and good,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: But I like hunting all by myself in October UM
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: and and late season. UM. But anyway, drop in your camera,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: leave a soak all rut, don't check it, don't hunt
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: nearby it, and then pull it. And that would give
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: you something to do in the winter. Analyze those photos.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: What what patterns there are? Okay, when are the bucks
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: coming through? What direction are they coming through? Where do
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you think they're coming from? Where do you think they're
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: going to? What weather conditions are they most this most
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: movement on? You know what types of wind uh wind
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: and such. You can gain so much intel from that.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: UM And I've really focused on doing that the last
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: few years. And I'll have time to you know, especially
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: during the rut when you're trying to take advantage of
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: an observation. You know, you might see a big buck
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: chasing a dough. You need to go hunt that right now. UM.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: You know you don't have time to go take time
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: off and check cameras, so UM, I don't know. I
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: highly recommend doing that. UM. And you really learn a
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: lot about dear behavior, especially if you have you know,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: several cameras, Like, I don't have a ton of cameras.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I know some guys run, you know, dozens of cameras.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I've got six seven cameras, um and uh but you
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: take all you know, if I can get four or
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: five of them out in potential rough funnels and then
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: line up those photos, you can see localized rot flurries.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: You can you know, you can see when bucks passed
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: through areas. It's just fascinating. So can you elaborate on
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: specifically how you're setting up your cameras, I mean, like exactly,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: like what height, what direction, what types of trees? Um?
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: You know, do you use any type of scent protocol
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: when dealing with those or anything like that to try
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: to minimize your impact, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. Yeah, so, um,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I've had the best So all right, so I've I
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: put my cameras in public land, and to day, I
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: have not lost a single one to theft across my fingers.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna lose one eventually, I know, I am. But
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: uh yeah, yeah, I probably just jinx myself, you know.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, and I've been you know, for
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: around ten years or so. I could put them out
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: in public. Um. But I hang them high, and I
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: hang them far back, so I'm not looking for pretty pictures.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: All I want is to be able to tell, like,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: you know, generally, Okay, this looks like it's the same
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: buck here as over there. Um, I don't need to
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: know if it's a thirteen pointer or a or a
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: you know at eleven. You know, I don't want to
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: know the basic typical frame. Um. So I'm off in
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: fifty ft back from where I think a buck is
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: going to pass through fifty um, and I I like
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: to hang them at the least. I reach as high
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: as I can, and I'm six five, okay, so you
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: know I can reach higher in most people. But I
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: like to carry a stick in with me. Put just
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: one stick on the tree, climb up and hang it,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: you know, eight ten ft off the ground, angled down
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: and it covers a really large area and so um,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: you know, early season, I really like to hang them
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: on food sources, okay, on field edges or or just
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: off the field edge because publicly, and you've got a
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: lot of people walk and field edges looking for a
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: tree stands set ups, So I don't want to lose
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: a camera there. I hang I'm just off the field edge,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: you know, major like ditch crossings and stuff lead bottlenecks
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: leading into the into the food source. I'm not looking
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: to get deer on on daylight at all, you know,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: if it's an hour after daylight, perfect, because I've already
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: scouted all the betting areas behind that food source. So
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I went and behind. I would't be hanging a camera there.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I scoutered him in the spring and the fall, the
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: previous you know, UM and UH. I just want to
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: know who's coming through and about when they're coming through,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: you know, UM, and then into October. I really can't
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: beat those big primary escapes UM and once I'm not
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: hanging them on the where I want to hunt, but
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I'm hanging them they don't get the places that will
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: have the most bucks coming through, just to see who's
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: there in the rock. I like rock funnels, UM, you know,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: ditch crossings, fence crossings, any pretty tight bottleneck UM that
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: pushes pushes deer through. UM. I had him in a
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: lot of squirrely spots that um are really tough to hunt. UM.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: But I can leave a trail camera there, so UM.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I really don't take a lot of cent precaution. Um,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I do a little bit um like like the really
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: big stupid stuff. And this, this is the true story.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: I have smelled lavender cented hand lotion on somebody else's
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: trail camera in the woods, like like I could only
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: imagine like he squirted his wife. Yeah yeah, yeah right,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: like escorted Lavenger said his handlotion on his hands, like
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: his wife's flotion or whatever. And I was like, oh,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna hang his camera. Well, I think you've been
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: there several days, you know. I wasn't sure, but that
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: that set was still there if I could smell it.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: A deer could smell that sucker from half a mile away,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: like to me, And that's like just a no brainer.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: Other than that, I don't spring him down when you
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: get him above beer height you know, deer I sight height. Um,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: the ground, your ground sets still there. It will stade
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: in a few days. That's why I really focus on
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: long term deployments. If you're there checking them every week,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: your ground sent if you didn't get any rain, your
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: ground sets still probably there at the end of a
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: week with you know, with dry condition or you know,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: the stable weather conditions just last a long time. But
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: I'm leaving my cameras out a month or more, so
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I want a long term observation of you know, natural
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: deer movement and deer you know, I know black flash
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: is a new cool thing to have with cameras. I've
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: experimented with a little bit. If I just playing a
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: plane and for red camera kind of feed off the ground,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: deer have no clue it's there. So yes, yeah, if
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you're only checking your if you're letting your trail cameras soak.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Like you said, long term deployment, and your goal is
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: a four year old most of your most of your
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: information is coming from the previous year then right in
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: your scarring, so correct. How how do you know when
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: you are going into a set that there is in
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: fact a four year old buck working that area. Well,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: so I'd like one glimpse, so it may be a
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: big set of tracks. Um. You know, I do a
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: lot of low impact scouting right before the season, and
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I do so I I shift my cameras. It varies,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: but a lot of times I shift them kind of
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: months months. I may get them in the summer. Um,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I like to check my cameras in September,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: A little while before October on those prime food sources,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: see who's around, and then I'll shift them into you know,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: monitoring scrapes and stuff. But if you know, if I
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: see a big set of tracks, I see him in
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: the summer, and I know I got him the previous
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: year as well. Uh um boom, you know I'm you know,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: I'm ready um or or you know I'll I'll leave
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: a camera soak all of October on a scrape, and
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: then I'll move it to a rough funnel in November. Well,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: maybe I got a big buck there in October. Um.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: And you know, especially in scrapes, if it uh, you know,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: I always check the card when I grabbed the camera,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: and if I got a buck there, um a buck
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: that I'm interested in going after in the last several
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: days or even just since the last rain, I'll go
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: out and try to find his tracks. Sometimes you can't
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: find his tracks in front of the camera, but a
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: lot of times you can, especially in a scrape, I
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: can find those big tracks. Boom. I have an idea
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: of tracks, and tracks are pretty distinctive. It's it's pretty amazing.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Like I recommend guys, um take a photo of the
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: next big buck, like, take a photo of his track
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: or obviously the next big bucket shoot take a photo
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: of his tracks, do that three or four bucks, and
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: then line up both photos. You'll be amazed at the differences.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: I guarantee there will be differences. Some of chip toe,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: some of square toes, some of longer to some are
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: wider um. Like, I mean it, once you start looking
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: at the at the tracks, it's it's pretty amazing. Um
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: the differences between individual box and kind of um. You know,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: one of the few benefits of not hunting highly managed
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: land where you've got a ton of four year old
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: running around. Usually there's only one, maybe two four year
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: olds with have overlapping whole ranges on these public areas.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: So you know, if you see a big set, it's
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: even more easilier, uh, you know, to say, okay, that's
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: this buck. You know it's not one of seven bucks.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: So alright, briefly now we're going to pause for our
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: weekly white Tail Wisdom with our partners White Tailed Properties.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Here's producer Spencer new Hearth. This week with White Tailed Properties,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: we are joined by abe A Dare, a land specialist
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: out of southern Iowa, and Gabe is gonna be telling
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: us about what strategy changes need to be made when
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: targeting mature bucks. Um. You know, that's when I deal
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: with a lot, And I've deal with a lot with
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: mainly with clients UM in the past, whether you know
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: clients that back ground that you know looking for advice
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: or clients and you know I've I've had hunting, you know,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: in in camp or whatever. And there's two things, UM.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: The one that I feel like has always worked the
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: best for me, UM when dealing with other guys is
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I feel like you've got to get somebody in the
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: frame of mind where they're more concerned about making a
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: mistake than they are about killing an animal. And it
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: blows you down because everybody knows that when you really
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: get you know, when you get these bigger half year
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: older five half year old deer, you know, things go quick.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: You know, you start racing your mind spending and you've
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: got to have a way to slow it down. And
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: the best way I found to blow it down with
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: people is to be more concerned about making a mistake.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: I would really get a guy to the point where
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: he's coming back to camp with a phone picture of
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: a deer walking off going did I make a mistake?
