Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1025: Hunting Mountain Bucks Out West with Eric Crawford

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Ep. 1025: Hunting Mountain Bucks Out West with Eric Crawford · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
0:04
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
0:09
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light,
0:13
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
0:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week in
0:22
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by avid mountain whitetail hunter Eric
0:25
Speaker 2: Crawford to discuss why and how you can pull off
0:29
Speaker 2: your first Western whitetail hunt. All right, welcome back to
0:37
Speaker 2: the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie.
0:40
Speaker 3: This week in the show we are head and West.
0:42
Speaker 2: We're talking to my friend in diehard deer hunter, Eric Crawford.
0:48
Speaker 2: He is a former Pennsylvania resident turn Idaho backcountry hunter.
0:53
Speaker 3: He was a.
0:56
Speaker 2: Wildlife CEO conservation officer there in Idaho for a while.
1:01
Speaker 2: He now works for Trout Unlimited, but in his spare
1:04
Speaker 2: time he is walking the rolling hills and mountains of
1:09
Speaker 2: the Western whitetail States, chasing big old mature bucks and
1:14
Speaker 2: big timber. Big hills, big mountains, vast country, the kind
1:19
Speaker 2: of places that a lot of us dream of and
1:21
Speaker 2: some of us hunt. Some of us have been able
1:23
Speaker 2: to head west and do something like this ourselves. Some
1:26
Speaker 2: of us hunt in the eastern version of this, maybe
1:28
Speaker 2: in the northeast or in the Appalachian Mountains Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maine,
1:35
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. There's a lot of habitat similar
1:38
Speaker 2: to this that we can chase deer in across the country.
1:42
Speaker 2: And today with Eric, we're going to dive into what
1:45
Speaker 2: that transition was like for him, going from Pennsylvania to Idaho,
1:49
Speaker 2: and how he discovered a very successful and fulfilling way
1:55
Speaker 2: to chase deer in this new kind of setting. It's
1:58
Speaker 2: an adventurous whitetail hunt. It's an active whitetail hunt. He's
2:02
Speaker 2: got great insight on how to break down terrain and topography,
2:05
Speaker 2: how to find white tails in this kind of country,
2:07
Speaker 2: and then how to actually hunt them down, whether that's
2:10
Speaker 2: still hunting or setting up in the stand and waiting.
2:14
Speaker 2: Really interesting stuff. It's got me excited to try something
2:17
Speaker 2: like this myself both out west and probably try to
2:20
Speaker 2: put some of these things into action in future hunts
2:23
Speaker 2: in the Northeast too.
2:24
Speaker 3: So, without any further ado, let's get to.
2:27
Speaker 2: My chat with Eric Crawford talking mountain bucks, heading west
2:32
Speaker 2: and having one heck.
2:33
Speaker 3: Of an adventure. All right. Joining me on the line
2:42
Speaker 3: now is Eric Crawford. Welcome to the show.
2:45
Speaker 4: Eric, Yeah, thanks for having me Mark.
2:49
Speaker 2: You have been teasing me with ideas and stories and
2:54
Speaker 2: little hints of Western whitetail hunting excitement and photos for
3:02
Speaker 2: years now, and you've continued to try to tempt me
3:06
Speaker 2: out in your direction to try this stuff. And so
3:08
Speaker 2: finally I'm I'm taking you up on it. Eric, I'm
3:12
Speaker 2: here to pick your brain about all things Western white
3:15
Speaker 2: tails with with plans to do it myself here hopefully
3:19
Speaker 2: really soon. So thanks for thanks for taking the time
3:22
Speaker 2: to do this, thanks for continuing to bug me about
3:25
Speaker 2: this every time we get together, and I'm excited to
3:28
Speaker 2: pick your brain here.
3:30
Speaker 4: Yeah.
3:31
Speaker 5: You know, I think you recognize and I recognize our
3:35
Speaker 5: mutual passions for for white tails, and so yeah, looking
3:38
Speaker 5: forward to this conversation and glad that you are finally
3:43
Speaker 5: jumping in with both feet.
3:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I should I should clarify I've done Western
3:48
Speaker 2: white tail hunting in the past, yeah, as you know,
3:51
Speaker 2: but I have, I've never done it quite the way
3:54
Speaker 2: that you do it, and I'm planning on changing that.
3:57
Speaker 2: So so I wanna get right into the first question
4:01
Speaker 2: that I think anyone listening might have, which is just
4:05
Speaker 2: why why should I go west and hunt mountain whitetails
4:11
Speaker 2: in seemingly tough country when I could just go out
4:16
Speaker 2: my back door in the Midwest here in Michigan, or
4:18
Speaker 2: I could go to Iowa, which is famous for white tails,
4:20
Speaker 2: or I could go down south, you know, where there's.
4:23
Speaker 3: Tons and tons of deer.
4:25
Speaker 2: Why is a western whitetail hunting in the in the
4:29
Speaker 2: kind of rugged country that you do it. Why is
4:32
Speaker 2: that worth considering in your view?
4:35
Speaker 4: Yeah?
4:35
Speaker 5: And I mean each one of those locations that you
4:40
Speaker 5: just mentioned, you know, as iconic whitetail destinations, certainly have
4:44
Speaker 5: their you know what, I think some people envision, as
4:49
Speaker 5: you know, the highlight of white tail opportunity. But when
4:54
Speaker 5: I with the hunting that I do now, you know,
4:57
Speaker 5: as we've discussed Mark, I grew up in pennsil northeast Pennsylvania,
5:02
Speaker 5: so I'm very familiar you know, with white tail hunting
5:06
Speaker 5: back east and smaller I guess perspective than what I
5:10
Speaker 5: do now. I think the really great thing about the
5:14
Speaker 5: kind of hunting that I do. I do hunt on
5:17
Speaker 5: private land to an extent, but most of it is
5:20
Speaker 5: is public lands and mainly large, very large tracks of
5:24
Speaker 5: national forests, you know, to the point that you leave
5:28
Speaker 5: the road at daylight, you know, and you won't be
5:30
Speaker 5: back until you know sundown, and during that time, you know,
5:36
Speaker 5: you're not crossing any roads, you're not using any trails
5:38
Speaker 5: other than game trails. And for me, it has always
5:42
Speaker 5: been this, well, what's on the other side of the ridge.
5:44
Speaker 5: You know, many of these places that I do hunt
5:46
Speaker 5: and have hunted over the years, from the extreme northern
5:50
Speaker 5: Idaho to where I am now in central Idaho, if
5:54
Speaker 5: you will offer different opportunities, but there is you know,
5:58
Speaker 5: this idea that at any point in time you could encounter,
6:03
Speaker 5: you know, an actual mountain monarch or you know, a
6:06
Speaker 5: whitetail that has really very little encounters with human beings
6:11
Speaker 5: just because of their locations. And I think that that,
6:13
Speaker 5: you know, for me and any die hard whitetail hunter
6:17
Speaker 5: you know, has been and would be a drive you
6:19
Speaker 5: know to really you know, you never know what you're
6:22
Speaker 5: going to bump into.
6:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's that's very appealing. But I wonder about
6:33
Speaker 2: what that kind of hurdle to entry was like for
6:36
Speaker 2: you when you came from Pennsylvania growing up doing the
6:40
Speaker 2: standard kind of Northeast white tail hunting, and then you
6:44
Speaker 2: stepped out into the West and you you know, jumped
6:47
Speaker 2: into that new pool. How hard was it to figure
6:49
Speaker 2: things out? What was that transition like?
6:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a little bit difficult at first.
6:55
Speaker 5: I mean I grew up, I think, like many of
6:58
Speaker 5: your listeners and viewers, you know, hunting in at camp
7:02
Speaker 5: as we know them, particularly in northeast Pennsylvania, with a
7:05
Speaker 5: group of other individuals, you know, with a father that
7:08
Speaker 5: you know, kind of instructed me. And so we had,
7:12
Speaker 5: you know, our stand that we would go to you know,
7:15
Speaker 5: an opening day and then you know, there would be
7:18
Speaker 5: a group of us, you know, that would drive after
7:20
Speaker 5: that initial opening day do deer pushes drives, and so
7:26
Speaker 5: to come out west and suddenly be in this vast
7:29
Speaker 5: landscape of what all of it is white tail habitat,
7:33
Speaker 5: you know, to be honest, to really start to pinpoint
7:37
Speaker 5: where I.
7:37
Speaker 4: Should be and what I.
7:38
Speaker 5: Should be looking for was a little overwhelming. Although it
7:42
Speaker 5: initially started with an introduction from from a coworker at
7:46
Speaker 5: that time, a good friend. Now, really I think wedding
7:52
Speaker 5: kind of wetting my whistle on it and you know,
7:54
Speaker 5: emphasizing you know, about shed hunting. I know it's controversial now,
7:59
Speaker 5: but at the same.
7:59
Speaker 4: Time, it really gave you gave me an.
8:02
Speaker 5: Opportunity pre season to really get out and explore some
8:06
Speaker 5: landscapes at that moment in time where I was in Idaho,
8:10
Speaker 5: particularly up in the Panhandle, and that I concentrated on
8:14
Speaker 5: very large and tracks of national forest with very little access,
8:20
Speaker 5: mainly very little vehicular access, particularly you know, offighway vehicles
8:25
Speaker 5: and motorcycles, and just really started to hike around and
8:29
Speaker 5: kind of get an idea for what these these white
8:33
Speaker 5: tails were actually focusing on or a lack thereof. I
8:37
Speaker 5: will be honest, Mark, I've never to this day I've
8:40
Speaker 5: really figured out, which is why is this deer in
8:42
Speaker 5: this location? There are some you know, habitat changes that
8:47
Speaker 5: certainly equate to higher densities of deer, partically in these
8:52
Speaker 5: these national forest landscapes and even the private interface, you know,
8:56
Speaker 5: whether it's corporate tumber lands with particularly clear cuts you
9:01
Speaker 5: know and logging that provides an abundant you know, or
9:05
Speaker 5: early serial habitat for whitetail and many other ungulates. But
9:10
Speaker 5: at the same time out there shed hunting. You know,
9:13
Speaker 5: you're just kind of wandering around the woods nowhere really
9:16
Speaker 5: to be paying attention seeing old rub lines, you know,
9:20
Speaker 5: no different than any other whitetail hunter in the country
9:23
Speaker 5: seeing old rub lines, seeing that some of these rub
9:26
Speaker 5: lines were generational, you know that years and years and
9:30
Speaker 5: years of grubs have been occurring in these same general areas,
9:34
Speaker 5: and still seeing remnants of scrapes and many of these
9:37
Speaker 5: finger ridges where you would expect to see now where
9:40
Speaker 5: I'd expect to see where I'd expect to see those scrapes,
9:45
Speaker 5: And then adding to that is picking up sheds and
9:49
Speaker 5: being a little bit surprised at the quality in some
9:52
Speaker 5: of these spots of the year that were inhabiting them. Granted,
9:56
Speaker 5: some of these spots were migratory and partial winter range.