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: And he's telling me did then that I got five
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: sex to make a decision. I'm gonna shoot this deer.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Boom's done, you know. And so that's the big one.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: I think you've really got to be more concerned and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: in a frame of mind about I don't want to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: make a mistake. And then the second one is is
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: you gotta be ready to not kill a deer. You
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: gotta be ready to let stuff walk in eat tag suit,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: you know. And so they're both really big ones. Um,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: the first one is probably the hardest, you know, I
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: think get people that frame of mind. But then once
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: you get to that point and you are better at
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: slowing things down, you are good at judging and and
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: being to recognize what kind of an animal you got
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: in front of it, you know, And then you got
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: to get into that frame of mind where I'm good
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: if I don't harvest an animal this year. I'm good
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: if I don't shoot a deer on this trip, you know.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: And so those are definitely the two things I think,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: you know right at the top, that the guy's got
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: to get into when you're really starting to target you know,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: upper each class white tails. If you'd like to learn
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: more and to see the properties that Gabe currently has
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: listed for sale, visit white tail properties dot com. Backslash
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: a dare that's a d A I R. So, Okay,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: if I'm understanding right, I'm gonna I'm gonna like recap
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: what I've what I've heard so far about your bunch
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: of overall high level philosophy. Basically, you're you're running cameras
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: every year, collecting data. You are then checking inventory during
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the current season trying to determine if Buck X is
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: still around, and if Buck X is still around based
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: on a glimpse or a track or a picture of
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: him on a scrape or something, then you refer back
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: to previous year's trail camera data to help you understand
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: exactly when possibly where to focus during the season. Now,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: the question, though, is is when to strike. And I
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: think there's two factors that you've mentioned here or two
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: hateg or as the factors to help you determine when
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: to actually go and make that hunt, And I'm curious
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: about how you rank them. So one would be the
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: annual pattern. So you've got a trail camera picture of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Mr Big coming through on November eleventh, and twelve maybe
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: the year before and the year before maybe. But then
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: the other set of factors that could influence I imagine
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: they could influence when you would go to strike would
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: be the um outside factors, whether um you know, moon
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: phase or bar might press or anything like that that
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: you may or may not take into a consideration. So
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I'm curious which of those is more important. So I mean,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: like if if in the past he showed up on
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: the tenth and eleventh, but the tenth and eleventh shows
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: up and at seventy degrees, are you still going to
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: go on for your first sitting there because the annual
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: pattern or will the weather or whatever other factor make
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: you say, now this isn't it? Yeah? A good question.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Um yeah, So it's it's the win and the where.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: I probably didn't focus much on the where either. I
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: can dive into that after I'll talk about the win. UM.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I how fanatical about being in the right
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: spot at the right time. So there's your win and where.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: So the win, UM, I want to see the combination
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: of factors come together, and I think that's how I've
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: been able to be um, you know, kind of boost
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: my odds. Um. I want here. I want to see
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: a box come through. Like you say that, you know
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: the tenth level of twelve you came through last year. Well,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: what weather conditions do you come in through? Okay? Um,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: say it was on the tail end of a big
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: cold front with a screaming northwest wind. Well this year
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: we had that screaming northwest wind on the ninth Boom,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: I'm there on the ninth, you know. Or maybe it's
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: the screaming northwest winds not there till the fourteen. I'm
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: there on the fourteenth. So, Um, it's that approximate time,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: not necessarily calendar day day. You know, it's absolutely not
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: the calendar day. It's it's a spread of several days. Um,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: especially depending on the time of the year. Peak rot
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: is really fickle, as you guys know. You know, you
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: can go from great activity to you know, dead stop
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: the very next day. Um. But uh, you know, bucks
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: move from point A to point B for a reason.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: You know, they're either you know, bed to food. You know,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: they're they're you know, escape routes or they're seeking those
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: you know. It's about that simple, um. And they move
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: certain ways for a reason. Um. They use the land
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: to their advantage, you know. And I hunt hills and
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: I kind of under beginning to understand how big Bucks
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: moved through these hills to avoid getting killed to stay
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: alive with age four and age five. Um, and they'll
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: they'll they'll move, you know, differently, but for the same
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: reasons in different terrains. Um. But they they will use
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the wind to their advantage when they're escaping from danger,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: however that may be. They'll send check areas that they
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: think dangers is it's dangers, and they'll use the win
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: to their advantage when seeking does um and and uh,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: they also you know, are prone. Say it's seventy five
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: degrees out in mid November, they don't you know, they're
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: gonna they move. They'll move a little bit, mostly at night,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: and otherwise they'll you know, just um, they can't sweat,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: but if dear can sweat, they'd be sweating. Um you know. Um,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: So if say that time period goes around, I know
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: a Big Bucks in the area, I know he was
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: cruising the previous year, but it was really cold. Now
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: it's really hot. Well, what's a good water hole nearby?
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: You know, um that I might be able to set
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: up on instead. Uh, you know, so I really want
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: to see several conditions line up. It's not just time
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: of year, it's time of year and weather. Um. And
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: and bucks will move differently. Makes sense paper leewards, floats
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: and hills, um. We could you know, we can dive
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: into bedding too. That kind of takes me into the wear.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: But it's regard to leeward slopes. They favor leeward slopes. Um,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: it's a it's kind of a wind advantage. Um. And
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: I see Bucks using uh, windward slopes too, you know,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: so they're on the side of the wind hits some
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: and usually it's because there's not an easy access around
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: on a leeward slope. Um. Let's see what else you know?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: And and other things like what elevation they're traveling on.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Bucks really like to travel on that military crest for
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: guys that don't understand what that is. Um. When you
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: have a ridge, it's flatter on top and a steeper side,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: it's right on the side of the ridge where the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: flatter area breaks to a steep slope. Um. Um. You know,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: they favor the military craft traveling. That being said, they
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: don't use that exclusively. They also have to avoid hunters um,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: and I see this a lot. Hunting pressure has by
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: far the most impact um on deer movement you know, uh,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: over just about anything else. So you know, I didn't
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: really mention that. While scouting, I want to cover, Um,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for hunters signed too, and I'm pinpointing where
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: the other hunters are hunting, um, both coming in from
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: the public areas, and I uh like to hunt a
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: lot of our the way spot. So actually I end
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: up facing a lot of hunters coming in from adjacent
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: private land even um because I can outwalk most other
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: guys from the public parking lot um or you know,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: outswim or whatever. Um. You know, you gotta do it
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: on public land. You gotta be where other guys are.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: You gotta um you know, if you want to hunt,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: if you want to kill deer that other other people
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: aren't killing, you gotta hunt of where other guys are
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: hunting and wherever that takes you. So for instance, on
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: a you know I talked about bucks lined to move
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: at the military crest, they also also like to bet
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: at the military crest. Um. But you can have uh,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: you know, if hunting pressure is mainly a pie in
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: hill country, UM, say the access point is on the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: top of the ridge. Well, very few guys go down
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: in the bottoms because you know, if nobody wants to
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: drag a deer up at two three foot hill or
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: several of them to get them out. So where did
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: the big bucks learn they can survive? They start bedding
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: down low. You know, I've got several instances like that,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: and I've killed bucks download doing that. So um they
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: go wherever the hunters aren't. So that's kind of the
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: first thing. If I'm looking at a new property, cross
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: off all those areas hunters probably are, and you can
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: scout them very lightly, but usually I just walk right
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: through them unless I see something, you know, glaringly obvious
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: that oh maybe there's no hunters around, and I'm focusing
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: on a lot of times it's less of the property.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: I'm time, there's only ten percent or less of the property. Um,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: a few acres here or there that it's either overlooked
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: or other hunters aren't going, And that's where the big
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: boys are living. You know, in daylight they're betting. So
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: um at that that makes sense. That was good. I
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: guess I tied into the I tied a little bit
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: into the war you know, um, the but Bucks betting man.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: We could, we could cover a whole podcast of what
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: I've seen, um betting behaviors. But yeah, um, well so
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: around here, like like I said, the primary ingredient is security,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: you know. And I know that's allows the explanation because
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: everybody wants something that they can just take and be like, oh,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: Buck's bed in here, because Joe says so, well, I
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: can't say that, you know, I don't. I don't know
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: your situation, but I do know that Big Bucks primary
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: goals staying alive. So he's gonna bed where he can
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: easily see here, smell something sneaking up on him, and
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: he can get out of there preferably without the hunter
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: or Kyo or whatever it is ever know when he's there. Um,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, so in hells Bucks love bed
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: nun points you know on this little secondary ridges, um
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: at the military crest, wind coming over their back, see
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: that all the time. Well, you throw the hunting pressure
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: into a into a uh you know, into a situation,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: and that's when I start to see some funky things
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: like I'll see Bucks bending down low on real low
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: benches and points. I'll see him you know, when you
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: get into more open farm country, you see him betting
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: on the tips of draws, their little ile in the timber,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: or even out on terraces. Um. And every single time
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: you see a betted buck, um, I highly recommend you
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: go there and you sit down in the bed. And
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't come up with that. You know, that's Dan Infalt,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: who runs the Hunting Beast. As the first guy heard
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: talking about that, I absolutely agree. You know, go and
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: sit down with that bucks betting. Feel where that winds
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: coming from. Almost always, unless you're in real thick cover,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: um And and it may not be wind based betting,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: almost always that winds coming over the bucks back in
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: some quarter quartering way. At least he's watching downwind. He's
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: got good visibility down wind. You just can't you can
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: almost all the time with a mature buck, you physically
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: cannot get in close to him without him busting out
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: of there, you know, And to kill him, you gotta
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: get as close as you can, but not bust him.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: So you might that might be two hundred yards, that
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: might be fifty yards, dependent on the cover, you know,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: and in the direction you want. Uh, you know, you know,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: he probably wants to head out of that bed and
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: set up and uh, you know, if he's home when
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: you hunt there, uh, you can get him. So it's uh.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: I'm I learned more and more about buck betting every
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: single year, so I don't consider myself an expert, but UM,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: I mean the biggest thing you've got to take away
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: is buck You know, bucks are you trying to stay alive.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: So wherever they're betting is where they know they can
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: detect danger and they can get the hell out of dodge.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: So I got a question for you. Um, I've never
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: uh and this is specifically to the farms that I hunt,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: and they're a mixture of uh, like those big draws
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: with egg and all that stuff. So I have never
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: found something that resembles a buck bed that is um,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: I want to say, used so much that there's white
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: belly hair in it, you know, and stuff like that.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: I'm I feel that on my farms there's different betting
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: areas for different winds. It's specifically on some of the
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: properties that you hunt. What do some of these buck
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: bed locations? I know you've you mentioned it, but specific
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: what do they look like? Yeah, that's a good that's
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: a good point, um, because I think I think a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: lot of guys get turned off, you know, they they
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: get fired up thinking about buck beds and thinking about,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: okaymna hunt this bed and buck comes back every day
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: for weeks on end, and I'm gonna kill him. It
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't you know, I don't see that either. I am
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: probably just about kind of one hand a number of
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: beds buck beds that I found. And I mean, you know,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: I well, you know, every mile or every year I walked,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: you know, three hundred miles, two hundred miles scouting and hunting,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: so like a hugas amount of territory. Um. You know,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: I don't see very many buck beds worn to the ground.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: You know, bull shaped hair in there that are just
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: getting a huge amount of youth. But most of the
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: time in hill country, and you know, in hill country,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: I think betting is different than say in swamps, where
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: there's very limited bedding areas, you know, and you have
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: to bed in this specific spot, you know, on this
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: group ball or you're sitting in water. Um. But in hills,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of times I see buck betting areas are
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: very defined. Yet so you know, next time you see
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: a buck bed, um look around and see you know,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: even a lightly use you know, one bed a buck