10:00
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people don't really equate white
10:03
Speaker 5: tails with winter range, but they certainly do move critically
10:06
Speaker 5: in specific locations within the state of Idaho and some
10:10
Speaker 5: of these other western populations over in Montana, and they
10:14
Speaker 5: do actually migrate to winter cover winter range, And so
10:19
Speaker 5: that really just gave me the start.
10:20
Speaker 4: Of what I would be looking for.
10:22
Speaker 5: And then you know, I'm always up for a good adventure,
10:25
Speaker 5: and I will I will be honest, Mark, There's many
10:28
Speaker 5: days that I have gone into places blind and totally
10:32
Speaker 5: just floundered around. You know, there was low deer densities,
10:36
Speaker 5: lack of really.
10:37
Speaker 4: Any sign, you know.
10:39
Speaker 5: But it's all learning experience, right, And I think that
10:41
Speaker 5: that's the thing that really drives me.
10:43
Speaker 4: It's just going in and being surprised, you know, and
10:47
Speaker 4: and what is there? And what isn't there?
10:52
Speaker 3: Do you?
10:53
Speaker 2: And I know this can vary from location to location,
10:58
Speaker 2: but if somebody were coming from what just take what
11:00
Speaker 2: you knew Pennsylvania. If somebody were coming from Pennsylvania and
11:03
Speaker 2: heading out to somewhere like the mountains of Idaho and
11:06
Speaker 2: the Panhandle or Montana or some of these other western
11:10
Speaker 2: states that have similar habitat when they're coming out, would
11:15
Speaker 2: you say they should expect really low deer densities and
11:20
Speaker 2: they should expect like to not feel bad they see
11:22
Speaker 2: just a couple deer every couple of days. Or has
11:25
Speaker 2: it actually been surprising that there's yeah, there's actually some
11:27
Speaker 2: places here where there are similar numbers of deer to
11:30
Speaker 2: what you were seeing in Pennsylvania. I guess just could
11:33
Speaker 2: you give us a sense of expectations around that.
11:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, each you know, each place, each habitat is unique
11:43
Speaker 5: in and of itself, particularly when he comes down to
11:47
Speaker 5: you know, are you really hunting that that corporate timber
11:51
Speaker 5: ground and that interface where a bunch of forest management
11:54
Speaker 5: has occurred, or are you looking at really big, expansive timberlands.
12:00
Speaker 5: Each has their own I think individual densities. You know, generally,
12:08
Speaker 5: I think that there's a lot of transferable skills from
12:11
Speaker 5: from what we know from Midwestern hunters and East Coast hunters.
12:16
Speaker 5: You know, whether you're a stand hunter, you know, and
12:18
Speaker 5: just want to sit all day and watch a spot,
12:21
Speaker 5: that opportunity definitely can be productive in and honestly has
12:24
Speaker 5: been productive for me. But it coincides with a very
12:28
Speaker 5: specific habitat, similar to you know what some of the Northeast,
12:34
Speaker 5: you know, the big wood hunter, big woods hunters of
12:36
Speaker 5: the Northeast, particularly Adirondacks, you know, the upper parts of Vermont,
12:41
Speaker 5: New Hampshire and Maine where they do a lot of tracking.
12:43
Speaker 5: Do you have the right conditions that can be very successful?
12:47
Speaker 5: I would say that there's definitely higher deer densities than
12:51
Speaker 5: what you know those Northeast northern Northeast hunters experience. But
12:58
Speaker 5: then again, the other I've found over the course of
13:02
Speaker 5: my white tail career here in Idaho particularly, it's still
13:07
Speaker 5: still hunting had been pretty darn productive, particularly at very
13:12
Speaker 5: very targeted times of the year.
13:14
Speaker 4: You know, we're blessed with very long white tail seasons.
13:17
Speaker 5: Here in this state from you know, the very end
13:20
Speaker 5: of August all the way through November in most cases,
13:23
Speaker 5: with a transition of various weapons seasons, archery into rifle,
13:30
Speaker 5: very long rifle seasons. But really the bread and butter,
13:32
Speaker 5: I think, like most of us know, is the rut
13:35
Speaker 5: is where it's really at, you know, and that really
13:37
Speaker 5: is that time where you can see a lot of deer.
13:42
Speaker 5: I've had hunts over the years in a very specific
13:47
Speaker 5: location where you're seeing you know, dozens of deer in
13:51
Speaker 5: a single day and a handful of different bucks.
13:54
Speaker 4: Now that's peak.
13:55
Speaker 5: Rut coincides a little bit with that landscape being you know,
14:02
Speaker 5: it's ponderosa kind of open ridge, more similar to what
14:05
Speaker 5: you would think mule deer would be in.
14:09
Speaker 4: But because it is the rut, those deer are moving
14:11
Speaker 4: a lot.
14:13
Speaker 5: There's a little bit of a migration going on, and
14:16
Speaker 5: so that really is a key time to be at
14:20
Speaker 5: that spot. Now, I've had other situations. Take this last
14:24
Speaker 5: year for instance, went into a new area, knew that
14:29
Speaker 5: there was likely you know, decent dear numbers in this area.
14:33
Speaker 4: Very remote, but still it.
14:36
Speaker 5: Is heavily managed for timber harvest and sitting on clearcuts
14:42
Speaker 5: and you would, thank jeez, there should be deer everywhere,
14:44
Speaker 5: and you would see deer tracks, but it was hard
14:46
Speaker 5: to really pin them down until we had a change
14:49
Speaker 5: in temperature and a little bit of snow. We were
14:52
Speaker 5: in you know, the third week of November. You know,
14:56
Speaker 5: some would think peak rut, and it was a little frustrating.
15:00
Speaker 5: At the same time, it ended up being a pretty
15:02
Speaker 5: neat experience.
15:03
Speaker 4: Not a lot of deer. We didn't see a lot
15:05
Speaker 4: of deer, but it's still it was a really great.
15:07
Speaker 5: Experience and I you know, harvested a pretty decent you
15:11
Speaker 5: know buck. But at the same time, I think most
15:15
Speaker 5: people may have may be discouraged by the lack of
15:18
Speaker 5: deer that you would see. But again I think the
15:21
Speaker 5: motivation for me Mark really is this idea like at
15:24
Speaker 5: any second. Again, many of these deer are so remote,
15:30
Speaker 5: have very little human interactions and a lot of them die.
15:35
Speaker 4: Of old age, you know, and so I think it's.
15:37
Speaker 5: Just knowing that and that what could pop out. You know,
15:40
Speaker 5: we're not talking about you know, corn belt two hundred
15:44
Speaker 5: inch deer.
15:45
Speaker 4: Although there are there are deer like that, you know
15:48
Speaker 4: in the state. There's bar and view between. Yeah.
15:54
Speaker 2: I love the idea though, of some old, gnarly mountain
15:59
Speaker 2: buck like you said, just just hasn't been around people.
16:03
Speaker 2: I just imagine huge body, maybe like a dark grizzled forehead,
16:08
Speaker 2: dark antlers. That's at least what I'm imagining to hear,
16:11
Speaker 2: very very appealing to run across a deer like that.
16:17
Speaker 3: Where do you start? I think that's one of the
16:19
Speaker 3: biggest things.
16:20
Speaker 2: Like when I think about it, when I have thought
16:21
Speaker 2: about this in the past, when I've considered trying to
16:24
Speaker 2: do the mountain thing, I look at the terrain, I
16:27
Speaker 2: look at the topography, I look at all the different
16:30
Speaker 2: cover and it's vast.
16:32
Speaker 4: You know.
16:32
Speaker 2: It's so different than trying to think through like a
16:34
Speaker 2: river bottom whitetail hunt, which is so simple. It's like
16:38
Speaker 2: the skinny stretch of cover and you know that white
16:39
Speaker 2: tails are going to be in that thick cover and
16:41
Speaker 2: they're probably going to move along parallel to that river.
16:44
Speaker 2: And it's very similar in certain ways to Midwestern white
16:49
Speaker 2: tail hunting, where you can identify a clear obvious food
16:51
Speaker 2: source and you can identify clear obvious bedding areas, and
16:53
Speaker 2: you try to get between the two, or you know,
16:55
Speaker 2: during the rut, you try to find those pinch points
16:57
Speaker 2: and those bedding areas. But when I look at the
16:59
Speaker 2: pan Handle of Idaho, or when I look at you know,
17:03
Speaker 2: northeastern Wyoming, or if I look at parts of Montana
17:07
Speaker 2: or you know, eastern Washington, I just see a lot
17:10
Speaker 2: of big hills and mountains and pines, and I don't
17:15
Speaker 2: know where to start. When someone's in that situation, how
17:21
Speaker 2: do you begin the process and then slowly I mean
17:23
Speaker 2: I imagine you're starting way out and then you're slowly
17:26
Speaker 2: dialing into a region and then a particular trailhead or
17:30
Speaker 2: drainage and then habitat within that.
17:32
Speaker 3: What does that process look like for you?
17:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think for you know, for me, I'm blessed
17:38
Speaker 5: to have been here for almost thirty years now or
17:41
Speaker 5: over thirty years, and so have you know, gone through
17:44
Speaker 5: that trial and error and still you know, I will
17:48
Speaker 5: just go into an area for the experience, you.
17:51
Speaker 4: Know, not not being.
17:53
Speaker 5: Overly committed to shooting a deer, but just going for
17:55
Speaker 5: the experience. And so but when I'm looking at new places,
18:00
Speaker 5: I still rely on you know, harvest data that is
18:04
Speaker 5: available through most of these states and their websites. I know,
18:08
Speaker 5: Idaho has a really great hunt planner opportunity. You can
18:12
Speaker 5: actually needle it down into individual units to see what
18:16
Speaker 5: the harvest is, what the effort is percent four point percent,
18:21
Speaker 5: five point so four by.
18:23
Speaker 4: Four, five by five.
18:26
Speaker 5: And I think that that at least for you know,
18:28
Speaker 5: the experience here in Idaho is a really good good
18:32
Speaker 5: place to start.
18:34
Speaker 4: You know.
18:34
Speaker 5: The other thing is that there's so many other resources
18:37
Speaker 5: these days, you know, with the various apps. You know,
18:40
Speaker 5: I think onyx is a really great start, particularly looking
18:43
Speaker 5: at timber makeup and timber harvest, historical wildfire, to really
18:49
Speaker 5: know what that landscape and what that habitat is probably
18:52
Speaker 5: going to look like. You know, with the technique that
18:55
Speaker 5: I primarily use still hunting, there are just places that
18:58
Speaker 5: you know, there might be a deer in there, but
19:01
Speaker 5: there is no way that you can effectively still hunt it.