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: betted here is a great big bed you betted here
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: some time last several days. We'll look around and see
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: if there's other lightly used beds, because three or four
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: real lightly used beds equals a ton of use, you know,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: if they add you know, and that one might be
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty ft over that direction, and then another
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: one might be thirty yards in this direction. So um,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: that's kind of how I look at it. And they're
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: lightly used, you know there there might be only you know, okay,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: the sign of that a buck betted there once in
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: the last week, you know. Um, and uh when I
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: see one, and quite often say on the same secondary
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: ridge point, I'll find several lightly used beds, and then
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: what I really like to find our one or two
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: perennial rubs, so you know, they're the last year's rubs,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: and there's time marks from two years ago and three
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: years ago on that same old tree, twisted narral tree.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: And man, that that just makes me, you know, the
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: hair on my next stand out, because I know a
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: buck has been using this location multiple you know, multiple years.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: There's clearly a reason. Um, And then I start looking Okay,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: what are the food sources in the area, what are
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: the you know, during the rut, what direction is he
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: probably go on? What direction are the rubs facing? Sometimes
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: there's a rub line coming into that betting area. A
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: lot of times there isn't necessarily a rub line, but
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: out to three yards you might find a rub or two,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: and but they're facing into or out of that betting area. Well,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: that gives you a line of travel. You know, he
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: was going that way, you know, on that particular time anyway,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: and not necessarily every time, but every every little bit
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: a clue, and you can really piece together, um, you know,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, the spider web of activity that
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: he's got going on, and that that betting location is
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: a focal point um, and you can just in herols.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: You can pretty much take to the bank where that
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: that is where when he was sitting there, the wind
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: was blowing over his back, so you can look in
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: that and then you can match up, Okay, what day
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: was the wind there? While it was that day and uh,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and continue to piece things together. So I
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I scrolled through historical weather all the time.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: I'm looking comparing trail camera sightings too. Um, you know,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: historical weather conditions all the time. I'm a spreadsheet nut.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: I keep a kind of spreadsheets, and especially if I'm
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: after one specific book. I started logging when I saw
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: him where I saw him? What weather conditions? Um, you know,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: I I go crazy. I'm looking at you know, barometric
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: pressure and and moon phase and all that. So can
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: you can you elaborate on those pieces there because we
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: haven't really talked about the factors the you know, I'm
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: trying to think about the right way to categorize these
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: factors are I don't know, weather, moon pressure, humidity, anything
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: like that. What specifically are you looking for there? What
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: do you think is important? What's not important? Um, let's
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: hear about that. Yeah, so all right, UM, So admittedly
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: I am I am. I'm a married I love looking
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: at uh data or trends. I should put it that way, um,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: because I'm a deer hunting married you know, I don't
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: wear a tie for a living. Um anyway, anyway, they
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: so I'm trying to think honestly. You know, if if
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: you're out to look at one thing, look at look
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: at well two things, look at stage in the rock
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: and weather. You know, and I think you know, I've
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: even heard you guys talk about, you know, paralysis by analysis.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: That's a dangerous thing. I mean, you know, you're looking
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: at more things than you should be looking at. You know,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: you need to dial it down, focus on the big stuff.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: You know, it's easy to get distracted by little stuff.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned the moon. I consider the moon
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: a secondary factor. Some guys, you know, think it's loo
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: need to even talk about the moon. But you know,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: I think I do see a few trends. But frankly,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not even looking at it that closely these days
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: because I'm really focusing back on weather. UM. And you know, okay,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: so for weather, you have wind speed and barometric pressure
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: and temperature UM and all precipitation too. But if you
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: just look at temperature, barometric pressure and wind speed, UM,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: you know that that's complicated. Complicated enough UM, the temperature,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody pretty much understands that. But you have
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: barometric pressure and wind speed. Those are related. So when
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: you have rapidly changing parametric pressure, that means your wind
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: speeds rapidly changing. Sorry vice versa. When you have when
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: you have high winds, usually that means your parametric pressure
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: is rising or falling pretty fast. And uh, you know,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: hypermetric pressure usually associated with good weather low pressure, and
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: so it's with bad weather. But not only do you
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: have high, medium and low pressure, you have rising and
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: falling pressure. So you know, you can have high and rising,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: high and falling you know. So it's it's bloody complicated. Um.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: So I can see how a lot of guys, you know,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: your eyes start glazing over and you're like, I'm not
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: going to listen to that, but just my general observation.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: So obviously, you know, guys know, hey, we've got a
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: cold front. It's gonna be good hunting. Well, I try
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: to look, Okay, what exactly in that cold front makes
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: good hunting? Um, cold fronts come in all shapes. Inside
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: is big ones, little ones, you know. Um, the bigger
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: the better, obviously, the bigger the temperature drop and the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: larger the high pressure behind it. And you know, if
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: a cold front might last three days, I'm not hunting
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: all those three days. I want to hunt once in
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: that three days, when is the very best time for
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: me to hunt? Well that it relates a little bit
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: too exactly when the you know what kind of pattern
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: I have on a deer. But I mean, as far
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: as best activity, I love when the pressure is high,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: like the day after the cold front is just reaching
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: the highest point, you know. And I've heard Mark Durry
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: talk about that too, and I absolutely agree, Like you know,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: that first full day in the cold front is fantastic. Well,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: I also like a little later in the cold front,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: you can when you get us wind switch, and I've
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: heard Mark talk about that too, the first south wind. Well,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a south wind per se,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: but just when that wind switches, I think deers start
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: to frequent new betting areas um, and maybe enter an
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: exit food source a little differently. Um. And you see
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: really good deer movement then um. And you know I'm
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: trying to I am usually hunting really tight to bedding,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: but I'm still looking for optimal deer movement conditions, even
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: though you know, I'm not hunting food plots and stuff,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: you know, but i want every extra minute that I
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: can have with that big buck on his feet. Um.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: And I firmly believe he gets up a little earlier
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: and moves around just a little more, you know, on
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: those optimal days. So so that's weather um, you know,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: I mean temperature. My thoughts on temperature. You know, seventy
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: degrees in early October, deer can move fairly well. Still,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: seventy five degrees in early November kills activity unless maybe
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: you know it might be worth while hunting the water source. Um.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: Otherwise you're probably only seeing anything on in dusk. Um
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: about um. You know one thing and put turl cameras
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: on water holes. And I've noticed a lot of use
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: by Big Bucks right at mid day on warm days.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: Even they get thirsty in the middle of the day
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: and they come in for a drink. But um, anyway,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: so you know temperature um. Wind speed in the hills
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: has a huge impact on deer activity. The stronger the wind,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: the more likely those deer are going to seek shelter. Now,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of guys say, say, you know, I've heard
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: this a lot of times. It winds flowing thirty four.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: Deer arn't moving. I think deer move great. They're moving
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: differently there. You have to get out of the wind
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: to hunt them. And sometimes you know, your occurrens can
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: get all of squirrely when you're setting up in strong wind.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: Out of the wind the hills. UM but um, I
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: love cold days with a screaming wind. You know, in
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: October or November, deer just stack up on those sheltered
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: leeward slopes and down low. Um. Not of some great
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: hunts doing that. Um. And uh, you know everybody else
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: is sitting at home saying the wind's too strong and
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: deer at moving. But I'm seeing deer moving. They're not
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: out in the wind. I wouldn't be either, although sometimes
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: you have to be. It's crappy because you maybe third
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: you up a tree and swaying and freezing to death,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: and down at the base of the tree, everything's nice
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: and calm up there. Just just to have a decent
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: wind in that kind of situation. Joe, Um, how do
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: you how do you hunt that situation? Because that's one
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: of the things you always hear about, is that it's
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: safer to hunt higher up because your wind is gonna
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: be more consistent. If you go down low, it's more
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: apt to have that wind swirling and or get detected.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: So on those windy days when bucks and other deer
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: have moved down lower where they can be sheltered, how
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: can you still hunt them down there without getting winded? Yeah? Well,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: good question, um, because it's tough. So for one, so
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: one thing I didn't while scouting, UM A lot of
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: times I take scent checker with me. Um. It's one
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: of the same, one of many things I learned on
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: the on the hunting beast. Um. I use um uh
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: those little cotton fluffy from milkweed. Um, and that is
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: by far the best scent checking um or the not
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: set checking jeez, confusing myself. Even wind wind checkers um. Uh. Anyway,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: you dropped those wind checkers um, and you can, you know,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: watch how they float down through the woods for quite
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: a way, far further than just if you had a
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: little squirt bottle of powder. I can't believe I used it.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: I carried her on a squirt bottle of powder trying
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: to check the wind for twenty years before I figured
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: that out. Um. But anyway, so while scouting, UM, say,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: say we got a strong wind. While scouting, will drop
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: into a low area that I know is you know,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: and this is outside of the season. UM. I probably
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be doing it three days before a hunter or something. UM.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: But I'll drop into a low area and I'll even
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: climb a tree and see, okay, you know you can find,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: you can see funny things in the hills. Um. You know,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: a wind wind can be coming over a ridge, a
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: real strong wind, and you can get on that leeward side.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: Verbals can be rising. But if it's real cold and
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: cloudy out, you won't have a whole lot of thermal activity.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: You'll actually have a vertical updraft. And it's a fluid
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: mechanics thing, all right. So um, that strong wind over
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: the top of the ridge is actually lower pressure and uh,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: the wind is just moving constantly up that leeward side
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: and you actually can hunt that leeward side down low
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: if you need to, and that wind will be coming
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: up in your face going up the ridge really consistent. Um,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: it's it's pretty amazing up until then will start really
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: falling hard, which might happen in day like my not
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: depends on weather conditions. But um, usually I don't go
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: into a low area unless I tested out first, Um,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: you know, just to be clear, like like hunting down
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: low and tricky. And I really like to you know,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: that's you know, I coper my bet so uh, I
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: like to know. I you know, I win there in
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: March and I dropped, you know, and I should have
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: a wind just consistently, even though it's forty miles an
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: hour up on the ridge top, you should be five
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: to ten down there, and it's just gently blowing down
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: the valley, you know. Um, and uh, you know I
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: can usually get that, and then sometimes we'll just get crazy,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: squirrely winds. I have spots. I have a long list
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: of spots, and I can't hunt because I don't have
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: a consistent wind. And that's something I feel strongly about, Like,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: I will not haunt a marginal wind. I want something
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: that's pretty darn consistent. I won't even I won't even try. Um,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: I've had you know, I've done that many times for
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: the past, and I learned my lesson. You know, you
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: push a marginal wind about nine times out of ten,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna work, you know. So, um, how I
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: guess that's a little bit on that. Yeah, how close
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: do you cut it? Though? Because I think with some
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: of the things you're talking about, and maybe you haven't
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: mentioned this specifically, but a lot of people we talked
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: to you talk about trying to cut the corners on that.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: So they want they want to they don't want to
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: use the marginal wind too often. But at the same time,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: they want to try to take advantage of how mature
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: buck will use the wind. So you want that buck
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: to think the wind sort of his favor. He's using
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: the wind in some way, but somehow you're able to
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: just cut it. Do you do you do you think
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: about that way when you're setting up? Yeah? Yeah, all right,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: So oh let's see. So I see bucks using the
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: wind to their advantage a lot of times around destinations.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: So when they're coming back into bed, they try to
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: hook into the wind to get the wind in there
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: their nose. When they're entering a food source, I often
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: see them enter from the downward side or even just
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: a low area. They slip into the lower area. While
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: that's a site advantage they're not skylined, but it's also
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of times when they're entering, say right at
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: last light or right after dart, those thermals are falling
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: and they're pooling in those lawyer areas um and also
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: low areas and hill country in the pre rout bucks
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: like to move through those lawer areas and they can
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: scent check the surrounding ridges. So outside of those destinations,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I honestly don't I think bucks moving across wind, moving
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: a tail wind. You know, if if they don't think
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: there's danger right next to them. Um, you know, I
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: I've killed a lot of bucks with the wind blowing
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: on their back. I've killed a lot of bucks on
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: a cross wind. Um. It's only around those specific destinations.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of times I am hunting
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: close to a bed. But say I find jay hooks
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: to be relatively small, say less than a hundred yards.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: You know, he comes in and he's gonna be coming
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: by like fifty yards down wind to the bed and
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: then hook in. That's just an example. Every situation a
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: little different. But I might set up a hundred and
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: fifty yards from the bed and kill him. And a
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: cross wind, you know, so um, I you know, every
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: situation is different, and you guys probably probably know that.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: But um, I will if I need to, I'll i'll.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: You know, the closer I the closer I have to
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: cut it, the more careful I am. You know, I'm
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: usually not hunting down in the valley with a butt
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: coming in from thirty degrees down wind, you know, almost
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: straight in from down wind, because it's just naturally download
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get a little squirrely wind. But if I
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: can get him coming in across with you know, across, um,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident I can kill him, unless you know,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: hunting gods are against me. Yeah, unfortunately seem to be
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: against me more often than that. So, with with all
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: that said, when do you choose to be aggressive? Yeah? Yeah, so,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: um it's a loaded question. I mean it takes experience,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: you know, And I just to be clear, like I've
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: screwed up so many times, like like and every single
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: screw up you know, I mentioned that that written are
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: view on wire time, like every single screw up valuable
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: because you can learn something from it. So when when
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: should I be aggressive? Well, I've learned to favor being aggressive,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and not every time. But if I'm going
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: to make a move, I'm going all out. I'm not
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: sitting in an observation set. All there are times when
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: you know, observation sits makes sense. But if I think
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: a buck is going to be using a betting area,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting right next to his betting area. I'm hunting it.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: In the evening, I'm hunting, you know, just out of
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: sight and sound and scent of him, just just over
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: the hill basically. UM. Usually, or if I'm hunting in
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: the morning, I'm hunting in there. You know, I'm getting