19:04
Speaker 5: One the topography might not be right, or the vegetation
19:10
Speaker 5: is not right. You're just making too much noise as
19:12
Speaker 5: you're trying to still hunt. You know, you can only
19:15
Speaker 5: see you know, twenty five yards. It's so darn thick,
19:19
Speaker 5: and so you're spinning your wheels. You're just gonna spook everything,
19:23
Speaker 5: not only from you know, the noise that you're making
19:26
Speaker 5: trying to get through that stuff, but then also the
19:28
Speaker 5: topography just isn't helpful. And so you know, when I
19:32
Speaker 5: initially started looking at it, there was a general topography
19:36
Speaker 5: that I looked at. Every mountain has zones of steepness,
19:40
Speaker 5: and then if you will ridge lines that are usually
19:45
Speaker 5: pretty productive to hunt and or bench const complexes, you know,
19:49
Speaker 5: stare stepped up, and particularly for white tails. I think
19:52
Speaker 5: that that ends up being very very helpful. I mean,
19:55
Speaker 5: even in all these years that I've been doing it,
19:58
Speaker 5: you inevitably find yoursel a self on steep slopes, knowing
20:02
Speaker 5: that the likelihood seeing a deer is pretty small. On
20:06
Speaker 5: those really steep slopes, even though they have you know,
20:09
Speaker 5: good mature timber in them, you can see a long
20:12
Speaker 5: way and mainly it's a transitional habitat as all it is.
20:15
Speaker 5: They're just varying through it to get somewhere else. And
20:18
Speaker 5: so yeah, you're going to encounter them probably, but you're
20:21
Speaker 5: not really in betting area or an area.
20:24
Speaker 4: That they're going to want to be in. And so.
20:28
Speaker 5: Terrain or topography is one of the first starting points.
20:32
Speaker 5: Is really trying to figure out, well, is it going
20:34
Speaker 5: to be manageable for me to hunt that, you know,
20:36
Speaker 5: is it going to be too steep, or is it
20:38
Speaker 5: you know, otherwise just not you just can't see, And
20:41
Speaker 5: then doing that vegetative layer and really starting to needle
20:45
Speaker 5: in some places you might you know, I guess have
20:48
Speaker 5: a false positive you think that it looks like mature
20:50
Speaker 5: timber from you know, a Google Earth image or satellite image.
20:54
Speaker 4: And it actually is. They couldn't.
20:56
Speaker 5: And so but the good news is is that if
20:59
Speaker 5: these are of those really large tracks of national forest,
21:04
Speaker 5: you can usually get to an open timber stand with
21:10
Speaker 5: very little effort from where you are, and so that
21:13
Speaker 5: has really been the focus.
21:14
Speaker 4: It's really looking at the topography and then looking.
21:18
Speaker 5: At those vegetation layers, whether or not there's been timber
21:21
Speaker 5: harvest and or wildfire in those landscapes, and whether or
21:25
Speaker 5: not it's going to be effective to get through you know,
21:27
Speaker 5: critically and still hunting phase, and those those are I
21:32
Speaker 5: think are really the best bets for trying to figure out.
21:34
Speaker 5: And then you know, again I put a very strong
21:38
Speaker 5: emphasis on the lack of access in the form of like,
21:42
Speaker 5: I don't want other people being there. I don't want
21:45
Speaker 5: to be you know, I hate to sound selfish. I
21:48
Speaker 5: don't want to share the woods with somebody else. You know,
21:50
Speaker 5: it's just it's just a matter of fact. And so
21:53
Speaker 5: I avoid, you know, as I said earlier, any place
21:56
Speaker 5: that has really good motor vehicle access, partically TVs or otherwise,
22:02
Speaker 5: and really avoid them. So looking at very large tracks
22:05
Speaker 5: of public land.
22:08
Speaker 3: How far.
22:10
Speaker 2: Away are you trying to be from a road or
22:13
Speaker 2: a trailhead like when you I know, you want to
22:15
Speaker 2: get away from it as much as possible, But what's
22:17
Speaker 2: the scale of a way that you're trying to achieve here?
22:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, ideally each place is is you know, certainly different.
22:28
Speaker 5: You know, I have shot I've shot mature deer, you know,
22:34
Speaker 5: a quarter mile from a road, you know, and it
22:37
Speaker 5: was rut they're moving, it was on my way somewhere else.
22:42
Speaker 4: I mean, inevitably, you know, it happens.
22:46
Speaker 5: But generally I want a piece of piece of country
22:50
Speaker 5: that I'm gonna be able to spend the day in.
22:52
Speaker 4: Now.
22:52
Speaker 5: Granted I'm not you know, put miles extreme miles on
22:55
Speaker 5: like a wood elk hunting, but it is similar to
22:58
Speaker 5: that concept. I don't have a minimum distance, you know,
23:02
Speaker 5: but I know that I don't want to walk across
23:05
Speaker 5: the road anytime during the day. I want to be
23:07
Speaker 5: as far as way as I can. And I mean
23:12
Speaker 5: what I've found mark over the course of my experiences
23:15
Speaker 5: here hunting and otherwise.
23:17
Speaker 4: I mean, once you're.
23:18
Speaker 5: A half mile off a road, You're not going to
23:21
Speaker 5: see very many other people, you know, And that's really
23:23
Speaker 5: what I'm looking for because you know, thinking about maybe
23:26
Speaker 5: that that half mile buffer. You know, I have done hunts,
23:29
Speaker 5: particularly over the last several years, where there are no
23:33
Speaker 5: roads where I've been hunting and have found myself almost
23:38
Speaker 5: you know, six miles away from from camp, you know,
23:41
Speaker 5: in a given day, and that's white tail hunting.
23:44
Speaker 4: You know.
23:45
Speaker 5: Granted, I've been able to you know, get somewhere fairly
23:48
Speaker 5: quick and not hunting that hole six miles, but at
23:52
Speaker 5: the same time, like putting that many miles one way
23:57
Speaker 5: away from camp, you know, just the experience that I've
24:00
Speaker 5: looking for.
24:01
Speaker 4: And so people might say, well, why do that.
24:03
Speaker 5: You know, there's there's white tails, you know, if you
24:06
Speaker 5: will in the front country. And I kind of refer
24:08
Speaker 5: to the country like anything really close to the road,
24:11
Speaker 5: you know, and and there are and and I think
24:15
Speaker 5: a lot of people can find success, and however they
24:19
Speaker 5: define success close to roads.
24:22
Speaker 4: But for I think.
24:24
Speaker 5: Anybody that is really looking for an exceptional white tail
24:28
Speaker 5: hunting experience, and particularly that wants to get away and
24:33
Speaker 5: hunt big woods, they can find that, you know, you know,
24:37
Speaker 5: with a minimum of a mile away from the road,
24:40
Speaker 5: you know, and so, and that's just my personal preference
24:43
Speaker 5: and what I'm looking for.
24:45
Speaker 4: Again, it's not to.
24:46
Speaker 5: Say that you you might not you may encounter a
24:50
Speaker 5: trophy white tail buck or a mature trophy buck, however
24:55
Speaker 5: you wanted to find what a trophy is, you know,
24:58
Speaker 5: close to a road. But at the same time, that's
25:00
Speaker 5: not the experience that I'm looking for, and so, and
25:03
Speaker 5: it's not always about you know, yeah, every year I
25:06
Speaker 5: go out to shoot a mature sure white tail buck,
25:09
Speaker 5: but some years it doesn't work.
25:11
Speaker 4: And oh and that's just kind of how it goes.
25:24
Speaker 2: What what's your experience with how these white tails react
25:29
Speaker 2: to hunting pressure. And I feel like in eastern and
25:33
Speaker 2: midwestern white tail areas, we're limited to like, hey, I'm
25:36
Speaker 2: on forty acres, and if I blow them off my
25:38
Speaker 2: forty acres, you know, I'm not going to see them
25:41
Speaker 2: again today because I can't go any more than fifty
25:43
Speaker 2: yards this way and one hundred and twenty yards that way.
25:45
Speaker 4: Right.
25:46
Speaker 2: But out west, you know, when we think about things,
25:48
Speaker 2: we're thinking about much larger areas. But then you also
25:51
Speaker 2: think about some animals like elk that might go a
25:54
Speaker 2: whole drainage over miles away and it takes them five
25:57
Speaker 2: minutes and you won't see them again for a week,
25:59
Speaker 2: maybe because they moved so much. How are these white tails?
26:03
Speaker 2: Are they kind of similar in that they can their
26:05
Speaker 2: ranges are vast because the available habitat is vast. Or
26:09
Speaker 2: do you think that they're still kind of finding a
26:11
Speaker 2: little nook and cranny and they just stick to it,
26:13
Speaker 2: sort of like these deer out here still do.
26:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I think I think it's that they still
26:19
Speaker 5: find a little nook and cranny, particularly on these big,
26:23
Speaker 5: vast pieces of public lands, and and and that is
26:27
Speaker 5: really based off of the sign that you see, like
26:30
Speaker 5: I've referenced earlier, you'll see these generational rub lines, and
26:34
Speaker 5: it's just like, well, it's got to be the same
26:37
Speaker 5: buck that's coming back year after year to this general
26:40
Speaker 5: core area, whether or not there are a bunch of
26:43
Speaker 5: dos in that area, and that's why he's coming back
26:46
Speaker 5: to it. But then in other instances, some of the
26:50
Speaker 5: hunts that I've had, you know, in the more recent years,
26:54
Speaker 5: these these animals are covering covering incredible amounts of country,
26:59
Speaker 5: you know, and are you know, in the midst of
27:02
Speaker 5: not only a migration, but they are looking for dose
27:06
Speaker 5: to breed and very low low density populations, you know.
27:11
Speaker 5: And and you may see a deer, you know, on
27:14
Speaker 5: the first day of your hunt. You know that you're like, well,
27:17
Speaker 5: that's that's a pretty decent buck. But it's the first
27:20
Speaker 5: day of the hunt. You're there for, you know, five
27:22
Speaker 5: six days. You're not going to see that that buck
27:25
Speaker 5: ever again. That that thing is gone, regardless if you
27:29
Speaker 5: spook it or not, or if it even knows at
27:32
Speaker 5: your present period, you're you're never going to see it again.
27:35
Speaker 5: And so and that really I think it's hard to
27:41
Speaker 5: just because of the way the habitat is the way
27:43
Speaker 5: the topography is. You know, I've had experiences you can
27:47
Speaker 5: definitely come back to, you know, some of that more
27:49
Speaker 5: managed forest, particularly clearcuts and such, and kind of get
27:55
Speaker 5: a pattern going on those deer and understand like, okay,
27:58
Speaker 5: I likely will see that deer again. But a lot
28:02
Speaker 5: of what I do mark is it's dropping into a spot,
28:06
Speaker 5: it's hunting it for an entire day, you know, seeing
28:11
Speaker 5: whatever you see. You might see small bucks, you might
28:13
Speaker 5: see dose, you know, putickly, peak, peak, rut. But then
28:17
Speaker 5: I might not even go back to that spot. I
28:19
Speaker 5: might go to another spot, and maybe I will go
28:21
Speaker 5: back there, you know later in the season, a week later,
28:25
Speaker 5: two weeks later. But I generally don't keep running into
28:30
Speaker 5: the same dear. You know, it's not that same experience
28:33
Speaker 5: of sitting on you know, some kind of food source
28:36
Speaker 5: where you can, like clockwork, the sun's going down, you
28:39
Speaker 5: know you're gonna see them again. You know, I do
28:42
Speaker 5: have some private property that I've hunted over the years
28:46
Speaker 5: that is is very similar to that. Sit either on
28:51
Speaker 5: in the ground blind or up in a free stand,
28:54
Speaker 5: and it's like clockwork, you know, I'll see the same
28:56
Speaker 5: deer come through and those tactics that most of white
29:01
Speaker 5: tail unders across the nation are familiar with are effective.