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: in there before he cuts home. He's either if he's coming,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill him. He's gonna bust me. His game over,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna move on to another one. So but you
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: know I'll do that once. Boo, that's it. And then
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: that's that's kind of why. UM. I stacked the deck
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: by lining up you know, six or eight high odds. Uh.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: You know high odds set ups, and I hit them all.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I and the high at the best of
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: the best. I'm not trying to hit one twice. I'm
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: not worried about hunting one twice. Occasionally I'll hunt hunt
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: one twice like this. Uh. It's kind of a perfect example,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: I guess to answer your question, dan, Um, I had
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: camera sitting there in August and September on which is
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: off the edge of um a felf field, a public land,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: and I got this really big bodied nine pointer coming
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: in routinely and he was frankly, he was on the
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: best pattern I've ever seen. He was just after dark
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: coming into this field. But I think I got him.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It was a bunch of times over
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: a course of a month. I slipped in camera was
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: in an easy access point um right an edge of
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: the field. A lot of other guys walked the field
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: and that that deer never showed up in daylight usually
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: didn't um. I think once or twice he did actually
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: show up in daylight. Most of the time it was
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: after dark. Well, I knew he was betting on private land,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: but the public land extend a couple hundred yards back
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: into the woods. Um. And then I where I suspected
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: his betting was um was there's several big knobs I
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: could tell from Google Earth. It's been recently logged, so
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: it was fairly thick um on a ridge a couple
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: hundred yards beyond math Um. So I knew as soon
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: as I and he was entering from that side of
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: the field. Almost all the pictures were from northerly winds,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: and that lined up to that that those you know
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: betting on those knobs, those were leeward slope. That was
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: on a leeward slope for a northerly wind. So I
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to take advantage of that pattern as soon as
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: I could. UM it was an early season you know.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: If I could kill an early season book, this was it.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: Um and uh So I think October one, I had
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: a north northeast wind or something, and I snuck in
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: there set up, you know, fifty yards from the property
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: line probably and I didn't see him, but I saw
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: um there there was a little eight poter that often
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: traveled with him, and that eight pointer came through. And
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: then I had also heard chainsaw and basically an exact
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: spot where I suspected he was betting a couple hundred
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: yards further on on the private um. So you know,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: so I thought, well, maybe that chain saw disturbed him.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: So a week later, November or October seven, I think,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: um and and I should mention I got in there
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: in the previous year too, using this food source. So
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: it was an early season food source. That's one thing.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: He was coming in a consistent wind. That's a second
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: baryo of the lining up. Um. You know, and I
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: could hunt fairly close to where I thought his betting was.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: As kind of a third thing. Um, So that's what
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: I you know, those three things lined up, and that's
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: what I'm not looking for just one thing. It's a
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: series of things lining up, Boom, take advantage of it.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: October seven, I moved in. I actually hunted a different spot,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: and I was hunting for Maturio was on the ground
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: um that I hunted. Maybe I moved maybe thirty yards
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: because I suspected that big buck had come in and
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: the course of that week had smelled where I was,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: and he was not going to come with him bullshadow
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: that tree. So I moved thirty yards and here I
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: was yards from the fence now, and that big buck
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: came in and I killed him, um, And he was
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: about twenty five yards of me. I shot him right
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: after he jumped the fence um onto the public land,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: and he was twenty five yards down wind to me,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: and he would have been fifty yards down wind of
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: the tree I originally hunted. I am certain he was
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: down there for a reason. He was gonna he was
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: coming through right there to smell if a hunter had
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: been in my first tree, um, because that's where i'd
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: been a week ago, you know. So that's the case.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I hunted that twice, um, And And to
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: be honest, it was a gut feeling. I couldn't easily
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: not seen him that second hunt but I did. I mean,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: it was just and that comes with experience, you know,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: you gotta and an experienced only comes from screwing up
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: thousands of times, you know, but you gotta learn from
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: your mistakes. So um yeah, yeah, I guess that cultfully,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: I've answered your question. So we've talked out this idea
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: of when to be aggressive. We talked earlier about how
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: you're finding where these deer are. We've talked about the
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: right conditions to strike, um, but one thing we haven't
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: really heard about is how you're specifically setting up on them.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: Because you you've mentioned a number of times almost all
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: these hunts are first time sits in a spot, so
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: that means you're you know, you've either set up stands
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: in the summer or spring, or you're going in there
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: and you mentioned your mobile lot, so you're going in
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: there and actually hanging and hunting that day of Can
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: you tell us specifically, you know, how you're hanging and
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: hunting these spots without you know, without spooking deer, and
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: whether it be specific gear you're using, or things you're
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: thinking about while you're setting up, how you're setting up
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: anything like that. Yeah. Um, yeah, So so while scouting.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: I want to pick. Um. Hey, I realized I did
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: proble must do it allows your job by explaining what
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: I did scouting, because all these questions you're asking answering me.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, I'm scouting. We could just be
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: the hosts. We might be yeah, yeah, that's all. You've
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: got a lot more I think. I'm pretty sure you've
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: got more practice doing your thing than I do doing this,
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: So it's probably me. Yeah. Um, I'm picking trees, um
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: and marking turees. I just got a GPS actually UM button.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: Before that, I was still picking trees and marking them
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: that I want to hunt out of in the spring. Um.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: And also I do a lot of hunting from the ground. Um.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: I do a lot more hunting from the ground and
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of people I think, um, and that's got
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: you in a separate tangent. But I'm picking spots to
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: set up on the ground now, um, just real quick
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: ground hunting. It's really tricky. You've gotta have the element
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: of surprise on your on your favor a feel things
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: I look for. I want to see dear coming from
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: a distance at least fifty yards away, and I don't
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: want you know, I wouldn't set up on the ground
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the dope betting area. You know,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: it's got to be a very safe location, you know,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: in terms of number a year around you. Um. But
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: I've killed a lot of big box with a bow
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: off the ground. Um. And I'd say mostly it's because
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: Element a Surprise. They had no clue a human is
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: going to be there until you know they came through
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: and they caught my arrow. So um. And I'm not
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: using the pop uplind. I hate pop uplines, you know.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: I mean they serve a purpose, but I just hate
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: hunting out of them because I feel boxed in, you know.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: I it's like you sitting in a cubicle band. That's
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: how I feel sitting in the pop up blinds. So
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: so um, I'm building just a rough line. It doesn't
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: even look like a blind. I'm leaning up three or
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: four logs against a tree, just enough to break up
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: my outline. It really does not take much and not
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: be skylined. Things like that, and Element of Surprise can't
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: get over that. You know, on at once works doesn't work,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: move on and then from hunting from a tree. Um.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: The last few years I've I've used. You know, I
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: used to hang stands before the season. Now I haven't
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: hung a stand on public land and I don't know
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: several seasons at the very least, Um, I don't on
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: a tree sandle. Mobile is the way to go. Um.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to convince somebody who's used to
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: hunt out of a ladder stand or out of a
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: thick stand to some kind you know all season long, UM,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: to try mobile. It's like it's so much work. Are
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: you insane? You know I've got I'm sure you both