29:05
Speaker 5: Just once you get into these this big timber country
29:08
Speaker 5: and chase them out, whitetails, it's really hard to get
29:11
Speaker 5: them better, and there's just really no rhyme nor reason
29:13
Speaker 5: to what they're doing. And because the densies are so low,
29:18
Speaker 5: particularly during the rut, those those deer are just covering
29:20
Speaker 5: a lot of ground.
29:23
Speaker 2: You brought up topography earlier as being one of those
29:26
Speaker 2: major things you focus on, and you mentioned something along
29:29
Speaker 2: the lines about kind of stair step benches and then
29:32
Speaker 2: some of these these ridge lines that maybe they're using.
29:34
Speaker 2: But could you describe that ideal topography a little bit
29:37
Speaker 2: more like when you're looking at these maps and you're
29:39
Speaker 2: trying to say, Okay, this is a place worth focusing
29:42
Speaker 2: on and this one's not. Can you can you really
29:45
Speaker 2: paint a detailed picture of what those key topographic features
29:49
Speaker 2: look like that that would separate like a not so
29:51
Speaker 2: great place from a oh yeah, this is where I
29:53
Speaker 2: want to focus.
29:55
Speaker 4: Yeah.
29:55
Speaker 5: And the one thing I did leave out mark and
29:58
Speaker 5: I forgot to mention is bosure. You know, north south
30:02
Speaker 5: east west exposures that has huge differences here in the
30:07
Speaker 5: West and particularly you know, in this northern Rockies area.
30:12
Speaker 4: You know, those north slopes are.
30:13
Speaker 5: Generally going to be very very you know, heavily timbered, damp,
30:17
Speaker 5: usually a lot colder versus sun Southern exposure is a
30:21
Speaker 5: little bit drier, probably a little bit brushier in most instances.
30:24
Speaker 5: So those are some of the things you got to
30:26
Speaker 5: look at. But as far as the topography, you know,
30:29
Speaker 5: I want something that's going to be a just a
30:33
Speaker 5: general you know, gain and elevation. You know, if if
30:37
Speaker 5: anybody that's familiar with Western hunting, particularly if you've seen
30:42
Speaker 5: any kind of show on meal deer hunting or elk hunting,
30:47
Speaker 5: you can you know the reality of how steep things
30:49
Speaker 5: can be. I don't really see white tails favoring that
30:54
Speaker 5: like you do meal deer.
30:56
Speaker 4: It just seems like they just.
30:58
Speaker 5: Rather have general gentle pular ground and topography. And so
31:03
Speaker 5: I'm going to look for, you know, kind of broad
31:05
Speaker 5: ridge lines and you can find I'm just looking at
31:08
Speaker 5: the tapo layer on anything, and just a really broad
31:13
Speaker 5: broad ridge line you know, can be anywhere from one
31:18
Speaker 5: hundred yards wide.
31:19
Speaker 4: You know, to you know, a quarter mile wide. Just
31:22
Speaker 4: a ridge line that is surrounded.
31:25
Speaker 5: By you know, a tributary or another drainage, you know,
31:29
Speaker 5: and they're going to frequent that generllar topography. And then
31:34
Speaker 5: same thing with the stairstep idea. The idea with the
31:36
Speaker 5: stairstep is that one you can probably get on an
31:39
Speaker 5: elevation line and stay on one of those steps for
31:43
Speaker 5: quite a while and work around to your favor, you know,
31:46
Speaker 5: still hunting through it. The same thing with the stair
31:50
Speaker 5: stepping is that usually you know, it's a broader a
31:54
Speaker 5: broader landing, if you will, maybe one hundred to two
31:56
Speaker 5: hundred yards before you have to gain another step of villainy.
32:00
Speaker 5: And so I see them favoring that. They just for
32:03
Speaker 5: whatever reason, you know, anything that's steep. It seems like
32:06
Speaker 5: white tails, you know, are using it as transitional habitat
32:11
Speaker 5: or travel cord or that is not consistently traveled, if
32:16
Speaker 5: that makes sense.
32:17
Speaker 2: You know, have you found any particular elevation sweet spot
32:23
Speaker 2: that they prefer, or or even just like a percent
32:27
Speaker 2: like if we're say the top of the ridge is
32:29
Speaker 2: one hundred percent, you know, is it is it three
32:32
Speaker 2: quarters of the way up the ridge? Maybe there's a
32:33
Speaker 2: lot of travel or betting like, Yeah, that's that's kind
32:36
Speaker 2: of a generality. You hear a lot about in the
32:38
Speaker 2: northeast and other areas of hill country and typical white
32:41
Speaker 2: tail worlds. Or are they right on top of those
32:45
Speaker 2: big broad ridges right in the spine? Where, if at all,
32:49
Speaker 2: do you focus when you find these places?
32:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wouldn't say that I focus on any elevational band.
32:57
Speaker 5: You know, I've hunted from the extreme north of Idaho
33:01
Speaker 5: close to the Canadian border where you'll find those deer
33:05
Speaker 5: literally on the tops of those mountains anywhere in between
33:09
Speaker 5: two uh, you know where I am now in central Idaho,
33:13
Speaker 5: and they can be again anywhere in between. There is
33:17
Speaker 5: a habitat type that they generally don't you know, associate with,
33:21
Speaker 5: and that's really that sub alpine hat or habitat type
33:25
Speaker 5: that you really equate with with with mule deer, you know,
33:29
Speaker 5: there's a subalpine fur.
33:31
Speaker 4: It's a lot more open, you know.
33:34
Speaker 5: You see a lot of low bush huckleberry up there
33:36
Speaker 5: in Faalse huckleberry. You generally don't see white hills in
33:40
Speaker 5: that kind of habitat.
33:42
Speaker 4: You know.
33:42
Speaker 5: It really is more in this this timbered habitat and
33:46
Speaker 5: brushy habitat.
33:48
Speaker 4: So but no, no specific elevation band.
33:51
Speaker 2: Okay, So when it comes to that vegetation, yeah, question
33:58
Speaker 2: you mentioned your north slopes are going to be damper, darker,
34:01
Speaker 2: more timbered. Your south facing slopes maybe a little bit
34:04
Speaker 2: more open, maybe a little bit more brushy.
34:08
Speaker 3: Is there?
34:09
Speaker 2: Like, I guess how do they favor that at different
34:12
Speaker 2: parts of their year or different parts of their day.
34:15
Speaker 2: You know, I might make the assumption that the dark
34:18
Speaker 2: timber might be where they want to stay hidden and cool,
34:21
Speaker 2: and then they might come out and feed on the
34:23
Speaker 2: on the brushy, open south facing slopes.
34:25
Speaker 3: Is that true?
34:26
Speaker 2: Or how do you consider those exposures that you mentioned
34:29
Speaker 2: earlier into how you actually hunt a spot and think
34:32
Speaker 2: about how these deer using it themselves.
34:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, much of it is related to as the season
34:38
Speaker 5: progresses right there. You know, you can go out, you know,
34:43
Speaker 5: late summer, early fall, September and glass clearcuts and you're
34:49
Speaker 5: probably going to spot a bunch of deer in them
34:51
Speaker 5: at varying times, usually you know, the early morning, late evenings,
34:57
Speaker 5: and so you're probably going to see that consistently. I
35:01
Speaker 5: think that these deer have you know, they're born where
35:06
Speaker 5: they're born, and that's what they know.
35:08
Speaker 4: And then so there are these.
35:09
Speaker 5: Varying little bits of habitats within these areas that I
35:13
Speaker 5: hunt that are are this matured chimber that you'll see,
35:18
Speaker 5: you'll find a lot of bedding in there, although you
35:21
Speaker 5: will find them in that thick stuff bedded for whatever reason,
35:25
Speaker 5: whether it's avoiding predators or such. And you know, that's
35:28
Speaker 5: an entirely different, complicating portion of this conversation with with
35:32
Speaker 5: all the predators that we have that can be pretty
35:36
Speaker 5: effective on white tails and change change that.
35:41
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I think we.
35:46
Speaker 5: It just I haven't really found I mean a lot
35:50
Speaker 5: of my what motivates me, Mark is how what the
35:54
Speaker 5: conditions are for hunting, you know, and how easily you
35:57
Speaker 5: can get through these habitats and actually see deer with
36:01
Speaker 5: minimal noise.
36:03
Speaker 4: And such.
36:04
Speaker 5: And so this this last year, like I said, we
36:08
Speaker 5: went into a new area. There is very little mature timber.
36:13
Speaker 5: Over thousands and thousands of acres, there is very little
36:17
Speaker 5: mature timber.
36:18
Speaker 4: It's been so.
36:20
Speaker 5: Heavily logged that there's just different ages of clear cuts
36:23
Speaker 5: and so you have to be really selective of where
36:26
Speaker 5: you're going. But what we what we were finding is
36:28
Speaker 5: that if you.
36:29
Speaker 4: Found you know, generally.
36:32
Speaker 5: Up to probably maybe a ten year old clearcut. You know,
36:37
Speaker 5: they're really going to be favoring in that as far
36:40
Speaker 5: as a hunter's perspective because you can still see through
36:44
Speaker 5: or into that clear cut. And so that and that's
36:47
Speaker 5: what we saw. And it was in you know, November
36:50
Speaker 5: that we were there. There was a little bit of
36:53
Speaker 5: cold snap, a little bit of weather snow, and although
36:56
Speaker 5: we'd be been seeing tracks everywhere, we just can never
36:58
Speaker 5: really pinpoint where these animals were. And it wasn't until
37:02
Speaker 5: the cold and that the snow put everything in the
37:05
Speaker 5: perspective kind of figured out a place to really target
37:10
Speaker 5: and actually just sit down and slow things down and
37:13
Speaker 5: sit and watch, you know. And so but they had
37:16
Speaker 5: so many different habitats adjacent to them, you know, both
37:19
Speaker 5: for feeding and for bedding and for cover that you
37:24
Speaker 5: know they were probably weren't.
37:25
Speaker 4: Really traveling very far.
37:26
Speaker 5: And so again a lot of it comes down to
37:29
Speaker 5: my personal preference of how easy it.
37:31
Speaker 4: Is going to be to hunt and how a DEVI
37:34
Speaker 4: is going to.
37:34
Speaker 1: Be to hunt.
37:36
Speaker 2: So how do you how do you actually like execute
37:40
Speaker 2: a day in the field, How do you plan your
37:43
Speaker 2: route plan when you're gonna arrive to a place in
37:47
Speaker 2: the morning and start doing whatever you're going to do,
37:49
Speaker 2: and then.
37:50
Speaker 3: Throughout the day.
37:51
Speaker 2: I guess maybe it's just walk me through an example
37:53
Speaker 2: day of how you plan it and what you're doing
37:55
Speaker 2: throughout that would be helpful, I think.
37:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So you know, I have a number of
38:00
Speaker 5: places throughout northern Idaho that I'm willing to hunt and
38:05
Speaker 5: look forward to hunting every year, and how that plays
38:09
Speaker 5: out on any individual day is really no different than
38:13
Speaker 5: anybody else walking into a stand. Right, I'm gonna, you know,
38:17
Speaker 5: pull up to my wherever I decided to park.
38:20
Speaker 4: My rig, and I'm gonna check the wind. You know,
38:23
Speaker 4: the wind.
38:24
Speaker 5: The wind is so critical, part brilliant and still hunting
38:28
Speaker 5: that I'm gonna check it. And in most times, I'm
38:32
Speaker 5: letting the wind dictate how my day goes and.
38:34
Speaker 4: Where I'm gonna go. You know, I want the wind,
38:37
Speaker 4: you know, in my face all day and I'll I'll
38:40
Speaker 4: let I'll.
38:41
Speaker 5: Just wander through the timber, you know, hopefully the wind's
38:44
Speaker 5: going to play it to my advantage that I can
38:46
Speaker 5: get to some topography that I've already noted or am
38:52
Speaker 5: familiar with from years past that I know that there's
38:56
Speaker 5: always activity in these little spots, and how am I
38:59
Speaker 5: going to be able to get there or am I
39:02
Speaker 5: going to have to deviate from that and go somewhere different,
39:05
Speaker 5: you know on my hunt? But yeah, I mean I
39:08
Speaker 5: leave again at the beginning at first light. You know,
39:12
Speaker 5: there's no reason for me to to get going in
39:14
Speaker 5: the dark because you know, again you could run into
39:17
Speaker 5: a mature buck, you know, right off the road and
39:21
Speaker 5: then stay till stay till almost dark or dark at
39:24
Speaker 5: some cases. And so it is very much dictated ark
39:28
Speaker 5: by the wind, you know. And just over thirty years,
39:32
Speaker 5: I have enough places that I've learned, no you know,
39:37
Speaker 5: potential places that I'd like to be on that mountain.
39:40
Speaker 5: But at the same time, if the wind's not right,
39:42
Speaker 5: then I'm not going to get there on that day.
39:44
Speaker 5: So that's really how it's going to dictate it.
39:46
Speaker 4: Now.
39:47
Speaker 5: If I'm going to employ sitting on a on a
39:49
Speaker 5: clear cut, that's much different.
39:51
Speaker 4: You know.
39:52
Speaker 5: I'm gonna you know, try to sneak in there as
39:55
Speaker 5: best as I can, you know. And again I'm.
39:57
Speaker 4: Picking clear cuts.
39:59
Speaker 5: I have no no real access to them any longer,
40:02
Speaker 5: you know, a road's been decommissioned there is no motorized vehicle.
40:06
Speaker 5: It could be a couple mile hike into these into
40:10
Speaker 5: these cuts, and then I'm just going to get in
40:12
Speaker 5: there and sit for the day on these cuts. And
40:15
Speaker 5: so it just kind of depends on which which activity
40:19
Speaker 5: that you want to do, and what time of the
40:22
Speaker 5: what time of the season it is, and and how
40:25
Speaker 5: how far along the rut really is. I mean, I
40:28
Speaker 5: feel like early November is pretty darn unproductive here for
40:34
Speaker 5: white tail hunting, particularly in these scenarios that I'm mentioning.
40:38
Speaker 5: For whatever reason, it seems like late October early November,
40:43
Speaker 5: you're hard.
40:43
Speaker 4: Pressed to even see a deer.
40:45
Speaker 5: They're still there, they didn't go anywhere, but for whatever reason,
40:49
Speaker 5: they just kind of disappear. I don't know if that's
40:52
Speaker 5: a function of pressure from you know, elk hunting and
40:56
Speaker 5: a little bit of carryover from that, or it's just
40:59
Speaker 5: a natural cycle. But once you start getting into that
41:03
Speaker 5: second to the third.
41:05
Speaker 4: Week of November, you know, and.
41:07
Speaker 5: Much of this northern rokies, that's really when the rut
41:11
Speaker 5: starts to kick in and you really start to see
41:13
Speaker 5: just a lot more deer activity. And so that's really
41:17
Speaker 5: going to change that too. I Mean, I've you know,
41:20
Speaker 5: I have a brother that I hunt with who is
41:23
Speaker 5: also here, and we hunt pretty exclusively together, you know,
41:28
Speaker 5: and we've been out el hunting and he's he shot
41:32
Speaker 5: one of his best way to help bucks, and we're
41:34
Speaker 5: we're we're elk hunton sitting on clearcuts for elk, you know.
41:38
Speaker 5: And so it just goes to show you don't know when,
41:41
Speaker 5: you know when or where they're going to show up.
41:43
Speaker 5: But I think knowing that there are mature and quality
41:47
Speaker 5: bucks out there, that's that's the real thing that motivates
41:50
Speaker 5: I think, or should motivate anybody that's thinking about a
41:52
Speaker 5: Western hunt.
41:55
Speaker 3: So how long does that sweet spot last?
41:58
Speaker 2: You mentioned maybe like that mid November time period as
42:00
Speaker 2: being a particularly good period.
42:03
Speaker 3: Does that last? Is that a week? Is that two
42:05
Speaker 3: weeks where it stays good? What's that been for you?
42:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say, you know, there's generally about two weeks, right,
42:14
Speaker 5: you know, And and again I used to preface it
42:17
Speaker 5: off of you know, a couple of days before after
42:20
Speaker 5: the fifteenth, but you know, you can definitely run through
42:24
Speaker 5: all the way at the end of November, you know,
42:26
Speaker 5: and you definitely, or at least I always used to
42:29
Speaker 5: see a little bit higher, higher harvest, you know, later
42:33
Speaker 5: in November.
42:34
Speaker 4: But I think that that was just the function of
42:36
Speaker 4: Thanksgiving and a lot more people being out right.
42:38
Speaker 5: I don't think it was a function of deer being
42:41
Speaker 5: any more active. I think it was just a function
42:44
Speaker 5: of more pressure and so more more animals were getting harvested.
42:49
Speaker 5: But I think generally, you know, starting around the fifteenth
42:52
Speaker 5: you can count on, you know, a pretty active def rut.
42:56
Speaker 4: You know, you never.
42:58
Speaker 5: Really fully see you know, those those those various stages
43:05
Speaker 5: of the rut, you know, the chasing and all all
43:08
Speaker 5: of that. You just it's very hard to see that here.
43:12
Speaker 5: But you will see, you know, definitely, you see the
43:17
Speaker 5: box just cruising the timber. And that's usually how we
43:20
Speaker 5: end up encountering in them is they're just out cruising,
43:23
Speaker 5: you know, don't really have much of a care in
43:26
Speaker 5: the world. They're still hard to hunt, they're still you know,
43:29
Speaker 5: they'll still get your wind and spook. But generally that's
43:32
Speaker 5: how you encounter them is that they're cruising. You very
43:35
Speaker 5: rarely find a buck that is locked down, if you will,
43:39
Speaker 5: although you know, one of the spots.
43:42
Speaker 4: That I've hunted over the last several.
43:44
Speaker 5: Years, you would see all the phases, the classic state
43:47
Speaker 5: phases of the run. You would see chasing, you would
43:51
Speaker 5: see lockdown, you would see search, you know, you would
43:55
Speaker 5: see everything. But that is pretty unusual and really a
43:59
Speaker 5: unique just for that specific location. And so these larger
44:03
Speaker 5: tracks that I've been referring to you just you don't
44:06
Speaker 5: really have that opportunity. You know, again, the densities are
44:09
Speaker 5: pretty low, and so you're gonna you're really just trying
44:13
Speaker 5: to stumble into them, you know, with the mindset of
44:16
Speaker 5: being in the right putting yourself, you know, in the
44:20
Speaker 5: best circumstances you can, with the conditions that you're provided,
44:25
Speaker 5: you know, and granted, you know, I think like all
44:27
Speaker 5: of us experience, there's weather events that, boy, you.
44:31
Speaker 4: Don't want to mess being in the woods.
44:33
Speaker 5: On very specific weather events, whether it's a good snowstorm,
44:37
Speaker 5: you know that we'll.
44:38
Speaker 4: Get here, that really.
44:39
Speaker 5: Gets the deer back up on their feet trying to feed.
44:43
Speaker 5: One of the better situations that we found are windstorms,
44:49
Speaker 5: which sounds kind of interesting, bizarre, but what happens is
44:52
Speaker 5: that you have, you know, a bunch of trees that
44:56
Speaker 5: ended up getting pushed over or fall over, blown over,
45:00
Speaker 5: and those those deer are really keying in on the lichens.
45:06
Speaker 5: I don't know what actual species they are. I think
45:09
Speaker 5: most of us refer to him as old man's beard,
45:11
Speaker 5: you know, that really stringy liking the roads on many
45:15
Speaker 5: of the conifers here in the Northwest anyway, and they're
45:18
Speaker 5: really keyed in. And if you can find, you know,
45:22
Speaker 5: some dispersed blowdowns, fresh blowdowns, you're going to find deer
45:26
Speaker 5: on them. It's it's a pretty incredible situation to get
45:31
Speaker 5: out there after a windstorm, and I think a lot
45:34
Speaker 5: of people would not really think about that, but it
45:37
Speaker 5: ends up being a pretty unique situation, you know. And
45:40
Speaker 5: then cold snaps too. I mean, they're going to be
45:42
Speaker 5: up on their feet all day long feeding and such,
45:46
Speaker 5: so cold snaps are going to be really good too.
45:49
Speaker 3: Hm.
45:50
Speaker 2: Never would have thought that old man's beard would be
45:53
Speaker 2: a focal food source out there.
45:55
Speaker 3: That's that's interesting.
45:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of yeah, Yeah, it is bizarre. You know.
46:00
Speaker 5: I don't think they generally have access to them, because
46:03
Speaker 5: they're how to reach. But when they when you do
46:05
Speaker 5: encounter blowdowns, particularly when you have a little little bit
46:09
Speaker 5: of snow where you can identify you know, fresh tracks,
46:13
Speaker 5: I mean, you can just you can.
46:14
Speaker 4: Just see they're concentrated on them. I we had a
46:18
Speaker 4: really big.
46:18
Speaker 5: Windstorm out here earlier in the year, almost catastrophic windstorm,
46:24
Speaker 5: and I had hyped into an area adjacent to a
46:28
Speaker 5: place to that hunt, you know, just to get some exercise,
46:32
Speaker 5: but you know, open maybe I'll.
46:33
Speaker 4: Find a shed antler.
46:34
Speaker 5: But it was it looked like a barnyard around a
46:39
Speaker 5: lot of these trees where you know, the white tails
46:41
Speaker 5: had been really concentrated on them. And there's just you know,
46:44
Speaker 5: deer droppings everywhere around these conifers where they had consumed
46:49
Speaker 5: those old man beards.
46:51
Speaker 4: Wow.
46:52
Speaker 2: So you mentioned that when you start off your day
46:55
Speaker 2: like this, you're gonna look at the wind and of
46:58
Speaker 2: course think about how you can use that as you
47:01
Speaker 2: move in towards these areas of good habitat. But what
47:04
Speaker 2: does good still hunting actually look like in your opinion?