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: of you guys have gotten that too. I know you
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: guys you know hunt, you know you running gun? Um,
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: But like you just it's incredible. How much more success,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: how much more quote unquote luck I've had hunting mobile
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: than when I hunted fixed sufficial stands. Um And uh,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: so you know I'll use climbing sticks. Get up there. Um.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: I I've actually built a little kind of a rest
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: on the top stick. So that's what I seek. Go
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: sitting in my tree saddle. Um And uh. You know,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: I'm probably hunting out of a tree sixty of the time.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: But even though I'm hunting out of a tree and
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: the majority of the time I'm killing most of my
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: big bucks on the ground, and that's just something I
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: kind of just realized the last year or two. I
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: was like, wow, you know, uh, something's going on there.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: And frankly, I'm still kind of steady in that um.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: And I think it's because I'm hunting places that you
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: really can't realistically hunt from a tree. Maybe there's a
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: tree there, but the you know, the when I killed
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: in he that busted me in the tree or there,
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: or maybe there is noble tree there, you know, like
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: the buck I talked about back. Um, you know they're
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: the trees were you know, two to three inches in
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: four inches in diamee, probably not even four inches in diameter.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I would have had a hunt fifty yards
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: away to have a hontable tree on the edge of
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: that cut over. And even then, uh, you know, srimming
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: is illegal on almost all Iowa publicly hounds. Maybe there's
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: something it is, but as far as I know, you're
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: not supposed to cut any branches. I would have had to,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: you know, break the law and cut this human shooting lane,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: which I wasn't gonna do into this clear cut um
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: old cutover just to be able to shoot through that canopy.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: Um and uh, and you know a deer to detected
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: that anyway. So um, yeah, that's hunting where I need.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: You know, let the deer tell you where you need
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: to hunt, and then you just have to commit to
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: hunting there one way or another. And I've gotten busted
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: on the ground, uh, you know a number of times. Um.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: But I've also you know, I've also busted a few
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: bucks doing it too. So well, that makes sense. Um,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: And I think that what you're saying there is consistent
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: with a lot of the best hunters and mature bucks
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: that we talked to. So many people prioritize that first set.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: So many people prioritize getting into those places and taking
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: advantage of that element of surprise, whether it be in
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: a tree or on the ground. But I think by bye,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: by being mobile in that way, by not hanging stands beforehand,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: and and by forcing yourself to be mobile. While it
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: has that inherent challenge and it's more work that you
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: have to do in the moment, it kind of makes
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: things easier for you. And the fact that you don't
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: get lazy like me. I've got a bunch of stands
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: pretty hung in a bunch of places. I'm always tempted
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: to get lazy, because yeah, it could be mobile, but
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: I've already got this great spot here that's all set up. Um,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: do I really want to go through all that work? Um,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: you're constantly battling that temptation. While in a situation like
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: where you're talking about, where you just simply have to
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: set up a new stand or sneak into a new
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: spot in the ground, it's much more likely that you're
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: going to be able to take advantage of that first
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: time opportunity just because you've kind of set yourself up
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: for it. So I like, I like, I like the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: way you're approaching that, and I've got I've got one issue. Um.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: The bad news here is that I would like to
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: keep talking to you about this stuff for a long
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: long time, because we're talking about really in some things.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: But we have a hard stop coming up here in
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: a relatively short amount of time, and I want to
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: make sure I get to at least one final set
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: of questions that I have. UM, and Dan might have
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: something final two, but here's my question for it. My
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: final set of questions. It's a two parter um based
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: on what I've heard from you today. Um, And based
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: on the fact that you you said earlier that you've
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: probably listened to every single episode of the Wintertime podcast,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: and from what I'm hearing you, you analyze things to
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: great detail. You really look at the the details. Um,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: you dig it on stuff. So if I had to
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: make a guess about you, I would imagine that after
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: hearing me and Dan talk about how we hunt over
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: the course of a hundred and fifty episodes, you've probably
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: you've probably picked up some things about what we're doing
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: and maybe have some thoughts on what we're doing right
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: or wrong. So here's what I want to know from you, Joe.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: And if if you don't want to answer this, you
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: don't have to. But yeah, here's what I like to
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, So, based on what you've heard me
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: and Dan say about how we hunt, I would like
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: to know what you would recommend I change if anything
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: in how I'm hunting, or if there's a specific thing
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: you've heard that you think that maybe I screwed up
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: or anything. Then and then number two, what would you
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: say for Dan in that situation? Oh? Boy? Oh, let's see. Well, okay,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: so all right, So the first thing, and I don't really.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: It's don't really have a reason for this first thing
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: that pops into my head regards d N. So I'm
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: gonna start there, M yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Uh one.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: So there's one thing, and you're probably gonna say hell
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: hell know of this. So run your trail cameras like
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: you normally do all summer long, right in come September.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: Put a padlock on everyone in your cameras so you
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: can't open them. Put those keys in an envelope and
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: mail that envelope to me, and I'll mail it back
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: to you, and I'll mail it back to you and
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: in November. Okay, so you can get back into your cameras.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: But I mean, you've got so much going for you.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: Then you're hunting mobile because you have you know how
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: hard it is to hunt. Convinced somebody to hunt mobile,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: They're like, oh, well, you know, like you've never done
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: that before. You know, you're running a gun and you're
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: on You've got slop bucks running down there round you know,
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: behind every tree in southern Ile, right, Um yeah, but
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: like don't pay attention, like I swear I've heard you say, man,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: I was a day late or you know a hunt
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: light or whatever, like ten times on podcast. It's because
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: I swear, I don't know. I think you're hunting with
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: your cameras too much, like use them to hunt, but
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: not like, oh there's a buck there three days ago,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: it's hunt there. Just ignore that, like for the time being.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: That put it in the bank, and you know, um
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: pull it out and telling me. You're telling me that
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: I should rely on last year's data than this year's data. Yep, yep.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: And I know you know, I listen to your podcast too.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: I know you're using UM uh that that that software
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: package that helps you analyze trail cameras, and you know
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: that's a great tool by all. You know, if you're
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: comfortable using it, use it. UM. And you've said you've
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: been noticing a lot of things. I mean, that's exactly
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. So look at you know when
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: peak rut movement is when a big buck is you know,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: moving honest feet in daylight, you know, and what conditions
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: you know it's not you know, maybe it was November
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: fifth last year, it's not necessarily going to be November
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: five this year. But within a few days of that,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: with similar weather, he's probably gonna be there, you know,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: you know if you got the lucky there last year.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: You know, guys don't forget something like that, you know.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: So Um, one question, one question to elaborate on what
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: you just told me. Let's say I go in and
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: I hunt a tree stand right, that's maybe just up
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: from a pinch point, and I got a trail camera
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: down in that pinch point. Should if I go in
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: there to hunt, should I go down an extra forty
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: yards to check that camera? Or should I still just
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: forget about it? Um? I would probably if I had
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: to cross any deer trails whatsoever, I would probably forget
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: about it, like any more deer trails, or I would