47:08
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of different versions. Everybody has
47:10
Speaker 2: a different speed that they can handle that they think
47:13
Speaker 2: is slow, but maybe isn't that slow. But I'm curious,
47:16
Speaker 2: you know, how slow are you actually going? How often
47:19
Speaker 2: are you trying to cover ground versus just stand in glass?
47:22
Speaker 2: How long do you glass for? How often do you
47:24
Speaker 2: sit and wait. I'm just curious a little bit more specifically,
47:28
Speaker 2: like how much ground do you actually cover in a
47:30
Speaker 2: day like this. That kind of stuff would be interesting
47:33
Speaker 2: to understand, and any other tricks you've picked up over
47:36
Speaker 2: the years to do this effectively.
47:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, you know, on a fast day, you know,
47:44
Speaker 5: I might be covering maybe two miles, you know, and
47:47
Speaker 5: that's you know, a loop in some way to the vehicle.
47:53
Speaker 4: You know.
47:53
Speaker 5: Initially, you know I'm going to leave the vehicle, and
47:56
Speaker 5: I do try to get away from the vehicle and
47:58
Speaker 5: away from the road pretty quick, you know, even though
48:01
Speaker 5: you can get like a sit en counter I'm mature,
48:03
Speaker 5: dear right off.
48:04
Speaker 4: The road, but I try to get away from it
48:05
Speaker 4: pretty quick. But then I'll just really slow down. I mean,
48:09
Speaker 4: I might, you.
48:10
Speaker 5: Know, take a handful of steps over the course of
48:14
Speaker 5: several minutes to get you know, twenty five yards at
48:16
Speaker 5: a time, and stand there for upwards of twenty to
48:19
Speaker 5: twenty five minutes, classing you know, my surroundings, you know,
48:24
Speaker 5: either with binoculars or just with the naked eye, you know,
48:28
Speaker 5: and really trying to pick out any kind of movement.
48:31
Speaker 5: The important thing is is how far can you actually see.
48:34
Speaker 5: You know, I'm trying at the outset. You know, it'd
48:37
Speaker 5: be great if you could see you know, one hundred
48:39
Speaker 5: and fifty yards through the timber, but that's that's not likely.
48:43
Speaker 5: You know, that's probably an extreme still hunting distance generally,
48:47
Speaker 5: and so you're a lot closer.
48:49
Speaker 4: But ideally, you.
48:50
Speaker 5: Know, you want to be in timber where you can
48:52
Speaker 5: see at least one hundred yards, you know, and at
48:55
Speaker 5: least you know that way, you know, maybe they aren't
48:59
Speaker 5: seeing you. Yeah, and that's you know, the difference here
49:02
Speaker 5: is that you're hunting conifer stands primarily.
49:04
Speaker 4: You're not hutting through a deciduous forests like we know.
49:07
Speaker 5: Them in the east, and so the ground is pretty
49:13
Speaker 5: much quiet, you know, particularly if it's wet like it
49:15
Speaker 5: is in November, and so other than stepping on a
49:18
Speaker 5: stick and really breaking the stick, you're you're not making
49:20
Speaker 5: that much noise if it is an open timber stand,
49:25
Speaker 5: And that's ideally what I'm looking for. You know, maybe
49:29
Speaker 5: at the offset about one hundred and fifty yards. Would
49:31
Speaker 5: it be great if it was a little bit further, Yeah,
49:32
Speaker 5: of course, But I think anybody that's been in you know,
49:38
Speaker 5: in a mature stand of timber knows that you know,
49:42
Speaker 5: you know, in one direction you might see one hundred
49:44
Speaker 5: and fifty yards to two hundred yards, and then on
49:46
Speaker 5: the other section you look to your right and the
49:48
Speaker 5: trees just line up perfectly and you can only see
49:51
Speaker 5: thirty yards. And that's this whole idea of really going
49:54
Speaker 5: slow and really creeping, because you know, not only are
49:57
Speaker 5: you still hunting, but generally those deer are just standing
50:00
Speaker 5: around or they might be feeding. You know, there's certainly
50:04
Speaker 5: situations where you'll come across the buck that is actually
50:08
Speaker 5: you know, on the move pretty quick, coming through the timber,
50:12
Speaker 5: grunting and actively searching for a doze, you know, and
50:17
Speaker 5: you know that's a good one to run into because
50:19
Speaker 5: they're not paying much to minds anything else except looking
50:22
Speaker 5: for a dough.
50:23
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, what what about when you come across
50:27
Speaker 2: really great sign, like if you're working your way along
50:30
Speaker 2: a ridge and then it's just blown up with like
50:34
Speaker 2: four or five big scrapes all on one zone or
50:36
Speaker 2: a bunch of these fresh rubs, does sign ever change
50:40
Speaker 2: your plans?
50:42
Speaker 5: So Mark, they should, they should, but they don't. Yeah,
50:50
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, there's different weather events, you know,
50:54
Speaker 5: that you can tell the freshness of a sign right
50:57
Speaker 5: and or a scrape, and so you're you look at
51:00
Speaker 5: it and maybe you'll come across, you know, a handful
51:03
Speaker 5: of scrapes and a general in a location and you're like, well,
51:07
Speaker 5: I should probably sit here for a while and watch.
51:09
Speaker 4: But I do.
51:10
Speaker 5: I do slow down a lot more under those circumstances,
51:15
Speaker 5: and I should probably particularly on those really big community
51:18
Speaker 5: scrapes that you'll you'll run into, and you still find
51:21
Speaker 5: things like that, particularly in this big timber, particularly on
51:24
Speaker 5: those little finger ridge. You know, you'll you'll see a
51:26
Speaker 5: scrape that's you know, six feet across and it just
51:30
Speaker 5: torn the heck and you know that there has to
51:32
Speaker 5: be a bunch of different bucks visiting that particular scrape,
51:36
Speaker 5: and I should sit on it and spend the day
51:40
Speaker 5: and invest in it. But inevitably, you know, my lack
51:46
Speaker 5: of discipline maybe gets the best of me, and I
51:48
Speaker 5: want to know what's on the other side of the ridge,
51:50
Speaker 5: and then what's on the other side of that ridge
51:52
Speaker 5: and so and then you know, there's been plenty of
51:54
Speaker 5: times mark that I've come back, you know, and through
51:59
Speaker 5: a place that i'd in, you know, on my return
52:01
Speaker 5: trip back to the truck visit that same scrape, and
52:05
Speaker 5: clearly it had been freshened up since I'd been there earlier.
52:09
Speaker 4: And they the day and I just like, why did
52:12
Speaker 4: I leave? Why did I leave?
52:13
Speaker 5: But you know, but those are the signs, you know that.
52:17
Speaker 5: I think that anybody that wants to do this type
52:20
Speaker 5: of hunting, you know, can relate to it. There are
52:24
Speaker 5: large community scrapes and and I know a bunch of
52:28
Speaker 5: people that are very very successful sitting on a community
52:31
Speaker 5: scrape for you know, days on end, waiting for mature
52:34
Speaker 5: buck to come to it, you know. And it's just
52:36
Speaker 5: a matter about having that discipline and the patients to
52:39
Speaker 5: really sit on it and put it in because you
52:41
Speaker 5: may see only one year visit it all day for
52:44
Speaker 5: you know, a week's time.
52:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's tough.
52:48
Speaker 2: You mentioned though, that you mentioned though that sometimes you
52:51
Speaker 2: do use a stand and and will kind of post
52:54
Speaker 2: up what is the situation, the ideal situation where you
52:58
Speaker 2: would like to actually do that and you're willing to
53:01
Speaker 2: have the discipline to wait it out.
53:03
Speaker 4: Yeah.
53:04
Speaker 5: So I think this last year was a pretty good
53:06
Speaker 5: example of recently employing that, particularly on what I think
53:11
Speaker 5: most people would say is really backcountry hunting. And granted,
53:18
Speaker 5: there were clear cuts in roads in proximity, you know,
53:22
Speaker 5: in a road, a gated road that we hiked into
53:25
Speaker 5: to get to this clear cut, but it was a
53:26
Speaker 5: spot that we could see. I mean, this is big
53:29
Speaker 5: mountainous country, and it was a it was a cut
53:32
Speaker 5: that we could see from a very long distance that
53:36
Speaker 5: you know, was probably anywhere between that five to ten
53:40
Speaker 5: year old cut. There was some tama ract that had
53:42
Speaker 5: started to grow back up into it, there was some
53:44
Speaker 5: brush it burned over, the wildfire had gone through some
53:50
Speaker 5: adjacent timber stands close to it, and for whatever reason,
53:55
Speaker 5: it just really stuck out to my brother and I
53:59
Speaker 5: as being we need to figure out how to get
54:01
Speaker 5: into that place. And so again the weather had turned,
54:06
Speaker 5: it got older, dropped about twenty degrees, and then it
54:10
Speaker 5: and it snowed a little bit, snow that stopped about
54:13
Speaker 5: eleven am that day.
54:15
Speaker 4: And so in the process of trying to figure.
54:17
Speaker 5: It out and get to the gate that we needed
54:21
Speaker 5: to to get in there, we noticed that there's just
54:24
Speaker 5: this really a pretty significant increase in deer activity. You'd
54:28
Speaker 5: see fresh deer tracks on these roads. And so then
54:32
Speaker 5: so we just hyped into this. You know, I had
54:35
Speaker 5: my son with me and I said, hey, we're going
54:38
Speaker 5: to go over here to sit in Wahich. You know,
54:41
Speaker 5: you could see the furtherest you could probably see was
54:44
Speaker 5: about four hundred yards and then there was a little
54:47
Speaker 5: bit closer, but there was some timber stringers in the
54:50
Speaker 5: riparian going up that would provide really good transition cover
54:55
Speaker 5: if a buck was cruising through, and then there was
54:58
Speaker 5: just generally fee well. As we started to hike in there,
55:01
Speaker 5: mark it was apparent that there there was a you know,
55:06
Speaker 5: a significant amount of deer in this general area. Just
55:10
Speaker 5: by the number of fresh tracks, you could tell that
55:14
Speaker 5: there were it appeared probably several bucks cruising around in
55:17
Speaker 5: this area just by the way, you know, looking at
55:19
Speaker 5: these tracks, looking how they're moving. They weren't you know,
55:22
Speaker 5: dough groups, you know, a dough and a yearling and
55:25
Speaker 5: fawn moving around. It was clearly a single deer, big deer.
55:29
Speaker 4: On the move.
55:30
Speaker 5: And it it ended up being worthwhile being in there
55:33
Speaker 5: because that initial evening we hiked in there about midday
55:37
Speaker 5: and we were going to sit till dark, and it
55:39
Speaker 5: ended up shooting a buck that was just out cruising.
55:42
Speaker 5: It was clear that he had been cruising all day
55:45
Speaker 5: and it just happened that he came to where we
55:48
Speaker 5: could see him. Now, we had sat the day prior,
55:53
Speaker 5: probably a half mile from there in a different clear cut,
55:56
Speaker 5: and I think just the clear the conditions just weren't
55:59
Speaker 5: right and we never even saw a deer, you know,
56:02
Speaker 5: getting there at first light, sitting and watching the conditions
56:05
Speaker 5: just weren't right, and the deer weren't moving.
56:07
Speaker 4: And then it was just like some switch.