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: check it. If I really didn't, I was like, you
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm probably not going to come back here
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: in hunt. Then go ahead and check it if you're
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: if you're realistic, you know, and who knows, maybe you've
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: got bucks running all over on camera and that will
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: give you, you know about even then I'm like, okay,
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: you left more set there, um, But I don't know.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: I I have learned a lot more, for instance, I'm sure,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: And so I'll hang a camera and sometimes I'll have
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: a big buck, you know, immediately, but usually it takes
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: three to five days after I put hang a camera
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: to see what seems like natural movement. And I only
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: know that because I left in a month. You know,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: in that first three to five days, movements really intermittent,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: and I swear it's because I left ground step there
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: and you know, some deer reacting to it some day
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: or noticing it. And then I'll stay away for a while,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: but then eventually you'll come back. And if I leave
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: that sucker there for a month, that last three weeks, um,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: you know, and yes, and I even see that, I'll
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: leave a camera there and I'll get another hunter walk through,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: um and boom, no activity for two days, and then
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: activities start seeing. You know, okay, a deer moving this
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: way in the morning and that way in the evening.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I start seeing more normal activity. So I
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: know there are situations where people can check cameras really
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: low impact, but I think it's a inc minority. And
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: especially if you you know, it's really powerful if you
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: can put a camera where you want to hunt next year,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: because it's you know, it's a high potentially a relatively
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: high impact location, you know, maybe near bedding or whatever.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: Let it's so you're not there, it's watching you know,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: for a full month, two months. You can leave it
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: there all year if you want. Um. It tells you
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: a huge amount of information. So uh yeah there, um
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah. So Mark, Um, I know you're chasing that
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: big old buck in Michigan. UM. I mean, well, obviously
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: your dial and and your situation a little different because
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: as you've I've followed that story, I know you had
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: him basically dead the rights and the muzzleloader and chose
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: not to take him, which is I think it's pretty admirable. UM.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: But uh, you know you want to kill him with
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: the bow. Um, try to kill him the very first time. UM.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: And by that I mean I mean, and I don't
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: know your property. Maybe you can sit observation, but uh,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: I know, UM, in the past you've talked about kind
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: of moving in, moving in. Um. You know, maybe you
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: can sit if you consider zero impact observation sit by
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: all means do it. But if your observation is any
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: impact whatsoever, go for the kill. UM. So I expect
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: to hear hear about you stick in that book about
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: October two this fall, I hope. So that's that's the hope.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: I plant or not. Yeah, yeah, I guess just I
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: challenge you not to be incremental. Um, you know, sit
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: back and then pounces. Um. But yeah, you know, and
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: of course you know you can and if you get burned,
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: you can you know, box up a you know, a
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: bunch of dog crap and send it to me. I
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: guess I might just do that. It what happens, you know.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: That's that's the challenge of Hutt in one buck. You know,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: I've been there. I've killed a couple of bucks where
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: it's like this buck and this is the only buck.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: I burned myself out on one buck too, you know,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: and I try to avoid it for that reason, like
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: like and I mean, I love the chase. You know.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: We're all suckers, you know. We see that shot, you know,
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: you know, and and for Michigan what you're hunting, you know,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: I said hunt one. You know I'm well aware of that.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: Um you know, so we're suckers for you know, that
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: one awesome, magnificent deer. But um, you know, I I
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: fight against it, man, because I've been burnt in that
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: end of the season. You know, that's a you know,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: I think, Um, I chased one bucks for a while,
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I didn't end up filling my
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: boat tag and at the end of the year, I
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I looked at I was like, well, that
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: was the east of time, you know, And that's a terrible,
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: terrible mindset and with and I probably shouldn't, but um,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: you know that's why I try not to. But good luck,
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, it's definitely one of those things that
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: it can be the ultimate high and the ultimate low.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: That's for sure. If there's anything I've learned about chasing
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: one buck, it's uh, it's a roller coaster, no doubt
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: about that. So so that was great. I I I
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: appreciate you taking a stab at the hosts there. And Dan,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: I guess i'll leave you. Do you have any final
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: question before we let Joe go? I do not, all right,
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: except will you come on again? Oh yeah? Oh yeah absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: So just I don't know if I should do this,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: but Mark, and this is coming from Mark Dan as
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: an ice breaker, I probably should. I probably should crack
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: a couple of ginger jokes. Okay, okay, are you a
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: ginger as well? No, no I'm not, but I'm married
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: a ginger and I have a daughter who's a anders.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: So I'm surrounded by them, so you know, don't you
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: don't need to You don't even jump across the phone
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: line and kill me. My wife will kill me. The beard,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: my beard games ginger. Right, So the hair though I'd
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: fit in, I'd fit right in if I decided to shave,
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: but I'm getting so the beard covers that up. Are
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: you going to give? Oh? Man? Uh, well, I've got,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: I've got. It's got to be a p u. Let's see.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: Oh so, so how does how does every redhead joke
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: begin by the joke teller looking over their shoulder to
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: make sure there's no gingers around? What do you? Let's see?
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: Oh this all? Uh? What type of ginger doesn't let gingers? Sorry?
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: What type of train doesn't let gingers ride a soul train?
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: I know that was me? Sorry, Dad, don't kill me.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: I'm used to it. Yeah, yeah, that's all right. But yeah,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: I was trying to take of a couple of Michigan
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: jokes to actually just to spread the law. Um. The
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: only the only one I could take of is there
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: was two Michigan hunters and they went into the woods
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: to hunt deer, and it came across a set of
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: tracks and one with a big set of tracks, and
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: one was like, that's a big buck. We gotta follow
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: hunt that buck down. The other one is like, there's
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: no way that's a buck. That's got to be a cow.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: While they were both certain they're right, and they sat
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: there arguing and the train hit them. Yeah, sorry, that
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: was being smart. Yeah, I know, and of course that
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: was Yeah, that was a blonde joke originally, but I
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: just had to stake Michigan, you know, to be fair.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: So it worked, well, it works well yeah, yeah, well, Joe,
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: you and I've heard I've heard my share of Iowa
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: in bread knuckle jaggon dril jokes, so I could take
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: it to everybody knows. Uh man, Well, this is fun,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: and I think, um, I can't think, I speak for
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: Dan and myself here that you share a lot of
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: really interesting, helpful things for all of us. So, like
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: Dan said, we we should try to get you on
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: again in the future and maybe we can talk about
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: our progress of our two thousand seventeen season or something
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: like that, because this has been great. So Joe, thank
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: you so much. Yeah, no problem, thanks for having me.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's pretty awesome talking to you guys,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: so good luck, good luck we don't talk again before
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: the season and and uh yeah, I hope you gott
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: I hope to see some awesome field kill photos from
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: both of you, absolutely, and we hope to see the
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: same from you. And with that, we're going to wrap
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: a bow on episode number one and fifty and help
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: out that one awesome awesome stuff. I am just so
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: ready for hunting season. I cannot wait to chase some
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: white tails and this has just got me more pumped
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: than ever. But that said, before we go big thanks
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: to our partners at Sitka Gear, Yetie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: Maven Optics, white Tail, Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge,
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: and hunt Terra Maps. And finally, thank you all for listening.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did,
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: and I hope you'll stay wired to hunt