56:09
Speaker 5: But it was that combination of you know, you got
56:11
Speaker 5: some timber stringers that provide good cover and sometimes you know,
56:17
Speaker 5: you might be looking at a select cut, which that
56:19
Speaker 5: is they only removed a portion of the trees, so
56:22
Speaker 5: it ends up opening up the canopy significantly to provide
56:26
Speaker 5: a pretty good food source, and it's just pretty unproductive,
56:30
Speaker 5: I think for the deer, and they want to be
56:31
Speaker 5: in there. And so that was a really good example
56:34
Speaker 5: of of kind of learning the spot and concentrating.
56:38
Speaker 4: On, you know, what we think those deer would be
56:41
Speaker 4: looking for, and then taking advantage of a weather event
56:44
Speaker 4: that really triggered a change in their attitude. You know.
56:48
Speaker 5: We we went back in there the next morning because
56:51
Speaker 5: of how much tivity we saw and we my son
56:56
Speaker 5: and I sat in a different spot and ended up
56:59
Speaker 5: seeing a little or buck come down off a finger
57:03
Speaker 5: ridge to the edge of what was you know, probably
57:08
Speaker 5: a little bit too old of a clear cut, but
57:11
Speaker 5: it stopped.
57:12
Speaker 4: You know when we saw it.
57:13
Speaker 5: It was you know, raking its antlers in a tree
57:15
Speaker 5: and making a scrape and then slowly disappeared into the timber,
57:19
Speaker 5: never to be seen again. But you could tell that
57:22
Speaker 5: there was heightened activity in that general area. Whether or
57:25
Speaker 5: not that was because there was a higher density of
57:28
Speaker 5: doze or a number of dos had come into heat,
57:32
Speaker 5: I'm not quite sure what really happened there, but it
57:34
Speaker 5: was clear that there was a higher density of deer
57:38
Speaker 5: and that you know, it is literally out in the
57:41
Speaker 5: middle of nowhere.
57:45
Speaker 2: What uh, this is gonna showcase my Western ignorance. But
57:51
Speaker 2: what do you mean when you say a timber stringer?
57:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so good question.
57:56
Speaker 5: So you'll see in a lot of you know, you know,
57:59
Speaker 5: timber is generally harvest under various management regimes. In Idaho,
58:06
Speaker 5: we have the Idaho Forestry Act, which prohibits removal of
58:10
Speaker 5: timber within riparian I can't remember how many yards it
58:15
Speaker 5: is from the wetted area outside on either side. So
58:19
Speaker 5: that is generally what I would refer to as a
58:22
Speaker 5: timber stringer. There might not necessarily be a creek there,
58:26
Speaker 5: but it's definitely a wetted area where harvest isn't allowed.
58:30
Speaker 5: And so when you look at a cut, you know,
58:34
Speaker 5: you'll see it might be flat, but it's a little
58:37
Speaker 5: bit rolly. And so where you have these draws, that's
58:40
Speaker 5: just generally where they'll leave the timber right because it
58:43
Speaker 5: is wetted and it is a riparian area in the
58:48
Speaker 5: you know, the higher order of a stream, and so
58:51
Speaker 5: the timber is left there, and so you'll see that
58:54
Speaker 5: deer will really concentrate on that for travel corridors.
58:59
Speaker 4: You know, for cover in safety.
59:01
Speaker 5: Although that makes sense, there's instances when when the rod
59:04
Speaker 5: is on and those white tail bucks kind of lose
59:07
Speaker 5: their mind and you know, in the classic sense, they're
59:10
Speaker 5: just out cruising, cruising big country and it's it's pretty
59:14
Speaker 5: neat to see.
59:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what about rattling and calling. I could see
59:21
Speaker 2: that if these are deer that rarely see people, I
59:24
Speaker 2: would think that maybe they rarely hear fake.
59:27
Speaker 3: Calling or rattling to them.
59:30
Speaker 2: But then on the other hand, I could imagine that
59:32
Speaker 2: in some of these places where there's lower deer densities,
59:35
Speaker 2: they just don't hear stuff in general a lot, and
59:37
Speaker 2: so maybe that's just not something they key into as much.
59:39
Speaker 2: What's what's your take on that.
59:43
Speaker 5: When I first started started hunting Idaho, I still had
59:48
Speaker 5: a lot of that Eastern roots in me and really
59:53
Speaker 5: concentrated and spent a lot of time rattling and grunting,
59:57
Speaker 5: particularly you know, prior to a peak rud At that
1:00:00
Speaker 5: point in time, my success rate and this was in
1:00:03
Speaker 5: the over the course of a day, mind you mark
1:00:06
Speaker 5: and and but over the course of a hunt, you
1:00:10
Speaker 5: know what, I came to found out that one in
1:00:14
Speaker 5: six times when in six sets you would have a
1:00:17
Speaker 5: buck come in like and I and that I kind
1:00:20
Speaker 5: of felt like was pretty darn successful. For whatever reason,
1:00:24
Speaker 5: I don't do it so much. And these were in
1:00:28
Speaker 5: very very large tracks of national forest. And what triggered
1:00:33
Speaker 5: was an abundant of rut sign, rubs and scrapes in
1:00:37
Speaker 5: a general area. Being able to see a little bit,
1:00:41
Speaker 5: you know, so if I because I'm just sitting on
1:00:43
Speaker 5: the ground, I mean, there's no not carrying around a
1:00:46
Speaker 5: saddle or anything, but but just find a spot that
1:00:50
Speaker 5: you could see and set up with good sign and
1:00:53
Speaker 5: then go from there. And one in six times it worked,
1:00:56
Speaker 5: you know. And and I don't do it as much
1:01:00
Speaker 5: as I used to for whatever reason. I can't really
1:01:02
Speaker 5: explain why, but I but it is it can be
1:01:07
Speaker 5: I think, extremely effective. I don't really know many others
1:01:10
Speaker 5: that do it, you know, as far as all the
1:01:13
Speaker 5: western runners that I know.
1:01:14
Speaker 4: That I you know, to talk to, I just don't
1:01:17
Speaker 4: know that many that actually spend the time to do it.
1:01:21
Speaker 4: Part of it's having the confidence.
1:01:23
Speaker 5: Right and yeah, you know, and keeping your eye out
1:01:27
Speaker 5: because of the way the land is, thepography of the timber.
1:01:31
Speaker 5: I mean, you could have a buck come in, but
1:01:33
Speaker 5: you just might not ever see it, you know, And
1:01:36
Speaker 5: so that will really discourage you from continuing to do.
1:01:40
Speaker 2: It, if you If you kind of talking about going
1:01:54
Speaker 2: from your Pennsylvania experience to then showing up in Idaho,
1:01:59
Speaker 2: what if we reverse to what if I picked you
1:02:02
Speaker 2: up and took you away from the West and dropped
1:02:04
Speaker 2: you off back in Pennsylvania. Is there any one particular
1:02:10
Speaker 2: lesson or technique or approach to whitetail hunting that you've
1:02:15
Speaker 2: picked up in Idaho that you would bring back with
1:02:18
Speaker 2: you to Pennsylvania that you think, oh, yeah, this this
1:02:21
Speaker 2: I would do now, or this would really help me
1:02:23
Speaker 2: now in Pennsylvania, or I'm going to be a lot
1:02:25
Speaker 2: more successful now in PA because of what I learned there.
1:02:27
Speaker 3: Does anything come to mind?
1:02:32
Speaker 5: Well, I think if there's one thing I learned Mark,
1:02:35
Speaker 5: is you know, even where I grew up in northeast Pennsylvania,
1:02:40
Speaker 5: you know, for east coast, there's pretty big tracks of
1:02:44
Speaker 5: either state forest, state game land, in some instances national forest,
1:02:50
Speaker 5: pretty large tracks, you know, and not many people, you know,
1:02:54
Speaker 5: go very deep into them. And so all the things
1:02:58
Speaker 5: that I've learned here, paying attention to topography, not really
1:03:04
Speaker 5: being worried about how far I go, you know, not
1:03:07
Speaker 5: worrying about getting a deer out hole, you know, dragging
1:03:10
Speaker 5: it out hole like we see so often there. Those
1:03:14
Speaker 5: are really transferable skills. And of course, you know, I've
1:03:16
Speaker 5: just I think, gotten to.
1:03:18
Speaker 4: Be a better deer hunter. This was just when I
1:03:20
Speaker 4: was young.
1:03:21
Speaker 5: It was you know, I think opportunity, you know, and
1:03:24
Speaker 5: so I just went with what everybody else was doing.
1:03:27
Speaker 5: I'd go to a stand and sit on stand and
1:03:30
Speaker 5: hopefully deer would come to me. I didn't pay much
1:03:34
Speaker 5: attention to massed crops, particularly agcorns, which are very very abundant,
1:03:39
Speaker 5: which you know, as most of your listeners, can relate
1:03:42
Speaker 5: to changes year to year, you know, across a large landscape.
1:03:47
Speaker 5: What you know, what may have been very very productive
1:03:50
Speaker 5: and as an oak stand the year before may not
1:03:53
Speaker 5: have any egg worns. And so I'm in a better
1:03:55
Speaker 5: understanding of that, and just I'm in.
1:03:58
Speaker 4: A better appreciation for deer.
1:04:00
Speaker 5: Deer and deer habits is certainly, I think one of
1:04:03
Speaker 5: those transferable skills. I will say it's been it's been
1:04:06
Speaker 5: quite a while since I've been back to whitetail hunt,
1:04:09
Speaker 5: but you know, after some things that I had learned here,
1:04:13
Speaker 5: you know, really did employ them and went pretty far
1:04:17
Speaker 5: from from where the camp that I used to hunt
1:04:21
Speaker 5: out of, and I think, you know, there were a
1:04:23
Speaker 5: lot of comments like, boy, you're going deep. It's how
1:04:26
Speaker 5: they would refer to it, and in places that you know,
1:04:29
Speaker 5: we're talking about sixteen seventy year old guys that have
1:04:32
Speaker 5: hunted this mountain forever had never even gone to you know,
1:04:35
Speaker 5: that's how they looked at it.
1:04:37
Speaker 4: Granted it was a mile and a half from camp.
1:04:38
Speaker 4: It wasn't a big deal for me.
1:04:41
Speaker 5: And that just like used some topography, looked at the
1:04:44
Speaker 5: habitat adjacent to that topography, and and went to that spot,
1:04:48
Speaker 5: and you know, conned my brother who had been was
1:04:52
Speaker 5: back with me and an old hunting partner to go
1:04:55
Speaker 5: up there. And in that day we each the first
1:04:58
Speaker 5: time hunting there, we eat a shot a buck in
1:05:00
Speaker 5: that same general area, sitting on stand, you know, just
1:05:05
Speaker 5: picking the remoteness of it. And so I think that
1:05:07
Speaker 5: there are a bunch of those transferable skills. But it
1:05:11
Speaker 5: goes the same way, right, There is nothing other than
1:05:14
Speaker 5: the expansiveness, which can be intimidating that it's not transferable
1:05:19
Speaker 5: to any single whitetail hunter, to western whitetail hunting, you know,
1:05:22
Speaker 5: whether it is you know hunting, you know, you know
1:05:26
Speaker 5: that bag interface, you know, river corridors or big timber.
1:05:30
Speaker 5: There's so many transferable skills. They are still white tails,
1:05:34
Speaker 5: they still behave in the same same way, you know,
1:05:38
Speaker 5: to an extent. Like I mentioned earlier, they do have
1:05:41
Speaker 5: a number of more predators that they have to worry
1:05:44
Speaker 5: about that you know, really them significantly, you know, particularly
1:05:48
Speaker 5: mountain lions and bobcats are pretty significant predators on them,
1:05:51
Speaker 5: So it's it's something that generally, you know, puts them
1:05:55
Speaker 5: at a heightened, heightened position.
1:05:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So I'm going to force you to put
1:06:02
Speaker 2: your money where your mouth is on this whole idea
1:06:04
Speaker 2: of of these skills being transferable and put.
1:06:07
Speaker 3: You on the spot.
1:06:08
Speaker 2: If you were forced to place odds on on my
1:06:14
Speaker 2: likelihood of being able to transfer my skills from where
1:06:17
Speaker 2: I live and hunt and the other places that I've
1:06:19
Speaker 2: lived and hunted.
1:06:20
Speaker 3: Over the years.
1:06:21
Speaker 2: Here, what would you say my chances are if I
1:06:26
Speaker 2: were to spend a week in this kind of country
1:06:28
Speaker 2: that we're talking about, and we'll say it's it's like
1:06:31
Speaker 2: a November rifle hunt. Knowing a little bit of what
1:06:35
Speaker 2: you know about me and what we've talked about in
1:06:37
Speaker 2: the past, give me, give me your give me your odds.
1:06:40
Speaker 2: Do I have a fifty to fifty chance? Do I
1:06:42
Speaker 2: have like a twenty five percent chance, a ten percent chance?
1:06:45
Speaker 2: You're you're welcome to totally crush my hopes and uh
1:06:49
Speaker 2: and tell me it's way worse than that.
1:06:51
Speaker 3: But if I put you on the spot, what do
1:06:53
Speaker 3: you think? What do you like? Do you like my
1:06:54
Speaker 3: own Mark.
1:06:55
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I think, knowing what I know of you
1:07:00
Speaker 5: in your white tail experiences, you know, i'd honestly put
1:07:05
Speaker 5: you well over seventy five percent odds.
1:07:08
Speaker 4: You know, you you.
1:07:11
Speaker 5: You have an immense amount of white tail experience in
1:07:14
Speaker 5: varied habitats that again are very transferable. Uh And now granted,
1:07:20
Speaker 5: you know, you know, are we talking about killing a mature.
1:07:25
Speaker 4: Trophy class white tail? Are we just talking about killing
1:07:29
Speaker 4: a white tail, you know, a white tail buck?
1:07:32
Speaker 5: Those are two different things. But in general, I think
1:07:35
Speaker 5: once you start looking at, you know, these landscapes and
1:07:40
Speaker 5: generally getting boots on the ground, there's so many transferable skills,
1:07:45
Speaker 5: you know, And I think the biggest one is patience
1:07:48
Speaker 5: and perseverance and overcoming the difficulties that come along with
1:07:54
Speaker 5: this that can be so not only demoralizing but intimidating.
1:07:59
Speaker 4: You know.
1:07:59
Speaker 5: And I think time and time again, all of us
1:08:03
Speaker 5: as listeners and viewers, have seen you come through that
1:08:06
Speaker 5: time and time again, that those are probably some of
1:08:09
Speaker 5: the most important skills. I mean, I can tell you that,
1:08:13
Speaker 5: you know, on that hunt that I did last year
1:08:15
Speaker 5: with my brother and son, over the course of that
1:08:20
Speaker 5: I guess we were only.
1:08:21
Speaker 4: There for four days.
1:08:22
Speaker 5: Over the course of that four day hunt, my brother
1:08:24
Speaker 5: never saw a buck. My son and I every day,
1:08:28
Speaker 5: every sit we saw at least one buck. And so
1:08:31
Speaker 5: but you know, he grows to expect it, you know,
1:08:34
Speaker 5: and he knows you know that, well.
1:08:36
Speaker 4: This is just what comes with the territory. Yep.
1:08:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's probably the most underrated, most important skill for
1:08:43
Speaker 2: any kind of hunters is just patience, perseverance, and just
1:08:48
Speaker 2: dogheaded optimism, stubbornness, something like that to keep on keeping on.
1:08:56
Speaker 2: Here's the problem, though, is that you just now put
1:08:58
Speaker 2: all this pressure on me because you just said that
1:09:00
Speaker 2: that there's higher than seventy percent odds that I can.
1:09:03
Speaker 3: Get it done.
1:09:03
Speaker 2: So now I really better get it done. And if
1:09:06
Speaker 2: I don't, you I give you, I give you permission
1:09:09
Speaker 2: to give me a lot of crap.
1:09:10
Speaker 3: If I don't manage to pull it off, now.
1:09:12
Speaker 5: Well, I mean i'll give you I'll reduce those odds.
1:09:15
Speaker 5: If you're just out there floundering around in October or
1:09:17
Speaker 5: September for whatever reason, you know, Yeah, you got to
1:09:20
Speaker 5: be in the woods at the right time. And I
1:09:21
Speaker 5: think that those odds you know, are up there well
1:09:24
Speaker 5: above seventy five percent. You know, to connect on on
1:09:27
Speaker 5: a whitetail buck and potentially a mature one. I mean,
1:09:32
Speaker 5: that's part of it, right, is understanding that there is
1:09:34
Speaker 5: a potential for running into a mature buck.
1:09:37
Speaker 4: And that's something that we haven't really talked about.
1:09:39
Speaker 5: But what I have seen through harvest over the years
1:09:44
Speaker 5: throughout the Northern Rockies. I always like to think that
1:09:48
Speaker 5: you know, you were talking earlier about these, you know,
1:09:51
Speaker 5: grizzled old white tail bucks, gnarley antlers, you know, and
1:09:55
Speaker 5: I always equate that with the northern expanses of Idaho
1:10:01
Speaker 5: and Montana. The actual rate on the Canadian border. I
1:10:04
Speaker 5: always get the sense that they're they have a little
1:10:07
Speaker 5: bit of an influence from those Canadian populations for whatever
1:10:12
Speaker 5: reason and what that's worth. But you definitely see a
1:10:14
Speaker 5: different body size and antler size up their morphology compared
1:10:20
Speaker 5: to as you group slowly go south. You know, it's
1:10:23
Speaker 5: just your more general typical you know, four and five points.
1:10:26
Speaker 3: So interesting.
1:10:29
Speaker 2: All right, Well, this probably won't be the last time
1:10:31
Speaker 2: you're gonna hear from me. I'll be keeping you posted
1:10:34
Speaker 2: if if this hunt comes together the way I'm hoping
1:10:36
Speaker 2: it will, I'll be I'll be sharing updates or picking
1:10:39
Speaker 2: your brain. So thank you for sharing all this with me.
1:10:43
Speaker 2: I want to ask you one more question, and it's
1:10:47
Speaker 2: a really really hard pivot, like completely unrelated to what
1:10:52
Speaker 2: we've been talking about, but I have you on the phone,
1:10:55
Speaker 2: and your day job, the main stuff you deal with
1:10:58
Speaker 2: is salmon and steel head and everything going on there
1:11:01
Speaker 2: with the Snake River in that region of the country,
1:11:03
Speaker 2: in the Pacific Northwest, and I just want to give you,
1:11:07
Speaker 2: like a sixty second elevator pitch opportunity here for anybody
1:11:11
Speaker 2: who likes to fish and who is not aware of
1:11:13
Speaker 2: what's going on up there. Could you give us a
1:11:15
Speaker 2: really quick rundown of what it is that's going on
1:11:18
Speaker 2: in the Pacific Northwest, what you work on, and where
1:11:21
Speaker 2: people could go if they like to fish and they're
1:11:23
Speaker 2: interested in learning more.
1:11:26
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:11:26
Speaker 5: So my day job I work for Trout Unlimited. I
1:11:30
Speaker 5: am the Snake of Her campaign director. It's a Trout
1:11:33
Speaker 5: Online Limited one a Trout Unlimited, It's national priority campaigns.
1:11:38
Speaker 5: It's s physically focused on recovering wild salmon and steelhead
1:11:43
Speaker 5: out of their risk of extinction. All of our four
1:11:46
Speaker 5: salmon species within the Stink of Her Basins are threatened
1:11:50
Speaker 5: into endangered, and part of that is trying to come
1:11:54
Speaker 5: up with a comprehensive solution to recover and restore them
1:11:57
Speaker 5: through the position is breaching the for lower snake over dams,
1:12:02
Speaker 5: but with the understanding that we need to replace those
1:12:05
Speaker 5: services associated with the hydrosystem and uplift the entire Northwest.
1:12:10
Speaker 4: And so that that's my day job.
1:12:13
Speaker 5: If people are interested and or at one time hope
1:12:16
Speaker 5: to catch a salmon and steelhead on the snake or
1:12:19
Speaker 5: salmon or clearwater rivers, you can follow much of our
1:12:23
Speaker 5: work and Trot Unlimited, particularly our campaign work at tu
1:12:26
Speaker 5: dot org forward slash Lower Snake. That's our landing page
1:12:30
Speaker 5: for that, but other than that, tu dot org has
1:12:33
Speaker 5: a very robust we have a very robust website that
1:12:38
Speaker 5: highlights a lot of our work nationwide and throughout the West.
1:12:43
Speaker 3: Awesome.
1:12:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys are doing great work. I appreciate to
1:12:47
Speaker 2: you immensely. I appreciate your work trying to make sure
1:12:51
Speaker 2: these incredible fish don't disappear, and I appreciate you sharing
1:12:55
Speaker 2: some of this hard earned whitetail knowledge to Eric. So
1:12:58
Speaker 2: thank you for all of that. Thanks for being here.
1:13:00
Speaker 4: Well. I appreciate your time mark.
1:13:02
Speaker 2: Thank you all right, and that's going to do it
1:13:06
Speaker 2: for us today. Thank you for joining us here on
1:13:09
Speaker 2: the Wired Hunt podcast. I appreciate you being with me
1:13:12
Speaker 2: here for so many years. Thanks for tuning into both
1:13:15
Speaker 2: my episodes as well as everything else we've got coming
1:13:18
Speaker 2: out here on the Wired Hunt Feed the Back forty
1:13:21
Speaker 2: podcast with Jake Koefer, Foundations, episodes from Tony, other episodes
1:13:26
Speaker 2: from Jake as he dives into more whitetail topics in
1:13:30
Speaker 2: our standard interview format.
1:13:32
Speaker 3: We're trying to diversify the lineup.
1:13:34
Speaker 2: We're trying to give you as many different opportunities to
1:13:38
Speaker 2: learn about white tails, whitetail deer hunting, how to make
1:13:42
Speaker 2: sure we can enjoy this amazing lifestyle well into the
1:13:45
Speaker 2: future in so many different ways. So thanks again and
1:13:49
Speaker 2: until next time, stay wired to Hunt.